Spheres of Influence-eARC Read Online Free PDF

me.” She saw the flash of his smile to take the sting out of the words; the little fangs added sharp punctuation to the grin. It’s odd, she thought. I’ve seen people with much more extreme mods than he has on the surface, but I feel a little different about his. Maybe it’s because his are ones he was born with, if “born” is the right word, and the ones I see in the typical crowd weren’t.
    “Wu, then. Thank you. Call me Ariane.”
    “It will be an honor, Lady Ariane.”
    “Don’t you go using formal titles on me. And it’s Captain if you insist.” She was surprised to find that she meant it. Captain Ariane Stephanie Austin was who she was now.
    “ HA! You strike back! Good! I do not want to be treated like a weakling. So ask, you were going to ask something, yes?”
    “Yes, I was. It seemed like you weren’t going to wake up…and then suddenly you did. What happened?”
    There was an embarrassed tone to his laugh, and one slightly furry clawed hand went behind his head. “I had some sense beaten into me.”
    DuQuesne’s laugh was almost a snort. “I get it. Sha, right?”
    “He picked me up and threw my self-pitying and worthless ass into the river! Then when I came up he told me that I was even more of an idiot than he had believed, and he kicked me over the mountain!” Wu was now kneeling on the floor behind the bed, leaning on the mattress and gazing at them with a fond smile that seemed rather at odds with the violence he was describing. His eyes, she realized, were a brilliant shade of green-gold. “That hurt. And so I tried to argue with him and put him through a couple of cliffs, but that just got him to laugh at me for not even having the conviction to throw a decent punch. That was when I realized he’d dragged the waterfall over to fall on my head.”
    She glanced at DuQuesne. “Um, is this the usual way you have discussions with Wu Kung?”
    DuQuesne grinned. “It’s like with a mule. ‘First, you get his attention…’”
    “ANYway,” the Monkey King continued, with a twinkle in his eye acknowledging DuQuesne’s jibe, “He then sat down on top of me and told me why I was an idiot. That you had come to me for help that only I could give, in your world, and that I was too much of a coward or too soft from living here to actually show the honor that the Monkey King should display, and that if I didn’t have the courage to go with you I didn’t deserve his friendship, Sanzo’s love, or even a name to be called by.” He laughed again. “You want to know his exact words after that, DuQuesne? He said, ‘He gave us life, you stupid monkey! Rescued us from your enemies, rebuilt our world so you could crawl in here and hide! Kill us? We’ll still be here , you fool, even if you go away for a hundred years! Now if you ever were the Monkey King, if you ever wielded that Staff for love and mischief and defeated a thousand enemies, if you ever were the Great Sage Equal Of Heaven, you will pick yourself up and go help that man, go see the wonders we can never dream…and one day, perhaps, bring us out with you.’
    “And,” Wu Kung concluded, looking somewhat shamefaced, “he was completely right. Sha usually was whenever he got preachy, you know. I was just being a coward, hiding inside myself. FIFTY YEARS? I’m ashamed, DuQuesne, ashamed, mortified! I’m amazed you even wanted to come back for me.” The Monkey King looked around. “Did you…come for the others too?”
    DuQuesne shook his head. “Not sure how to approach them yet, Wu. But we will.”
    “Of course we will. Once I understand this new world enough to tell them, we will come back for them all.” He glanced over at Dr. Davison. “Well, healer?”
    Davison shook his head. “You must be in agony every time you move. You really should—”
    “Pain is nothing. I will work hard and I will not be in pain after a while. Pain passes. Am I healthy? Can I go?”
    “Well…yes, the nanomedicals kept you healthy, and