by Essa Hansen
The engines died. Blackness oozed into Caiden’s senses.
He couldn’t move anything but his eyes. And his chest, surely, because he was still breathing.
Muffled voices resonated through the gloom.
Open, he thought, hoping a thread of neural link remained. The bay doors sighed.
Light washed over him, and he regretted the command. Crumpled on his side, he saw his left arm: the radius bone was splintered in two, humerus broken, muscle shredded off in purple strips like ragged sleeves. The mess wiggled loosely in his shoulder socket. It should have been painful, but he didn’t feel it. Didn’t feel anything below his neck.
There was very little blood on him. It was all over the walls.
The voices were shadows that drew closer but became no more intelligible. Caiden’s head filled with the razor whine of charged weapons.
“It’s a kid …” a gruff voice called.
Blood sputtered in Caiden’s mouth as he tried to speak.
Someone said, “Passager Winn, 8116,” and more distant shouts skewered the air.
“Hold on.” Lyli’s voice. Lyli’s tranquil, velvet voice. “Passager Winn and the starship Azura are under special consideration. Exempt it from scans while I take custody of the pilot. Summon the rest of medical, please.”
Caiden peeked through sticky red eyelashes. A cluster of glaves pointed at him. Lyli crouched, washed out into a silhouette of wavering curves. He wasn’t aware of any pain as a crew marched in to bind him together and slide him onto a stretcher. The glaves’ whine left his head but a fizzing of broken tones remained, wriggling through the canyons of his gray matter, and wringing out his consciousness.
“I’ll begin the …”
Something tore Caiden apart from the inside. Searing pressure crunched through him. Blood boiled, skin blistered, bones white-hot rods. He screamed, swam, and clawed the air but touched nothing. Pain radiated up his throat into screeches.
Vague awareness frothed in his skull. Lyli’s attending hands were spatters of rain, her alarmed shout a lone ribbon of wind. She was a little storm of worry, and Caiden, still blind, could only feel her until he finally woke, lying flat and submerged in liquid, his head resting on crystal manifolds. He strained his gaze down to confirm that his arm was still a shredded mess.
“Hello, Passager Winn. You are stable now.” Lyli’s face was backlit and framed by waist-long silver ringlets. “You have sustained substantial cervical vertebrae injuries, and are currently paralyzed. Your arm, as you can see, is severely damaged as well. We have put you in a temporary decision-stasis. Your condition will not worsen, but a choice will need to be made between reconstruction, augmentation, and amputation, after extensive nervous-system repair. There is only so long we can keep you stable until we must operate on your spinal cord, so please, deliberate swiftly. You have already been unconscious for a full ephemeris day.”
Caiden closed his eyes. His body burned with an itch he couldn’t scratch. Everything heavy, muscles roused from sleep but not fully awake, buzzing with prickles like a galaxy contained.
His voice was a mush of husky syllables when he said, “Lyli … the Azura …”
“We have arranged for your starship to dock in a Cartographer recess shielded from Dynast detection zones. Your safety and anonymity is important to us, and the Cartographers remain a neutral entity.”
Lyli hooked a long ringlet behind one ear. She looked over his body with a clinician’s gravitas, unfazed by his gruesome injuries. He must have looked like the butcher had taken a break mid-slaughter.
All damned, what a mess. Caiden marveled down at the ribbons of striated purple muscle and glistening white tendon that wrapped his broken bones like a twisted present. His neck had to look worse, skull hardly attached.
He was little more than meat.
“Passager, an anonymous message was delivered for you.” Lyli looked politely away as she held up a black card for him to read. White words emerged on its surface: “I told them to keep your bird locked up tight. You’ll change your mind. It’s what you are. I’m leaving for the Harvest in two ephemeris days— decide by then.”
There was no mistaking what “told them” implied. Threi had used his Graven effect to make a suggestion or order that the Cartographer dockworkers would struggle to genetically refuse, just like he had influenced Sina at the Cartographers’ Den before. But Threi’s Graven powers weren’t absolute; he couldn’t saunter in at any time to take the ship. Could he? Giving Caiden the freedom of choice seemed to mean that Threi’s offer was sincere. The man needed both the ship and Caiden’s cooperation, which couldn’t be coerced.
Caiden had less than two days to get the Azura as far from Unity as possible.
CHAPTER 25
AUGMENTATION
He was born Casthen.
Was made for them. Belonged there.
Confusion hashed in Caiden’s head, unable to form in his paralyzed body.
His engineered nature wasn’t something he could change, outrun, or hide.
Earlier barbs dug deeper: why Threi would want to betray the organization he worked for, and what his link truly was to the Dynast. How inaccessible Çydanza seemed: in all his searches on databases and maps, he hadn’t found a way to the Casthen Harvest. Its location was talked about like myth; a grand quest many passagers had embarked on and failed, returning with a story wilder than the last. Even the majority of the Casthen’s own adherents were escorted in and out effectively blindfolded.
Threi was Caiden’s clearest path in.
But he still wasn’t sure how entwined the Casthen were with the Cartographers or Dynast, whether Threi was a sole rogue agent or if the organizations themselves were as incestuous and murky as he. Or if he was lying entirely.
Caiden roused when a hand stroked his forehead. Its repetition became as crucial as a beating heart or inflating lungs. When the motion stopped, palm lingering over his damp cheek, Caiden opened his eyes.
En wore a desolate expression, brightened by a twinkle of hope in her eyes. She hooked a spill of black hair over her ear, lifting stripes of shadow from her face. Spicy citrus fragrance tickled Caiden’s nose.
“Hi, Winn.” She tried a smile: a sad, crooked thing. “I’ve looked like you more than a few times.”
He moaned and shut his eyes again. Paralyzed, all he could do was lie and wait for admonishment, misunderstanding, for them to throw him out once and for all. And if they didn’t— was that because a Graven part of his soul soothed their misgivings and convinced them they loved him enough for another chance?
A coarse little tongue scraped his temple. Caiden flinched and closed an eye as the whipkin covered him in kisses. Her long-fingered paws took hold of his jaw and hair as she sniffed around his face and licked up half-dried salt tears.
“H-hi, sweet girl.”
Did genetic coercion extend to animals too?
Ksiñe stood next to Lyli farther in the room, in deep discussion as they pored over a holosplay of data and a model of Caiden’s shattered spine.
En said, “Ksiñe’s the only surgeon in Emporia experienced with your sort of hybrid nervous system. And I’m biased, obviously, but an augmentation— hybrid organic and machine— can be installed and in-grown fast to replace your injuries. Biological regrowth is slow, even with a makeup like yours that regenerates at alarming speed.”
What a good quality, for a soldier. He turned his cheek into the whipkin’s soft fur. She curled around his skull and rooted her wet nose in his hair.
“The test flight of the Second Wind went well. Laythan is still allergic to Unity and anywhere the Dynast is, eager to leave, but we’re waiting on you, kid. Laythan is hard but not heartless— he’ll wait, even if he is furious right now. The fact that he hasn’t kicked you out already means he’s deeply attached, just can’t show it.”
Caiden knew why now.
“Furious, huh,” he said. “And Taitn?”
She hesitated. “Taitn feels guilty. He’
s shut down, won’t talk to anyone.”
Silence filled the room. En leaned over him, her gaze brimming with compassion on the edge of pity. He didn’t want pity.
And her compassion wasn’t real. It was invoked.
“I’ll do the augmentation,” he said.
En reached into the stasis-bath liquid for his intact right hand and squeezed. Caiden felt it: a momentary break in the burn, the tingles fleeing from her touch. If only his whole body could be squeezed, the anguish wrung out of it.
Lyli approached, her creamy blue eyes filling with stars of data. She was dressed in luminous white and purple, and with her milky skin backlit, her bones showed through even more. “There are decisions to be made regarding material, style, and function.”
Caiden looked at En, pleading.
“I’ll take care of all that.” En smiled down at him. “You’re gonna love it.”
He hadn’t even spoken— his look alone swayed her. Caiden shut his eyes and couldn’t muster a thanks.
En started chatting merrily with Lyli about hyperdiamond, biomineralized bone, dilatant nanoparticle skin, and morphic crystal.
The whipkin’s warm furry body left. She jumped to Ksiñe as he approached and looked over Caiden’s mangled body. “Casthen?” he asked.
Caiden blinked and met the Andalvian’s red gaze. “Yes. Cracked the base of my skull. Ended up in flights I wasn’t ready for, trying to escape. Heard things I didn’t want to hear.”
Ksiñe nodded and stroked the whipkin’s back as she flattened to hug his torso. “Then you made best choices you could.”
Caiden stared in surprise.
Ksiñe shrugged, his skin vibing calm lavender bands.
Was this gentle acknowledgment due to Caiden’s Graven effect? He wasn’t sure how to tell, how to recognize when or whether it was poisoning his interactions. If anyone was proof of the effect, it was Ksiñe. The Andalvian’s hate had transformed into camaraderie in a short span of time. Seems it wasn’t due to Caiden’s efforts or empathy at all. Although Threi had struggled to influence Sina, also Andalvian— some species were more resistant.
Rousing softer thoughts, Caiden said, “Thank you for being my surgeon. I’d trust no one more.”
If he was a Casthen cur bred to alter the wills of those in his presence— even to the slightest degree— he had to be all the more mindful and considerate. Anything, to balance out the monster they’d made him.
Caiden must have been making a weird expression, because Ksiñe’s forehead speckled green and he plopped the whipkin by Caiden’s head again. She nuzzled into his hair and licked the back of his ear, snuffling sweet sounds.
“Animals are medicine,” Ksiñe said. “I prescribe her until time for operation.”
Caiden smiled for the first time since the crash.
The whipkin groomed his hair, then her own snowy fur, then glommed onto half his skull and fell warmly asleep. Given that his head was all he could feel, Caiden soothed under the pressure and was able to relax without sleeping, until Ksiñe arrived with a team.
He begged not to be put to sleep— therein lay the desert of death— so instead he drifted in a chemically bizarre, muggy half-consciousness on the operating slab, infiltrated with filaments of light.
When it was time for the augmentation, a filmy oxygen mask covered his face and obscured the operation. Yet he heard every gruesome part of it. Squealing like pressure on a cracked pane of glass. Bursts of suction matched with flurries of dizzy heat in his brain. Grinding of an unsteady, ringing metal blade.
Occasionally, he made out En’s warm citrus scent, and her voice, a husky whisper of optimism and faith telling stories to drown out the sounds of mutilation. Eventually, the team moved Caiden off the slab. His vision was a mess of textures, his hearing a tapestry of nonsensical delays. Groggy, he was helped upright in one of the Cartographers’ rooms.
White, luminous Lyli grasped his right arm, her hands soft as cloud.
Dark, shadowy En was on his left, gripping his foreign shoulder: crystal that blurred an array of black folded petals. His arm was sleek, porous bone bundled in layers of plump bluish muscle, sapphire pins, and lustrous white tendons like bands of pure light.
He gasped at the flurry of sensation that radiated from En’s touch, each cell a landscape of feeling, multiplied a millionfold.
“It’ll calm,” En assured.
Eyes closed, the sensory overload was all he could focus on as the two women moved him to another room. In the back of his mind he thought of Leta’s synesthetic hypersensitivity, how sound sometimes cut her, a graze might bludgeon, and textures sat cruelly on her tongue. Like this … How had she possibly endured?
“The repairs to your spinal cord and the cervical curve of your vertebral column succeeded without incident. Additionally, your augmentation has been completely integrated with your nervous system. It has replaced eight percent of your body. How do you feel?”
“I can feel, that’s better than before.”
Lyli’s piscine eyes smiled. “I understand you were dismayed by the mixed nature of your genetics, but it was precisely those strengths that made your spinal injury repairable. Your medic was quite complimentary of your biology.”
Ksiñe seemed to value all things objectively. If he had known on their first meeting that Caiden was such a well-designed creature, would Ksiñe have hated him less?
“It’s fine work.” Strands of hair slithered from En’s tie as she bent left and right to observe his arm. “My friend Cheza is the best dynamic pigment artist in Unity. Look at those flaws. Freckles, even!”
Caiden’s new left shoulder and arm looked so identical to his right, he forgot it wasn’t real. He smoothed his hand down the construct, skin-soft and brimming with sensation. His skin was warm. Slivers of black veins contoured the aug.
Lyli tried to stifle a charming smile, and bowed before leaving.
Caiden asked, “Before, it wasn’t skin-toned, how—”
En whirled next to him and transformed in the same motion as he stretched his muscular right arm next to Caiden’s left. The black seam veins fattened and skin turned translucent. The inner construct had workhorse materials scuffed by use, gouged with fight scars, and loose from age. Fat ribbons and wires pulsed, ready for action. “Think of a shiver from your neck down your arm.”
Caiden imagined— it felt exactly like a shiver as the pigment dissolved and his skin grew transparent again. Bluish muscle ribboned around black bones and crystalline actuators. Angular strips of cloudy diamond covered his shoulder and the back of his neck. He imagined it had been part of him his whole life, like his mortal flesh was torn up and this had been beneath it all along.
He ran the skeletal black aug hand through his hair and turned to a mirror on the wall.
Several vertebrae had been replaced, including the spot where his slave brand had been.
Lustrous diamond replaced that symbol of Casthen property.
But Threi had ripped open a scab Caiden hadn’t known he possessed. He wasn’t property— he was Casthen. Their mark was in his bloodstream, his marrow, his voice, and every damn freckle on his skin.
He curled his hand into a fist, his blue machine muscles bulging. A shaky exhale leaked from him.
En smacked a hand on Caiden’s hyperdiamond shoulder. “This represents your reckless bravery. Each augmentation is a story, a reminder. I’m not proud of all or most of mine, but these stories have built up into who I am.”
“Reckless bravery, huh? You say that like it’s a good thing.”
“I think so.” En patted Caiden’s shoulder again. “I need to cheat some Cartographers out of medical fees and structure repair. Go check on your ship.” En swept out the door.
Caiden found his shirts and morphcoat in a pile on the operating slab. A furry mound lay in the center: the whipkin, asleep.
“Hey now, I need these. Why didn’t Ksiñe take you?” Caiden wiggled his fingers under the creature and lifted her up in a ball. She
uncurled and climbed up his arm, stretching the length of it. He stroked her patterned back and noticed a message strip fashioned into a collar loop.
It read: Painkiller.
Caiden chuckled. He dressed while having to relocate the whipkin for every sleeve and buckle-up. His morphcoat transformed into soft leather with a hood, in which she coiled up while hugging his neck, nostrils whistling by his ear.
He exited the Cartographers’ white warren halls to the main lobby— the circular platform in a cavern of lightseep clouds. Down a side passage toward the hangars, the Cartographer halls teemed with passagers and with maintenance teams repairing a great streak the Azura had left.
The activity drove the whipkin deeper into Caiden’s coat, where she clung flat against his chest, little head over his heart. “Yeah,” he said, “I wrecked this place. How big is the repair bill En’s trying to cover?”
He unlocked the door to the docking recess where the Azura perched: a simple space with four of the Cartographers’ luminous white walls. Purple and gold hues throbbed over her like bruises.
“You deserve my apology the most.” He strode into the bay and dumped himself in the pilot’s seat, settling his head in the cradle. The whipkin balled on his lap.
“Sorry, Azura.”
The cockpit holosplays bloomed. A red stack of chevrons blinked, then formed blocky squiggles of text. It was the guttural language Taitn and Laythan argued in, and read: FLIGHT CONTROLS HAVE BEEN LOCKED BY COMMANDER TAITN MARAY ARTENSI. ENTER PASSCODE.
Caiden stared at the alert, heart sinking. Commander?
Taitn needed an apology the most, it seemed. Until Caiden got the codes, he’d lost his only set of wings.
CHAPTER 26
FOUND OR FORCED
The huge, beetle-like Second Wind parked inside Pent’s depository, all prepped to leave. Laythan and Ksiñe huddled over inventory beside it.