by Laura Lam
And now the others knew. If only the rumors about Evoli abilities weren’t lies, propaganda made up to sow fear in the Empire. Then she could make them forget what they had seen.
You have to face them. They deserve the truth.
Ariadne hurried out of the barracks after them and took Rhea’s other side. “Let me help.” Together, Clo and Ariadne helped her to the shuttlecraft. “The others will come around,” Ariadne murmured to Rhea. “You’ll see.”
Rhea thought of Clo. Would she be repulsed? And what about the others? Rhea understood a lifetime of suspicion and Tholosian programming was not so easy to unlearn, even if the Oracle was no longer active in the minds of anyone there. One left echoes. Nationalism cultivated prejudice. Everyone here was fighting against their own upbringing, Rhea included.
Eris was the first to leave the barracks, and the one who stopped closest to Rhea.
Clo edged in front of Rhea. A protective stance. “Keep that blaster in your holster, Eris.”
“It’s staying,” Eris said. “I’m not going to shoot someone for being Evoli, Clo.”
“You would have once,” Clo muttered.
As Nyx and Cato came outside, a wave of nausea hit Rhea. Cato’s emotions were sharp and curved as thorns. His hands were still bound in front of him.
Clo slid an arm around Rhea’s waist, pulling her close. “We need to get you on that shuttle,” Clo murmured.
“Not yet. Please. I need a moment for my stomach to settle.”
Rhea pressed her helmet to Clo’s shoulder as the other woman rocked her. She wished she could take the suit off, touch Clo’s skin. Press her lips to the other woman’s and forget everything. It was a strange reversal—usually Rhea was the one to offer comfort to others. To soothe their fears and worries so they could leave the Pleasure Garden and go back to their roles in the unyielding machine of the Empire.
“You’re not angry? Or afraid?” Rhea asked.
Rhea had held on to this secret for so long. So few had known about her abilities. The Archon. Damocles. Juno. The Oracle. Ariadne, only recently. Damocles had loved to use her skills as a tool for pleasure for himself. As a weapon against her. The Oracle couldn’t command or program Rhea, so Damocles had kept her hidden, locked deep in the Pleasure Garden.
His caged bird, unable to fly.
Clo’s arms tightened around her. “Angry? Gods, no. Surprised? Aye. But I’ll get over it. We have Evoli working with us back at Nova.”
“I’m not Evoli,” Rhea said, gently pulling away. “I’m not Evoli,” she repeated to the others, this time more strongly.
“You look like a fucking Evoli to me,” Cato muttered.
Nyx and Eris turned to glare at the same time, but it was Eris who said, “You’d do well to remember that Rhea is the one who begged for your life. I almost had Nyx put a Mors blast through your skull.”
“And I wanted to comply,” Nyx added.
Cato pressed his lips together and glanced at Rhea. His emotions faded slightly, uncertain.
Eris nodded to Rhea. “Go on. Tell us.”
Rhea took a deep breath, tried to form the words. There, in the bright sunshine, on a floating island above the rocky surface of Ismara, her secrets fell free. “I look Evoli, but I wasn’t lying when I said I’ve never left Tholos. I was engineered in a Tholosian lab—part of a very small, experimental cohort personally overseen by the Archon. His goal was to hack Evoli DNA, access their abilities, and use it to weaken them.” Rhea shifted away from Clo. “They made multiple attempts at mixing our DNA with the Evoli. The Archon’s engineers still don’t understand how I’m the only one who survived.”
“So, you’re a spy?” Cato asked with a dry laugh. “And I’m the one tied up.”
Nyx glared at him. “You’re about to be the one with a broken nose if you don’t shut up and let her finish.”
Rhea shifted uncomfortably. “He’s not exactly wrong. I was created for the purpose of one day infiltrating the palace of the Evoli Oversouls. The intel I could gather as someone perceptive to their empathic abilities would have been invaluable; the Archon hasn’t been able to get anyone into that palace because it’s too easy for them to detect a Tholosian mind.”
Cato stared at her in disbelief. “That goes against everything the Empire believes. I would have expected them to kill you on principle. They would never have allowed you to live.”
Nyx moved as if to hit him, but Cato held up his hands. Though the worst of the programming was gone, he still had a lifetime of being told the Evoli were evil, something to be destroyed for the good of the Empire.
Cato’s face contracted with some emotion, the sheen in his eyes breaking for an instant. He looked at Rhea like he actually saw her. Unfogged by the Oracle. His shoulders hunched as he pulled against his bonds.
Rhea shook off Clo’s comforting touch. “They let me live because I was engineered to help destroy the Evoli,” Rhea said to Cato. Her voice barely wavered. “That’s the only reason.”
“It makes sense from a military standpoint,” Eris said. Her voice was soft, but the expression on her face was tight. Rhea wished she could touch her again to catch a glimpse of her feelings. “Create someone loyal from birth, who can’t be compromised. But you were never programmed by the Oracle.”
“I couldn’t be. They learned from an earlier testing group that Evoli abilities are incompatible with programming.”
“Unless they’ve had a brain injury,” Eris said softly, her expression inscrutable. “But for the most part, yes.”
Rhea frowned. Now, more than ever, she wondered about who Eris was before she became a member of the resistance. How did she know so much about the Evoli? How did she withstand Rhea’s abilities?
“But you affect emotions,” Nyx said, drawing Rhea from her thoughts. “It’s how you helped Ariadne deprogram me.” Nyx’s face was implacable, but Rhea felt the other woman’s unease. “And you can control people. Why didn’t you just escape Tholos on your own? Why did you need us?”
“The Archon and Damocles are mostly immune to me.” Rhea bit her lip. She decided not to bring up Eris, despite her questions. “And influencing more than one person at a time takes too much concentration. I usually have to be touching them. The amount of ichor here seems to be making the difference—I’m not usually so . . .”
Out of control, she almost said.
Rhea kept her walls up, trying to keep their emotions separate from hers. Her heart hammered. Keeping the illusion was like having a layer of dried paint on at all times. She felt strangely free.
“I guessed who you were,” Ariadne admitted. “When you knocked Cato out with your abilities. The Oracle had files on the Evoli DNA experiments and mentioned one living child, but she was always referred to as TBDAM-43425.”
“Wait a minute, when she knocked me out with what?” Cato asked.
“You were going to kill Ariadne,” Rhea said. “There are still bruises on her neck, Cato.”
Cato quieted, his expression flickering with shame. But his unease remained. Rhea couldn’t read thoughts, not exactly, but she’d guess he was wondering if there was much difference between Rhea and the Oracle. If Rhea wanted, she could make Cato throttle someone against his will, too. But only one at a time. There was an Empire of difference between her and the machine, she wanted to say.
Rhea kept looking out at the hills, away from the others’ scrutiny. The view was so peaceful, marred by the ichor threading through the floating island beneath her feet. Wind rustled through the trees as it swept down onto the floating island. Rhea wished she didn’t have her helmet on; it would make breathing so much easier. She was still nauseated, and her body trembled.
Nyx frowned. “What does TBDAM stand for? That’s not the usual cohort naming system.”
“No, it’s not,” Rhea said quietly. “It means—” She bit her lip.
&
nbsp; Ariadne finished for her: “It means To Be Destroyed After Mission.”
They all fell quiet.
Clo hissed in a breath and pulled Rhea close. “Salt,” she swore. “I hate them. I hate them.”
“We should go,” Eris said, businesslike once more. “Sher’s supply ship will be here within the hour. Commander Talley”—she paused, cleared her throat—“he said the Tholosians would return for the rest of the ichor. We need to leave this quadrant before that happens.”
“Oh!” Ariadne brought a hand to her mouth. “Oh, oh, oh, oh, damn.”
“Nyx,” Eris said, “you speak fluent Ariadne, right?”
“Yep. Means she’s just thought of something shitty. What is it, kid?”
Ariadne’s hands started moving as fast as her mouth. “It’s just that the ichor made the miners sick, and was used to kill a bunch of people in experiments on other planets, and Rhea being around it also made her drop her illusion. So . . .”
Rhea went cold. “The truce,” she said. “Thousands of people will be attending to celebrate the supposed end of the war. Evoli spies would be exposed if the ichor works on them like it did on me. The Oversouls will be there. The Ascendant will be there.”
“The truce is a godsdamned lie,” Clo confirmed. “The rock isn’t just a projectile; it’s going to spread the disease and kill everyone in the palace.”
“Not just the palace, Clo.” Eris’s fingers curled into fists. “Think bigger. If Damocles starts a pandemic, it’ll be everyone on Laguna. And we just gave him the weapon to do it.”
42.
NYX
Present day
Nyx hated the silence.
She was beginning to realize how much she appreciated the camaraderie of the women around her. They hadn’t been a team for very long, but she had grown used to a ship full of chatter and bantering, of Ariadne’s music and Rhea’s dancing, and Clo and Eris’s verbal sparring. This, she realized, was what it was like to be around people free of the Oracle: their bond wasn’t something programmed or forced. It was chosen.
But choice made it tenuous and fragile.
Clo and Eris were avoiding each other. Whatever history was between them went deeper than Nyx had suspected—something that made them both grieve. Rhea had kept to her rooms and hid from the others and their emotions.
Partly your fault, Nyx thought to herself as she and Eris unpacked the supply cache Sher had sent in silence.
Ariadne and Rhea had picked apart Nyx’s programming, but like Cato, Nyx still heard a litany of the Oracle’s voice in her mind, reflections of old commands hardwired into her brain since birth. Undoing a lifetime of Evoli prejudice wasn’t easy. She couldn’t hide those emotions. And Rhea had heard and felt all of them.
Nyx scratched absently at the shallow cut along her shoulder where she’d stumbled in the Ismaran cave. It was like some small, universal rebuke for the pain she’d caused Rhea. A reminder of what her friend had gone through.
Eris looked up from unloading the food, weapons, spare disguises, and uniforms. She seemed exhausted. None of them had slept since leaving Ismara. “You should get Cato to look at that. Put some healing ointment on it.”
“I’m not going to waste our medical supplies on a scratch.” Nyx shook her head as she stacked the bags of food. “I’m concerned about Rhea, Eris. She felt my emotions toward the Evoli back on Ismara.”
The other woman let out a breath. “You can’t help the echoes of your programming, Nyx.”
“Maybe not. But it’s Rhea.”
“Listen to me,” Eris said. “If you still had the Oracle in your mind, you would have held a Mors to her head. Being deprogrammed doesn’t mean you erase what the Oracle said and did to you; it means you can make the choice not to pull out the gun. Rhea knows that.”
The echo of a sharp cry down the hall made them pause. Cato. Another deprogramming session.
Nyx’s deprogramming had taken place in Rhea’s room in the Pleasure Garden, where anyone might have heard such agonized cries. Rhea would turn music on. She’d touch Nyx’s skin—which Nyx now recognized as the other woman using her abilities—and even that couldn’t dull the pain entirely. Lasering the thorns from her flesh had been nothing in comparison.
Ariadne had broken Nyx down into little pieces and built her back up into something different. Eris was right: once the Oracle had left her thoughts, answers weren’t easy anymore. They weren’t commands that repeated through your thoughts until you were certain—absolutely certain—that every action was for the glory of Tholos. Those old orders were just memories to be ignored.
Her mind, now her own, was sometimes too quiet.
“I wouldn’t have even questioned what we saw back on Ismara, would I?” she asked Eris, afraid of the answer. Needing the answer.
“No.” Eris’s voice was surprisingly gentle. “You wouldn’t have.”
Nyx couldn’t stop thinking of those skeletal faces, the withered, flaking skin and twisted fingers, reaching out for help none of them could give. An entire planet thrown away. Not a large planet, or populous, but its purpose was clear: it was an experiment. The beginning of something larger. The soldiers who left them there weren’t just following orders—they were programmed to think their actions served the glory of the Empire.
Another of Cato’s screams echoed down the hall.
Eris wordlessly hefted a bag of food onto her shoulder. “I’m going to take these to the canteen. Tell the others we’re having a meeting in an hour.”
“Eris?” The other woman paused at the door. “How was Rhea able to control everyone but you back on Ismara?”
Eris didn’t look at her, but Nyx saw the tension in her shoulders. In the end, the other woman only released a soft breath. “Get some rest, Nyx. You’ll need it.”
* * *
—
They all gathered in the command center.
Eris stood in the middle of the room, with the others congregated in a rough semicircle around her. Clo stood the farthest away, her scowl fixed firmly on Eris. Eris’s expression was carefully composed as she gazed back, but Nyx noticed her fingernails dig into her palms.
What are you both hiding? Nyx thought.
The secret floated over those two like a specter, and Nyx sensed her unspoken question wouldn’t be answered. That chafed. Their lives were in each other’s godsdamn hands, and the tension made these walls unbearably claustrophobic. What if the group ran into danger again? Secrets like this could be fatal.
And Clo clearly didn’t trust Eris—not entirely.
“After what we saw on Ismara, I’ve come to a difficult decision,” Eris said, her voice ringing clearly across the command center. “We’re going to continue this mission without the resources at Nova. That shipment we just received from Sher will be our last. Starting now, we go dark.”
“That’s salted.” Clo took a step forward. “We only have eleven days until the truce ceremony on Laguna, Eris. The Tholosians are going to slaughter thousands of people, and we still have no way in. We don’t even know how Damocles is planning to smuggle ichor into the ceremony.” She shook her head sharply. “No, we need to get Nova on this. We need backup. We need help.”
Eris grimaced. “I think Nova might be compromised.”
Clo froze. “What?”
“Think about it.” Eris spread her arms wide. “All our undercover operatives have been exposed, a lot of them caught and executed before they managed to escape. The last spy ceased communication just after she sent information that Zelus had left Tholos with the shipment of the ichor. So, either the Oracle has somehow gotten into our systems or someone at Nova is feeding the Tholosians our intelligence. But I’d bet my life on it not being safe.” She let out a long breath. “Right now, Sher and Kyla are the only ones who know about our mission and that we’re getting close to a plan involving a coup. It h
as to stay that way. The second we involve the rest of Nova, we risk losing the element of surprise. We need to keep this to ourselves. The co-commanders agree with me.”
Clo glanced around, her teeth worrying her lip. “Unless we’ve accidentally indicated we know already. We accessed the Oracle’s files on Ismara.”
Ariadne’s eyes went wide and her hands flapped. “You think I messed up?”
“You didn’t mess up,” Nyx interjected. “For gods’ sake, Clo, don’t just throw around accusations like that. Ariadne isn’t an amateur.”
“I know that. I’m not throwing around—”
“Stop.” Rhea’s command echoed across the command center. “I sensed Ariadne’s emotions on Ismara. She was confident, and I trust her.”
Everyone went quiet at the reminder. Nyx looked away, hoping Rhea didn’t see the flash of shame in her features, and hoping that she couldn’t feel it now that she wasn’t surrounded by the ichor. Rhea endured Nyx’s lingering programming, all that prejudice commanded from birth. How could she even stand to be in this room with her?
I’m sorry, Nyx wanted to say. I’m so sorry.
“Okay,” Clo said, drifting closer to Rhea and taking her hand. “I’m sure you’re right.”
Rhea went still at Clo’s touch. Rhea’s face shifted to a frown and she gave Eris a hard look. You have so much blood on your hands, Rhea had told Eris back at the barracks.
Nyx’s hands curled into fists. And so do you, Nyx. Don’t be a hypocrite.
The reminder made Nyx scowl. “You two.” Nyx gestured between Clo and Eris. “Can you get over whatever the fuck you’re fighting about, please?”
“Not that simple,” Clo said. She shot Eris a look that burned. “I need to know one thing: will you kill him? If it comes to that? I’m not trusting you with a mission that has no oversight from Kyla or Sher until I have your answer.”
Who? Nyx frowned, catching equally baffled looks from Ariadne, Rhea, and Cato. Something to do with Eris’s past in the Tholosian military?