by Keary Taylor
Cyrillius stands and angles toward me, and the way he’s looking at me? I swear he can see right down to my bones.
I decide then, his cinnamon-brown eyes are my least favorite color in the galaxy.
“Because I do believe that eventually you will come to realize that you are alone in this galaxy, Nova,” he says, and his words chill me. “You do not make friends. You’re in a state of constant disdain. You don’t like people. But you do love working. You love creating.”
I want to shake my head, to say he’s wrong.
But he’s spot on, with everything, except that I am alone.
“You seem to think that I am this symbol of bad, that you are better than I,” he continues. “But you are not a selfless person. You knew you were going into something illegal, and you did it anyway, for entertainment and for the purpose of financial gain. In the end, it is difficult to draw a line and stand on one side or another when you achieve or gain whatever gives you satisfaction.”
Emotion bites the back of my eyes.
His words pull from every dark part in myself. Truth echoes through me, over and over and over again.
Whatever gives you satisfaction.
I’ve done that. Over and over again. I do what I want. I push aside the consequences.
I dumped Zayne and created illegal weapons because I was bored.
How selfish am I?
“You need not feel guilt over it, Nova,” Cyrillius says, his tone gentle and understanding. “We, as human beings, all do it. So very few are truly noble and pure. And those who are, are typically happy to die as martyrs. You would be quickly forgotten as a martyr. But you could be remembered forever for your brilliance. Do not deny your potential.”
He places a hand on my shoulder, lingering for a moment. I feel his weight there, feel his honest and raw words.
And then he walks back to the elevator, leaving me to think about all he’s said, and marvel over the monster below me.
“Are you still alive?”
The voice echoes in my brain, which startles me so much, I trip on my way to the bed that night.
“Still alive so far,” I answer as I right myself and climb under the sheets.
“Is he still alive?” Zara asks directly through the telepathic connection.
I give a sigh, rolling onto my side. “For now. I’m still working on it.”
She doesn’t say anything, and my connection with her is nowhere near as strong as it is with Valen. With him I get these impressions about his expressions, his thoughts and feelings. But I don’t get any of that with Zara, Master Nero on Salypso.
“Be careful,” she says. “Cyrillius is a tricky man.”
I nod, even though she can’t see it.
“How are they?” I ask. My stomach slowly slithers into a knot, pulling tighter and tighter. “Is everyone alright?”
There’s a beat of pause, as if she’s considering what to say. In some ways I want to pretend that everything is perfect and everyone I left on Salypso is happy and fine and not angry at me for sneaking off in the middle of the night to do something dangerous and impossible.
But I know the reality is that they may not ever forgive me.
“Reena is surprisingly settling into a life here,” Zara answers me. “She and Kyril are still exploring the reality of a relationship, but she has been finding her place on Salypso.”
It makes me smile. Reena has always been so cold, so distant and closed off. It nearly seems impossible that someone would come along and crack her open and pull out feelings. I’m happy for her.
“Zayne has been…unsettled since you left,” Zara continues. “He is in a constant state of worry over you. I think he believes he’s eventually going to come to your aide and fight until the bloody finish. He’s been teaching the students sparring techniques, as if he’s preparing them to fight, too.”
“Which is kind of useless when you can create your own weapons and force fields,” I say with a little chuckle.
This time, I swear, I can almost detect a smile from Zara. “But it seems to be making him feel better. And the students seem to enjoy it. He and Nymiah seem to have formed quite a connection.”
Something in my chest loosens. I think I’ve felt guilt that I moved on, developed feelings for someone else. I’ve worried that even though Zayne said he understood that we’re different from the people we were when we were together, that he wouldn’t let go.
I’m happy to find he has.
“What about my father?” I ask of the one I’m most afraid to hear about.
There are three beats of pause.
“Your absence has been difficult for your father,” she answers honestly. “He’s been trying to build a ship so that he can get to you and help.”
“Is he succeeding?” I ask in alarm as I sit up in bed. “Do you have parts on Salypso?”
Slag. I’d never seen another ship on the island-ocean planet. I’d never considered that there might be a way for those I care about to get off that planet and come after me.
“None of us were born on this planet, Nova,” Zara says in a patient yet condescending tone. “We all had to get here somehow. We have two ships in storage here. Neither have worked in two solars. But your father is a skilled mechanic.”
I swear, letting it slip down the connection. “You have to intervene,” I say, and panic slips into my tone. “You have to do something to break it or stall him or something. Zara, my father will do anything for me. And I’m exceptionally lucky and grateful for that. But it will mean the death of him if he gets that ship in the air and comes after me.”
“You cannot control everyone around you, Nova,” she says, chiding me. “If you do not let people exercise free will, you are no better than those you are fighting against. We must all follow our conscience.”
She may as well have just slapped me.
She’s right. I hate that she’s right, but she is.
“Do you ever feel like you’re going insane, trying to keep right and wrong separate?”
“It’s just one of the many reasons I am content staying here on the far side of the galaxy.”
She’s always so wise. Has so much wisdom.
Why can’t I be so level-headed?
“Thank you for letting them stay there,” I say. “I…I appreciate what you’ve said tonight.”
She pauses again. Zara doesn’t say anything without heavy consideration. “You’re a smart person, Nova. You’re infinitely talented. But you are still young. We all make mistakes, especially in our youth.”
My chest gives a squeeze, and again, I’m filled with gratitude. I needed a teacher. And while I may not always agree with her, Zara is a good person. I’m lucky she was the one I found.
“Thank you,” I say again. And she bids me goodbye, and then I’m alone in my head once more.
Like deja vu, the following day begins the same way as the previous. I’m brought high quality, beautiful clothing to wear. They leave me a massive, delicious breakfast. I shower. Eat. And then I am escorted to the lab.
I work on the single-edged sword for nearly an hour before the doors open and Edan steps through them. Under the watchful eye of the soldiers, he works his way over to me.
“With this amount of time spent on quality, no wonder you charge so slam much,” Edan says with an annoyed sneer. “What? Head muddled and slow? Are they not letting you get any sleep?”
“Go to void,” I growl back at him, holding a metal rod up at him, just under his chin.
The soldiers get uncomfortable at that, yelling at me, stepping forward, ready to knock me on my rear end with their Neron weapons.
I hold my hands up in surrender, glaring death at Edan.
The soldiers settle down, going back to their places as Edan gives me a wicked, smug grin.
“Not bad,” I say quietly under my breath once they’ve stopped looking at me with suspicion.
“I’d take a bow but…” he trails off, looking up at those who could vaporiz
e us at one wrong move.
I take a grinder to the handle now forged out of the finest titanium I’ve ever handled. For a few minutes, I actually work. Just like the old days when I was hiding in my hidden workshop at Horne Energy.
I shut the tool off when I’m done and set to attaching it to the blade.
“I’ve been thinking about what you said yesterday,” Edan says quietly as he watches me work. “You said that something happens whenever you think about killing him. And thinking back, I’ve seen you…moon out a few times since we got here.”
I nod my head as I continue working. “I wasn’t sure if it was just in me, happening over a split second, or if anyone could tell.”
“I mean, it’s not like anyone who doesn’t know you would be able to tell,” he says, observing those around us. “But it’s there in your face, just for a second.”
I nod again. “Something isn’t right,” I say. “It’s like I’m not in control. Like it’s not even me in my head for a bit.”
Edan pulls up a stool and sits, acting like he’s closely watching me work. “I have a theory,” he says, keeping his voice low and quiet. “I’ve never actually seen one in person until we got here, but I’ve certainly heard the stories about the Kinduri.”
My hands slip as my blood instantly turns cold.
“There were dozens of them around the day we got here,” he says, his tone turning even quieter. “One could easily have touched you without you noticing that day. What if…what if that was all it took to get in your head? Nova, what if they made it so you can’t kill Cyrillius?”
Stars.
Of course it’s possible.
The Kinduri can read your thoughts. They can pull information right from your mind. Why wouldn’t they be able to plant things inside it, too?
“Slag, Edan,” I breathe as my eyes rise up to meet his. “What if…” I trail off as my thoughts tumble, racing through the past and collecting information. “If that’s true, I think I know why Valen can’t leave Cyrillius.”
His eyes narrow in question but the words don’t form on his lips.
My eyes dart around, making sure no one is within earshot. “It’s been wrecking me since I asked him to come to me on The Corsair. I asked him to leave Cyrillius. He’s strong enough to take him down. To take over the slam galaxy if he wanted. But…” My heart is fracturing, remember how I pled with him. How I was nearly in tears begging him to leave. “But he told me he just couldn’t. And I believed what he said.”
My hands have paused their work and my fingertips and palms feel very, very cold.
“What if Cyrillius used the Kinduri on Valen?” I say, my voice no more than a whisper. “What if Valen really can’t turn away from him?”
Something in me cracks, and I know. I just know.
Valen might have turned into a bad man.
But it’s because he’s a prisoner, trapped by thoughts planted into his own mind.
“Slag, Nova,” Edan breathes, and in his tone, I hear his sympathy.
Slag, slag, slag indeed.
Valen has been trapped. For solars. Nearly his entire life, possibly.
How do you free someone who has been mentally poisoned for decades?
I sit in that uncomfortable chair, staring at Cyrillius, who stares right back at me.
His legs are crossed, his fingers are laced together over his lap. He’s so calm and composed and it makes me hate him more, so instead of letting it show, I mirror his position, keeping my expression serene and relaxed.
“Have you ever heard of the planets Xantu and Bihhani, Nova?” he finally says after we stare at each other in awkward silence for a good four minutes.
“No,” I answer him, never breaking his gaze.
“That is probably because they were both destroyed nearly five hundred solars ago,” he says, dropping that little tidbit like it’s a tip about the weather.
It works.
I blink.
I swallow once, lean back further in my seat.
“They, along with their combined eleven million residents ceased to exist in a matter of seconds the day they declared Neron war upon one another.”
A knot forms in my stomach.
Cyrillius does not lie, not fully, anyway. He may twist the truth to his advantage, but everything he says is based in some form of truth.
“The two planets had been in conflict for more than a century,” Cyrillius continues, reaching to the table between us for his glass of water. He takes a careful, unrushed sip, and carefully places it back. “Bihhani had more Neron deposits than any other planet discovered at the time. But they were a desert planet with little to no other resources. So they struck a bargain with Xantu, who at the time was the most technologically advanced planet in the galaxy. Xantu sent Bihhani technology that could revolutionize them, Bihhani sent Xantu Neron to power their planet.”
I just want this to be over. Cyrillius is good with words, I’ve heard them plenty. I just want to be allowed to go back to the lab and finish the sword I’m supposedly working on for Edan.
But Cyrillius keeps talking, which is a problem when he is so well spoken.
“As you can imagine, feelings were hurt, understandings and deals were broken. Politicians got involved in regulation and laws and ordinances were established. For decades, the two planets existed on rocky footing that was constantly shifting.”
Cyrillius’ cinnamon eyes look up at the chandelier above our heads, made entirely of Neron. It would cost me more than one million credits to get that much Neron.
“As things do, they escalated,” he continues the story. “Soon, they were sending ships to attack each planet. Supplies were cut off. The economies collapsed. There was starvation and famine. The entirety of both planets was caught up in the war. Every resource was drained.”
A screen illuminates on the table in the middle of our chairs, and it doesn’t take long to realize it’s a map of the Eon Galaxy. I easily pick out where we are, on Isroth, in the L Sector. The view shifts and zooms in, and I find myself quickly descending into the H Sector.
It looks like we’re sailing through an asteroid belt; never ending, with massive boulders and tiny shards. It’s the biggest mess of space rocks I’ve ever seen.
An asteroid belt is what I think it is. Until I see the first body.
Only it’s only barely still a body. The flesh is crystalized and black. There is no head, only a torso and one leg and both arms.
Floating just off from that, is what looks like some kind of personal transport vehicle.
Further through space we fly.
There’s the burned skeleton of some kind of animal, a bird.
Scraps of some kind of electronic. The shattered form of a front door.
The knot in my stomach tightens and I have to look away as dozens more bodies float across my view.
“They all had lives,” Cyrillius says, never once looking away from the table. “They were mothers and sons, bankers, and teachers. All eleven billion of them. And then, because of politics and regulation and disputations, they were nothing but particles in space.”
My stomach gives another twist. I remember Cyrillius’ speech he gave on Korpillion. I’ll never forget it, because it made so much sense, no matter how much I hated it.
Dominion is not what you need fear. Chaos is what you should fear, Cyrillius once said. Disorder is what you should fear. I want you to imagine it. A galaxy where there is no one to regulate Neron. A galaxy where Neron may be claimed by anyone. Any army. Any government. I want you to imagine a galaxy where Neron is used in interplanetary warfare.
I know that Dominion’s presence is taxing on a planet. But the galaxy would turn into a wasteland without it.
“My great-great-great and so on great-grandfather founded Dominion weeks after he heard the news of Xantu and Bihhani’s downfall. He knew that there must be a better way. He knew that the regulation of Neron could not be handled by each individual planet. Because each one has their own g
overnment and there has not been a single government in the history of mankind that has not been victim to some form of corruption.”
I refuse to meet his eyes, but that means that my eyes keep drifting back to the screen in the tabletop. It means I keep seeing body parts floating through space. I see burned flesh and nearly bare skeletons. I see the wreckage of a planet entirely destroyed.
“Dominion has never claimed to be the savior of the galaxy, Nova,” Cyrillius says. “But there would be no one left to save if we had not done what we did.”
With everything in me, I wish I couldn’t find any truth in his words.
But I see those bodies floating through space. And a little voice in the back of my brain whispers, he isn’t wrong.
Cyrillius still doesn’t tell me what it is he wants me to work on. After our conversation where I only said one single word, Commander 12-3 returns to the office and escorts me back to my prison room.
I shower in the hottest water possible, trying to burn his brainwashing from every part of me, but still, I feel his words inside my head. I knot my hair into a wet bun at the back of my head and change into the soft, comfortable, silky sleeping clothes they gave me.
I go to the chair by the window, looking out.
I want to see stars. I want to see the evidence of planets out there, other systems. Systems where my father and Zayne and Reena are. Where Valen might be on Kaelea.
But all I see is a gray sky. Through the smog that hovers over Isroth, I see the shape of its moon, Gara Lune. But even that is mostly just another shade of gray.
Alone, locked away, but sure they have cameras pointed at me, I let my eyes slide closed. I let my senses stretch out into the room.
I need to feel it. I need to exercise my abilities. Because I’m still new to this. I have to practice or maybe I will forget how to do this.
I feel the Neron in the flooring. I feel a heavier deposit of it in the metal the bathtub is made of. It’s particularly scarce in the materials the bed is made of.
I take slow breaths in and out as I run my way through the entire room, evaluating the natural Neron amounts in every place in the room.