Symbiosis

by Nicky Drayden

  This can’t be it, I think. This can’t be the only way. There must be an echo where Adalla and I could have been together. Forever. One in which I hadn’t hurt her so badly. I reach for another and another until the light fades. The heaviness lifts, and we’re back in the death organ. It’s returned to its original gray state now, except all the dewdrops look smoky, as if they’ve burned out.

  Adalla lifts her head from the floor. “You okay?” she asks. I brace for her echo, but it doesn’t come.

  “Yes, you?”

  She nods. “Did you have weird dreams?”

  “Yes,” I say, though we both know they weren’t dreams. “I saw different versions of the past. I was searching for one where I hadn’t hurt you, but they all ended badly. I know I messed things up. I can’t even tell you how sorry I am. How much I wish we could go back to how it was before—”

  “But you can’t.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Sure is sure is sure.” Adalla draws in a long breath, then lets it loose between barely parted lips. “I looked for futures. In about half of them, I kiss you right now. They all ended in heartbreak.”

  I’ve got definite feelings about this. I want to argue with Adalla, that maybe it won’t have to end badly. That maybe there’s an echo she missed. But I bite my tongue. “What about the other half?”

  Her eyes soften and a warm smile spreads over her lips. It’s the same smile she’d given me as she roused me from stasis, back in that other life. Bright and full of possibilities. “Things between me and Presdah are good. Sometimes really good. But beyond that, I find a way to be whole again.” She looks down, fiddles with the damp hem of her dress. “I forgive you. And I love you. But we need to stay friends. For my sake, and for the sake of everyone out there who needs your leadership right now.”

  I’m numb all over, but I manage to nod. I’d do anything to keep Adalla happy and safe. Turns out that means letting her go.

  Perhaps this has always been our fate, and I was just too stubborn to realize it. Our lives became entangled long ago, and as our worlds grew, so did our interdependency. The ways in which we were tied together were so complex that undoing those knots seemed unfathomable. And yet, in but an instant, they’ve been severed. I wonder how long we would have lasted if we’d realized how simple it was to break free of this symbiotic relationship, and just like that, escape into an unknown future.

  The silence grows between us, but in that moment, I realize our Zenzee has stopped shaking. The war has ended—or, at least, the battle has. And with that ceasefire, Sisterkin has held up her end of the bargain, so I’ve got no business worrying over futures anyway.

  As of right now, I belong to her.

  Doka

  Of Tainted Air and Bated Breath

  “Ready on three,” I say through the mouthpiece of my re-breather. I’m standing upon the open rim of our Zenzee’s third ass, preparing to launch myself at the Tertian’s Zenzee that’s steadily barreling toward us. She looks like a moon-size soldier, her entire hide layered over with interconnecting metal plating and weapons protruding through her flesh. Even the tips of her tentacles have been fortified with barbs that could slice through our Zenzee’s thick skin, right down to the vital organs. I can’t even imagine what effort and resources were expended to arm her like this.

  I swallow back my reservations.

  This is a solid plan, right? Make a short jaunt through naked space, then strut right onto a ship full of warriors who were trained to fight from birth? But I’ve seen Baradonna in action. If she thinks we can swim through the void with a smattering of protective gel and twenty-year-old re-breathers and then commandeer their ship, why should I doubt her? If we fail, we’re as good as dead anyway. After watching the way they tore through the Vaz’s Zenzee, we know our weapons are no match for theirs.

  I’ve got Macario’s orb packed with me, and we’re hoping it’s enough to help up navigate across the enemy’s Zenzee without being seen. I think I can get the mirrors big enough that we can shoulder our way through from one room to the next, using the element of surprise to subdue anyone who gets in our way. Then, once we’ve secured the control room, we can stop the Zenzee from firing upon us there. Baradonna says that if we work strategically, it’ll take five minutes, eight max.

  She also warned us it wasn’t a very good plan.

  “One,” I say. The Tertian’s Zenzee is even closer now, tentacles splayed perfectly wide, ready to rip us apart. The Tertians have such precise control over every movement of their Zenzee. I have no doubt her deadly grip will pose just as much of a threat as those cannons firing at us, quaking our Zenzee with each landed shot.

  “Two.” My heart is racing. This is it. I glance over at Bakti, geared up in makeshift armor like the rest of us, mostly made of baking pans from Macario’s shop. He smiles at me as if he’s waited all his life for this moment. Not a trace of fear anywhere on his body.

  “Thr—”

  But before we can jump, a bright fuchsia light fills the sky. Or maybe it’s more magenta. I close my eyes, but it still bleeds through. Burns so badly. It’s all I can do to keep my grip on the Zenzee’s ass and not get tossed into space. When it finally fades, it takes me a long while to get oriented. Back outside, the Tertian’s Zenzee has stopped charging at us. Her tentacles move slowly, naturally, like they do when they’re still in their herds—before we colonize them and rewire their brains. I look around and see all the Zenzee have stopped fighting, in fact. The ground no longer trembles.

  “Seske and Adalla must have done it,” Bakti says, daring to throw a fist into the air.

  I nod, still at a loss for words. We’d taken several damaging hits, though, and I can’t help but worry about Kallum. “We need to get to the Senate,” I say. “We have to talk some sense into them and stop this from ever happening again.”

  “Two ghosts and a Klang confronting the Senate,” Baradonna says. “I think we had a better shot against the Tertians.” Yet she leads us through one of the fissures, navigating us through secret channels and overlooked crevices until we’re back to civilization. The turmoil is mounting all around us, people screaming, babies crying, and beyond that, a weighty sadness hangs in the air. On the way, Baradonna and Bakti stop to help a woman who’s been injured by fallen debris. I keep pressing forward, though, eyes set on the Senate chamber doors.

  I throw open the doors. Everything is in such disarray that the guards don’t even notice me. Papers and wreckage are strewn all over the room, senators helping one another up and back into their seats, as though a war hadn’t just started and they’re in a rush to get back to business. I spot Kallum, dusting off his robes.

  “Hello, Kallum,” I say, staring at him. My voice rings metallic through my re-breather. I’d forgotten to remove it, but I pop the seal now and let it hang loose around my neck. Kallum looks up, past my bare face devoid of naxshi, past my straightened hair, and sees me. Or sees a ghost is more like it.

  He gasps for air once. Twice. Then he tries to scramble away. He nearly falls, but I catch him by the hand. This touch reassures him he’s not hallucinating. His fear turns to something else . . . rage, anger. Whatever it is seems so foreign on his face.

  “You’re dead,” he tells me. “I saw your body drifting through space.”

  I can’t imagine what he’s going through now. His half-healed wounds ripped right open again. I hang my head. “It was a puppet dressed up to look like me. Seske and I have been living with the Klang ever since. I wanted to contact you but—”

  Kallum starts cussing out my Line, well my old Line, I guess. So loud, we’re attracting attention. I drag him back to the far wall of the Senate chamber, where we can have something that approximates privacy. He is still cussing, but he doesn’t resist coming with me.

  “I’m sorry if I hurt you,” I tell him.

  His eyes widen. “If you hurt me? You know fucking well that you hurt me. You tore my fucking heart out, and worse, I had to go and pretend it di
dn’t happen to try to save all of our asses.”

  “You shouldn’t have had to do that. I would never have wanted you to shoulder that burden.”

  “Well maybe you should have thought about that before you decided to shove your dick in your wife, and then die without me getting a chance to—” Kallum bites his lip then crosses his arms and turns away from me. I touch his shoulder, but he shrugs me off.

  “How’s Charrelle?” I ask, changing the subject to something less charged. “How’s the baby?”

  “They’re fine,” Kallum says sharply. “She’s remarried to Vellah Pranim, the woman who oversees the Uncommon Gardens, and her husband. We’ve been splitting custody of Kenzah.”

  Kallum stews for a minute longer, then turns back around. His face has softened. “He’s been so amazing, Doka. He’s walking now. Talking some. His first word was ‘pai.’” He smiles at me, a tear sitting in the corner of his eye that refuses to budge. “Well, it sounded more like ‘ba,’ but I know what he was saying. He was calling for you.”

  I shake my head. “You’re his pai, too,” I say. It was a conversation we’d had a dozen times. There was only one term for head-father. I’d wanted us to share it. It carried so much weight, but Kallum was as flighty as ever and wanted to come up with his own term. He lived life on his own terms, so it was fitting.

  “I decided to go by Dad,” Kallum says. “I know it’s archaic, but it has a nice ring to it. I tell him stories of his pai all the time, though. From before, when we were kids, and everything wasn’t so complicated. I wanted him to know the man I’d fallen in love with.”

  “I wish more than anything that I’d been here for both of you,” I whisper.

  “Me too,” Kallum says.

  The sadness in his voice nearly melts me. If we go on talking like this, it might.

  “We need to put an end to this war for good, Kallum,” I say, abruptly changing the subject again. “The Senate isn’t going to do that without pressure. I’ve lived among the Klang long enough that I see how we could function. I’ve seen the bonds they’ve built. No, they’re not perfect, but fuck perfect. We just need to be better. I’m glad you’ve got a seat in the Senate. I know how much that meant to you, but a seat isn’t enough. We’ve got to flip the whole damn table. I want to do that for you and Kenzah or die trying.”

  Kallum’s lip trembles, but his eyes remain distant. “You talk a good talk, Doka. You always have. But I don’t think—”

  The main doors to the chamber slam open. The screams start almost immediately. I crane my neck, and then I see it, too. Kallum pushes me behind him, like he’s going to protect me. Like he’s the father and I’m the child. Maybe fatherhood has changed him. Regardless, I push my way to his side, standing right next to him. Our fingers twine instinctively. Seconds later, we both notice and drop each other’s hands like hot coals.

  The creature steals our breath and thoughts anyway. It’s like something that’s walked out of a nightmare. Gray skin with black tentacles erupting from her arms, and a gown sewn from parts of throttle fish. She bares a crown upon her head, made from their fangs. A necklace of skulls hangs low around her neck, and right above the loop, a glowing mass throbs against her chest. When she looks our way, the face is immediately recognizable. She scowls in our direction. Kallum’s hand is in mine again, but this time we don’t let go.

  “Sisterkin,” Kallum and I say at the same time.

  The doors slam behind her, and the walls start vibrating all around us. Spurs erupt from the bone-carved doors, sharp and thin tendrils that intertwine with one another, sealing off all the exits. Sisterkin walks gracefully down the center aisle, then takes her spot—my old spot, where the matriarch presides over the Senate proceedings.

  “Greetings from the ancestors,” she says, then chuckles to herself. “Not your ancestors, mind you, but those of the Zenzee. Their Line reaches back to before humanity was even a thought. And yet, in the brief time since you have encountered the Zenzee, you have managed to decimate an entire pod. The good news is that they have forgiven you. They understand you are bound by the limits of your nature. And they think you are capable of redeeming yourselves . . . with a little help.”

  The bulge on her chest swells even more, pulsing like a heartbeat. Suddenly, it starts to crack, glowing red-hot along the edges, then a white cloud erupts, spilling over the first two rows of senators before dissipating. Kallum and I look at each other. I snatch my re-breather from around my neck and latch it over his face, then rip a swath of fabric from his robe. I press the thick fabric firmly over my nose and mouth.

  “Doka—” he says to me.

  “Don’t argue,” I say back. “I’ll be fine.”

  Coughing surrounds us. She’s poisoning our air, trying to destroy us.

  “Breathe in, my dears,” Sisterkin says, her arms thrown wide.

  “You can’t kill us!” Kallum yells out. I pull him out of her line of sight, toward relative safety, but he tugs against me. “It’s barbaric! What kind of person would do this?”

  “An evolved person,” Sisterkin says with a laugh. “We are not trying to kill you. Didn’t you hear that you’ve been forgiven?”

  Banging comes from the rear doors. I hear Baradonna yelling for me from the other side.

  “Doka,” Kallum says, averting my attention back to Sisterkin. The lump on her chest is swelling again, ready to release more of the white mist. “We have to take her out. Who knows how far her poison might spread if we let it leave this room.”

  I nod. We race down the aisle, charging Sisterkin. She might have superhuman strength, but there’s two of us. And we’ve got the tunneling orb.

  Sisterkin watches as we approach her, then blinks. In one motion, five senators from the aisle seats on both sides step into our path, blocking our way.

  “Move,” I tell them. But they come at us like they’re not thinking. Like they’re being controlled. Fright washes over me. It’s not a poison cloud, but one of spores. Just like the ones from the fungus that affect the gall worms, causing them to burrow against their will. Sisterkin was telling the truth. She isn’t trying to kill us. She’s doing something far more sinister.

  The mind-controlled Senators attack us, their movements jerky, like gel puppets. Kallum kicks a Senator in the shin and she goes down, wailing a wet gurgle that barely sounds human. I punch Bella Roshaad in the jaw, nearly breaking my fist. I shake out the pain in my knuckles. She deserves worse for trying to kill me, so I guess it’s too bad my hands were made for signing declarations into effect and not fighting.

  The door bangs open, and I see Baradonna standing there, flanked by Seske and Bakti.

  “No!” I yell, watching the spore cloud swirl toward them. They’ve got re-breathers on, but the people on the rest of the ship . . . “Close the doors!” I say. Baradonna sees my panic and complies.

  I shake my head. That was too close. But now we’ve got backup to help stop the next round of spores from releasing.

  “Help us get Sisterkin,” I yell. Baradonna storms forward, throwing Senators off us left and right. But another group of them have stationed themselves in front of the stage, a wall between us and Sisterkin. We’re blocked, until I remember something.

  “I’ve got an idea,” I say. “Keep them off me for a minute.”

  Senators keep rushing us, a dozen at a time, but Seske, Bakti, and Baradonna handle them efficiently. I crouch down in the aisle, gently pull the orb from my satchel. I’d only watched Macario use it a few times, but I knew his movements after four months of watching him bake. It was an art as much as it was a science. Supposedly. I take a deep breath through the slim protection of my fabric swath, then set it aside, holding on to this lungful of air. I move my hands as Macario had done, and the mirrors form, small ones at first. I peer into each, looking for a glimpse, then press the one in the Senate chambers. I reconfigure, drilling down until I’m looking at the stage. Reconfigure again, and I’m staring at the back of Sisterkin’s head. I wide
n the mirror. A bit more. A bit more, until it’s slightly wider than my fist.

  Then I just . . . punch. Hard. Sisterkin pitches forward, and her link on the Senators breaks. My hand is aching worse now, and I’m so gripped by the pain that I don’t notice she’s looking through the mirror, staring straight at me until it’s too late. Tentacles whip through the mirror and wrap around my neck, choking me. I tug back at the tentacles, trying desperately to get my fingers under them so I can break the seal.

  Sisterkin’s grip tightens. She leers at me through the mirror, like a voyeur who’s taken an intense interest in my suffering. “Breathe in, Doka,” she huffs. “Even the most heroic among us are still parasites—mouths always open, minds never so. Now is the time to open your minds. You’ll be happy, I promise. You want to be happy, don’t you? Under my rule, all will be equal. All will be at one with the Zenzee. Isn’t that what you wanted?”

  My lungs burn so badly. Sisterkin pulls my head to her chest bulge. It pokes through the mirror, and my cheek presses against it. It’s hot, yet slick. The caustic substance nearly burns me. I feel the jagged seams widening, ready to release more spores.

  This was exactly the distraction we needed.

  Baradonna seizes the moment and surges past, knocking Sisterkin with a stiff forearm. Sisterkin goes flying across the stage, and her tentacles release me. I’m free, but my lungs can’t take much more. Just as I’m about to be forced to take in a spore-ridden breath, Baradonna pops in the mirror to slap a spare re-breather onto my face. I fall back, sucking in clean air at last. I pull myself up from the aisle, close the mirror, then tuck the orb back into my satchel so I can rejoin the fight, even though my hand is pretty much useless at this point. I run up to the stage, watching as Baradonna has Sisterkin pinned down.

  I start to praise Baradonna for her quick thinking, but notice she’s not wearing a re-breather now. It wasn’t a spare re-breather. It was hers. The spores release, right in her face. Almost instantly, her bulky frame goes slack, and her arms fall to her sides. She rises off Sisterkin in an inhuman motion, as if her center of gravity has slipped to her knees. She looms, eyes empty, leaning farther forward than her strength should allow.