by Keary Taylor
I can’t say anything.
“I have meant every word I’ve said since you arrived, Nova,” Cyrillius says. He places his hands on the tabletop, leaning toward me. He stares me down with his cinnamon-brown eyes. “I am offering you an opportunity thousands could only dream of. And your other option is rather bleak.”
Here is where my blood turns cold.
“You committed numerous crimes, Nova,” he says. His voice is very even, very calm, but there is a menacing tone to it. “You committed level 3 felonies building those weapons. You committed level 5 felonies working with Reena McDyer selling illegal Neron. You stole a ship from Korpillion. You ran from the law for lunars. You know what the punishment for all these crimes amounts to?”
I am a child.
I am nothing.
I am a tiny insect crawling around on the floor beneath this giant’s feet.
“145 solars on Crion,” Cyrillius delivers my sentence. “Nearly a century and a half on the prison planet not a single convict has ever escaped from.” He stares into me, as if he can see down into the bottom of my soul and has declared me unworthy of redemption. “That is your fate, Nova. That is what you willingly walked yourself into, because of your decisions, your actions. None of it was forced upon you. That is the future you bought yourself.”
He stands, straightening to his full height, which towers nearly a full foot above me. He looks down at me with his cinnamon eyes. And I hate myself when emotion tightens my throat.
I feel like a little girl. I’m being chastised by the headmaster of the school. I’ve been caught doing something bad, and now I have to face the consequences.
“Every government in the galaxy would condemn you, because you broke the law, Nova,” Cyrillius continues. “They would all condemn you to Crion.”
He pauses for ten beats, and with each of them, I hear my heart pound in my ears. Louder and louder and louder.
“What I am extending to you is redemption,” he finally says, and I hate that I feel relief at his words. “I am offering you a second life. A new beginning. I am offering you a full pardon.”
He slowly comes around the table between us, and I take one step back, away from him, when he rounds it and steps toward me.
“I am offering you a life of stability and ease. A life of praise and recognition. A life where you are free to create to your heart’s content. A life where you would never have to hide again. I am offering you infinite opportunity, Nova.” His voice drops lower and lower, and no one but he and I could hear his words. “Do not waste opportunity when it is served on a silver platter. Because the other option is spending the rest of your life wasting away in prison.”
I swallow once.
This isn’t forever, I mentally whisper to myself. This isn’t for real. You’re going to change everything.
Do whatever it takes to lay low, Valen had asked me to do.
“What is it you want me to build?”
I expected an evil smile to form on his face at my yielding. But his face is just calm, as if he were a parent, patiently waiting for his child to come around to see reason.
“You are thinking short term, Nova,” he says. “There is no one particular project. What I am offering you is a purpose in life.”
He takes a step away, and motions for me to follow him. As we cross the lab, I feel eyes on me and look to see every one of the engineers watching us, each with annoyance and hatred in their eyes.
There is a set of stairs on the far side of the lab. Cyrillius starts up them, and I follow.
The white walls continue, rising up and up. We go up two flights of stairs, and then the space opens up into another brilliantly white space.
It’s smaller than the lab below. There is a wall of solid glass that looks down on the lab I’ve been working in.
This is a smaller version. But where the equipment down below was beautiful, this is glorious.
I’ve never seen finer tools. I’ve never seen better holotabs with more advanced drafting programs. I’ve never seen Neron in so many usable forms.
“I’m offering you long-term employment, Nova,” Cyrillius says. “I’m offering you a lifetime. I’m offering you the time and the tools to create anything and everything your imagination could come up with.”
My heart is beating very fast, and my hands are itching to reach for those tools. My mind is already racing, thinking of all the ideas I’ve ever had but didn’t have the supplies to create.
“You’re more talented than any of the other engineers I know,” Cyrillius says. “I can’t bear the thought of it going to waste with you spending your life as a prisoner. All it takes is one word from you, Nova, and you will no longer be mine.”
My eyes slide over to his and I realize what he’s saying. No more guard escorts, no more being watched over. No more Commander 12-3 following me around with weapons that could kill me.
It would mean that I just live here. That Cyrillius would be my new boss. That this is my life.
Even if it’s not real. Even if I know it’s only temporary.
It’s what I will have to pretend.
My eyes scan the beautiful lab again, and I understand now why those other engineers hate me. They knew this was up here, they knew that Cyrillius was going to offer me this. Some of them might have been here for solars, worked very hard for the most powerful man in the galaxy. And Cyrillius is just going to give it to me—a wanted criminal.
A smile forms on my lips as I imagine the things I could make here.
“Yes,” is my answer.
Everything and nothing happens over the next three weeks.
Just as Cyrillius said it would be, I’m treated just like an employee, not a prisoner. The guards leave me alone. I’m moved to new quarters where there are no bars on the windows, no locks from outside the door. I’m given my own full wardrobe and all the comfort supplies I need. I have my own employee ID scanned into my connect-link.
I get full reign of my lab. And it’s my lab. No one else is permitted to enter it without my permission. I’m offered an assistant, which I turn down. I like working on my own.
So I legitimately start working on some new designs. I’m actually excited about them, even though I know I have to hope that I never get to see them to completion. Because hopefully I will be getting out of here.
Edan was successful in disabling The Corsair enough he can’t get off Isroth. They don’t have the parts on-planet to fix it, and it’s going to take four weeks to get them here so he can “leave.”
In the time being, he manages to kill one Kinduri almost every single day, and wherever he’s stashing the bodies, apparently it’s a slam good place, because neither of us hears any kind of alarm sounded over someone methodically slaughtering Cyrillius’ real security.
I only dare try to reach out to Valen twice over the three weeks. Both times he just shuts me out, telling me to keep lying low.
It tells me a little bit about where Kaelea must be located. He’s far enough away it’s taking him weeks to get here, even with The Black Arrow, one of the fastest ships in the galaxy.
I hate that I don’t know what is coming. I hate that I have no idea what Valen is going to do when he gets here. I hate that I don’t know how to plan for whatever is to come.
All I can do is stay on Isroth, working for the man I hate more than anything in the galaxy, and pretend that this is my life.
So as I walk to my lab one morning, I have to mentally escape. I’m already feeling defeated and exhausted and trapped.
So I think back. To my time on Salypso. I think back to a time of me lying in bed. I think of the future.
I pull on the first vision I had on the Nero-inhabited planet. I think of how it felt when I had that vision of Valen coming for me. I think of how it felt to be on that planet, just the two of us.
It had to be Kaelea. It was so peaceful, so perfect. Just like Valen has described it. We could live there someday, the two of us. And someday we could raise our
children there. A boy and a girl.
But I push those memories aside. I pull up the memory of the two of us building our home there. I remember how it felt forming the earth with Neron. I remember the satisfaction in seeing the house begin to take shape.
And I dwell on the memory of Valen carrying me across the threshold and what happened after.
I wasn’t paying attention, so I don’t even notice when I bump into someone and continue on my way.
Until a cracked voice calls out one single word that chills me to the bone.
“Nero.”
I stop in my tracks, frozen, too scared to turn around.
I feel them behind me, hear their ragged breath.
“The Nero is not the only left after all,” the voice says, the sound of its voice watery and dry and cracked at the same time.
Slowly, I turn, my blood rushing through my ears, my pulse painfully strong in my wrists.
A male Kinduri stands just three steps behind me. He stares at me with his weeping black eyes, his shoulders tight and hunched toward me. He takes one step forward, and there’s only two feet between us.
“Oh, Cyrillius will be most happy to learn just how truly talented his newest employee really is,” the Kinduri man says as he smiles. Even his teeth are turning black, his gums stained and rotting.
“No,” I say, shaking my head. “You’re mistaken.”
The man smiles wider, shaking his head. “But the Neron in your blood does not lie.”
Before I can think, he lunges forward, grabbing my upper arms with a strength I never would have guessed he’d have. His withered black fingers dig into my flesh painfully.
I feel as if something is being sucked out of me. I feel him taking my memories, my thoughts.
A scream slips out of my lips as I try to tug out of his grasp.
I wasn’t careful enough. I didn’t protect…everything, everyone…enough.
I feel that Kinduri in my mind. In my memories. In my heart.
“Betrayal,” he hisses. His eyes bore into mine, but I know it is not my eyes he’s seeing. He’s seeing everything in my head, everything in my past. “Valen Nero’s loyalty and desire has begun to change.”
He sucks in a breath, even as I twist and yank, attempting to get out of his vice grasp.
“You have seen the future,” he says in awe. I try to step back, but he keeps me locked in place, refusing to release me. And then a smile grows on the Kinduri’s face. “Oh, Cyrillius will be very pleased indeed. An entire family of Nero.”
Everything in me turns cold.
My son.
My daughter.
I can’t stand the thought of Cyrillius knowing anything about them. Not now, solars before they are even born. Not ever.
I draw in a breath, locking eyes with the Kinduri man, and I think he knows what’s coming just half a second before it happens.
His eyes gleam with both awe and fear.
I pull every ounce of Neron from around us. I let it collect around my hands, forming into pure energy that crackles and swirls around them. And I plunge my hands into his chest.
And I release it.
He drops to the floor.
A cavernous hole of black blood and shredded organs leaks out onto the black stone floor.
“Slag.”
The voice behind me stops my heart.
Slowly, I turn.
Standing behind me is Commander 12-3 and two soldiers.
To my surprise, she isn’t looking at me with fear or shock. She’s looking at me with annoyance.
Which is different from the way the other two soldiers are looking at me. They definitely looked stunned.
“You two,” Commander 12-3 says, turning to the soldiers, “Clean this mess up. Incinerate the body. Don’t call a clean up crew. We will take care of this ourselves. Do you understand me?”
“Yes, Commander,” they both say with a nod, and immediately step around me. They grab the body by the ankles and shoulders and attempt to pick him up, but with a huge hole in the center of his chest, they just manage to rip him in half.
“Go to the lab,” Commander 12-3 says as she levels me with a serious stare. “Pretend everything is normal. Wait for me there. Don’t say a word to anyone.”
“I don’t…” I trail off, trying to get a grasp of what she’s saying, of what just happened and why she isn’t hauling me into Cyrillius’ office right this very second. “Why-”
“I will explain later,” she cuts me off, giving me a dark glare. “We don’t have much time to deal with this before someone finds this mess. Go now.”
I take a step toward where I need to go, looking back again. She gives me this death glare that gets me going.
My mind is racing, tripping over itself as my feet automatically take me in the direction of my lab.
Commander 12-3 works for Cyrillius. She is one of his favorite commanders. So why in the galaxy would she cover this up for me?
I reach the lab and I tell my brain to shut up and just work. I let my hands go through the motions of tweaking a draft on the holotab. It’s a plan for a cannon, capable of a blast big enough it could take out an entire Class 4 ship.
I am very aware of time as it passes. So my chest grows tighter and tighter as fifteen minutes pass by. Then thirty. Then an hour.
And when it’s been an hour and six minutes since I stepped into my lab, my heart explodes into my throat when Commander 12-3 steps into the lab and closes the glass door behind her.
“The cameras have been set to a loop over the past hour, the microphones as well,” she says, but still speaks in a low, quiet voice. “We have about ten minutes until they correct themselves.”
“I…” I stutter as I stand. “I don’t understand why-”
“Valen contacted me two lunars ago and told me that you were going to be arriving on Isroth,” she says. She stands with her legs spread shoulder width apart, her hands clasped behind her back. It’s a very military-esque pose. “He asked me to keep an eye on you, to help you if you ever needed it. He said I would understand why you might need help. It didn’t take long to figure out.”
I don’t say anything. I’m too stunned. Too confused.
“You haven’t exactly been very careful,” she says with a little bit of a sigh and a barely suppressed eye roll. “It’s a good thing most of our soldiers are idiots, because just about anyone who’s been watching you would know that you and Edan Calwin are friends. Close ones. And you really underestimate modern technology’s ability to overhear conversations.”
My blood runs cold. “Does anyone know?”
Commander 12-3 shakes her head. “You’ve kept me very busy over the last four weeks. I’ve been running interference, erasing and editing recordings. It hasn’t been easy keeping it all from Cyrillius.”
“Why?” I ask, shaking my head. “Why would you help me? Why would you cover all this up?”
She looks around the lab and takes a deep breath. “I assume you know Valen’s history,” she says. She doesn’t wait for my response before moving on. “You know he was picked from the surface of Starvis with a bunch of other orphans.”
It dawns on me just as she says the words.
“I was one of those other children,” she says as she finally looks back at me. And I realize that her eyes are Neron blue, too. “I’ve known Valen my entire life. We were from the same tribe. We went through training together. While my version of friendship with him might look much different from you and Edan’s, we’re loyal to each other.”
My heart beats fast and my mind races to catch up to this new twist.
“Cyrillius is a better option than starving on a savage planet,” she says. “I have a bed. I have training. I have power. But it’s a job. My loyalty will always be to Valen over Cyrillius.”
Something surges inside of me. Something like hope. Something like an idea. But it’s too wild and too widespread to form into anything useful at the moment. “Thank you,” is what I manage instead.
She gives a little nod. “The soldiers who were with me are loyal, too. They won’t say anything. They won’t report you.”
I nod, feeling relief flood my system.
“Valen will be here in two days,” she says, and I feel our time ticking away. “Stay out of trouble until then.”
I nod my head again, still at a loss for words. “Thank you,” I say again.
She dips her head, before meeting my eyes. I’m not sure what that is in them. Questioning. Reverence. Suspicion?
“Be more careful,” she says, her tone quiet as she turns for the door. “There are those of us here that are simply fulfilling a position and receiving a paycheck. But there are others who do this because they like the feeling of lording over others and being associated with power.”
I nod, and watch as she opens the door and walks out, going back to being Commander 12-3.
Pound, pound, pound, pound.
My heart hasn’t been able to calm down all morning.
I didn’t sleep at all last night.
I can’t eat more than five bites. I pick at my plate, scrambling everything together into one messy pile.
I glance to the side, to where Edan sits eating with a group of others. He’s made some friends here, some fake alliances, mostly low-level cleaning crew. He meets my eyes with a concerned look that only I can read off his ever-tired-looking face.
He knows what’s happening today.
Finally, I give up. I toss the food in the trash, stack my tray with the others, and leave the mess hall to head toward my lab.
The passageways of the Compound are crowded today. More so, than normal. Soldiers march here and there. Workers talk animatedly in the halls. People look up and down from their holotabs as they bustle around.
But as I head down the main corridor toward the elevator that descends down into the lab, the crowds grow quiet.
I feel the air shift. I feel this weight fill the space. I feel this…presence.
Everyone around me shifts off to the sides of the hallway and I’m left standing out in the middle on my own.
I feel it.
I feel him.