Nyxia

by Scott Reintgen

  Her whole face unlocks. “Yeah, I promise.”

  Defoe directs me out of the room. I’m guessing whichever rabbit hole he’s leading me down won’t come with magical elixirs. We walk through hallways and it’s an effort to keep up with his long, purposeful strides. I find myself side-eyeing our mysterious director of operations. Nothing shakes the guy. He always seems in control and he always sounds confident. Only his hand stands out as a weakness. Up close, I can see just how shriveled it is. Since day one, he hasn’t bothered to hide it. The bones look malformed and the skin looks permanently burned.

  “What happened to your hand?” I ask. It’s none of my business, but it’s about time we tested him back. I want to know what kind of skeletons he has in his closet.

  He holds the hand up, considering it.

  “I sustained the injury in an encounter with an Adamite.”

  My eyes widen. “Really? You’ve seen them?”

  “So have you, Emmett.” He glances over. “On the videocast.”

  “But you’ve seen them in person. You actually fought one?”

  “It wasn’t meant to be a fight. It was supposed to be a peaceful discussion.”

  “And it did that to you?”

  “Yes, but are you familiar with the phrase ‘you should see the other guy’?”

  I nod. “Of course.”

  “Well, you should see the other guy,” Defoe says, throwing me that dangerous grin of his. I think back to the video of the Adamites. A squad of high-tech marines got destroyed by just a handful of them. Still, I find myself believing Defoe. He has an undefinable danger to him. Babel needs us because they can’t overcome the Adamite forces and defenses to mine the nyxia they want, but for all we know, there are millions of Adamites on Eden. It’s possible that an individual fight could favor a human, especially someone like him.

  “You don’t cover it up or anything,” I point out.

  “No,” he says quietly. “It’s a reminder.”

  “Of what?”

  “I don’t have to be perfect. I just have to be better than the other guy.”

  He leads us up a spiraling staircase. It’s strange to walk and talk together like normal people would. I kind of admire the guy. He’s a golden standard in a new age. But the deeper, instinctual feeling is fear. Underneath all his shine, I know Defoe is power and chaos.

  “You don’t wear a mask.”

  He glances over. “Not my style.”

  “But how does everyone understand you? Without the mask?”

  He raises an eyebrow, like a magician weighing whether or not he wants to let me in on the trick. After a few more paces, he lifts his good hand and taps his cheek twice. “I have a permanent translation insert in this molar. Our most advanced tech. Perks of being the boss.”

  So there’s even more to Babel than what we’ve seen so far. Makes me wonder what’s still in store for us.

  “Am I in trouble?” I ask. “Feels like I’m being taken to the principal’s office.”

  “Not exactly. We just have to monitor the health of our contestants. With only ten of you on board Genesis 11, it’s vital to keep you alive and well.”

  “My health? But I feel fine.”

  “How did you feel when you hurt Roathy?”

  I take my time answering. “I didn’t mean to hurt him, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “You didn’t?”

  “Not for real. I just wanted to win.”

  “Winning is important,” Defoe says. “I understand. This is just protocol, Emmett.”

  We continue in silence. The hallway narrows into an almost normal-sized door. It opens up into one of the ship’s comfort pods. The room is filled with plush cushions and calming colors on the walls. Except now the view is of space. I walk over and squint out. It reminds me of black holes.

  “Take a seat, Emmett. Dr. Vandemeer will be in shortly.”

  Defoe helps himself to an espresso. The machine coughs black liquid into a ceramic cup. He swirls sugar in and stirs. Even the coffee makes me think of black holes.

  “My attendant’s name is Vandemeer too,” I say.

  “Same person.”

  “But he’s not a doctor.”

  “Of course he is,” Defoe says, turning.

  The door gasps open and Vandemeer enters. He offers a friendly smile but looks completely transformed. He’s wearing glasses now and a little white coat over his uniform. Like Defoe, he’s got a data pad in hand. “Hello, Mr. Atwater.”

  Defoe salutes us with his coffee and exits.

  “So you’re a doctor?”

  “Of a sort,” Vandemeer replies. He takes a seat opposite me. His face is full of odd angles, and he keeps his receding hair cut short. It’s the first time I’ve seen him this way. Most days he’s gliding alongside me, appearing one moment only to disappear the next. After a few clicks on his data pad, he looks up at me. “So, you were involved in an incident the other day.”

  I nod. “It was an accident.”

  “Certainly,” Vandemeer agrees. “And how did it make you feel?”

  Oh. He’s one of those doctors. I let air out through my nostrils as I look away, out into space. It’s so full of unknown that it looks empty. I don’t want to hash out my feelings with a psychiatrist. He went from friendly insider to brain thief in about two minutes. When I don’t respond, Vandemeer tries again.

  “Emmett, every employee fulfills multiple roles on this ship. My roles both happen to deal with comfort. I act as your attendant during part of the day and a doctor during the rest of it. I’m assigned to you, but I can’t help you if you’re unwilling to speak to me.”

  “I don’t need your help, all right?”

  “All right. Certainly. Can I show you something?”

  I glance back at him. With a sigh I say, “Sure.”

  He flips the data pad around. His finger taps the center of the screen, and I watch the footage from earlier in the week. I sidestep Roathy’s blow and crush him with my left hook. He topples, and the camera watches as I back away. My face is completely, utterly, terrifyingly blank. “Did you notice what we noticed?” Vandemeer asks.

  I nod once.

  “So I’ll ask you again. How did it make you feel?”

  “Horrible,” I say. “I didn’t mean to hurt him. I felt bad about it.”

  “And yet it didn’t show on your face. You masked that emotion.”

  “I didn’t mean to. I was just…I don’t know. Everything here is so simulated.”

  Vandemeer nods knowingly. “Exactly, Emmett. One of our biggest concerns with the training design is the simulated aspect of it. We were worried that it would form a distance between the participants and their actions.”

  “Okay,” I say. Where’s he taking me? I hate feeling like I’m being led somewhere, like I’m a dog with a pretty collar. “If you already knew it would happen, why’s it a big deal?”

  Vandemeer turns the data pad back around. He swipes the screen and continues looking at me. “Because we projected these symptoms for day one hundred and twelve.”

  I stare at him. “So, what, you’re worried I’m some cold-blooded murderer or something?”

  Vandemeer shakes his head lightly. “Of course not. Are you worried that you are?”

  I roll my eyes. I hate the whole let’s-turn-your-question-into-my-question thing. I glance back out to space and remember the recurring dreams. Destroy or be destroyed. I’m not a murderer, but I do want to win. More than I’ve ever wanted anything.

  After ten days, Babel’s already worried they brought damaged goods with them. I try to imagine how they think of me. A poor kid from Detroit. If they did their homework, they know I’m not in any real gangs. I hang out with the Most Excellent Brothers, but they’re harmless by Detroit standards. Still, to the higher-ups and the Richie Riches I bet I look like your everyday street thug.

  “Look,” I say. “When I get pushed, I push back. That’s how I was raised.”

  “And that explain
s your lack of reaction?” Vandemeer asks.

  “I guess I didn’t feel like I was wrong, because it was self-defense. You saw how he came at me.”

  “I did; you’re right. So you felt that you were defending yourself?”

  “Yes.”

  “And that completely removed your empathy for him?”

  “Not completely. I felt bad on the inside. But it doesn’t show on my face because my instinct is to push back, to protect myself. I guess I wasn’t sure I was safe yet.”

  Vandemeer frowns. “But he was down on the ground at that point, Emmett.”

  I laugh, knowing I have him now. “You ever been in a fight?”

  “No, have you?”

  “A few times,” I say. “Seen a bunch too.”

  Vandemeer spreads both hands. “And?”

  “Well, the first guy on the ground isn’t always the one who loses the fight, Doc.”

  “I see. So this was all…instinct?”

  “Right. I was defending myself, and that doesn’t stop when the guy hits the ground. You let up then and you deserve to get hurt. That’s all it was. Case closed.” He’s not quite convinced, so I decide to throw in a little extra. “I keep having this dream.” I try to look distant, like I don’t want to share it. “I don’t know what it means.”

  “Do you want to talk about it?” he asks.

  I give him a weighty glance. “I don’t know.”

  “Come on, Emmett. It might help make things easier.”

  I nod. Now sharing the dream was his idea. People love it when something’s their idea.

  “I kept getting sucked out into space,” I say. “There were these black holes that looked like the other kids. I just kept getting pulled into them, like they were destroying me.”

  Vandemeer makes a note on his data pad. He’s typing rapidly and nodding now, like it all makes sense. He keeps asking me questions; I keep feeding him answers. We dance our way to the conclusion that my life on the streets made me defensive, but that I shouldn’t put a wall up between myself and my emotions. I leave out the part in my dreams where I’m the black hole, where I’m the destroyer. I am what Babel wants to believe I am. It’s better that way.

  DAY 10, 2:18 P.M.

  Aboard Genesis 11

  Vandemeer releases me, but the words dig under my skin until I find my feet moving in a different direction. Not back to my room, but down. Level after level until I see the signs for the med unit. The orientation labeled this wing as off-limits, but I need to see Roathy. He’s been stuck in the med unit since I put him there on day seven. I tried not to feel too guilty, to convince myself that this was just another part of the game, but Babel arranged our second round in the pit as rematches. Everyone fought the same opponent they did in the first round. Roathy’s avatar appeared next to mine just long enough to register a forfeit. Points trickled into my score and guilt tucked into a corner of my heart. I was telling Defoe the truth. I never wanted to hurt the kid.

  The medical wing’s a bright honeycomb of rooms. Six of the seven doors are swung wide open. The sheets on each bed are folded with perfect hospital corners. Light glances off polished medical instruments. My stomach turns a little. Hospitals always remind me of Moms.

  I swallow the feeling and push past the empty rooms. The seventh door is a sliver of light. I pause by the opening to look inside. Isadora’s sitting with her back to me. Her hair’s pulled up in a topknot and I can see the crowned eight tattooed on her neck. My eyes trace the delicate lines before noticing the reach of her outstretched hand. She holds Roathy’s limp hand in hers. His eyes are closed, and a monitor ticks off the beats. He’s alive, but God he looks small.

  I almost leave, but think better of it. Just because Babel wants a cutthroat competition doesn’t mean I can be less than the person my parents raised me to be. I knock twice.

  The door edges open as Isadora turns.

  “Hey,” I say. “How’s he doing? I wanted to come down, talk to him.”

  She rises and all of her beauty sharpens into a weapon. She stares at me with all the fierceness I saw from her when she was driving a knife into Jazzy’s stomach.

  “Leave.”

  “I just came to say I’m—”

  She turns her wrist casually. A nyxian bracelet slides off, smoking into her hand and reforming in the shape of a dagger. My heartbeat doubles as she grits her teeth in warning.

  “You need to leave.”

  I’m a lot of things, but I’m not stupid. I raise both hands and back out of the room. I can feel her eyes trailing me until I reach the stairs. I take calm and steady breaths as I make my way back home. Kaya’s words make more sense now: If we team up, it’ll feel like we’re coming back every day to a safe place. I want to feel like I’m coming home.

  Back in Detroit, we all knew which places you could and couldn’t go. There were invisible lines drawn around every block, and consequences for being in the wrong places at the wrong times. We learned the rules because learning the rules meant staying alive. Isadora’s threat is a much-needed reminder. Some of the places on this ship aren’t safe. Some corners are more dangerous than others. I make a mental note to learn the new rules, and soon.

  Kaya’s waiting for me when I get back to the room. Before I can share more than a few details about what happened, though, she cuts me off.

  “You need to take a shower,” she says. “Maybe two showers.”

  “For real?”

  She leans over, sniffs twice, and pretends to faint back onto the couch.

  “That’s messed up, Kaya.”

  But she just lies there, pretending to be knocked out. I throw a pillow at her and she still doesn’t move. “Fine. I’ll shower, but you want to check out what Alice is doing after?”

  She opens one eye. “That’s a great idea. Hurry up!”

  I laugh before heading into my room. Kaya’s quickly becoming my favorite. Obviously, it’s pretty easy to like Bilal. He’s quick with a compliment, and always polite, but he acts that way with everyone. If it had been Longwei on the stairwell that first morning, I think Bilal would have joked and smiled with him too. Or he would have tried.

  But with Kaya, it’s like she chose me. First as her teammate, and now as her friend. There’s something completely foreign about having someone just like me for no reason. Back home you had to earn your way into things. A sweet jump shot or a well-told joke. Get your reputation and you got your friends. Kaya’s changed the rules, and I think that’s a good thing.

  After I towel off and dress in Babel’s plush bathrobes, I find Kaya waiting in our shared living room. As I sit down across from her, though, I can tell she’s a world away from the person she was just half an hour ago. A dark mood has pushed through her defenses. Her jet-black hair bunches against the arm of the sofa, and her little arms are wrapped tightly around a pillow.

  “I can’t stop thinking about what Roathy said at the beginning. About all of us being poor.”

  I take a seat at the end of the sofa. “He wasn’t wrong.”

  “But he wasn’t right either,” she says. “That’s not why Babel chose us.”

  Kaya glances at me. Her eyes are like two dark little pools. I try not to think about the fact that she’s really pretty. All this time she’s treated me like a brother; I want to treat her like a sister. Past all the beauty is a surprising sadness.

  “Why’d they choose us?”

  “We’re all broken. They picked us because we’re broken.”

  I don’t like how close to the truth that sounds. The words have me shifting in my seat, feeling all kinds of uncomfortable. Not sure what else to say, I take a shot at cheering her up. I reach out and pat down my arms and legs before offering her a smile.

  “You sure about that? No missing pieces far as I can see.”

  “You’re broken,” she answers quietly. “The same kind of broken as me. We’re the same color, you know? It’s not the worst color to be, but it still hurts.”

  I glance away. V
andemeer might have the degrees, but it feels like Kaya can see things he doesn’t. She’s right. I am broken. I should have been able to piece myself back together by now, but I spend all my time bracing for the next collision instead. I think about Moms going from warrior to wounded as the disease spread through her kidneys. I think about all the teachers who thought that because I was quiet I wasn’t worth the effort. I think about PJ flirting with Shae Westwood even when he knew I was crushing. Life’s thrown shots at me from every direction. Through all of it, I learned that distance is its own kind of armor.

  Maybe that’s the real reason I signed up with Babel. To put distance between myself and the next collision. A small part of me wants to leave now, put distance between myself and Kaya’s knowing gaze. It’s like she’s seeing something in me that I’ve been trying to ignore my whole life.

  “You can really see all that?” I ask.

  “Like colors,” she says with a nod. “It’s been like that since I was…little. Different kinds of brokenness have different colors. All of the others have a color. Longwei, Jazzy, and Bilal are all red. That’s burden. All three of them are carrying a lot of weight on their shoulders. Azima’s white. She’s searching for a peace that she’s lost. And Roathy’s black, because he’s never known any peace. Katsu and Isadora were both betrayed. It’s like gold, but the color’s all faded. Then there’s you, me, and Jaime. We’re all blue.”

  It all sounds so strange, but I can’t help asking, “What’s blue?”

  “Forgotten,” she says. “We’re the people the world wants to forget.”

  Her words hit so deep and hard that it’s all I can do to release a breath. She reaches out and pats my leg, like she knows exactly how it feels to be this lost in yourself.

  “So they chose us because we’re broken, not because we’re poor,” she says.

  “What’s the difference?”

  Kaya smiles now. “The pieces of broken people can be put back any which way. If we were just poor, they’d have to break us first, to make us into what they want.”

  I snort. “I had the distinct impression that they were trying to break us. Throw pennies to beggars and watch them fight. That kind of thing.”