Read Cassiel Winters 1: Sky's End for Free Online Page A

comfortable seating.
    “Hey, aren’t you Daz’s little sister?” asks an effusive female voice behind me.
    Turning back, I recognize the speaker’s face from the mess (women are so outnumbered here it’s hard not to notice each other). She’s beautiful. Caramel skin. Hazel eyes. A few scattered black freckles dust really round cheeks. She’s slight but probably extremely strong (she’d have to be to become an officer). I eye the two stars she sports on each sleeve.
    “I’m Lieutenant Daria Preston,” she says. “I’m a close friend of Daz,” she adds, awkwardly, leaning slightly against the edge of her workstation.
    I look down at her outreached hand. I decide to shake it because I don’t know what else to do. “I’m . . . going to be late for a meeting,” I mumble, giving her an empty smile.
    That was bitchy. Not like me. But I don’t care.
    Before I can turn to head the way I was going, she adds rapidly, “We trained together. He’s an amazing pilot. They don’t come better than him.” I look closely at her. She’s hurting. Maybe she was more than just another one of his flings.
    A sense of reality shifting around me, then, a vacant sense of omnipotence, finally, the familiar yet brand new visual reality settles in—all so smoothly, so effortlessly, there’s no time to hold on and examine what’s really happening because, darnit , it’s already happened.
    A déjà vu turned . . . vision. Daria’s still standing before me, but she’s also sitting at her workstation with King and she’s working on what appears to be a mission report. The section header and the star date are in my line of vision. King’s leaning over the back of her chair, um, a little too close if you ask me , reviewing the contents carefully one last time. Daria’s eager to help.
    King says to her, “Good. That’s perfect. You’re doing the right thing.” He puts his hand on her shoulder. She looks up at him, uncertain. He adds, “It’s what Daz wanted.”
    Huh? What did Daz want? Is that Daz’s mission report? Are they, changing it ?
    As soon as King leaves, Lt. Lazarus arrives. He stops Daria from closing the file and says, angrily, “Now you’ll do what I say.” Daria looks like she may wet herself.
    Then it’s over.
    But I don’t focus my eyes on reality just yet. This is beyond bizarre. What did Daz want? Why was Lt. Lazarus spying on them? And what the Pluto does this mean?
    I blink a few times and focus on Daria, desperate to question her, knowing I can’t. I can just imagine the conversation: “I just mentally ESP’ed you fucking with Daz’s mission report. Nothing personal, but what gives?”
    She appears uncomfortable at my momentary mental absence. “Sorry, I . . . I just failed first-year H2H,” I blurt out. “I’m a mess. And, uh, I have to go.”
    I turn to leave but maybe I should at least try to investigate what it is I’m seeing.
    Stopping mid-stride, I spin around and ask, “Maybe we could meet in Proxy after my meeting?”
    She hesitates. She obviously thinks I’m nuts. I’m used to it. Because I miss things whenever I ‘déjà vu,’ people tend to think I ‘flake out’ a lot.
    “Maybe we could talk about Daz?” I dangle Daz’s name like it’s a carrot.
    She perks up.
    “See you about twenty hundred hours?”
    “Sure,” she says, her eyes darting left and right. “See you then.”
    Quickly I glance down at my com-tab and head down a short quiet corridor after turning a corner, putting the memory of her and King and Lt. Lazarus out of my mind. Are she and King an item? No head space for that right now, though I recognize the feeling I just experienced: hope. This is the first tangible . . . thread I’ve had to find out what’s going on with Daz since I got here—just before I get sent home of course.
    I pass a few doors, counting down the numbers. I reach a slightly longer stretch of wall without doors and then A-12.
    All right , I exhale, let’s get this over with