by Essa Hansen
Caiden entered the colossal concourse of layered walkways, where waterfalls filled the lightseep surfaces. Huge plumes of vapor coiled all around without sound, temperature, or taste. He walked toward the Cartographers’ district on the same route as that first day headed to his acceleration, strolling down to same atrium where—
The walls were bright with image feeds, this time too. Caiden froze as a rough female voice grated his ears.
“— don’t judge the expulsion, as it’s allowed our fleet to focus on recovery efforts in CWN82, where other planets are being reclaimed, which is an opportunity, and blame always gets in the way of opportunity.”
Çydanza, the Casthen’s Prime.
There was no image for her feed, just their symbol— his old brand— in the center of the screens. A crowd clotted around them in the atrium.
“A planet was discovered in the middle stages of being set up as a replacement livestock-breeding operation— though the faction responsible is unknown.”
Heat surged up Caiden’s neck. His morphcoat flickered into scales. Unknown? My memories showed them—
“A pity, since nophek are so rare and delicate, the existence of the precise environment to farm them could have been unimaginably lucrative if it had been shared, and the Dynast could have profited most of all if they had cooperated instead of looking to their own interests.”
Caiden closed his eyes. The slave-brand emblem burned in afterimage against his eyelids. Red as hate.
His focus flocked away. His body turned to fire poorly contained in skin, while tightness gathered in his stomach.
Çydanza’s voice was a rasp of sand. “The recording itself was found to be compromised, fabricated by the Cartographers, for suggestion is a powerful thing, even stronger impressed by a powerful machine, stronger still to influence a young, developing brain, and what does it say that the Cartographers have yet to respond to the allegations that their mnemonic source is himself a passager?”
Lies. Power moves.
He could waste the rest of this life trying to get to Çydanza. She had no face or form, not even something he could imagine to play out his scenarios of vengeance in his mind. She lay in a fortress obfuscated by centuries of myth.
“The source— a young mosaic— was stolen Casthen property, implemented in the nophek operation organized by the unknown faction, and while the doctored memories are meant to incriminate the Casthen, our presence in CWN82 was merely a result of tracking our stolen property.”
Caiden reached up to where his brand had been. His fingertips tingled, nail trembling tick-tick against the diamond.
“With the allegations against us in flux, I have gained Dynast and Cartographer clearance that my Enforcer remain in Unity to oversee a number of operations in critical motion.”
Threi. What new scheme was this?
Caiden elbowed through the crowd and headed out. This wouldn’t rile him like it had his fourteen-year-old self. Even in a corrupt multiverse, there were things to love and enjoy. Perhaps he could be happy doing small actions that mattered, and let the rest go. He’d done his part with the memory jog, and the Casthen wouldn’t be able to refute it. He could thrive by doing justly in every moment possible.
A new voice from the feed stopped Caiden in his tracks.
“To some, the ethics of farming nophek may be acceptable under the light of these new developments. But I ask you to observe the ethics of their slaughter.”
The Dynast Prime. Her radiant, enthralling voice snared him and twined him up, pivoted his feet, and wrung out every worry he’d thought was on his mind.
As Abriss spoke, the crowd reoriented toward the display wall in one collective wave that shoved Caiden to the front. Abriss wasn’t physically present, this time, but her image appeared on the screen, her strangely ordinary but mesmerizing freckled features almost as powerful as that first encounter. Her voice was just as twilight and soothing, even filtered through the broadcast system.
Caiden’s willpower dissolved into a summery feeling, an ease and purpose, heart quivering, eager to protect.
It terrified him.
“The investigation into the memory jog has concluded without question. As such, we will take no action to overturn it. My stars have told me this is amenable to all, but we should educate ourselves with hindsight.”
Shivers caressed his skin. The precision of her diction felt like it arranged him, too, sorted his thoughts, cleared the unnecessary.
“It is not Dynast policy to get involved in multiversal conflict. There is safety in the known, not the new. In Unity, we know how to treat disease, prolong life, generate free energy, and stabilize commerce. The Casthen may do as they will, for the danger and corruption outside Graven Unity is the punishment inherent in leaving it.”
The Prime closed her eyes for a long moment. The crowd went dead-still. Her lashes rose, thoughts aligned. “We rescind our incrimination of the Casthen free-course faction following this conclusive proof that the Cartographers’ anonymous mnemonic record was falsified.”
“False?” Caiden breathed. He didn’t hear her next words awash in the murmur of the crowd. Shock doused some of the Prime’s effect on him, and he edged closer to the screen. “Those memories weren’t false. We can’t keep erasing the reality of slavery.”
Caiden strode for the wall’s screen.
A black-gloved Dynast hand shoved him back. “Respect, cur.”
Cur … He glared at the sentinel. The man blinked at him, nonplussed— snared by Caiden, another Graven spider. Caiden balled up frustration in his diaphragm and lungs and spoke with all his energy. “Step back.” The sentinel obeyed with a puzzled look still on his face.
A vile sickness twisted Caiden’s insides. He was a monstrous thing the Casthen had made, and he could never change that.
The black storm of old rage swallowed all the warmth and optimism Caiden had gained after his dinner with the crew. Everything I suffered for. Every nightmare that’ll gnaw me up for the rest of my life— all for nothing.
He didn’t hear any more words. He curled his augmented fist, marched to the wall, and slammed it into the screen. The Prime’s image rippled. His new muscles were more than tight: he felt charge gather, pinpricks of power and speed clouding into a storm that he loosed. His next punch sent radial cracks skittering three meters through the wall, crashing into the woman’s image. It wasn’t her he was angry at. His anger just was. Perhaps always would be.
He drew back for another hit. Gloved hands hauled him away by his shoulders but couldn’t stop his thrust. He pummeled the glassy rift, throwing up liquid and sparks. The pigmentation streaked off the surface of his aug hand to reveal transparent skin and black bone beneath.
Dynast officers dragged Caiden into a tight bundled group. As the fight drained from him, it surged in them: a fist met his jaw and snapped his head back. Arms looped his elbows and stretched him. Their shouts and curses muddled, and Caiden laughed, which turned to a bloody cough. A knee or boot found his belly. “Cur” spat into his ear.
Caiden ripped his left arm free, elbowed a skull as he drew back for a punch. He struck at an officer’s looming face, but a knobby gray hand caught his wrist mid-swing from behind.
Caiden’s blue muscles fattened, the storm in them curling against the hold. He looked up at his captor: a male saisn’s dark face, pitted with broad furrows. The face of a powerful tamed animal that still had wild in it. His muscular features were rife with discoloration from healed scars. His eyes were black pools with a burning limbal ring, and the jeweled accretion in his forehead reflected pure white under the overhead lights.
Caiden froze, noting the gray-and-purple Cartographer garments honing the saisn’s sinewy frame.
“That is enough damage, Passager.” His forearm bulged with pronounced muscle bands, just able to match Caiden’s augmented strength.
Behind the saisn rushed a winded Lyli, pale as a ghost. “Disciplinarian! I will handle this.”
Discipli
narian? Shit. Caiden, panting, twisted his wrist but it was held fast.
Lyli said, “This passager is recovering from grave injury and is under my aegis. You may stand down as well, sentinels. Merely a fit of pique.”
An admirable attempt to save him, but the saisn yanked Caiden away from the group. Lyli caught up and snatched the Cartographer’s coat to stop him at the edge of the crowd.
“Maul, release him, there is no need for this. He did not hurt anyone. It was simply a wall, and they are easily repaired.”
“Do you not think the crash did enough property damage?” Maul’s voice was gravel, his throat serrating the words. “I advise he learn to curb his reactions or move on from them, before punching a wall turns into worse.” He tossed Caiden free.
Caiden massaged his knuckles. The pigment un-glitched. He stepped to Lyli and lowered his voice. “My memories aren’t false. What good is your memory jog technology if it can so easily be claimed to be fabricated? Get a vishkant to confirm my truth!”
She shook her head. “If it were so straightforward, there would be no contention. I am sorry, Passager.” Lyli made to reach for him but curled her hands together over her chest instead. Afraid of him? She stepped closer and lowered her voice too. “Please come with me so I can examine your well-being, and do not worry, it was simply a wall—”
“No,” Caiden whispered. “Maul is right.”
My anger is a taproot, straight to the Casthen. The acceleration hadn’t pulled it out of him, and the nightmares nourished it like water. The soldier’s temper bred into him made for fertile soil. His bloodstream pulsed with violence and darkness, as Threi had said, just itching for a way out of his body.
Threi’s promise, We’ll kill Çydanza with a blade of her own design. Caiden had been searching for belonging and purpose, but it lay with the Casthen all along.
Maul towered. “Clinician Lyli, why are we housing this passager’s ship in our secure docking recess?”
A muffled, amplified voice behind them replied: “Because I said so.”
CHAPTER 28
ENEMY OF MY ENEMY
Five Casthen parted the crowd. The man in the lead had a confident, swaggering gait and a tall, broad-shouldered, slim-waisted build that was unmistakable even with the featureless blue mask covering his face and even if he hadn’t said, “Leave, sentinels, he’s here with me,” at which the Dynast group shuffled and muttered among themselves. Groups were harder to coerce, it seemed. Threi’s shoulders contorted at the hesitation, and he twisted to face them, having to repeat the order with intent and gravitas, “Leave,” before the sentinels peeled off like clouds facing a gale.
“Cartographers.” Threi recovered with a dashing bow. “I’ll take it from here.”
Maul’s face scrunched, considering, then he grunted and turned to leave. Lyli wore a relieved and loving expression. She bowed then followed Maul. Lucky for Threi: two species he had an easier time convincing.
Threi turned a circle to the rest of the mixed passager crowd. “All of you can leave now too— show’s over.” A third of them loved him enough to obey. He yanked off his mask and peered around the crowd with a gentle “Go,” and convinced the next third to drain out the atrium exits. Snarl wrinkles stacked across the bridge of his nose. He nodded to his Casthen crew, who bullied out the remainder of the crowd.
Caiden rubbed his kicked jaw and straightened. His morphcoat leather thickened, ready for a fight. “What a good soldier you are, able to eliminate a threat in moments. Not perfect, though, are you?”
Threi swiveled to face him, simmering. “Not yet.”
“Why are you here?”
“I came to see Abriss’s statement, because who doesn’t want to watch a leader so plain and uncharismatic charm an entire crowd?” Threi dragged his hand through dark curls.
The other armored Casthen fidgeted, hands near glaves.
“And you,” Caiden said, “so handsome and charming, struggle to dismiss that same crowd.” Aggravating the Enforcer wasn’t a smart move, but Caiden was in a tetchy mood.
Threi donned an artful smile. “A shame, the falsification of your memory jog.”
“That was you.”
“Not I. Çydanza sees quashing rogue errors as a game. The result of your survival— incrimination— was an error she swiftly corrected.”
“Really? She seems less real to me every day. Yet you benefit directly.”
The others shuffled at his hostility, but Threi laughed. “True. Now you’ve gained absolutely nothing from the memory jog except trauma that will hound you the rest of your life.” The man glanced among his crew. “Return to the ship. The Paraborn and I need to talk.”
They took no extra urging to obey.
When they’d left earshot, Threi said, “I twirl around my finger three keys: your liberation from horror, your route to the Casthen Harvest, and the secret to killing Çydanza at last.”
Pulled hard by those promises, Caiden closed his eyes. The brand of the Casthen afterimage still hung there. The nightmares were a permanent brand, one he couldn’t replace as easily as skin and bone. He said, “Tell me your plan, start to finish.”
“Sorry, pup, can’t do that. Mind, memories, and information are more powerful currency than you know. And even with all you’ve seen and heard, there’s still a lot of the multiverse that can’t be explained by anything less than direct experience. And if not knowing every detail scares you, you’re not ready for life in this multiverse anyway.”
Threi stalked close and extended his hand, gloved in black membrane and tiny scales of scratched steel … resuming where they had left off in the previous encounter. “Deal?”
Caiden had thought being an adult would solve everything; he’d wanted to be just like Laythan and the others. But the crew showed him how deeply old lessons burred in, and how easy people found it to ignore them as time passed on. Caiden needed to face his knots head-on, now, and not carry them along into the rest of his life like bits of shrapnel folded into the body by scars, still digging shapes into him.
He would have rather died on the nophek planet than have survived only to relive that day over and over. And he would happily sacrifice himself to end the Casthen, if the path were clear. He couldn’t live happily while knowing they still exploited vulnerable worlds.
He loved his new family, even if his genes had forced them to accept him. But they deserved better; he would become someone grown out of the atrocity from which he came. Only that would prove he was worth their care.
Threi’s eyes were dead sapphires, betraying nothing.
“Deal.” Caiden grasped the man’s hand as he might a snake in the grass: before it could strike.
He trekked alone to the Azura’s docking recess, his decision hardening into reality. His unbuckled morphcoat transformed to a thin mesh, and he picked up a brisk pace to feel some air. The Casthen were the only weight left in him, and unfettered from anything else, he could focus solely on ripping them out of the world, and his rage with them.
He input the security for the door, which dissolved open.
Taitn stood before the Azura. “There you are. You disappeared after the party.”
“You all fell asleep …”
“I did. En passed out. There’s a difference.” Taitn clapped Caiden on the back and rested his arm there. “How does your neural link feel? Not altered by the operation?”
The neural link congealed with proximity, spreading a sunny, satisfying feeling. Taitn must not have heard about the falsification yet. If I tell him, he’ll try to convince me it doesn’t matter.
“Link’s still strong.” Caiden’s voice quavered.
Taitn’s gaze cruised over the Azura’s black, glistening hull. “I’m curious what the link will allow you to do, over time. We might have only scratched the surface of what this ship is capable of. The engines are tuned to her universe. Panca thinks some of the stranger components only function there.”
Shut up, Taitn. Each adoring word dug Ca
iden’s pit of guilt deeper.
Taitn spun him gently. “Everything all right? You look downhearted.”
Throat tightening, he managed to reply, “Just tired.”
“Laythan will come by soon to fly with you. We’ll be out of Unity in no time.”
“Thanks, Taitn. And … well. I didn’t have real siblings, but …” Caiden hesitated lamely, staring at Taitn’s bearded face that might have looked brutish if not for the warmth in his eyes. “Well, never mind.”
Taitn’s smile widened. “Rest up.” He headed for the door, his footfalls echoing, the ties on his boots jingling.
“Taitn—” Caiden fumbled for meaningful words. Something better than a goodbye. “I think Lyli likes you. You should talk to her.”
Taitn turned, and Caiden almost burst out laughing at the man’s stunned expression.
“No more spending time with En for you.” His blanched face turned rosy. He pivoted and walked out, but his shoulders shook with a chuckle.
The door materialized closed, leaving the wall uniform and smooth. Caiden’s smile wilted. Warmth left.
He perched his hand on one of the ship’s vanes and pressed against her solid metal, traced her older scars with a finger. The Azura was his home, his safety, his rock in the turbulence of the multiverse. Upright, weathered, and battered, like him. Of mysterious composition, like him.
“We saved each other.” He ran his fingertip along a seam. “I can get through this if I have you. This final stretch.”
He walked inside, threw his coat over the pilot’s seat, and slumped in it, resting his head in the neural cradle. Luminous holosplays unfurled in the cockpit air. Blocky print still read: FLIGHT CONTROLS HAVE BEEN LOCKED BY COMMANDER TAITN MARAY ARTENSI. ENTER PASSCODE.
“Twelve thirty-eight.”
Tension unleashed. A surge of energy foamed through the Azura’s mass. Caiden exhaled, and teared up at the immensity of the release, felt through the link. Half his tension had really been hers. He leaned back and let it un-ratchet from his tendons, the stress ooze from his bones.