Sion (Planet Abstrus Series #2)

By TK Rayford

Life has almost returned to normal for Lexi. The hunters that were out to kill her have been taken care of and her father saved from their clutches. Her biggest worry has become remaining "just friends" with the hot, alien Gallaghar, who clearly wants more from her while she is secretly pining away for Ferdinand, who seems to have a much darker agenda than being her boyfriend.

Lexi still hasn't located her mother and receives information that she may be on the planet Sion. She drops everything and drags her friends with her to follow a lead that could very well be a trap. If Farah has her way, then Lexi won't be leaving Sion alive and this will mean the start of a war to the death between their planets.

• Language: English
• Publisher: TK Rayford
• Release date: Dec 13, 2011
• ISBN: 9781465744708

TK Rayford

TK Rayford was born in Chicago. IL with her four siblings. She later moved to Memphis TN. where she was raised. She fell in love with writing in the second grade and has been writing ever since. She has a fondness for dark literature, but found her home in young adult science fiction.

Book preview

Sion

Book Two of

The Planet Abstrus

Series

TK Rayford

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2011

By TK Rayford

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this and did not purchase for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.

Table of Contents

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-One

Twenty-Two

About the Author

One

The air was so still that it seemed as if I existed inside of a bubble. I had been here so many times in the past two months that I wasn't surprised to be here now. The red clay cliffs stretched out in front of me as far as my eyes could see, meeting with the blazing bright horizon in the distance. My breath stilled completely. Whenever I ended up here, the need to breathe disappeared and sound completely eluded my ears. I couldn’t tell if that was because this place was devoid of sound or if my ears simply weren’t functioning.

The sun seemed to beat down on me from all directions. I glanced up at the sky to see two suns, one in the east and the other in the west. It all seemed so familiar and yet so strange. Despite all of the times that I had been here, I hadn't come any closer to deciphering where here was exactly. But no matter what I did or how hard I tried to stay away, I was sucked right back with increasing frequency that was becoming more and more alarming. And it played out the same way each time too. I would arrive in the middle of the sea of red cliffs, close enough to a gorge in front of me for my stomach to knot with the beginnings of vertigo. The gorge was a sudden break in the red clay that dropped straight down and went so far that I could barely see the clear stream at the bottom. Leaping head first from the cliff was still a vivid memory and I didn't at all hope to repeat it. I took a step back from the edge.

The spot on my back between my shoulder blades began to itch. I quickly turned with the feeling that someone was there watching me. My paranoia of being spied on had become my constant companion with each trip I made to the cliffs. But I could never get used to it and accept it as something that came with being here. Each time I swung around in a circle, determined to find and catch whomever it was that was here with me, but each time I was only met by empty space and more red clay. I would usually return to an inexplicable sense of peace after ensuring myself that I was alone, but now it seemed different. The calm that I had become familiar with did not envelope me. I was greeted instead by an even more urgent need to figure out who was here with me. I spun around again, determined to put an end to the mystery.

And there Gem stood. I sighed in relief, although the sound was lost on my ears. She had her back to me, her thick, black waist-length curls blowing in a breeze that I couldn't feel. It seemed to be centered completely on her. I moved toward her, grateful to see a friendly face or any face for that matter. It was still weird for me to think of her as friend, though. Little more than a month and a half ago, I would have called her everything in the book other than a friend. After all, it had been her job to hunt me down and kill me. Lucky for me, she had turned out to be terrible at that job.

Gem, I called out, attempting to get her attention. But the words died just as they left my lips, leaving the perfect silence intact. I tried again to call her name, this time louder, hoping to break the silent barrier. But that attempt failed just as the first had. I walked around until we were facing one another. Her eyes were staring straight at me, although I could tell that they weren't seeing me. They seemed to be seeing through me rather. I waved my hand in front of her dark eyes, but she didn't even blink or move to acknowledge that she sensed me there with her.

Gem was the tiniest person I knew, but for what she lacked in size she made up for in strength and spirit. If we were making eye contact, she had to slightly look up to me. I bent my knees until I was at eye level with her and placed my hands on her shoulders. Her skin was icy to the touch and I jerked my hands back. Panic overtook me as I watched her pretty face contort in a mask of fear and pain. Her mouth opened in a soundless scream. I reached out to shake her out of whatever horror she was witnessing behind her eyes. But my hands, this time, went through her, grasping only air. I grabbed for her again, but still my hands came away empty. I watched helplessly as her form, which was solid only minutes before, flickered and lightened until she became completely transparent. And ultimately she disappeared altogether, leaving me alone again on the barren cliffs.

~~~*~~~

Lexi, a deep voice called. And when I didn't respond right away, it called again. Lex, get up. You're going to be late for school.

I sat straight up in bed, blinking over and over in an attempt to focus my eyes. My purple comforter was twisted all around my legs and my back was slick with sweat. I moved to untangle myself as I surveyed my room. Everything was in order as it always was; my CD collection stacked waist high in the corner and my country flags lined up neatly. My heart rate slowed to resemble a normal pace as my mind processed what was going on. I had had the dream again. I let out the breath I’d been holding, partly in relief, and partly to ensure that my ears were working properly again. The recurring dream had first started over two months ago, but I was still unnerved every time I was sucked into it. It had become a staple in my week: eat, watch TV, clean my room, have crazy red cliff dream. I went to bed each night fully aware that I could end up back on those cliffs, but still felt blindsided when it actually happened. But this time it had been different. Gem was there and that was new. Remembering the terrified look in her eyes just before she disappeared left me with an ominous feeling in my gut. I wondered silently what it could mean.

Alexandria Lee, you're going to be late, the voice that I now recognized as Dad’s called again.

I'm up, I yelled back before glancing over at the train alarm clock sitting next to my bed. I had forgotten to set it and in 10 minutes I would officially be late for my first day as a high school senior. It was strange to not wake up to the choo-choo sound that the alarm made when it was time to get up, but I shrugged it off. I threw my legs over the side of the bed, revealing the pink and yellow stripes that ran down my pajama pants.

Being late to school wasn't something that I was new to, but I had hoped to turn over a new leaf for my last year. So much in my life had changed over the past eight months and I still wasn't sure if most of those changes were good or bad. But if the only change in my life that I could control was whether or not I was late for school, I was prepared to take it head on. Not remembering to set my alarm wouldn’t help me to do that at all.

I took a second to examine my face in the mirror beside my bed. Every time I had the dream, for some reason I expected something to have changed about me. Luckily, as was true for every other time too, my straight brown, shoulder-length hair, matching brown eyes, and peachy skin were all in order— only my eyes were set a little further apart than usual. But that had become expected. After proving to myself that I was still me, I raced down the hall past Dad's room. A lump rose in my throat as a passed the open door, remembering how he had been holed up in there for months. I had to remind myself daily that he was okay now. The constant fear that he would revert back to what he had been plagued me.

When Mom had disappeared, now eight months ago, and the police declared that they were no longer looking for a person, but a body, Dad had sort of checked out. He had been barely functioning and left me to be the one to try to take care of everything. My older brother Van was around, but no one who knew him would expect him to take care of anything other than himself. But that was all in the past and I desperately hoped to keep it there as well as keep Dad in the kitchen making breakfast as I had become accustomed to him doing over the past month.

The clock that I kept in the shower glared back at me. I had five minutes until I was late. I hopped out of the shower and dressed, in record time, in a bright green t-shirt, jeans, and new sneakers. It hadn't been easy for me to let go of my old ones that I had owned forever, but after trekking through the woods several times over the course of the summer, they were not fit to be worn anywhere, public or private. I ran back down the hall to grab my backpack off of my bed before racing down the stairs and past Van's new, or my parent's old bedroom, depending on how you looked at it.

When I entered the kitchen, Dad was sitting at the island in the middle of the room, sipping a cup of coffee and staring blankly out the window. I sometimes caught him in these states that were alarmingly similar to how he was in zombie-mode. But whenever he saw me, he would immediately perk up as if he didn't have a care in the world. I appreciated the effort, but the façade wasn't necessary. I knew that losing Mom had left a huge emptiness inside of him, because it had done the same to me— that is before I learned that she’d secretly left us of her own accord. Of course, Dad didn't know that, but the knowledge definitely made me question how I felt about her.

There were tons of things that I had learned over the summer that Dad didn't know. The fact that Mom was an alien High Council member from a planet called Abstrus and was parading around Earth posing as a human was a huge something that Dad didn't know. She had passed herself off as a simple stay-at-home mom named Janie Lee. Dad didn’t even know that her real name was Jandra. None of these were secrets I planned to let him in on anytime soon. He finally had a job that he liked at the local grocery store and the fog of depression, which I had begun to believe to be permanent, finally started to lift. There was no way that I was going to do anything that would possibly send him back into that dark place— including telling him the truth.

The smell of the bacon and toast that Dad had prepared for me made my stomach grumble in anticipation. It was quite depressing to realize that I didn't have time to sit down and enjoy it. I walked over to the island and planted a quick kiss on his weathered cheek, before grabbing a slice of toast and two pieces of bacon that I had every intention of stuffing down my throat on the walk to school.

You're going to be late, Dad said without looking up from his newspaper.

Not if I can help it, I yelled over my shoulder as I headed out the back door. Love you.

Love you too, Lex, he replied as the door clicked shut between us.

Two

I turned the key in the door, making sure that it was locked. Before summer vacation, I never paid much attention to locked doors and things like that. But running for your life from a group of alien hunters that are convinced you shouldn't exist will kind of make you conscious of those kinds of things. I turned to find Liza sitting on the top step of the porch waiting for me. She was responsible for saving my life as well as risking it, and I must admit that I was still working through some of the trust issues that I had developed with her as a result. But I didn't dare tell her that. She would just burst into tears and make me feel guilty for being upset with her for trying to kill me.

Liza hopped to her feet as I started down the stairs. She fell into step beside me, chewing hard on the wad of gum that was always in her mouth. We didn't speak as had become to norm for our morning walks to school. I loved that about our friendship. She didn't need to muddle the silence with pointless conversation. And that early in the morning, I wasn’t sure that I had much to say anyway. We squeezed through the hole in the fence of my backyard and cut through to the street beyond.

I glanced over at Liza, happily smacking away at her gum, her strawberry blonde curls blowing in the breeze. She wore a purple v-neck shirt with khaki shorts and matching purple sandals. Everything about her gave the impression of a normal junior in high school. But I knew better. She was anything but normal and so was I. For 17 years I had no idea what I really was, but she waltzed into my life and revealed things to me that I had never thought possible. It almost made going through the motions of pretending to be a regular teenager seem pointless.

Liza, I said, breaking the silence between us. I'm half human and half alien. I'm from Abstrus, not Earth. You're from Sion. Do you really see a point in us hiding out here on Earth pretending to be normal human teens? It all seems kind of silly doesn’t it? When she didn't respond right away, I continued. I mean, here we are a part of something that humans couldn't even comprehend, but we’re pretending that school actually matters.

Liza sighed and blew a huge pink bubble. She seemed to contemplate her response while she looked up at the sky as we walked. Well, she finally said. "We are acting normal because we are normal. We're just a different kind of normal."

Yeah. Normal, I said sarcastically.

I know that after learning all you've learned it seems that the more mundane aspects of life on Earth are pointless. But don't forget that Earth is still your home.

Abstrus is my home too, remember, I said.

Abstrus is a part of you, but that doesn't automatically count out Earth. And it's my home now too. There's nothing back on Sion for me and frankly I'm happy to fit in to normal life here. It's a lot better than being stuck back there on my dying planet. And besides, I'm a junior this year and that's so exciting. Liza squealed to prove just how exciting it was.

I humped my shoulders noncommittally. 20 minutes earlier I had been all but breaking my neck to start my senior year on time. All of my gusto seemed to have gone out the window, though, and that probably had come with the knowledge that I would still be late. We walked up the steps side by side and pushed through the doors of the school. There were a few other straggling students, but the first bell had already sounded so the hall was relatively empty. Liza gave me a tight hug before we parted ways. She headed up the stairs to the second floor where all the junior classes were and I walked straight and turned the corner to the senior hall, the one that I had been aspiring to for the past four years.

Becoming a senior had never meant much to me like it did to most people. They saw it as their opportunity to be in charge and torture the freshmen that they referred to as fresh meat. I, on the other hand, just saw it as being one step closer to being done with high school. That's not to say that high school had been unusually bad for me, because it hadn't. I had just sort of existed rather than participated, which worked for me. The most attention I'd received was the previous school year when everyone thought that Mom was dead. I became the poor girl who lost her mother and had to suffer through everyone's pity. Frankly, I would much rather have remained nameless and faceless in their eyes.

Thankfully, walking into homeroom late wasn't the usual embarrassment. The first day of school seemed to grant some sort of unofficial pardon to we stragglers. I took a seat in the center of the room and chewed on the end of my eraser trying to block out the superficial conversations of everyone around me. I wasn't at all interested in finding out what everyone had done over the summer and how excited they were about senior year. Of course, no one was discussing what college they wanted to attend or what they planned to do with their lives. But what could I expect?

I kept my eyes trained on my desk, attempting to convince myself that I wasn't holding my breath, waiting to see if a certain dark-haired, dark-eyed guy would walk into the room. Since homerooms were assigned by last names, if he were here for this school year, he would be in the same class as me. I shifted uncomfortably in my seat. He was not something that I wanted to be thinking about, but wasn't something that ever seemed to be far from my mind either. I cleared my throat and tried to focus on the TV in the corner that had come to life, displaying students reporting school news on channel one.

I sat through my first four classes without incident; each one was the same routine. The teachers introduced themselves, handed out massive syllabi, and thought that it would be fun to play ice breaker games in some form or other; all the while I was busy not looking for Ferdinand. Ice breakers seemed kind of pointless too, in my opinion, when you have gone to the same school with most of the students for your entire life. If the ice hadn't broken by senior year, then I was assuming that it probably never would. Relief flooded through me when the bell rang in my final class signaling the start of the lunch period. Liza hadn't shown up anywhere on the senior hall that I could see and I was anxious to get to the cafeteria. Seeing a friendly face never hurt anything.

I made a pit stop into the girls' bathroom on the senior hall. The other girls had obviously headed to the one closer to the cafeteria, because this one was empty. But I wasn't complaining. I was actually grateful for the privacy and ducked into the first stall. The bathroom door creaked as it opened slowly, followed by the sound of light creeping footsteps that halted almost as suddenly as they had begun. I strained my ears, listening for a stall door to open or a faucet to turn on that would signal the presence of another student. But the bathroom remained in complete silence. My ears had to be playing tricks on me right? I sucked in a slow breath, resolving to just use the bathroom near the cafeteria. I stuck my chin in the air in an attempt to convince myself that I wasn’t scared, but the butterflies in my stomach told a different story.

When I pushed out of the stall, I didn't see her right away. She was leaning up against the bathroom door, blocking anyone from entering and me from leaving. Her unnaturally red hair blazed under the fluorescent lights and she kept her hazel eyes trained on me. My steps completely halted when my gaze found her.

F-Farah, I stammered. It was a complete shock to my system to be seeing her again, especially in school. The last time I had seen her, we were in her bedroom and she was essentially refusing to help me save Dad from the