“Dakota?” The voice sounded loud, and right next to me. “Dakota? What is wrong?”
I forced my eyes open, found myself in that blue-mirrored room again.
I tried to take to take in the face that hovered over mine.
His hair looked darker than I remembered it. I saw it shift color then, sliding into a near-auburn. For an instant, I thought Gantry’s face hung over mine. I thought maybe I really was at home, that I’d gotten some kind of concussion in that alley...
“Dakota!” he said, shaking me lightly. "Tell me your name!"
His fingers touched my face, pushed hair back from my eyes and cheeks. I lay on a blue floor that looked like ice. This couldn’t be real. It couldn’t be.
Nihkil's fingers tightened.
"Tell me your name! Do you you remember?”
"Dakota," I managed to slur. "Dakota Mayumi Reyes."
"Where are you from, Dakota?"
"Earth." The answer struck me as absurd. "Seattle... Washington. United States."
"Do you see me now? Can you see me, Dakota?”
I looked up at him blankly, not really understanding the question. “Yeah. I see you.”
He breathed out what might have been a sigh of relief.
“Good. That is good." His inflection didn’t change when he added, "The drugs they gave you... it is too much. They drug you, thinking you are like one of them. They use many drugs, and have higher tolerance to be drugged. They don’t understand why you do not. It is better if you do not sleep now...”
I could only blink, confused. I tried to take in all of his words.
I nodded a few beats later, not fighting him as he pulled me up to a seated position. Once he had me more or less upright, I fought another wave of nausea as the spinning in my head worsened. I found myself staring down at what had to be a pile of my own vomit. It didn't help much with the nausea... or the fact that I’d been lying in it. Gross.
Nihkil continued to hold my arms, sliding closer on the polished floor.
I saw his eyes change colors, despite the lack of expression on his face. I tried again to decide what I thought of him. He let those doctors take me away and cut at me. He also saved my life, and tried to help me. He warned me not to come here.
Thinking about this, I let out a low chuckle, closing my eyes.
Not much in the way of real humor reached me, though. More than anything, I wanted to curl up in his lap, sleep until I woke up somewhere I liked.
"You are better now?" he said. "Less sick?"
I shook my head, then regretted that, too, when it made me dizzy. I glanced at my own vomit just long enough to feel my throat tighten. I motioned at it clumsily with a hand.
"Can I get... away from that?" I said.
Glancing down at the brightly-colored bile, he seemed to understand. Taking hold of my arms, he tugged me physically closer to him. Then, scooping my shoulders and the back of my knees with his arms, he lifted me, rising carefully to his feet. He held me as though I barely weighed anything.
"Dakota," he said. "You must stay awake." When I didn’t answer, he cleared his throat. "Open your eyes. I will be forced to call the technicians back, if you do not."
I forced my eyes open at his words, blinking in the dim light. The blue-mirrored walls seemed to slide and move under my eyes. They looked alive to me.
"Where are we?" I said, slurring a little.
He shook me lightly. "Open your eyes."
I realized only then that I’d closed them again. But it was too much work.
"Dakota... wake."
My tongue didn’t want to cooperate.
“Leave me alone,” I said.
Still holding me, he walked directly to a wall.
The mirrored surface melted soundlessly in front of my groggy, half-awake eyes, creating a low opening that stood up from the floor. Climbing up, he carried me through it. Pushing me into the center of the cave-like space on the other side, he touched another segment of wall inside. An access panel appeared, something less organic than the morphing tiles I'd seen in that room with the doctors. A screen flipped up, and Nihkil spoke in that other language.
It sounded like some kind of command.
Freezing cold water flooded the small space. Letting out a startled shriek, I tried to squirm away, but he pinned me there, half in his lap.
In seconds, the water drenched us both.
"You must wake," he told me firmly. "It is important. I do not want to call the doctors back here... I do not trust them with you."
My eyes continued to not work correctly, but I did feel more awake.
I still saw geometrical shapes in the water, whirling around us like iridescent fish. The water felt almost good, now that I was over the shock of cold. I kept my eyes open as the cool liquid washed dirt and medicine off my body. Parts of me hurt a lot, from the fight with the stockbroker, the cuts and scrapes in the glass gully, what those soldiers in the gray scuba suits did to me, and then whatever the creepy doctors did after that. I tried to move again, but my stomach heaved. That time, it happened too quick for me to hold back.
I threw up violently on the tile. My body arched from the effort of it.
Hell, I nearly blacked out, but somehow, it was a relief, too.
Turning away from him, I heaved again. And again.
Nihkil didn’t move. He sat with me, neither comforting me, nor reacting to what I was doing. I was powerless to stop it, anyway, at least for a few minutes. It hurt more at each heave, and not only because nothing remained in my stomach to expel, not even the alcohol I drank with that sociopath in the bad eighties club.
"It is right," Nihkil said. “This is better.”
I didn’t try to make sense of his words.
The vomiting finally wound its way down, and I leaned against the morph’s chest, wiping my mouth and closing my eyes. The water washed it all blissfully away, and I felt that relief intensify as my vomit and its smell disappeared down the drain. I felt better. So much better in fact, that I glanced up at Nihkil, blinking at him through the falling water.
"What is better?" I said, speaking louder over the water. "Getting sick?"
"Yes," he said. “They implanted you. It will take time to adjust.”
I tried to take that in, too, but couldn't. Instead, my words grew angry again.
"Why me?” I said. “What do they want with me, Nik?”
But he seemed to misunderstand the question.
"Not you.” He sat back, resting more of his weight on his heels. Giving me a rueful look, he rubbed the center of his chest with one hand, as if in demonstration of his words. "Everyone. Here, anyway. We all wear them. Mine is more controlled than yours... a lock, since they cannot keep track of morph otherwise. But all have the emotional monitors, too. It is important to them, to believe everyone is happy. To believe no one is angry... that everyone can be controlled. The Malek do this, too. It is why they implanted you first, before anything else."
There was a silence.
I fought to control my breathing as he looked at me, to not succumb to the horror that fell over me at his words.
"You learn how to fool the machines," he assured me. He laid a hand on my arm, as if reacting to something he saw on my face. "You learn to control physical reactions... tension in muscles, breathing... even heart rate. You learn to hide, to pretend. They cannot really control your mind. They can suggest, persuade. If you learn to feel the manipulations, you can notice and ignore... pretend to believe. We all do this, human and morph. We all learn to pretend. Do you understand?"
I gripped him tighter, noticing only then that I held his soaked shirt in my hands, as if he was my personal life vest. I nodded without loosening my hold on him, fighting to make sense of his words as I sucked in breaths.
"Yeah. Okay."
"I will help you with this."
"Thanks. Yeah... thanks. That would be good."
For a moment we only looked at each other.
Then he averted his ga
ze. I watched in bewilderment as that blank look crept back around his features, even his hands... leaving me alone, despite the pressure of his fingers.
“Nihkil,” I said. “What did all of that mean before? All of that ‘choosing you’ business? The thing with you being connected to my will? Is that some kind of––”
He waved a hand at the sensor.
The fountain ceased at once.
I looked around, watching as excess water sloughed off the walls. Nihkil removed his hand from where he'd held my arm. He didn’t let go of me in general, though, or push me away. His voice through the translator grew polite, careful.
"No,” he said. “I do not think we should. It is premature."
"What is?" I said. “What is premature?”
"Discussing this."
"Discussing what?”
“What you asked.”
I stared at him, but his expression didn't change. He didn't react to my stare at all, not even with a shrug.
"I am sorry," he said, after a too-long pause. “I know this is not the answer you wanted.”
I frowned. “So... what, then? Can you tell me anything? Will they keep cutting on me, or just lock me up in here with you?”
An uncomfortable look skated across Nihkil's eyes. They looked light brown now, I noticed, almost amber in color.
"They housed us together," he said after another too-long pause. "They obviously mean to honor some portion of my claim." His skin darkened, noticeable even in the dim light. "I am sorry for what they did... truly. I should have anticipated that they would want to experiment on you, take samples. They likely knew I would forbid access once I had time to register legal ownership." Looking at my face, he hesitated, seeming to misunderstand my reaction. “...It will do them no good," he said. "You are human, just like the humans here. The genetic variation is negligible. I was able to ascertain that much in my initial survey of your world."
My headache resurfaced.
Instead of trying to make sense of his words, I found myself staring around us again, trying to find things I could wrap my head around.
“So this is the bathroom," I muttered. "But that other room... I didn't see a door. Are we in a prison? A cell?” When he made a whistle-type sound, I said, “Is that a yes?"
"Yes."
“I have questions, Nik,” I said. “A lot of them. I know you don’t want to talk about the lock thing, but can you answer some, at least?”
He looked at me, his gold-colored eyes narrow. “Ask. I will answer... or not.”
Nodding, I bit back some frustration, combing wet hair back from my face. “Okay. Well, can you tell me what you are? What are you, Nik?”
I watched him think for a few beats. Finally, he took my hand. He did it so quickly it startled me, but I didn't jerk away. I just sat there, instead, watching as he laid my fingers over that spot in the middle of his chest.
"Give me permission," he said. "Let me open it... I will show you."
"Show me?" I said, frowning. "Show me what, Nik?"
After a few seconds’ pause, he released my fingers, sighing a bit.
"They were not wrong," he said, as if continuing a conversation he hadn't bothered to clue me into. "They no longer control the shift. This bothers them.” Pausing, he gave me a more intent look. “You really cannot do this? Unlock me?"
I felt my brows scrunch together in puzzlement. “No.”
Nodding, he just sat there, his expression impossible to read. Watching him stare sightlessly at the curved, wet walls, I tried to sort through his words, couldn't.
"Why?" I said finally. "Why does it bother them?"
He gave me another of those shrugs. "I am good at my work," he said. "They have been pleased with me up until now. I am reasonably compliant. I have done many jobs for them, and it takes a long time to train a morph. They see you as having deprived them of an operative."
My frown deepened.
When he continued to stare blankly at the wall, I sighed, leaning deeper into his chest, suddenly aware that I essentially lay in his lap. The realization didn’t bother me enough to make me want to move, though.
“I will need to relearn now,” he said, apropos of nothing.
“Relearn?” I looked up at him. “Relearn what?”
“I have a new lock-holder,” he said. “It will change things for me.”
I continued to watch his face, wary. “Change what?”
“I do not know,” he said. His voice remained unchanged, almost disinterested-sounding. “It is different each time. It could be food, what I eat. It could be personality. It could be many things. But there will be some change. Some re-patterning, as I adjust to having a new person holding my lock. Do you understand?”
Again, I just blinked at him. Then I looked down at his arm where it slung casually around me, holding me against him. He’d gone back to lightly stroking my arm.
"No,” I said finally. "I don't understand. Not even a little, Nik."
He nodded to my words, his face lacking expression. Still, I couldn’t deny the subtler thread of familiarity I felt there. Beyond the handful of hours I'd known him, I was starting to feel like I did know him, although I couldn’t have described what I meant by that exactly, especially since it made absolutely no sense.
When the silence stretched, and I couldn’t pull any of that apart, either, I sighed.
"So, can we try again?" I said. "Explain this to me. What is a lock, Nihkil? What does it do to you, exactly?"
His eyes grew puzzled. He glanced down at his own chest, then up at me.
"You really cannot?" he said. "You cannot unlock me?"
I threw up my hands. "Nik, I don't even know what that means. Let's start simple, okay? What is a lock? Start there."
"I thought it would be easier if you saw," he said, shrugging. At my lip-biting frown, he touched my arm again with his fingers. It felt almost like an apology. "Morph are shifters, changlings. We change. Humans put us on first contact, because we can change enough to hide, disappear if we need to. We can also fight. We can be whatever they need us to be."
"Yeah,” I muttered, thinking. A few seconds later, I looked up. "So what does that mean, exactly? Just how much can you change?” At his blank look, I motioned towards his face. “I’ve seen the eye-color thing... and that thing you do with your hair. Is there more to it?”
“Yes.” He frowned, touching his own hair. “I suppose there is... more to it.”
“Can you make yourself look like the people on whatever world they send you to?"
He nodded, his eyes relaxing. "Yes. People. Animals, too."
My eyebrows went up. "You can change into an animal?"
"Yes."
I smiled. "So you could be a bug?"
"A very large one, yes," he replied seriously, leaning his now light-blond head against the wall. "There are limits to the relative size we can take on... especially in terms of smaller creatures. The density becomes a problem. Very talented morph could perhaps make themselves this size, but likely not smaller...”
Nihkil held up his hands, approximating the size of a large house cat, or a small dog. I raised my eyebrows, but he continued to speak.
“...It is said that we can become any carbon-based life form, and this is essentially true, but some of these forms are far easier for us to take than others. Your example of an insect would be difficult for me... for many morph. Warm blood... this is easier. Larger organs. Bones. We have to practice at first, to attain a form. It is difficult until we feel how that organism works. There are forms some of us never successfully attain. Some of us have gifts for particular forms.”
He leaned his head back again, relaxing as he stroked my arm.
“We all have a base form,” he said next. “This is usually mammal, or mammal-like. Whatever our base form, it is easier for us to morph to that which is closer to that form in composition. To go significantly larger or smaller, or significantly different in shape or metabolism, requires much more energy... a
nd focus."
"A base form?" I said.
"Yes. This is set upon birth... or shortly after."
I frowned a little deeper. "You mean this base form, it's different for different...” I hesitated. “...People? Like you? Morphs, whatever."
He nodded, as if relieved that I understood. "Yes," he said. "Mine is human," he added. “...I was raised in captivity. My mother was locked when I was born, so I even came out human. This is unusual... I am told."
"Captivity." I copied his posture unconsciously, resting my arm on a propped knee. "You mean you're like... a pet?"
An irritated look flashed across his face, briefly changing everything I could see behind his eyes. The look was there and gone, as if he'd wiped it off with one of those white-board erasers I remembered from school.
When he didn’t speak, I cleared my throat, trying again.
"So explain about the lock thing," I said, my voice more subdued. Waiting for him to speak, I hazarded a guess. “...Does it keep you in the form you're in currently? Like, you're locked now, so you stay human until someone unlocks it?"
Again, he looked relieved. "Yes. Exactly that."
"And you don't control the lock?"
"Not entirely,” he said, glancing at me. "We share control."
“You and me?”
“Yes.”
I fought with that for a minute, feeling like I should ask more about it, but without knowing what to ask precisely. "Who controlled it before?” I said finally. “Ledi?”
Nihkil shook his head. "No. My lock was held by my owner. My owner is Yaffa.” He said the word as if it tasted bad in his mouth. "I am his pet," he added, somewhat more bitterly.
I felt another twinge, and considered apologizing for my choice of words.
Seeing his face, I thought better of it.
“How do I open your lock, Nik?” I said instead. “Can you teach me?"
He looked up.
I couldn't help staring at the violet color now shining from his irises. I saw something else glance across his expression. Not quite relief that time, but... something. Whatever it was had an emotional kick that surprised me.
The Morph (Gate Shifter Book One) Page 11