by Essa Hansen
“Help me up,” he whispered, and croaked a “please” to wrap the iron of that Graven order in some manner of velvet.
She brushed sticky hair from his face and checked his vitals.
“To my—” Ship. The last word died on his lips. Home wasn’t his Casthen room, it was the Azura. What would be left, when his ship was dismantled?
She knows, Silye signed right in front of his face, but Caiden couldn’t make sense of it. She gave up and looped an arm under his torso, helping him to his feet.
Caiden waded through agony and vertigo with every tiny step. Silye stayed glued to his left side, under his arm. Slurring, he said, “Would you help me if I wasn’t making you?”
She didn’t pause, just shifted her grip to pat his heart.
They reached a scour, and she leaned him inside. It initiated, whipping energy through him, shocking every system until he tingled from his marrow to the little hairs on his skin. Minor injuries and swelling had healed. His knees buckled and he folded up awkwardly inside the tube, eyes slitted, vision bleary through his lashes. Silye crouched at the opening. Her creamy hair was a waterfall of color and shadow. Her eyes black but for the round, concerned pupils surveying him.
This isn’t sustainable. Killing Çydanza is further away than ever.
Silye reached in and picked up his hand, tugging him to a standing position. He let her lead him through the Casthen darkness to an even darker cramped room and a cot with one tattered blanket. He collapsed onto it. She tried and failed to arrange his limbs in a better way, and resorted to stitches and salves on the wounds that the scour hadn’t healed.
“Silye!” Threi shouted down the hall outside.
She swiveled around, shoulders cringed.
Caiden reached a weak hand out to pinch her sleeve. “You shouldn’t have to go.”
She looked at him, eyes bright and pink in the darkness, curved with a smile. She patted her heart.
“Come!” Like Threi was yelling for a pet. Footsteps boomed in approach and then past, and Threi’s knuckles rapped the door on his way.
Silye flinched then levered to her feet and swept out the door.
Caiden curled on his side, inviting the twinge of the fractured hip. He was Graven enough that all love was a lie, but not Graven enough to save Silye from abuse. He’d never succeeded at that with Leta either.
He curled a fist and tucked it under his hip, leaning into pain. Darkness seeped up— perhaps unconsciousness, Caiden couldn’t tell the difference. There were no dreams or memories. He was beaten and scrubbed so raw, none of his history remained. Might as well have been here since infancy. He’d ended up here after all, and the intervening time had taught him nothing.
He wanted to dream of something nice, for the first time in so long. He plucked through tattered memories, and poured imagination into the holes. The nophek’s throaty purr as it head-butted his chest. His father’s laugh, his mother’s playful scowl, and Leta braiding flowers into crowns. The spicy age of oak scent, and the green, and how warm their world’s wind could be. He’d made jokes and laughed and was happy being only a mechanic. Leta laid a crown upon his head.
A spotted hand palpated Caiden’s temples. He flinched as a light pierced his retinas— one, then the other— leaving a foggy afterimage. Blinking, he brought his hands up to swat at the figure, but fingers wrapped around his wrists so gently he paused.
“Crimes … what did they do?” A voice Caiden knew. As gentle as the hands.
He begged his memories to carry on to the next. His brain was frozen, rewiring frantically, knitting together headache threads like thin whines braided into screams. He opened his mouth and worked his jaw, hoping sounds emerged. “Taitn?”
Impossible. They were far away, and had moved on. Now the crew were no more than weaponized memories that Çydanza would wield against him.
Darkness throbbed in his vision. Multiple sets of hands helped him to a sitting position. Threi’s crew, going to force him into functional shape again for some new horrific task.
But soft, spotted fingers probed his head.
“Ksiñe.” Caiden blinked until the Andalvian’s face emerged.
The scarlet speckles crowding Ksiñe’s nose thinned to cirrus clouds. “She missed you. Stopped eating.” The whipkin climbed down his arm and clambered over Caiden’s collarbones. She dug under his coat and shirt to flatten warm and fleecy against his bare chest, squeaking and purring all the while.
Caiden swiveled his head. Ksiñe and Taitn. Laythan. En by the door, muscular and bristling with glaves. Panca behind her.
Icy shock sheeted through Caiden.
This was a new kind of dream. The nightmares had eaten away his childhood, now they gnawed on newer parts of his past. Çydanza’s attack had rattled loose a new perseveration. “You need to leave.”
Caiden slid to his feet off the cot.
Laythan slugged him in the cheek. He tumbled onto the floor, half-caught by Taitn. Ksiñe scowled and sprayed sealant over the fresh gash on Caiden’s cheekbone.
“After all we did for you,” Laythan fumed.
Real. Real, real, this is real. The pain was keen. Caiden’s head teemed with sparks, vision fuzzed— this wasn’t the feeling of a dream. He covered his mouth with a shaking hand and struggled to believe the sight.
Laythan continued, “Still too stupid to see that people care about you.”
Care. He’d left them because they were better off that way, free and safe. “Impossible.”
En peered over her shoulder. “You didn’t think I’d have the resources to find a way here eventually? Such little faith you have in my disreputable ways! I worked at it day and night, kid.”
They came because of Graven love, because his engineered nature was a hook he hadn’t dug out of them first. He caved in at that thought while Taitn helped him up to his feet.
Caiden’s speech clogged on its way to his tongue. “No. You only … because I’m Graven …”
“Oh.” En swung her glave back and swept from her position at the door, straight for him. Laythan stuck an arm out to stop her but she slapped him away, carrying through to tackle Caiden in a strong embrace. Sprigs of pain burst in him. Her dark hair encompassed his head, citrus scent stung, warm voice filled him. “That’s not why.”
Caiden’s thoughts stuck together. It had to be a fever dream. The whipkin wriggled out and jumped back to Ksiñe as En squeezed. She cuddled into his wounded cheek and said, “I’m augmented enough to be a good amount resistant to Graven charm, while Andalvians are naturally averse and Ksiñe sour enough to hate anything, and look at Laythan— a bit of Graven grease might’ve softened up the old man’s edges but you had to fight to gain his respect.”
“Back to the door!” Laythan peeled En off Caiden and towered. Light glazed the hardest edges of his face and the sharpness of his eyes. “Respect but not approval. Is this really what you wanted? Look at you.”
Caiden gingerly probed his cheek. “I wanted to destroy her and—”
“No, that’s what Threi wants.”
“That’s right.” Threi sidled into the room and shoved a glave to En’s skull while she walked back. He deflected the muzzle of her glave as she fired into the ceiling. Twinkles of liquid and metal rained from the blast. Threi pointed his other glave at the group. “You really shouldn’t have come.”
Caiden’s heart sank.
Pinch and Jet flanked Threi with weapons. Towa followed. Silye cowered against the wall behind.
“Take them to the viewing platform,” Threi ordered.
Caiden stepped forward. Threi turned a glave on him. Towa glanced over her shoulder as she herded the prisoners out.
Caiden and Threi stood in deadlock for several moments.
The warmth was sucked from the room. His family, swallowed, like the machine had swallowed everything. Please let this be a nightmare. I didn’t come here to be rescued.
Threi lowered the glave and looked Caiden over. “ Çydanza will expect you th
ere too. You’ll want the uniform. Anonymity. Trust me …” He looked around, but the little room— Silye’s?— had nothing. Threi tsked and removed his own armor. “Use mine. Hurry. And you’ll … You have to keep your head about you or she’ll decide to end your second chance, and you won’t get out of there alive. Winn, we still have one opportunity to kill her, but you need to trust me this time.”
Trust. Caiden cinched Threi’s armor on his body. I still love them. Çydanza proved that when I failed to kill her. I can love them even if their reciprocation isn’t genuine. Crimes, En, why did you have to say those words.
They were family and he had thrown it all away to make himself suffer among the enemy. Was it less because he craved justice and more because he felt he was deserving of punishment?
Threi handed Caiden the blue mask. “Be ready.”
CHAPTER 40
REWARDS
Threi pushed Caiden in front as they headed for Çydanza’s viewing platform. “Whatever you feel, don’t let her see it. Do better than before. No tears. You said she used love to break you last time? Well, this ordeal will prepare you for what she’ll throw at you during the next memory flood.”
“What’s going to happen to them?”
Threi took Caiden’s arm and paraded him up to the atrium. “Just keep it together, and we can end everything after. We don’t have long before the ship is … Listen, your friends won’t be killed, just imprisoned.Çy prefers to wring the value out of things. That buys us time. We need to … finish the task, then this will all change, and you can release them.”
Caiden seethed but said nothing. He sweated in the borrowed Casthen armor, all his clothes damp. The morphcoat was a limp mesh attempting to wick away his heat. He cinched the blue mask tighter. At least they wouldn’t recognize him, wouldn’t know he was standing there, useless to help, wouldn’t see his complicity in all this.
“Do you understand how close we are?” Threi asked.
“Yes.”
Caiden’s understanding didn’t make it any easier to see the sight down the stairs.
Casthen soldiers prodded the crew into a jagged row in front of Çydanza’s universe. Rose and cerulean candescence lashed their bravely postured silhouettes. En’s hair was loose and wild, his dark skin glistening with Casthen blood, and some dents in the armored soldiers behind showed just how much he’d fought. Panca’s sensory veils had been ripped off, the core in her forehead swimming with light. Ksiñe’s skin strobed black as a storm and just as bloody as En’s. His posture tensed with violence, arms curled around the whipkin hugging his torso. Laythan stood tall as a statue of bravery, his broad shoulders square, eyes as piercing as ever. He rested a hand on Taitn’s wilting shoulder.
Caiden and Threi descended together. Their footsteps hammered on metallic silence. The sound strummed every nerve inside Caiden’s Casthen shell.
The frame in the rind clarified like the great eye of a judge, its rainbow waves ripping back around the approaching vishkant’s figure.
Caiden stopped with Threi at the sidelines, looking down the line of his family all serried for interrogation, limned bright by the rind. His composure withered. Anxiety eddied in his body, hot and itching beside the chill of shame.
Çydanza stood before the rind and cocked her head. “Ah, captors, here to save their child. Your attempts poked up one too many times in the surveillance data, little birds picking at Casthen routes. Too slippery to catch, and our defenses too robust to break, but I could certainly let you in. After all, your presence provides a fantastic opportunity to test my sweet probationer’s loyalty and absolve his final weakness— I will reward you each for that.”
The Casthen soldiers jammed three long glaves against the back of Laythan’s neck and shoved him forward. He stood, spine rod-straight. His eyes looked crisp and fractured in the rind’s light.
Çydanza stared through Laythan and saw. Like withering leaves, her lips slowly curled in a smile. “Do not fear, Laythan Paraïa, I can reward you with everything you want.”
Caiden’s armor creaked as he ground his fists. Threi nudged his shoulder with a warning look. Get through this, kill her, save them.
Çydanza laughed— a wispy sound that morphed into something mellifluous. Her blond locks lengthened and lightened to a lavender gray. Her jutting cheekbones rounded, face filled out, skin darkened to a tawny shade and filled with freckles like the spattering of a heavenly rain. Caiden’s breath hitched the way it had when he’d seen the Dynast Prime Abriss. This wasn’t a true Graven response but a powerful echo. Beside him, Threi stiffened and made a choked sound. Whites gleamed around his startled eyes. He had no mask to hide behind.
Çydanza’s gaze flicked over to Threi for a beat before she turned back. “Laythan,” she said lovingly, voice bright as a songbird and rich as honey. “How adorable, you were Dynast Prime Laureli’s protector! And you loved her, did you really think she loved you back, that someone adored by billions could find a place in her heart for one?”
Laythan struggled to get out words. “I didn’t need to be loved back. That’s not how love works.”
“Your faith in goodness failed you that day she was murdered, but tell me, was it because of the half of your love’s skull that Hesh blew off or because you couldn’t aid her without crashing the ship and killing everyone anyway?”
Laythan’s breathing grew ragged, pupils saccading as memories reared in his mind. He backed up a step but the glaves shoveled farther into his neck.
Threi drifted forward like a sleepwalker, looking thunderstruck. Caiden twitched, mind slow to connect. Laureli was one of the previous Primes, Abriss’s mother … why did Threi care? More Dynast history that had built his hate?
Çydanza-as-Laureli smiled, her gaze flicking to Threi before she continued, “Oh, but it was your fault, wasn’t it, being blind to Hesh’s plans was as good as fault even if you hadn’t been framed, though the punishment wasn’t death because Veren knew value, a shrewd man I can admire. ‘The body has a use and we will put it to use. All things in Unity have value, and the darkness changes souls.’ Did you enjoy your use in the labor prisons, Laythan, did the blind darkness change your soul? Prison was quite peaceful those years, you thought. Don’t deny it— sometimes you do miss the simplicity, the isolation. I can ensure you’re able to greet the dark again.”
What does that mean? Caiden’s fury stirred where it had slept.
Laythan choked sounds, unable to speak.
Çydanza-Laureli finally turned her head to acknowledge Threi. He broke his icy stare at Laythan and looked at Laureli.
The woman said, “Luckily, Laythan— or is it Dynast Safeguard Laythall Sorsen?— I have the perfect person to reward you for your bravery and your prison break. Would you please, my sweet hound?”
Threi had grown deathly calm at the name. His breathing was deep and predatory, his focus wrenched entirely off plan. In a husky exhale, he responded, “Gladly.”
Caiden stepped toward Threi’s back, fighting the urge to grab the man’s arm. Threi glanced over sharply— a warning— but there was something untamed in his features, something the smiles and snarls had hidden.
Threi didn’t need armor to look dangerous; all in black, tall and athletic, he strode with the grace of someone unstoppable. He slapped the guards’ glaves away and leaned toward Laythan, issuing a Graven command. “Move. Up the stairs, you’ll follow me.”
Laythan’s head tilted down, feet moved, willpower shrank. The rind’s light slicked off the two men as they headed up the stairs, drenched in shadow.
Çydanza’s smile withered. The body of Laureli dissolved into vapor and a whisper of skeleton within. “You,” she hissed.
Taitn was shoved forward from the line. Three glave muzzles stacked against his spine.
“War hero …” Çydanza’s form rippled and folded upon itself, congealing into white, silver, pink, ghostly bones, and a beating heart. Lyli. “Years of valiant service, praise, adoration, all admirably earned.”
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Taitn crossed his arms calmly, but his muscles flexed, his fingers dug in, jaw set. His eyes fixated on the ground, but he still saw whatever memories Çydanza excavated from his mind. So close to a vishkant, mental dams broke; every fear and doubt surged up.
“How gruesome that old acceleration technology was.” Her voice took on Lyli’s gentle, clinical tone. “You were laid on the torture rack of time, stretched until all your social connections shattered, then abandoned to solve your brokenness alone, you lost and lost, mocked and deceived, naïve until the point you stopped trying. How much easier it is to not forge connection.”
“But not worth it,” Taitn whispered.
“What was that? So soft-spoken and shy, so surprising that you are this gentle nonetheless, and your desire is sweet; but do you really think regaining those lost years will rejoin your body to your mind and make you worthy of love at last? I can give you back those many years, war hero Taitn Maray Artensi.” Çydanza’s treacherous smile did not fit Lyli’s gentle face. “Take him to the desenescence chambers.”
No. Caiden struggled to keep still, bit his cheek. The six years of accel he’d done instantly had been bad enough— desenescence would be a rapid breaking down, trickles of soul sucked out in every session. Did it wipe memories too?
Soldiers grabbed Taitn’s arms and shoved him up the steps into Jet’s waiting hands. As the chketin forced him along, Taitn twisted and said softly, “Pan, be strong.”
She was quivering. Her velvety hackles raised.
Panca. Caiden smothered the urge to spring into motion. His lungs were hot and furious, rhythm lost. Sweat or tears ran down his cheeks beneath the mask, filling his nose with the reek of wet metal.
Panca hugged her arms and looked up bravely, but her shivers knotted into convulsions as Çydanza’s vapor congealed into a tall, male saisn shape.
Caiden knew what she would be seeing in her mind’s eye: her own memory jog.
“Ah …” Çydanza’s saisn voice hissed and cracked like a whip of flame. “Your memories visit you often, First Daughter Pan Carai. Look how strong they are, a hurt grooved over and over, deeper each time …”