Venomous Heart

by Mary Auclair

  “I managed perfectly well.” Arlen heard the lie in his own voice as he spoke, and knew Karian heard it as well. “You can have my sanity tested if you like. I won’t oppose.”

  Karian’s mouth opened and his brow creased with what could only be pain. Sharp, vivid pain. A pain that no amount of combat, no amount of peace, nothing could abate. A pain that stood between them like a stone wall, where there was once only brotherly affection.

  Slowly, Karian shook his head, his mouth reducing to a thin line. “You never wrote, never holo-called.” He spoke through clenched teeth, the pain and anger obvious in his blue eyes. “Not Father, not me. Not even Mother. Not even once. I had to ask for news of your health via the chain of command.”

  Karian’s pain echoed somewhere deep inside Arlen, in that place he had done his best to kill during his long year of constant violence. The place that was filled with a void so cold, he worried it could spill out and drown him at any second.

  He had to get away from Karian. Had to get away from anything that reminded him of his past life. If that meant he had to get down to Aveyn and coddle a bunch of freed humans then he would gladly do so.

  “There was nothing to say.” Arlen was doing his best to remain stoic, but it was getting harder by the second. He forced his eyes from Karian back to the sea of green in front of the window. “I will fulfill your mission on Aveyn on one condition.”

  “What is it?”

  “After a year on Aveyn, you have to send me back.” He saw Karian flinch out of the corner of his eye. “A year of peace for a year of war. That is my offer. If you don’t take it then I will have no other choice but to tender my resignation from the Eok army.”

  A long pause stretched out as Karian took a step back. Arlen kept his eyes fixed on the planet below them as Karian stared at him.

  “A year for a year.” Karian’s voice had returned to his normal tone. He wasn’t a brother anymore, but the Commander-in-Chief of the Eok armies. “After that, if you want to drown your soul in blood, then you’re welcome to do so.”

  Arlen stared at the emerald planet as the past surrounded his mind, full of the things he had refused to feel. He would fulfill his mission for the Eok armies but he would never return home. After this, he would go back to the outpost and fight. Fighting was the only thing he could do now, the only purpose he had left.

  He didn’t turn as Karian walked away. His brother’s steps echoed in the empty room for a long time after he was gone, like the ghosts of a broken past. Arlen turned away and walked to the Command Center. He had work to do if he wanted to get off this planet and back where he belonged.

  Bathed in the blood of his enemies.

  2

  Ava

  “Thank you, Edmila.” Ava nodded to the brown-haired girl standing in the doorway to the small, windowless storage room Ava used as an office. “You know where to find me if you need anything.”

  “I won’t.” Edmila shook her head, her pretty, heart-shaped face scrunched up as she ran her soft hazel eyes over the small screen she carried everywhere like her life depended on it. “You’ve worked since nine o’clock last night, Doctor Ava. It’s a quarter past eight now. You need to eat and sleep. Leave the rest to me.”

  Ava smiled, the weariness eating away at her muscles, and aches spreading up and down her back. At barely twenty, Edmila was young, too young to be shouldering the responsibility of all these sick and injured people, but Ava had no other choice. Edmila was the only one who had volunteered to help with the medical clinic.

  “Very well.” Ava lifted her arm midway to pull the girl into an embrace but stopped herself. Her touch wasn’t something people longed for. “If Christie shows any signs of labor, don’t hesitate to come find me. She’s the priority. After that, don’t forget the infection nanobots treatment for Will Harl. They need to be replenished every three hours or he’ll lose the leg, whether he’s threatened to slit my throat or not.”

  At this, Edmila lifted her eyes to Ava, then shot a murderous glance over her shoulder toward the long hallway that led to the room where all the patients slept. “I’ll make sure to take extra care of the old jerk.” Her tone clearly contradicted her words.

  “Just make sure you follow my instructions.” Ava yawned, the tension leaching from her body as the prospect of sleep loomed closer. “He might be a jerk, but he’s a patient first.”

  Edmila lifted her eyebrows midway to her hairline.

  “You care for him until he’s healthy again. Then, it’s open season on jerks.”

  Edmila chuckled, then turned away, her long, brown, straight ponytail swishing with each step as she gingerly made her way back to the patients.

  Ava turned away, then grabbed a tray full of food from the cart holding the patients’ breakfasts. She walked deeper into the medical facility, far away from the patients, the equipment, past the storage rooms and, finally, to a small room tucked between the cooling machinery and the electrical generator rooms.

  She paused, staring at the gray paint for a few moments. Carefully, she flattened her ear against the cold metal, listening to the sounds on the other side. Only silence answered her, and it was more comforting than anything she had heard since she woke up.

  Without waiting any longer, she entered the darkened room, her eyes adjusting to the change in luminosity faster than a human’s would, but slower than Avonie vision. Everything about her was an in-between: not entirely Avonie, but never truly human.

  Except maybe her heart. She had a very human temper—Knut had told her so enough times.

  The smile stretched her lips, easy and true. It was the first time she’d truly smiled in the last fourteen hours and it felt better than she could describe.

  As the door closed behind her, the boy stirred under his blanket then finally turned toward her, sleep still tugging at his eyelids. Ava flipped the light switch on, flooding the room in artificial, cold light.

  Bright golden eyes stared at her from a round, childish face that looked younger than his twelve years. Uril’s light green skin was speckled with freckles on the bridge of a slightly large, turned-up nose, and a mane of black hair fell over his forehead as he sat up, rubbing his cheeks like he could still sleep another ten hours.

  “Wake up, sleepyhead!” Ava chuckled as Uril lazily stretched his long, fine limbs, yawning with pointed exaggeration. “You’re going to turn into an Arroumi if you sleep any more!”

  “I wouldn’t mind hibernating.” Uril sat up on the narrow cot against the wall, then his two golden eyes settled on her. They no longer held any remnants of sleep. “You look like you could sleep for a few months, too.”

  Ava made a face at him, then walked all the way to the back of the room she shared with the boy. She sighed as she placed the tray of food on the small round table and sat in one of the two empty chairs.

  “Well, I can always sleep when no one needs me,” she said grumpily before taking a long sip of the gray-colored sludge containing all the nutrients her body would need for the day. She grimaced at the overly sweet, metallic taste, but forced herself to swallow. Maybe someday the humans on Aveyn would grow food like they did on Earth, but in the meantime, they had to be fed. Not that most humans minded the nutritious sludge, but Ava wasn’t used to it. She was used to living with Knut in his mansion and eating real food.

  Yet another reason why humans hated her—but she couldn’t change the past any more than she could change her genetic make-up.

  She grimaced, then drank some more. It was awful, but at least it would keep her alive. Then she would catch a few hours of sleep before returning to her duties.

  “Uril, come eat. You know you can’t skip a meal.”

  He slowly made his way to join her at the table and stared at his food packet with disdain before gulping it down in a few swallows, leaving not a drop behind. He had adapted to the food rations much faster than she.

  “More?” Ava lifted her brows as Uril looked up from his empty packet with a hopeful express
ion on his face. She chuckled, then pushed her half-eaten packet his way.

  “You barely ate.” Uril spoke reluctantly, but his hunger still showed as he eyed her plate. “You need it more than I do. All I ever do is wait here.”

  “It won’t be long now.” Ava’s heart squeezed at the tone in Uril’s voice. He didn’t deserve to be confined to the back room of the medical clinic all day. He should be running outside, making friends and learning things, like all the other human kids on Aveyn.

  Only Uril wasn’t like any other human child on Aveyn. Because he wasn’t human, not truly. Just like Ava, Uril was a hybrid, whose very existence was forbidden. Just like Ava, Uril was the result of Minister Knut’s greed, his DNA mixed with Cattelan instead of Avonie to please a fabulously rich buyer.

  But unlike Ava, he was in constant danger. Neither of them was safer now that the humans had been freed. In fact, they were more in danger than ever.

  “You still have no idea where the Exo-Heart is. You might never find it.” Uril bit his top lip in that gesture he made whenever he was sad, or nervous, or scared. A hundred times, a thousand, she’d seen it, but it still tugged at the strings in her heart that belonged only to him. “Why don’t we just order another one?”

  Uril was the brother she’d never had. The child she would never carry. The family she had always been denied.

  “Exo-Hearts are delicate, complex. Yours had to be tailored to your genes, and it wasn’t easy.” Nor was it legal, but she left that part out. Knut had the resources to order the gene-engineering necessary to engineer an Exo-Heart tailored to Uril’s hybrid genetics, and buy the silence of the synthetic organ makers in the process. But the humans on Aveyn wouldn’t be able to pull it off, and the Eok warriors who protected them wouldn’t even try. “I know Knut had one made for you, and we will find it. You just have to be patient.”

  “I know.” Uril’s tone was resentful but his face wasn’t. His features might be juvenile but he had long shed the innocence of childhood, if he’d ever had it. Being born a faulty genetic experiment had a way of making people grow up faster than they should. “I just wish it was easier.”

  Uril bent his head and began to work his way through Ava’s portion in silence, his eyes cast down. He had endured so much, had lived through a dozen surgeries, faced countless myocardic nanite treatments to repair his faulty heart. He was stronger than anyone gave him credit for. Anyone but Ava.

  “The Eoks are here now. A full contingent of warriors landed during the night.” Ava reached for his fine-boned hand and squeezed it gently. “Today, I’ll go find whoever is in charge. I’m sure they will be able to find it.”

  “And if he refuses to search?” Uril lifted his gleaming eyes to her, full of a fear that resonated with her own. “What if the Eoks don’t care about me? I’m not even human. The other kids, they call me frog-boy, because of my skin. That’s when the grown-ups don’t call me the other word.”

  Abomination.

  Ava pursed her lips at his words. She had no answer for him, no words that could soothe the pain he felt, the fear.

  “I’ll tell you what,” she whispered in a conspiratorial tone and leaned over the table toward him. “Finish this fast enough, and we can go outside for an hour in the small clearing behind the building before I go to sleep.”

  “Really?” His mouth stretched into a true smile. “Thank you, Ava!”

  Uril gobbled up the remnants of the food and they headed outside, through the small back door that was only used by them and, finally, into glorious sunlight.

  “Don’t run,” Ava warned him as the boy walked gingerly to a patch of small purple flowers. “You don’t want to overheat.”

  Uril nodded but she still saw him roll his eyes as she sat down in the warm glow of the morning sun, her back against the cool stone wall of the building. She shielded her eyes from the light, watching Uril play with the flowers and the myriad of small, lightning fast reptilians that lived in the knee-deep grass.

  Fatigue rolled over her as she sat in the sun, heat blazing from above in a thick, sleep-inducing blanket. Her head was heavy, and soon, her eyelids closed. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she intended to open them again, but she was too tired, and darkness invaded her vision.

  She slept and dreamed of Uril, running around in the sunshine and laughing.

  Arlen

  Arlen walked at an efficient speed through the hallways of Minister Knut’s old mansion, not bothering to slow down to allow the human male to comfortably follow. It was no mistake on his part. He was the superior warrior, the one in charge of securing the entire planet, and having to negotiate with the officially elected human representative annoyed him.

  “The population of Aveyn has a right to decide.” The human male’s voice was choppy, out of breath. “As their elected representative, I am demanding that you stop displacing people to the Tower right now.”

  Arlen stopped abruptly, then turned to face the smaller male. “What is your name?” He didn’t bother with the customary niceties. His mission was to ensure the human population’s safety, not earn their affection.

  “Jonah.” The male crossed his arms across his chest, his pale gray eyes gleaming with irritation. “For the third time, my name is Representative Jonah, Commander Arlen.”

  Jonah pronounced his name pointedly but refrained from raising his voice. Arlen glared at him, hard. There was steel in this human, maybe even the potential for greatness. The humans would need a leader like that if they intended to survive and remain free, especially those wishing to remain on Aveyn.

  But it still made him want to pummel the man into the ground for wasting his time.

  “Well, Representative Jonah, if you want to know how I will ensure your people’s safety, then come in.” Arlen turned away and pushed open the heavy metal door to the control room.

  As he entered with Jonah on his heels, all eyes in the room settled on them. Sitting in front of a large panel of screens were two Relany males, their faces filled with apprehensive awe as Arlen approached. He knew why, but didn’t appreciate the recognition. Anything that could hinder the efficiency of his mission was superfluous, and he didn’t do superfluous.

  “Commander Arlen. I am Officer Shetak.” The first Relany officer got to his feet, bowing his head deeply in a respectful salute. “We are honored to serve under your command.”

  “Don’t be.” Arlen cut the young Relany short. “I’m not here to honor any of you. I’m here for duty.”

  Arlen looked at the officers one after the others, meeting their wide-eyed, awed stares head on. He had built a reputation as a merciless, fierce commander during his yearlong combat at the border, and these officers’ reactions were normal. They had no idea why he had left Eokim, why he’d hardly left the battlefield for an entire year.

  And they would never know.

  “If it isn’t the fiercest, most feared Eok warrior in all the Ring!” a familiar voice called from the right, and Arlen turned to see his younger brother walk toward him, a broad, easy smile on his face. “Wow! I almost forgot what a grim-faced killjoy you could be.”

  Arlen stood straight, his hands clasped behind his back as Khal made his way to him.

  “Captain Khal.” His voice was stern and as he spoke, Khal’s smile faltered, then faded altogether. “You are forgetting whom you are speaking to. During this mission, I am not your brother but the Commander of the entire Eok forces. You will be expected to behave in a manner befitting the respect your rank commands.” He stared at his brother, focusing his entire attention on the young Eok warrior until Khal swallowed, hard, then straightened his posture. The joyful expression on his face vanished to be replaced by a cool, polished efficiency.

  “Yes, Commander.” Khal inclined his head sharply. The light glistened on the markings covering his skin, their colors a shade lighter than the deep Prussian blue of his skin. “Please forgive my outburst.”

  Arlen nodded to his brother, then returned his attention to the
human male. Jonah’s already pale pink skin was a shade paler than before, and his narrow face was taut. He looked like one who was about to take off running.

  Yes. Don’t forget what I am. Never forget what I am.

  “What is it you want to know, Representative Jonah?”

  The human opened his mouth, then closed it. His eyes went from Arlen to Khal, then to the Relany officers. Slowly, resolve returned to the smaller, weaker male’s expression and he cleared his throat.

  “Firstly, how many of you are there?” Jonah nodded to himself, like he was getting encouraged by his own boldness.

  “An entire contingent,” Arlen answered coldly. “One hundred warriors.”

  Jonah blinked, then frowned. “There are a thousand people on this planet who need to be kept safe.” He chuckled, then his smile slipped when Arlen scowled. “How are you going to keep all of them safe with a hundred guards?”

  “Not guards.” This time it was Khal who spoke, his tone cutting. “Warriors. Do not mistake our peaceful intentions towards your people for weakness. A hundred Eok warriors are worth a thousand Ilarian guards.”

  At this, the human’s eyes grew wider and his pale skin took on a sickly sheen. No matter how brave he was, Jonah wasn’t prepared to face the full force of an Eok warrior’s strength.

  But no matter how much the human annoyed him, Arlen still couldn’t turn him into a blubbering fool by terrifying him out of his mind. Jonah had been elected Representative of the human population of Aveyn, and Arlen needed him if he was going to keep them safe.

  “Together,” Arlen went on, bringing Jonah’s attention back to him. “I will keep them safe by keeping them together. The new housing complex is finished and ready to house the humans. Each family unit can be accommodated in keeping with their needs, and single housing units will be provided to unmated males and females. The entire human population is expected to be relocated to the Housing building within the month. What your people call the Tower is the main tool I will use to keep them safe.”