by T. M. Catron
He questioned them. Asked them how. Asked them about the free ones he’d found underground. But the adarria wouldn’t answer. Eight hours later, he turned to the empty room and sighed. Even after all he had seen and done, the adarria never ceased to surprise him. Just when he thought he’d learned everything, he found more secrets to uncover.
Maybe that’s what being alien truly meant—an inability to understand another culture or species. Today, the adarria certainly felt alien.
So did Mina. His complete inability to articulate his feelings for her had finally made him shut down their earlier conversation. He suspected this would give her more reason to hate him in future, but she wasn’t the type to hold a grudge. In the end, she hadn’t pushed him, and he was grateful.
Doyle revered the adarria. They had been his first nurturers. His first teachers. He had that reverence in common with Calla. Although Mina didn’t need to know that bit of information. But his feelings for Mina went beyond what he felt for the adarria.
He’d checked on her once while she slept. He’d thought about waking her. About asking her to help him now. He refused to admit it was because he wanted her company. But she wouldn’t be much help if she were tired.
And then there was the grief. Doyle didn’t know how she was going to cope with losing her friends. He didn’t understand how she felt, but he’d seen enough humans mourn to know she could be affected for some time. Another reason why Doyle hadn’t finished the conversation with her—Mina wasn’t in the right frame of mind to respond correctly. He didn’t want to play with her feelings, if she had any.
A tall, blonde hybrid entered the hall. Doyle straightened, and his back spasmed in pain. He suppressed a grimace as the woman headed for him.
“Dar Ceylin,” she said, saluting. Then she stood, waiting for him to give her permission to speak.
But Doyle wasn’t in the mood to play commander. “Something wrong, Grace?”
Grace dropped the formality of standing at attention and walked over to lean against the window next to Doyle. Her hair fell around her face in waves. She had let it grow longer on Earth. He bet the humans had loved that. She looked like a runway model.
“They aren’t going to cooperate,” she said without preamble.
“They will. Give them time.”
“Do we have time?”
Doyle turned to gaze out the window at the stars. “We have at least until I can capture a Glyph and bring it here.”
Grace smiled at Doyle's use of Glyph instead of Condarri. “And then?”
He was so tired. Grace could keep watch over the humans while he grabbed a few minutes’ sleep. “It’s enough time,” he said.
He felt deep in his bones that Mina and her friends needed to choose to help. Much as Doyle would like to, he wasn’t going to force them even though it would be easier.
“I don’t know, Doyle. You seem to have fallen in with a stubborn bunch.”
“When have you ever known humans not to be stubborn?”
“Good point.”
He pushed himself off the window and twisted around to loosen his back muscles.
“You should let me take a look at you and give you some pain meds.”
“I’m fine. They’re probably awake by now. I need you to do something for me.”
“Yes?”
“Keep an eye on the humans. They’ll have to stay here when I go.”
“Even the woman?”
Doyle glanced sideways at Grace as they walked toward the dormitory. “Which one?”
Grace snorted. “The one you can’t… The one who can’t take her eyes off you.”
Did Mina look at him that way? A small, hopeful pang shot through Doyle. Of course, she did—he had noticed but hadn’t dared think about what it meant. He still wouldn’t. Not yet. Finally, he said, “Word travels fast. Been talking about me?”
“Yes. You know the hybrids are going to talk.”
“Let them talk. I have nothing to hide.”
“Doyle, I’m going to give you advice as your friend.”
He nodded.
“Be careful. The hybrids all love you. Not the humans.”
“Which is why you’re going to babysit for me.”
Grace sighed. “I thought we were friends. I want to go Condarri-hunting.”
“We are friends,” he said. “Which is why I trust you with the boring stuff.”
Chapter Five
When Mina woke, everything looked the same. The bunk room was dark—no lights yet. She twisted on the cold stone beneath her. Sleeping here was worse than sleeping in the forest. And the surrounding silence was almost unbearable.
Her eyes were puffy and crusted over from her crying. She rubbed them, trying to erase the evidence of her mourning. There was no place for that here.
A light clicked on.
“Hey,” Lincoln said. He was sitting on the edge of his bunk with a flashlight in his hand.
“Where’d you get the light?”
“Doyle brought it a while ago. He said he’d find more.” Lincoln stood and hobbled over to sit on the edge of Mina’s bunk instead. “Glad you finally got to sleep.”
He must have heard her crying. Mina sat up. Her entire body protested the extra gravity like her grief was physically tying her to the bed. “Did I wake you?”
Lincoln turned off the light. “No. For some reason, I have trouble sleeping on a bare slab. Feel better?”
“Sleep is a relief.” Mina found his arm in the dark. She squeezed it.
“Tell me about it. Hey, not so hard.”
“Why? What’s wrong?”
“Poison ivy.”
Mina grabbed the flashlight from him and turned it on. “Let me see.”
Lincoln pulled up his shirt sleeve. Angry red blisters oozed clear liquid. His whole arm was inflamed. “It’s spreading, I think,” he said.
Mina winced and turned off the light. “Doyle will have something to put on it.”
“That’s okay.”
“Don’t be stupid. You might as well take advantage of being here.”
“What do you think of his plan?”
“I don’t know what to think anymore.”
“Do you seriously believe that it’s a good idea?”
“You have a better one?”
Lincoln sighed. “No.”
“I just don’t think Doyle has thought about what will happen after they defeat the Condarri.”
“You know what will happen. The hybrids will take over Earth.”
“Is that what you think of him?”
“I don’t trust him, no. Not one bit.”
Something thudded to their left, the sound of flesh on stone. Then cursing. Mina flipped on the light.
Nelson was on his hands and knees on the floor. He cursed again when the light hit him. “You trying to blind me?”
“What happened?” Mina asked. She and Lincoln went to help him to his feet.
“Thought I’d grope my way to the bathroom. My feet had other plans. Frickin gravity.”
“You’re bleeding,” Mina said. A trickle of blood ran down his cheek.
Nelson reached up to touch the cut on his forehead. “Hit my head on the way down. Who sleeps on stone, anyway?”
“Hybrids, I guess.”
“Yeah. I hear ya. Borrow that light?”
Mina handed it to Nelson. He lumbered down the room toward the bathroom, his mousy hair sticking up in back.
“He’s not going to hold up here,” Lincoln whispered. “Neither will Carter.” He looked at the older man sleeping a few bunks down.
“And Alvarez?”
“Alvarez is getting out of here,” Alvarez said from behind them. Her voice sounded tired and drained of all emotion. Apparently, she hadn’t slept well, either.
“How?”
“Doyle’s going back to get a Glyph, right? He can take me with him.”
“It’s not safe to be alone out there,” Lincoln said.
“And it’s defin
itely not safe to be here, alone or not. Anyway, I plan on persuading Carter and Nelson to go with me.”
“You can’t make them go,” Mina said.
Even though Mina couldn’t see Alvarez in the dark, she felt the wave of contempt flowing out from her.
“Have you thought they may not want to stay?” Alvarez asked.
“Of course I have. But we can use them here.”
“How?”
“Doyle needs help with the adarria.”
Alvarez scoffed. “No, he needs help creating a new species. But I know you’re eager to do that, aren’t you?”
“Hey, easy Alvarez,” Lincoln said.
“Shut up, Lincoln.”
“You know,” he said. “I’m tired of people telling me to shut up. It’s all I’ve heard over the last twenty-four hours. I’m not in the mood to listen to more bickering and griping. We’re here. We’ve made it this far.” He lowered his voice. “And the only people I trust are in this room right now. We need to stick together.”
Nelson returned with the light.
Mina took the opportunity to glare at Alvarez, who was glaring at Lincoln. “You’re right, Lincoln,” Mina said, “with one exception. I trust Doyle. I trust him with my life. And you should too. Both of you. He’s not perfect, but he’s the only person who is offering some real solutions. And he’s doing so at great risk to himself. In case you hadn’t noticed, no one else seems to be capable of fighting back against the Glyphs.”
She pushed past them to roll her blanket and stuff it in her pack. The act was a habit, born from months of sleeping in a different place every night. Mina did it not because she was going somewhere, but because of an absence of something else to do.
“And another thing,” she said, turning to Alvarez. “If you want to leave, then leave. But I’d like to know what’s so important down there. Do you have something better to do?”
Alvarez’s face burned red. “I’ve been caught up in this mess long enough, Mina. You have your family right here. But I’m only halfway there. I know my closest friends are alive, that’s true. And I don’t believe they are safe, no matter what you say about Doyle. But there are other people I want to find.”
Mina dropped her pack. “Who?”
Alvarez sniffed and glanced at Lincoln. “My mother and sister.”
“Where were they?”
“Sacramento.”
Mina sighed and sat down on her bunk. Alvarez’s family was probably dead. Doyle would say they were. But then, he’d said that about Lincoln, yet here he was.
“I can’t keep this up, Mina,” Alvarez whispered. “I can’t.”
The aether at the door shifted in swirls of black, and Doyle walked through it. As if it had heard Alvarez’s comment, wisps of the aether swirled around him, through him almost. Even to Mina, Doyle looked imposing and powerful.
He took in the four of them with one sweeping look. If he caught the anxiety in the atmosphere, he didn’t comment on it.
“Glad you’re awake,” he said to all of them. “I have something to show you.”
Doyle led them through the Factory once again, this time going all the way to the great gaping arch at the end of the corridor.
Lincoln tried not to think about his bum leg, or the possibility of Alvarez leaving, or the possibility of Mina staying. She had passionately defended Doyle. Lincoln wanted to trust his sister’s instincts, but he couldn’t help but feel uneasy about Doyle all the same.
Doyle saved us. The voice in his head sounded suspiciously like Mina’s. Doyle had saved them from being killed by the Glyphs at the Lodge. But like Alvarez had suggested afterward, they wouldn’t have needed saving if Doyle hadn’t shown up there in the first place.
They entered an empty hall half the size of a football field. Just like everywhere else in the Factory, adarria covered the walls and floor. The room was round. Light flashed as the ceiling shifted. Now that Lincoln was used to the adarria, he appreciated that they had a kind of unearthly elegance.
“Looks like the silo,” he said. “It’s huge.”
Alvarez and Mina stood on either side of him, refusing to speak to each other. Nelson stood behind them. They’d left Carter in the bunk room to sleep.
“I thought so, too,” Doyle said. “Except this one has adarria. When I first saw the bunker, or silo, as you call it, it reminded me of this hall.”
“What’s this one for?”
“A training room.”
“There’s nothing here.”
“It’s for teaching the offspring to communicate with the adarria. I brought you because the hybrids don’t come in here much anymore. We have time to talk. And I thought you might like to get out of that bunk room.”
“Can they hear us?” Mina asked. She nodded to the adarria surrounding them.
“Sometimes—through me. They won’t say anything.”
“How do you know?”
Doyle sat down cross-legged on the floor and gestured for the others to do the same. “I just do.”
“Is this what the ceiling looks like in the silo?” Lincoln asked. “We could never see it.”
“No.”
“Then what does it look like?”
Doyle ignored Lincoln’s question and turned to look at all of them as they got settled on the floor.
Apparently, chairs or couches were too much to ask for.
“I have a problem,” Doyle said. “Last night, you saw the adarria mark the offspring in the womb. At least, you saw a computerized rendering of how it happened. But to create more, I have to persuade the adarria to do it again.”
Lincoln’s empty stomach rumbled. He tried to ignore it. “Why do they need to be marked? Won’t they blend in better if they don’t have the adarre or whatever you call it?”
Alvarez shot Lincoln a dirty look.
“Hey, I’m sure he’s already thought of it,” Lincoln told her. “I’m not giving him any new ideas.”
Doyle smiled. “I have already thought of it. But you brought up something yesterday that I hadn’t considered. What would happen if the adarria left the Condarri?”
“Left them?”
“Or at least rebelled from them. I’m not sure what would have to happen. Mina and I found another chamber in the silo—one your group never found, Lincoln. The adarria inside it were free from Condar.”
“Free from Condar? I don’t understand.”
“Condar mastered the adarria millennia ago. They made slaves of them.”
“How?”
“I don’t know. I’ve been trying to get the adarria to tell me.”
“Okay, hold it,” Alvarez said. “These are just carvings in stone. How can they talk to you? And how can they be slaves? And how can they trap the light like they do?”
“Life in the universe takes on many forms. Why not as writing? A living codex has no need for a body like we do.”
Alvarez shifted around on the floor, trying to find a space free from the symbols.
“It’s okay to sit on them. They don’t get offended.”
“But we’re talking about a being. Can they hear everything we say?”
“Yes.”
Alvarez looked over at Mina. “Mina knew that, didn’t she?”
“Yes, I knew,” Mina said. “Is that why you think the adarria are letting us stay here?”
“Yes,” Doyle said. “And why they won’t report on what we say.”
“Who would they report to?”
“Technically, they could tell Condar exactly where we are. But they won’t. I even asked them not to tell the other hybrids what we were discussing. I’m not sure how happy they’d be to know I’m trying to find a way to free the adarria.”
“Why?”
Doyle stood. The others did too, only more slowly. Lincoln felt weak and drained.
“Because without them, the hybrids are much more limited in what they can do.”
“You mean they’d lose the ability to communicate, just like the Condarri,” Lincoln
said. “I don’t get you, Doyle. One minute you want to expand the hybrid army. The next, you want to take away its power.”
“I think if we set the adarria free, they’ll help us anyway. They have so far. They reported to Condar that all of the hybrids on the Factory were dead. They stopped the aether from killing all of them, helping me convince both Calla and Condar that I was obeying orders.”
“Calla is that woman you were fighting at the Lodge?” Lincoln asked.
“Yes. And the hybrid Mina shot.” Doyle regarded Mina with admiration.
Lincoln scowled. He didn’t even like to think about all the dangerous situations Mina had been put in as a result of befriending Doyle. “Where is Calla now?”
“Probably dead, or dying very slowly in a torture chamber on Condar. She would have turned herself in.”
“Are you sure?” Mina asked.
“Nothing is sure.”
“Back to the adarria,” Lincoln said. “You need them to mark the wombs so the new offspring can communicate with each other?”
“And the aether, yes. But the adarria are resisting me. They didn’t let us in the labs right away, either.”
“Maybe they don’t want you to create an all-powerful army,” Alvarez spat.
Lincoln was taken back by the venom in her words. But he couldn’t blame her, not really. The thought of a superhuman army terrified him too.
“I’ve thought about that,” Doyle answered, ignoring her tone. “But I don’t know why. The adarria have no interest in Earth. Just their freedom.”
“Are you sure of that?”
“Nothing is sure,” he said again.
Doyle’s cryptic words were starting to annoy Lincoln. Was he always like that?
“What do you want us to do?” Mina asked.
“Well, it was Lincoln’s idea,” Doyle said with a shrug. “Maybe he’ll have another one.”
I need you to talk to the adarria, Doyle told Mina as he led them into another corridor. In here when the others aren’t looking. I’ll find something else to keep them busy.
“I didn’t think you liked my question,” Lincoln said to Doyle, oblivious to his communication with Mina.