The Breaking

by Imogen Keeper

  She stuffed one of her precious rations down her throat and swallowed a canteen full of water.

  Where was Ajax?

  They’d captured him. Had they killed him?

  No.

  She needed to trust him. And have hope. Still, she rubbed her chest, where the Bond felt empty and flat. Not something she would think about.

  The birds. What was she going to do about the birds? And how would she stay warm without a fire? Ajax had said she should go back to the ship, but she had no idea where the ship was. The river had twisted and turned, and for all she knew, she’d come out miles farther down than where they’d fished that day.

  She eyed the sun where it hovered, opalescent and shimmering above the mirage of the horizon.

  Night would fall soon, and with it, cold, solitude, and flesh-hungry black birds.

  35

  Stay hidden. Stay safe.

  Ajax studied the two men before him, wincing against the ache in his abdomen where the stun blast had hit him.

  He was probably purple-black from bellybutton to pectorals, but with his hands bound behind his back, he couldn’t take a look. Bruising and tenderness for certain, but he doubted any serious damage. He’d feel like shit for a week. But nothing serious.

  They’d set up a force field that deterred the birds. They squawked and dove against the invisible barrier with ridiculous frequency, circling in the darkening sky, a deafening cacophony.

  His captors weren’t bothered in the slightest.

  They moved about their tasks, bagging up the bodies of their fallen comrades and digging graves for them with an efficiency that spoke of old association. Comfortable with one another’s motions. Comfortable enough with death that the loss of men they knew and clearly respected didn’t stop them from completing their mission.

  Grief was evident in the lines of their faces, the gravity with which they handled the bodies, but it didn’t change anything. Ajax couldn’t help but respect them. Just a little bit.

  Professionals. That much was clear. And friends, if he had to guess. There was no sense of formality or ceremony between them. Tattoo was thicker, taller, the harder of the two. The other one was wiry, with solid strength and a face rimmed in laugh lines. Laugher looked like a hard man in a fight, but probably a fun one over a drink.

  Not a pair he could fight. Definitely not on his own, with his hands tied behind his back.

  Feola thumped in his chest, the sweet weight a steady comfort. She was safe, somewhere. Planning something. Hopefully at the ship, safe from the birds, warm and curled up in a corner of the bathing chamber. She’d have to take Utto’s serum soon if she hadn’t already. He flexed his palms behind his back where his wrists were bound, itching to feel her body against his, smell her hair.

  He tried to send her messages. Don’t do anything stupid like try to rescue me. Just be patient. I’ll get out of this. But the Bond didn’t work that way. Instead, he focused on trying to feel safe and unconcerned so she wouldn’t worry.

  The men spoke in Vestigi occasionally, and he understood enough to know they were bounty hunters.

  Former soldiers.

  So they’d been sent by Utto. Or maybe his uncle. Probably both.

  They wore thick coats against the cold, implying they’d had better information about the state of the planet than he had. They’d wrapped a blanket around his back, shoving him to the ground beside the fire.

  The light bounced off their pale skin, making them stand out like ghosts against the inky sky and landscape beyond.

  He tilted his head back and rolled his shoulders. His arms hurt from being pulled behind his back for so long, muscles stiff and sore.

  Hundreds of thousands of stars blinked down, swirling as the massive wings of the great black birds blacked them out, like a mass of tumbling snowflakes.

  The smoke disappeared, thick and gray.

  Squatting down in front of him, Tattoo took a long sip from his canteen. “Water.”

  Ajax nodded. Grateful. His mouth tasted of smoke and dust.

  Tattoo jerked his head, and Ajax understood. It wasn’t exactly how he’d helped the sick men in his healing bay to drink, but it was kind, nonetheless. Kinder than the man had to be, to offer him water.

  Ajax opened his mouth and tilted his head back.

  Studying him like a lab experiment, Tattoo let him pause to swallow a few times, and though it grated, Ajax nodded to indicate his gratitude.

  They could easily have let him sit there, thirsty as hell, and ignored him.

  It was eerie. Ajax couldn’t always tell where those pitch-black eyes were looking, though when the firelight hit them right, their eyes glowed amber. After a long moment, the man nodded and rose.

  As he walked away, the firelight reflected off the thick mane of black hair that fell down his back.

  “I’m Ajax,” he said to the man’s back.

  A grunt was the only response.

  They largely ignored him for the rest of the night.

  It was unnerving. He’d spent his whole life hating them. They’d killed his mother. And Clari. Every man, woman, and child of the Tribe believed the Vestige to be evil. He’d heard stories. The atrocities, barbarism, lack of empathy for the plight of others. Only monsters would murder women and children.

  They’d tried to annihilate Argentus.

  And yet these two men behaved for all the world like any member of the Tribe. They were just soldiers. In the dark, if it weren’t for their eyes, they could easily be Tribe warriors. What stories had they grown up hearing about Argentus?

  “How much Argenti to you speak?” he asked in Vestigi.

  They ignored him.

  So he spoke in Argenti. “I have a horrible illness. I shit blood and piss bile. It’s highly contagious. Travels in the air.”

  Laugher chewed on the inside of his lip like he was hiding a smile, but otherwise, neither reacted.

  “I’d like to kill you. Eat your bones and shit on the grave.”

  The smile broke free, and Laugher laughed, earning a dark glare from Tattoo.

  “I hear all Vestigi jerk off into their eeffoc before they drink it.” The most ridiculous thing he could think of. “Or do you jerk off into each other’s?”

  Laugher laughed again. No poker face, that one. In a different scenario, Ajax might have liked him.

  “What’s the difference if we speak Argenti?” Tattoo asked.

  “I just wondered.”

  They returned to their meal.

  “I grew up hearing that you guys slaughtered children and ate each other. I’ve never thought about it before, but growing up, what did you hear about Argentus?”

  Two heads swiveled at that. Leaving the fire, and locking on Ajax. Two pairs of black eyes glittered in the night. A long moment passed. “We learned you sent the Dark Death that nearly destroyed our people two centuries ago,” Tattoo said, in a voice low and gravelly deep.

  The hairs on the back of Ajax’s neck stood.

  “We learned that you tie your women to you with addictive chemicals so that they are forced to fuck you or die. It’s the only way you can keep them. We learned that you spread through space like a virus, destroying every land you touch, taking everything you can get your hands on. We learned that you come from the pits of hell.”

  Ajax flexed his neck. “So you do hurt children for fun.”

  Laugher wasn’t laughing anymore. He rose half to his knees, but Tattoo smacked him back down.

  “Truth in every rumor,” Tattoo said. “There was a time when our planet starved. We were near to death from your disease. A few resorted to cannibalism. No one escaped unharmed. Your Dark Death murdered ninety-five percent of our population.”

  Ajax frowned. That plague had been brutal, decimating the population of Vesta, but it hadn’t come from Argentus. He was sure of it. “We didn’t send that plague.”

  “A lie.”

  “No.”

  Tattoo traced his knife across the fruit in his hand
s. “We are a population of warriors. Yours is the population of doctors and scientists. Do you think it is likely that we could develop such a thing?”

  Ajax shivered against the ring of truth in the man’s voice.

  “Or do you think it’s more likely that we simply altered the one that had already been sent to us?”

  His stomach twisted. Altered? Tattoo meant the Plague of Days, which had killed all but twelve percent of Argenti women thirty years ago. Including his mother and sister. A plague the Vestige had unleashed on Argentus. “So it would kill Argenti women?”

  “It was supposed to only kill men. It backfired.”

  Facts he’d been told from birth, or a fiction developed by a desperate class of rulers determined to keep the peace on Argentus? Where had the Plague of Days come from thirty years ago? The Vestige sent it. Their oldest enemy. He knew it as surely as he knew that water was comprised of hydrogen and oxygen. He’d always known it. Never questioned it.

  And before that? Three thousand years ago? The first plague to ravage Argentus?

  Who had started that one? The very first one? Could he believe everything he’d been taught in school?

  Three thousand years ago, a plague had come that had lasted years. They called it the Blood Sickness for the way the victims had bled from every orifice, dying slowly and painfully, with recoveries and relapses ensuring the illness spread like wildfire. How could you quarantine people for years?

  It had killed in droves, moving in cycles for centuries. A thousand years of death. That’s when serum evolved. So men could save their women. It had taken hundreds of years for it to develop into its modern concentration. For the Bond to become so strong it could heal someone even from the Blood Sickness.

  Ajax had written a thesis in school positing that the serum was actually a concentrated form of the original virus, and his instructor had torn his theory to shreds.

  What if the remnants of that virus had been used to create a new plague two hundred years ago? What if the Tribe had engaged in bioengineering weapons and had indeed sent the virus to the Vestige homeworld, Vesta, and nearly wiped them out?

  Then the good were not so good. Did that also mean that maybe the bad were not so bad?

  It made more sense that the Vestige had manipulated an existing virus, the Dark Death on Vesta from two hundred years ago, and sent it back to Argentus thirty years ago in the form of the Plague of Days, which had nearly killed off the entire female population of Argentus.

  Could they be blamed?

  He saw his mother’s face. And Clari’s.

  Laugher spat into the fire. “If I had the chance, I’d send a new plague to your people. And watch you all suffer.”

  Tattoo hissed, and the sound blended with the crackling flames.

  Ajax closed his eyes. In the morning, he’d keep trying to piss them off. Maybe they’d make a mistake and give him an opening. At the very least, he needed to stall them.

  36

  I need you.

  The night came upon Feola, cold and dry, the darkness fast on its heels, bringing desert breezes, twinkling stars, a pitiless sky, and a glorious surprise.

  The lavender trees with fronds that reached high into the sky into mammoth arches, before returning to the powdery white terra. All along the fronds, night-blooming, perfumed blue blossoms as large as her palms sprung forth. They glowed in the night and made her head spin with their heady aroma.

  Their soft radiance calmed the pervasive, childish fear of the dark that had loomed with the setting sun.

  She had a lighter she could have used to build a fire to chase away the cold, but fear of the birds stayed her hand.

  Glancing furiously around for something to use as a blanket, or shelter, her gaze landed on the great trees. On the long, feathery fronds that swayed in the occasional chilly breeze.

  Using one of the knives from the sheaths on her thighs, she cut away great handfuls, weaving them into loosely braided coils, like the baskets and mats she’d made on Triannon.

  It didn’t take long. The fronds were so thick and soft in her hands that it was fast work before she had something roughly the shape of a massive, shapeless tunic that hung to the floor, thick and plush, fragrant and cozy warm.

  Peeking through a gap in the draping strands of the tree, she eyed the sky, with all its stars. Darker than at home, on Triannon, where the light of three moons warmed the night. Now that her eyes had adapted, with the soft blue glow surrounding her, she didn’t feel so afraid.

  And best of all, Ajax beat warm and soft in her chest. He was alive. She dropped her head back in relief.

  The birds had come to them that night on the plain… perhaps because of her song, or the fire. Maybe it was their scent. But surely now, if she stayed quiet, if she had no fire, if she remained under cover, surrounded by the trees’ sweet scent, perhaps she’d be safe. Ajax would have done far more for her.

  Draping the bag with her belongings over her shoulder, she climbed into a notch at the base of a branch, gathering even more draping fronds to cover herself.

  She tucked her feet beneath her and took a knife in hand. She’d sleep in the heat of the day. Tonight she would get no rest.

  With a little luck, the birds would never even know she was here.

  The night passed quietly. No birds. Just the cold, the dark, and the silence. The morning brought light and heat. The blue night blossoms gathered their petals, demurely receding into their beds of fronds. Feola dropped lightly to the floor, a cloud of soil bursting around her as her feet touched down. She squashed her plush tunic into a little ball and secured it with more fronds. She wouldn’t leave it behind.

  Desire for Ajax burned, an abject longing, sharp and low. She ignored it, refusing to acknowledge the loathsome vials. Drank water, stuffed provisions down her throat and tried to pretend that her head didn’t pound, her stomach didn’t wretch, her hands didn’t shake, her body didn’t sweat, and her vision didn’t blur.

  Today, she would cover her hair and dress all in white so she could blend in with the landscape. And she would find them. They had to be staying somewhere near the river. They, too, needed to drink and wash. They had to sleep. She would follow the river back to the hotel.

  She walked in the slight depression of the beach, between the water and the rising land, sticking to the copses of trees for shade and camouflage. It was cooler there. It took all morning and part of the afternoon to find them. But she did.

  They had a fire. A slim column of black smoke rising to the sky.

  Her belly clutched. Waves of chills broke across her skin. The flesh between her thighs throbbed, hot and angry. She needed Ajax. But she would not accept any part of Utto inside her. Never again.

  They had a crude camp set up beneath a copse of trees a few yards from the river. Her very bones called out to run to Ajax, throw herself into his arms, take succor in his body, but she inhaled a long, slow breath of hot air, gathering patience.

  Backing away, she withdrew to the shade of a tree, and lifted herself up high, parting silvery branches so she could see them. There was no advantage to approaching during the day. Surprise was her only chance. So she’d wait and watch, as she had with Utto.

  Rennie had been all instinct, impulse, and fear. There’d been no time to plan, just a frenzy that had left her bloody and frantic.

  This time, she’d have a chance to plan her course.

  She’d have to find an opening.

  She watched through the day as they strode from the shade in their black clothes, to splash water on their faces, refill their canteens from the river… and that’s when an idea took hold. The Vestige holding Ajax were men, just like any other.

  All men must pee. Fact of nature.

  And these men peed in the same spot. They even brought Ajax there twice so he, too, could empty his bladder.

  The spot they used was slightly downriver of where they refilled their canteens, beneath the base of another tree, in the shade. She waited until the
sun hung low in the distance, and their pissoir was vacant. Then she ran across the tiny blue flowers and the dusty white soil, and climbed the tree right over their spot to wait.

  Night would come. And at some point, one of them would come alone to pee beneath her tree. She shuddered. Who was this monster within her? A calm, ruthless woman had taken residence within, leaving no room for the old her.

  She closed her burning eyes and finally allowed herself to give in to the constant, aching pull of her mind. Like a headache, it beckoned and pulled, summoning her to the darkest place and time in her life.

  Rennie’s voice in the bathroom of Utto’s chambers on Romeo-Two. Cold and thick in her ear. Brittle and putrid. He pressed his hardness against her, his hands drifting over the bare skin of her thighs. I’m going to lay down on your bed. Take off my clothes. I’m nice and hard for you. Feel that?

  He met her eyes in the mirror. She tightened her fingers around the pillowcase that held all her hopes and dreams. And a knife.

  Feel it?

  She’d nodded, throat convulsing as he butted against her.

  You’re going to fuck me. And you’re going to smile while you do it. And when I’m done, you’re going to walk around all day with my cum oozing out of your cunt, and when your mate returns, he’ll get a nice, creamy reminder of who owns him.

  Her hands shook. Her head spun. The fine hairs on her body rose.

  His fingers drifted higher. Nausea had curled in her belly, and sirens blared, whirring in her ears. Her vision darkened, and all she could see were the darks of his eyes, tight at the ends in a mirthless smile. A wide, toothy grin stretched across his face.

  Smile, he’d said.

  And she had. She smiled, big and dazzling and wide, sneaking her hand inside the pillowcase.

  That’s a good girl. Smart girl.

  He straightened, adjusting his pants. Find me when you’ve got your cunt wet and ready.

  Something snapped inside. All the terror and rage of months under Utto’s hands boiled up, filling her face with hot pressure, her eyes pulsing, and the sirens blared again, blocking out all sound. All she saw was Rennie’s broad back as he sauntered away.