“Jon!” She pounded at the door.
The door was flung open. Light flooded the room.
Tyron was upon her, thrusting her against the wall and compressing her windpipe with a forearm. Cesium fuel vapors clung to the older woman’s blood-stained clothing in a noxious cologne. She was a wild-eyed shield maiden of Nyxa, come to deliver her death.
“Why was Ravstar waiting for us?” Tyron demanded. “Who is Defensor Tristic? Why does she want you?”
Erelah was afraid of how it would feel to have that bare skin touch her own and connect that circuit of Tyron’s rage. She feared that more than the threatening words or the pain she could bring.
Erelah could only blink at her.
“Ty! Stop it!”
Jon inserted himself between them.
Tyron’s arm was pried away.
Erelah sank away, sliding down the wall. And watched. It all seemed to happen in another room, far removed from this one. They were two familiar-looking people, pulling off a convincing play of anger.
Jon shoved Tyron back. Head lowered, she turned her anger at him.
“I deserve answers! Valen died for her!”
“Yes, but not like this!”
Jon stood between them. He was tensed, hands out at his sides, ready to repel Tyron’s next attack.
“Calm down. We’ll do this, but not with you like this. Get it under control, soldier.”
Erelah felt Tyron’s cool stare from over Jon’s shoulder. Forget shield maiden; she was Nyxa incarnate, ready to bring torturous death.
She leveled a finger at Erelah. “I never forget.”
“Enough!” Jon shoved her from the room.
---
Erelah shivered beneath the blanket Jon had wrapped over her shoulders. The galley was cold, the way Fleet kept their vessels. He always liked things that way, she recalled. His rooms back on Argos. Even arguing with Uncle about the size of the fire in the hearth. How appropriate, she thought, feeling Tyron’s frigid stare from the doorway. She had changed from the bloody clothes but looked no less terrifying.
Beneath Erelah’s bare feet, the ship muttered on with its uneven hum, something else to gnaw on her nerves.
A fourteen percent imbalance between the cesium expellers. Nothing a simple recalibration wouldn’t fix. But she doubted they were interested in her diagnosis right now.
Erelah wound pale hands around the steaming cup of insta-cal that Jon forced on her, and savored its warmth against the mysterious cuts on her fingertips. The thought of food made her want to retch. But she took small sips of the bland stuff just to please him.
Jon sat on the bench opposite from her. His hands on his knees. His back rigid. She could not stand the intense look on him, as if she were a stranger, someone he’d never met.
He reached across the space between the two benches to place a hand on her knee. She shied away.
The intensity in his gaze softened, replaced by hurt. He drew back.
“Tell us, Erelah. All of it. We need to understand.”
/Yes. Tell him all, Veradin. Confirm their suspicions. Let them know the full danger you bring them./
Erelah drew in a quivering breath and pushed back against Tristic’s voice.
Not now.
It was easier than before. She had a sense that something had happened to weaken the Defensor, if just temporarily. She still felt Tristic in there, seeking a way through, scratching. It was like an itch at the back of the throat, a dull ache that lingered and would freshen if prodded.
Regardless of the reprieve from Tristic’s presence, it was still hard for her to recount time as an orderly set of events. Although the pharms were well gone from her body, she felt as if she were dissolving, barely able to hold her shape. She was a collection of pieces that belonged to now-Erelah and then-Erelah.
Jon cleared his throat. She realized she had started to go away again.
“There was a NeuTech installation. It was where I worked… with others. High clearance, very few of us. Adan. Tilley. Myrna…”
Those are names of dead people.
Tyron uttered an impatient sigh. Jon shifted.
“The ship we called Jocosta… for the project. Something new: a j-drive. It was meant to replace velo drive, but on smaller ships. But special.”
“Special how?” Jon asked.
“Ships that can travel without mapped conduits… can make their own FPs.”
“Like the stryker in the bay? It can do that?”
Tyron growled. “This is inefficient. Ask her about Tristic. About Ravstar’s involvement.”
“Maintain, Tyron,” Jon said, his voice pitched with warning.
Erelah retracted further beneath the blankets, away from their raised voices.
Tryon resumed pacing.
Jon nodded for Erelah to continue.
She swallowed, granting Tyron a wary look.
“It worked,” Erelah said with a broken smile. Tears invaded her vision.
Jon leaned forward, expression carved with concern. His pity was suffocating. She gazed down at the cooling cup in her hands instead. “And then… then… Tristic learned about me. She decided I was so much more useful than the new j-drive tech.”
“What makes you so bloody important?” Tyron sneered. Jon turned stiffly, frowning at his woman. She glowered back at him.
“I used the Jocosta to get away. But that’s not why she wants me. The stryker….the new drive…they’re toys to her. She can make a fleet of them if she wants, she has the plans. She wants me. I’m perfectly imperfect. She wants to use me.”
“Use you? How?” His stare was fierce. His jaw muscles clenched.
“She’s dying,” Erelah said. “She’s terrifyingly brilliant. She has eyes and ears everywhere. But she’s also dying.”
“But why does she want to use you? Help me understand,” he pressed.
“You’ll believe me?” Erelah looked up at him, feeling warm tears slip down her cheeks.
He nodded. “I promise.”
“She wants to be me… to wear me. I go away. And she becomes me, living in my body. She can do it now, bit by bit. But to do it for good and make it final, she needs me in the flesh.”
“Be you?” Tyron mocked. She looked her up and down, measuring. “If she could really inhabit another body, why not someone bigger, more powerful? More like me? Or Jon? Or Valen?”
“Because I was different than the others.” She sobbed. “Imperfectly perfect. Perfectly imperfect.”
Jon came to Erelah’s side of the bench. She allowed him to pull her close, careful not to touch his skin. She curled against him and listened to their tense buffet of words.
“The stryker, I can understand. But this. I don’t believe this. It doesn’t make sense.”
“And you know everything now?” Jon shot back. “Miri knows what Ravstar experiments on. Bioweapons. Psy-Ops. Is it that far-fetched?”
Tyron answered with a derisive grunt.
“The question is how we use this intel,” Jon said.
“I don’t know, sir. But we have an advantage, a slight one,” Tyron answered.
“Advantage?” Jon asked. “How?”
“Although I still question the reasons why Tristic wants her—”
“Why would my sister lie?”
Tyron continued, speaking over him. “Before his death, Sergeant Valen told me that Tristic was desperate to locate Erelah. That does corroborate her… version of events. The Defensor did appear physically ill. If Tristic is dying then we just wait her out. We withdraw to the Reaches to elude capture. We wait for Tristic to die.”
Jon was quiet. Then: “Withdraw. Shelter in place.”
“Exactly, sir. Modified attrition.” Tyron actually sounded eager. Erelah could nearly hear the click/whir of the rational motor in the soldier’s mind.
They didn’t understand. They didn’t get it. They’ve never been unmade. But they did not live with this thing in their heads, curled in its inky den and feasting on eve
rything that once made them whole. Scratching. Burrowing.
“It’s not that easy. It doesn’t work that way.” Erelah shoved away from Jon’s embrace. The mug tumbled to the floor. She climbed to her feet, backing away from both of them. “She’s still connected to me. That’s how she knew to find me at that station. She can sight-jack me, take me over, but not permanently. I can push her out, but I keep losing ground. I can’t wait her out. I can’t hide from her.”
The air was filled with the nerve-jangling rattle of the Cassandra’s engines.
“Sight-jack? Really? You are obviously psych-damaged,” Tyron spat.
“Enough, Sela!”
She turned her anger onto him. “Your emotional connection to her is blinding you to some basic facts.”
“Ty, stop it!” Jon rose, stepping into Tyron’s way.
Fearful, Erelah recoiled, her feet tangling in the blanket. She fell back against the wall.
In one cat-like move Tyron slipped around Jon and cornered her against the bulkhead. “You forget one thing. You’re Eugenes. A Sceeloid, not even something like Tristic can sight-jack a Eugenes. That’s why we have Purity codes. That’s why we purge the non-reg races.”
At this, Erelah gave Jon a strained look. He was a bundle of guilt: head bowed, eyes shut. The muscle of his jaw compressed. He rubbed a hand across the back of his neck.
Did he not tell Tyron about Helio’s message?
Their unspoken exchange did not go unnoticed by Tyron.
“What?” She glowered, straightening.
“You’ve not told her, have you?” asked Erelah, careful to use High Eugenes.
“There’s never been a right time,” he replied in the same. Expelling a ragged sigh, he dragged his hands down his face.
“What are you saying?” Tyron demanded.
“Ty, I have to tell you something.”
Her moves wary, the soldier backed away. The suspicious glint in her amber eyes was entirely focused on Jon. “Tell me what?”
“Erelah and I are Human.”
26
Sela stormed along the common passage. The curved walls were a liquid blur. There was no destination, save escaping the crushing sensation in her chest. But each footstep seemed to give it strength.
“Just listen for a moment, please.”
Jon’s voice was like a tether affixed to something deep within her. Her feet slowed, not out of obedience, but because she had run out of hallway to storm. Sela faced the hatchway to the cargo hold, her image mirrored in its portal. Reflected behind her, she saw Jon slow to a halt.
His hand was on her arm, turning her. The walls changed places. Then with sudden ferocity he was kissing her, full and hard. As if he would inhale her, drink in everything she was. The last kiss of a condemned man.
Clear. I need to be clear.
She pushed him away, curbing her strength. “Stop. Just stop.”
His eyes held a bigger looming doubt. Whatever it was, she still felt that urge to crush it, for threatening this man. But it would crush her in return, she knew that now.
The hall seemed too narrow. The air was flat and metallic, as if the scrubbers were no longer working. The unhealthy vibration of the engines found every painful bruise and magnified the ache in her shoulder, her wrist. It all suddenly threatened to overwhelm her. Sela slowly sank down the wall, knees drawing up.
“Did you always know?” she asked up at him. “Even before… all of this?”
“No.” Jon knelt before her. “I had no idea, Ty. My whole life is a lie that Uncle told us.”
“That was the message, wasn’t it? From the avatar on Newet?”
“Yes,” Jon said. “Uncle did it to keep us safe. He was too late to save our parents. So he raised us. Erelah and me. He hid us in plain sight to keep Seekers from killing us. We were never meant to leave Argos. Helio was doing what he thought was right.”
“By lying to you about your own nature?”
“He meant to tell us. Things just… happened. That’s why he left the message.”
She looked into Jon’s warm brown eyes so full of reckless hope and devoid of guile. Sela saw a man that she would have foolishly worshiped, no matter what. Here stood someone she was expected to call her enemy.
But that was not the source of the crushing hurt.
“Say something,” he said finally.
“I don’t care.” Her own voice sounded small and lost to her.
“What?”
“I don’t care that you’re Human. I know that I should. It’s what I’ve been trained to do. But, I don’t.”
His shoulders sagged with relief.
“You told me so many times that you thought me more than a simple soldier. That you saw something different in me.” She felt her throat tighten. “Yet you kept the truth from me. Why would you not trust me? After everything that I’ve done. After everything we’ve been through. Haven’t I proven you can trust me?”
“I know, Ty. And I’m sorry,” he said, leaning in. His forehead pressed to hers and his warm hand cradled the back of her neck. “I didn’t know how to say it. For Miri’s sake, I didn’t even believe it myself at first. I was afraid.”
“Afraid?” She placed her hands on his shoulders, pushing him back gently.
“Of what you would think of me. Afraid to lose you.” He grabbed her left hand.
“As opposed to what I think of you now? How is this better?” Sela pulled her hand away.
The skin around his eyes tightened. And he sank back onto his haunches.
“And I had always thought myself unworthy of you.” Sela rose, sliding up against the curve of the wall. Careful not to touch him as she strode away.
---
It had been some time before the quiet mutter of Jon and Tyron’s hurt voices faded in the passage outside. Now there was only a heartsick silence.
Perhaps they have forgotten me. I would like to be forgotten. That would make not being so much easier.
Erelah sat before the gutted remains of the coms array interface. This was a plaything, she realized, devoid of any useful active components to complete the system. Jon had thought of that. It was something to occupy her. The same way Old Sissa would give her trinkets and broken costume jewelry to entertain her as a child while the old woman kneaded bread in the great warm kitchen in the house on Argos.
“Erelah.”
Instinctively her shoulders drew up toward her ears, fearful that Tristic had returned, full of admonishment. The evil queen had come so close, only to have her prize snatched away. And she knew that Erelah had been talking about her, telling secrets.
Not there. Not there.
Cautiously Erelah reached a quivering hand for the circuit node, then withdrew, uncertain. Jon would not let her have the soldering iron. Nothing that could cut or burn.
“Erelah.”
She flinched. But she said nothing, and wiped her chin against the collar of her rumpled clothes.
“Erelah. What is it?”
And Jon was standing across the table from her.
She looked up at him. “Oh. It was you.”
He seemed so lost, hurt. It was written in the slope of his shoulders and the red-rimmed eyes.
You’ve come to the right place, brother. This is where broken things congregate.
“Who else would it be?” His forehead wrinkled. “Tristic? You can hear her?”
“Mostly all the time now. But right now, she’s quiet. I think she got hurt at the station. Good.”
Erelah’s gaze slipped away, looking over his shoulder to watch the shadow traipse past him: dark hood, stooped, a flash of pale skin. She focused with such intensity that Jon even turned to look.
But she knew he would not see.
Jon rounded the table, taking a seat at her side. He grabbed her hands. Erelah quickly slipped them from his reach and drew them back inside the cuffs of her shirt.
“What is it? Tell me and I’ll help you,” Jon said.
Tears blurred her vi
sion. Once more the darkness over his shoulder drew her attention.
She looked down and whispered over clenched teeth. “Make her stop.”
“Who?”
“Tristic.”
She was taking a chance even saying the name. After all, she could hear everything.
“How do we make it stop, baby sister?”
Erelah slid back along the bench. “I’ve said too much.”
“Erelah, there’s no one else here.” His face clouded with doubt.
He thinks I’m mad.
Oh. If only it were that simple. She shrugged, a jerky, hitched motion.
She looked up at him, feeling her eyes fill with tears. “I don’t know. I try to be strong. But I can’t fight forever.”
Jon propped an elbow on the table and rested his forehead in his hand. “I’m failing everyone.”
After a long silence, Erelah turned her focus back to the remains of the coms array. It felt better to watch her hands work.
“You hurt her, you hurt your Ty…but she knows what to do with pain. Like when she hurt her wrist. ‘You turn it into something else.’ Just like the drillers would teach,” she said simply, pulling a nest of tangled wires from the casing. “I wish someone had taught me that.”
“The drillers?” Jon asked, frowning. “Did Sela tell you that?”
“Like she would ever talk to me.” Erelah rolled her eyes. “Just something I saw.”
She was only vaguely aware of his expectant silence before she withdrew inward, fingers nimbly tracing the circuits of the damaged beacon. It felt better to focus on this than the thing at the other side of her brain, scratching and digging for a way in.
Scratch. Scratch. Scratch.
---
Sela grunted, trying to stretch the clinging mesh of the cellseal across her shoulder. It was hopeless, awkward. She had used a pain dampener from the stolen medikit on her injured wrist. Already the swelling had receded as it set to work fixing the sprain, but it had temporarily deadened the sensation in her right hand. She gave up, and the free end of the binding flopped uselessly against her skin.
The remaining contents of medistat kit lay scattered across the bunk beside her. There were meds and supplies that would have cared for her team on Tasemar. Not to mention a field surgery kit that could have kept Atilio alive.
Allies and Enemies: Fallen Page 21