Catalyst

by Fletcher DeLancey

  She risked a glance to the side. Ekatya was still there, watching with a worried look on her face.

  “Better?” Kane asked as he put away the injector.

  “Yes.”

  “Good.” He straightened and looked down at her. “Then let’s talk about your second mistake. You’re trying to kill yourself, Dr. Rivers, and I have two problems with that. First, I can’t let you do it. Second, I find it insulting that you believe I would not see your intent.”

  She looked down, letting her head fall. He reached beneath her chin and forced it back up. It was the first time he had touched her face, and his fingers tightened when she instinctively tried to pull back. She could smell the subtle scent of expensive skin cream.

  “You still think you’re the smartest person in this room, but you’ve walked into a trap yet again. I told you your first day in the chair that I could break the index finger on your left hand, yet you believe I would limit myself to damaging your torso.” He let go and leaned down, bracing his hand on the bed. “Your injuries so far were only to get your attention. Now that I have it, let me tell you how long I can make you suffer. Do you know how many bones there are in your foot? Twenty-six. Tomorrow I can break eight bones in one foot. Or I can break four in each foot, and the next time you have to use the toilet, you will have to crawl.”

  A shiver racked her body. She had no doubt that he would do exactly as he described and enjoy watching the results.

  “The next day I’d have thirteen to work with. I could break more bones in your feet, or perhaps snap your fibula. I can pull your patellae permanently out of place, and after that, even crawling would be something you could only dream about. I can make your vertebrae separate. I can turn your body into a sack of broken pieces and still leave enough intact for you to do what I need.”

  She stared at him in horror, wondering if he had truly done this to others.

  “I see this hasn’t occurred to you. Has it?”

  “No,” she whispered.

  “Would you like to reconsider your answer to my question? Do you think you can withstand thirteen commands from my interface? And twenty-one the day after that?”

  She shook her head, carefully and with a minimum of motion.

  He bent lower, placing his mouth near her ear, and whispered in a sensual manner. “I can make it so easy for you. One injection and you’ll go to sleep with a smile on your face, just like you did before. All you have to do is change a few words. Say a few things on the video. And then it will all be over.”

  His tone became harsh as he pulled back far enough to stare into her eyes. “Or I can make you wish I really was careless enough to kill you. Surely, surely that can’t be worth it to you. What are you defending at such a horrific cost? A few aliens that by your own admission would be criminals on their world? You would suffer the worst death imaginable, a death that would take weeks. And for what?”

  He pushed off the bed, picked up the medkit, and took a step back. “I’m done trying to convince you to save yourself. I am going to walk through that door, and once I do, you’ll be in that chair tomorrow even if you’ve changed your mind. You have one chance left.”

  She watched him walk to the foot of her bed, then turn and stride across the room.

  “Lhyn, what are you doing?”

  Ekatya’s tone was disbelieving, and Lhyn wanted nothing more than to touch her in reassurance. Without taking her eyes off Kane, she held her hand where Ekatya’s thigh would be, then let it sink down to the bed.

  Kane was reaching for the door lever when she said, “Wait!”

  He stood facing the door, his shoulders lifting and falling as he took a large breath. When he turned around, the triumph shone in his expression. “Yes?”

  “I…don’t want to die that way.”

  “No, I don’t believe you do.” He came back around the bed. “Then you’ll change the text I asked you to?”

  She nodded.

  “Use your voice, Dr. Rivers. It’s such a pleasant one.”

  “Yes. I’ll change it.”

  “And say what we tell you to on the video?”

  “Yes, but I can’t… No one will believe it if I look like this. I need rest. Rest without pain. I need that injection.”

  He looked at her silently, his expression giving away nothing, and she began to worry that she had played her hand too soon. Beside her, Ekatya shifted, her insubstantial body tensing for an attack she could never make.

  Lhyn desperately wished that she could.

  “You’re quite smart enough to try this manipulation,” Kane said at last.

  Her heart sank.

  “But I also think you’re smart enough to realize what the consequences will be if you renege tomorrow,” he continued. “So I’ll choose to believe you, if you’ll tell me two things.” He leaned down, putting his face centimeters from hers, and lowered his voice. “Tell me you’ll obey me.”

  Despite everything, she found it nearly impossible to say the words. And he knew it.

  Slowly, she blinked, inhaled as deeply as she could, and did what she had to.

  “I will…obey you.”

  A broad smile creased his face. “Very good. You’re almost there. There’s only one thing left between you and a peaceful night of sleep.” He brought up a finger and ran it lightly along her jawline. “Tell me that you belong to me.”

  “Oh, what a fucking little torquat!” Ekatya burst out. She vanished from Lhyn’s peripheral vision and reappeared just behind Kane, her head next to his. “You can’t belong to him because you’ve already given yourself to me. You asked me to bond with you, and you are my tyree. I give myself to you, Lhyn. I belong to you. So you look at me and tell me who you belong to.”

  There could not have been two more contrasting faces in her vision: Kane, with his perfectly groomed exterior hiding a rotten, grasping core, and Ekatya, her blue eyes flashing as she spoke the words Lhyn knew she had never said to anyone before.

  She barely remembered to speak in Common instead of High Alsean. Locking eyes with Ekatya, she said clearly, “I belong to you.”

  Both Ekatya and Kane smiled.

  “You have just passed your training,” Kane said. “We’ll speak more about this later. But for now, you’ve earned your reward.”

  The injection sent her pain floating up, up, until she could no longer feel any part of it. Her lungs expanded with ease, and she took a breath of pure joy as her eyes fell shut.

  “Good night, Dr. Rivers.”

  “I love you, tyrina. I’ll see you on the other side.”

  When she woke, a deep hum was reverberating through her body. She recognized it even before becoming fully conscious: the sound of surf engines. She was on a ship.

  Keeping her eyes closed, she listened for any clues about her situation. Her head felt startlingly clear, and she knew Ekatya would not be here. That had been a waking dream, induced through drugs and a fog of pain. It wasn’t real.

  And now Kane was transporting her somewhere else.

  She could not think about what would happen when she broke her promise. There had to be a way to speed up her death. Maybe she could surprise him and grab his medkit. It wouldn’t take long to overdose if she could just get her hands on—

  “It’s good to have you back with us, Dr. Rivers.”

  The voice, so close to her ear, jolted her out of her thoughts. It was deep, slightly nasal, and held the accent of a Tashar native who spoke Common organically.

  Definitely not Kane.

  She opened her eyes to find a low ceiling overhead, curving down to meld with the bulkhead next to her bed. Another bulkhead at the foot of the bed held a status display with what appeared to be her bio readouts. She tried to turn her head, but her neck muscles were not responding.

  An older man appeared in her vision, leaning over with a ki
nd smile. “You’re safe now. We’re taking you to Tlahana Station. For now, I have you on meds to reduce the inflammation and speed up the healing of your muscle fibers. You’ll find it difficult to move, but that’s the price for the faster healing. It will get easier. Are you in any pain?”

  The question startled her. How could she not have noticed immediately upon waking?

  “No,” she said, amazed by the truth of it.

  “Good. That’s what we want.”

  She studied him, not trusting this apparent miracle. “Who are you?”

  “One of the people sent to help you.”

  Not a real answer. “Where is Kane?”

  His expression hardened. “Secured in the front of the shuttle. He’ll never hurt you or anyone else again.” He watched her for a moment, then shook his head. “You don’t believe me. I understand. You’ve been through a trauma, and your system was clogged with a dozen different drugs. It’s taken me half the trip to neutralize them. Right now, you don’t know what’s real and what isn’t.”

  After all of Kane’s psychological manipulations, the very fact that this man knew how she felt made her even more suspicious.

  “Perhaps it will help if I pass on a message,” he said, pulling a pad from his sleeve pocket. “Captain Serrado sent it through Director Sholokhov.” He activated a file and held the pad in her line of sight.

  The message was three sentences, written in High Alsean. Ekatya would have needed a translator program to produce the text, but she knew Lhyn could read it.

  Lhyn, you’re on the other side. It was not a dream.

  You’re still the bravest person I’ve ever met.

  “I see that means something to you,” the man said gently.

  “Yes. It does,” she managed. But her voice shook, and the trembling spread through her jaw, down her torso, out to her arms and legs.

  He rested one hand on her shoulder. “Don’t worry about the shaking. It’s just your body realizing that it can finally let go. You are safe, Dr. Rivers.”

  Warmth radiated out from his hand, the first touch she had experienced in days that was neither painful nor meant to shame or manipulate. She focused on it, desperate for him to stay, to keep her grounded in reality, to not leave her alone again.

  “Don’t…”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” he said, seeming to read her mind. “You can let go.”

  He held her gaze, his hazel eyes full of understanding as she stared at him and shook. Gradually, the trembling slowed, then began to sputter, with longer and longer periods between bouts of shaking. After a final shiver, her body sank into the bed as if it suddenly weighed twice as much.

  “Good,” he said. “You should be able to sleep now. A nice, healing, natural sleep. No drugs.”

  She was already halfway there, falling into a lassitude of pain-free safety.

  It was not a dream, Ekatya had said.

  She closed her eyes and breathed.

  CHAPTER 49:

  Breathing

  With a little creative rearranging of dates, Ekatya was able to reroute the Phoenix to Tlahana Station and still remain on schedule for their five-station tour. An egregious abuse of her position disguised as a practical evaluation of their surf engines ensured that she arrived only one day after Lhyn.

  The first test of her patience came during docking maneuvers, when she had to sit on the bridge and pretend that she cared about the myriad details of docking the Protectorate’s newest and largest warship to a station that had been built before the Pulsar class existed. They were at the end of the longest pylon, the only place with enough room for them, and getting the umbilicals hooked up was nowhere near as clean and efficient as it had been at Quinton Shipyards.

  Her second and bigger test of patience came during the waste of time known as diplomatic duty, when she and her section chiefs met the station commander and his staff for a formal dinner, followed by cocktails. But the ache in her chest had abated. Her body knew Lhyn was here. On the Phoenix, the ache hadn’t ended until they saw each other. She wondered whether this was a natural progression of their bond, or if they had accelerated it with their mental connection.

  The minute that it was remotely feasible to do so, she made her farewells, ducked out of the private dining room, and headed toward the central hub.

  “Captain, wait!” Dr. Wells caught up to her. “May I accompany you? I feel a bit like she’s my patient as well.”

  “And you’re bored to death in that dining room.”

  “That too,” Wells admitted. “But it’s not even close to the main reason.”

  “Come on, then.” Ekatya set off again, her boot heels clicking on the tiled floor.

  Wells fell into step, and they walked in companionable silence through the post-dinner crowds that surged in and out of the retail shops on this level. The ceilings here were more than twice as high as those in the administrative section, and the corridors were easily ten times wider. It was a vast open space compared to what Ekatya was accustomed to on her ship, and the noise and undisciplined crowds made her edgy. She just wanted to get through it and into the quiet confines of the medical section.

  They left the retail shops behind, walked through a slightly less busy corridor of service shops, and entered the bulbous central hub. Viewports all around offered spectacular views of the station’s pylons and the many ships currently docked, but Ekatya had eyes only for the signs directing them to Tlahana Medical.

  “This way.” Wells pointed ahead to an unmarked door on their left.

  “But the signs—”

  “Are for people who don’t know their way around. I do.”

  “Oh. Yes, of course.” She had forgotten that Wells had been stationed here earlier in her Fleet career.

  The door opened onto a narrower corridor that enveloped them in a hushed calm. Wells moved through it with confidence, straight to a large data console on the wall that was clearly meant for staff. She tapped away at it.

  “Are you authorized to be in here?” Ekatya asked.

  Wells tapped twice more, then smiled as she pointed to a record. “Yes, because Lhyn authorized both of us.”

  Ekatya’s heart jumped simply from seeing the name on the file. “She would think of that.”

  Wells loaded the medical record into her pad, then led the way around two corners and through another door. On the other side was a space much like the medbay lobby on the Phoenix, with treatment rooms arranged around a central nursing station.

  “I’ll wait here,” she said. “She’s in that one.”

  Ekatya followed her pointing finger to a treatment room with clear plexan—Lhyn’s doctors wanted to keep her in view. A still figure lay on the bed.

  She was inside the room without any memory of crossing the lobby. Slowly, she approached the bed.

  Lhyn seemed to be asleep. Her face was pale and her throat was bruised, more on one side than the other. Ekatya had not seen those bruises when she was with her—possibly because Lhyn had already forgotten about them? Anything that had not been in her thoughts or active memories was invisible to Ekatya’s vision there.

  If bruises that painful didn’t merit Lhyn’s attention, she shuddered to think what did.

  “Hello, tyrina,” she said softly. “I’m here, and you’re safe, and I don’t know if I can ever let you out of my sight again.”

  Lhyn stirred, her eyes blinking open. A slow smile transformed her face. “Tyrina. I love that name. Please don’t let anyone call me Dr. Rivers.”

  “You worked hard for that title. Don’t let him take it away from you.” She leaned down and pressed a soft kiss to Lhyn’s temple. “It’s so, so good to see you,” she murmured before pulling away.

  “It’s good to be seen. And to breathe. I’ve spent my whole life breathing and never given a thought to what a miracle it really is.”


  “I think you might be a little happy on drugs.”

  “I’m a lot happy on drugs, and thank the Shippers for that.” Lhyn looked up with luminous eyes. “Ekatya…there are no words—”

  “Shh, you don’t need them—”

  “Yes, I do. You made me feel so safe. It was such a nightmare, but the moment I realized you were really there, I was…at peace with it. Whatever happened, I could get through it because you were there.”

  Ekatya could not speak. Seeing Lhyn with her own eyes, being able to touch her—it was too much, and she was fully occupied with keeping her tears back.

  “Don’t cry,” Lhyn whispered. “I’m all right, thanks to you.”

  “Can’t…” Ekatya shook her head, then bent over, buried her face in the clean sheet next to Lhyn’s shoulder, and let it out. Lhyn combed her hair with gentle fingers, murmuring that she was all right, it was over, they were both safe, and all Ekatya could think was that she was supposed to be the strong one, the one who wasn’t hurt, and Lhyn was having to take care of her. What a fine example she was setting.

  She straightened, wiping her cheeks, and summoned up a watery smile. “It’s not thanks to me. You’re the one who fixed the control panel and figured out where you were. You even beat Kane at his own game in the end.”

  “And you’re the one who found a way to get to me. I’m still not sure how you managed that.”

  “Oh, that was…” She turned to look out the clear wall of the room. Wells was reading her pad, but she seemed to feel Ekatya’s gaze and looked up. “That was Dr. Wells taking a leap of faith.”

  Lhyn rolled her head too carefully and glanced out into the lobby. “I’d like to thank her.”

  Ekatya lifted a hand, and Wells gave a nod.

  “Hello, Lhyn,” she said as she entered the treatment room. “You’re looking rather amazing considering what I just read.”

  “I hope that record doesn’t include the images they took.”