by Loren Walker
* * *
Renzo was sullen when questioned. Again and again, he explained the decision made to give Sydel over to Huma. No, not even give; Sydel had volunteered. A sour taste grew in Phaira’s mouth as he talked and talked.
The real shock was Cohen’s reaction, when he too woke from unconsciousness. The shouting match went on for several minutes, Cohen’s voice booming through the old ship as he berated Renzo for sacrificing Sydel. From the other side of the room, Phaira rubbed the injection site on the side of her throat. Sometimes she felt for her heartbeat.
They did everything they could think to find Sydel. But every search came up empty. The records on the carrier freight had been erased from the public network. No one from the Jala Communia would reply to their messages. Phaira even tried to mentally call out to Sydel, foolish as she felt in trying. No response, of course.
So, finally, they called Nox. First, he berated them on not calling him sooner. Then he did a search in the global patrol database. But no one named Huma existed in public record: no birth record, no fingerprints, no genetic record. They gave Nox a rundown of Sydel’s features: eighteen years old, just over five feet tall, bronze skin, dark eyes, copper hair. But there was nothing else to offer. They didn’t even know if she had a surname.
Frustrated, Cohen argued with Nox, demanding that the law intervene for what had been done to him and Phaira. Nox’s reprimand was sharp: they had been the aggressors, they had entered without consent, and therefore Huma and her followers had the right to defend themselves.
He was right; Phaira knew it before he said it. The guilt overwhelmed her, and she had to leave the common space.
An hour later, Phaira looked up from her perch at the sound of knocking. She’d taken a shower, put on warm clothes and bundled herself into the corner of her bed, but she was still freezing.
Cohen sat on the edge of the mattress. He looked as exhausted as she felt.
“Phair, we gotta find her.”
Phaira shook her head. When she ran a hand through her damp hair, she felt her fingertips tremble against her scalp. “There’s nothing we can do.”
“How can you say that?” Cohen exclaimed. “They’re terrorists! We have to get her out of there.”
“Even if we found them, those people, that woman, they have abilities that I can’t even explain,” Phaira said. “We’re lucky to be alive.”
“It doesn’t matter. We have to get her,” Cohen said firmly. “She doesn’t belong with those people.”
“Where does she belong, then, Co? With us?”
“Why not?”
Phaira shook her head again. “I can’t. I can’t do it.”
“Phaira, please - ”
Turning her head, so her chin brushed her shoulder, Phaira stared out of the window at her bedside as the night sky streaked past. Soon, she heard his angry footsteps, stomping down the hallway and into the next room.
I’m sorry, Sydel, she thought. I doubt you can hear me, but I am. I was reckless, and arrogant, and blind. But I don’t know, maybe it will all be okay. You’ll find a place where you belong, somewhere better than that creepy commune. You’ll change those people for the better….
The self-talk wasn’t helping. Guilt pulsed under Phaira’s skin, tiny stabs of shame. The girl would have seen past the speech, anyways, looked at her in that steady, discomforting way that made it clear she saw Phaira for who she really was.
Phaira got up and went to her door, locking it. Then she resumed her position on the bed, this time with the lights off. In the darkness she could focus on what was going on inside of her body: how the core of her being, that thin central cord, wouldn’t stop shivering. Her nerves were hypersensitive to every sensation. She couldn’t sleep, and when she did, her dreams were filled with dark water, of sinking into an endless pool, scrambling, panicking, her lungs on fire, coming so close to breaking the surface, but her vision turning black a few inches from life. That brief moment with Huma, nothing ever registered so strongly: no combat mission, no scenes of death and destruction. Even Nican’s plunge was now twisted around the memory of Huma.
And not only her mind, either. That woman had stripped Phaira of her most precious possessions: remnants of her brief other life.
The black nanotube bodysuit had been specially designed for Phaira’s body measurements when she turned eighteen, now eligible for special operations. It withstood most heavy firepower, applied automatic pressure to any wounds or bone breaks, adjusted for heat and cold. The circuitry within the suit pumped enzymes and nutrients into the body to combat fatigue, constricted around wounds to stop blood blow, and regulated temperature. The very latest in warfare.
And her two 765-Calis pistols: the first models after the experimental prototype, powerful, but heavy recoil. No one in her division would touch them. It had taken her days to master them. When Phaira was dishonorably discharged, she only managed to keep them both through Nox’s help. He still had influence, despite his early retirement. In her weeks of exile she had kept them close, as a reminder of when she was considered to be extraordinary.
So little of her was special anymore. Nican’s family had seen to that.
II.
Renzo finally docked in a tiny seaside town, Inna, a place renowned for its white beaches. With constant rainstorms over the past month, however, contamination had broken out in the beaches, so tourists were sparse. It was a good place to regroup, and figure out what to do next.
Phaira made her way through the wet streets, a thermal belt looped around her waist, the collar of her raincoat high. Now and again a Subito speeder flew by, spraying water onto her back. She didn’t care. The shoreline was rough and desolate, but she walked up and down the empty coastline for hours where the waves beat against the sand.
Cohen wouldn’t come with her. He’d barely spoken to her since the incident, and he was the first to leave when they landed. Phaira suspected he walked the town too, burning off his frustration.
Renzo’s mood alternated between angry outbursts and intense, impenetrable thought. All the same, he stayed busy, seeking local repair work, ordering supplies, working on the ship’s bad wiring and corroded power system, disappearing for hours on end.
On the rare occasions when she was alone in the Volante, Phaira paced its narrow corridors. It felt smaller every day. It suffocated more every day. She could barely look at the door to the little storage unit, where Sydel’s satchel still lay. When it got too overwhelming, she trained for hours in her locked quarters, using her body as resistance, trying to focus on her strength, stamina, and flexibility, trying to regain that cool blue focus.
One day, as she wandered into the common room, lost in thought, a call came on the public line. The console blinked at Phaira. It wasn’t Nox’s cc, or any other cc she recognized. She hesitated. Then she clicked the audio connect.
“Are you there?”
Him again. Unbelievable. She had changed the cc to the Volante twice now. How did he keep finding her?
“If you’re going to go out in public, Phaira, you should probably try and blend in a little more.”
Phaira let out a huff. “Who asked you, Theron? Stop calling me.”
“There is always someone watching,” the man continued, very serious. “No matter how abandoned a town is, or how solitary a beach seems - ”
“Are you listening to yourself? You are equally as creepy as that statement,” Phaira interrupted. “Stop tracking what I’m doing! Are you looking for me to come back and shoot you?”
Theron chuckled. The sound made her uneasy. “I had a question for you. About your stowaway.”
Phaira’s heart skittered. “Is she researching us in public again?” That was the subject of his second call to her, the first being the invitation to meet and ‘sort the truth out.’
“She left on her own?”
Phaira took a moment to compose the tone of her voice. “It doesn’t matter. She’s gone.”
“Ba
ck to Jala Communia?”
She said nothing. But in her mind, she was back in the arena, waiting for her combat time slot. Guaranteed a percentage of the night’s take, she would finally have enough rana saved to run again. Three promoters stood in the locker room, but they didn’t have the right look about them: their bodies on edge, a little too slow to approach. She was high on mekaline, though; it didn’t take much for them to overpower her and smash her in the head.
When she came to, she saw the peeling walls of an old hotel room. She was bound to a wooden chair. She could hear the movements of the three bounty hunters behind her. And there were two new men standing before her, staring down at her. One was young, but incredibly tall, with a warm, sandy complexion that spoke of good food and lifestyle, and long black hair tied back with red cord; the other with deep wrinkles, a stooped back and grey hair, far less healthy.
As she blinked, trying to focus, the man with the black hair kept looking between his associate and Phaira. His eyes were the color of amber.
Then time became a blur of light and blood; they hadn’t secured her wrists tightly enough. She went for the bounty hunters’ throats: crushing one’s larynx; snapping one’s neck; slashing one’s jugular vein and sending a spray of red in an arch across the wall.
A blast of white and the stench of gunpowder. Burning pain exploded through Phaira’s body and everything went sideways. She tried to keep her eyes open, to clear her vision, but all she could make out was darkness, pierced by red lights, then white. And pain in her head, endless pain, her dreams filled with red and black threads, bundling together.
Then: Sydel, folding towels at her bedside, in that country clinic. And everything after.
Until he called and asked her to come to the capital. She assumed it to be some sick endgame, but in that windowless room, Theron laid down his Aegis firearm, and his explanations rang with truth. She didn’t know what to make of him, or any part of the past few weeks. Why did he keep getting involved? Wouldn’t it be easier to just forget that they ever crossed paths? Did he expect her to repay him, somehow? Did she owe him that?
“Phaira?”
He was still on the line. Phaira studied the blinking light.
Then she disconnected.
Just as the connection broke, an auto-news alert sounded: a developing story of a vessel on fire in town, torched in a waste disposal, unknown if people were inside. Fire officials on the scene, warning locals to remain inside until the smoke’s toxicity was determined.
Then the reporter broke in: “…the freighter formerly registered to a courier service, abandoned six months ago….”
When the brothers returned, Phaira was still in front of the broadcast. Renzo and Cohen clustered around her to read the bulletin.
“Oh no,” Renzo said, growing pale. Cohen looked like he might vomit. Phaira put a hand on his arm as she watched the flames on screen.
“Wait,” Cohen said suddenly. “Wait. Look. No one inside. No victims.”
Phaira let go of her breath. Renzo removed his glasses and pressed his fingers to the bridge of his nose. Cohen just watched the ongoing broadcast, looking sadder than Phaira could recall in a long, long time.
When hours had passed and the fire officially extinguished, Renzo was the first to leave, a scarf wrapped around his face. Cohen followed, a hat pulled low over his brow.
Shrouded in the cockpit, a musty blanket around her shoulders, Phaira watched the projection from Renzo’s Lissome, propped up the flight console. The space echoed with her brothers’ breathing and the sound of mud squelching under their feet.
Then the scorched skeleton of Huma’s carrier ship loomed into view. Phaira’s chest grew tight at the image.
“Do you see it?” came Renzo’s voice.
“I see it,” Phaira said grimly.
The video zoomed closer to focus on the charred windows, the exit door hanging by a hinge. Phaira could almost smell the gasoline and burnt rubber.
As he stepped inside, Renzo turned his Lissome screen outward so Phaira could see. The space was a jumble of burnt wires, scorched storage containers, piles of ashes. The cockpit was trashed, the console ripped apart. Blobs of melted glass had cooled on the windshield from the fire’s intense heat. In the corner of the screen, Phaira could see Cohen stepping through the wreckage, searching. Then he noticed he was on Renzo’s video feed, and stepped out of frame.
“There’s nothing here, Phair,” Renzo reported. “They cleaned it out completely. They’re gone.”
Gone, Phaira mused as her fingers drifted to the side of her throat. Not just gone, but warning that we should not pursue. Why else would they torch the ship in the beach town? Huma knew we would see the report and make the connection.
But they were missing something; Phaira’s senses were pricking, telling her so.
When Renzo stepped back outside, his Lissome swept past the half-dangling door.
Something was burning.
“Ren!” Phaira cried.
The video jumped. Renzo’s face suddenly filled the screen. “What?”
“Show me the door. Just make a sweep. Anything there?”
The video rotated to focus on the door again: blackened along the edges, composed of a hard greenish metal.
Something sparked in the center of the door. Phaira’s face was inches from the image, squinting. What was that?
Then a faint yellow line unspooled on the door’s surface. Phaira’s mouth dropped open as words formed in cursive. “Do you see that, Ren?”
“See what?”
“What’s going on?” Cohen asked, off-camera.
Phaira stared at the message. Was this some kind of trick?
“Nothing,” she finally spoke. “Sorry. I thought I saw something. Come on back.”
The link to the Lissome went to static. Phaira sat back in the pilot chair. The blanket dropped from her shoulders, but she barely noticed.
They can’t see it, Phaira thought. But I can.
A trap? No, Huma had one purpose in mind when she torched the ship, and it wasn’t to string them along.
Could it be from Sydel? But why could Phaira see it and not her brothers?
Her mind turned back to the incident, when Huma called her an Eko, a ‘receiver,’ whatever that meant. Sydel had used the term Eko, too, talking about that blonde bomber.
Expanding the digital screen above her Lissome, Phaira did a general search of the term. Information was scarce, but there were a few stories posted. Just as Sydel had mentioned, an Eko was the term for a particular psychic being whose abilities fell into the ‘mental’ field: telepathy, clairvoyance, that sort of thing. Reflect, project and receive, read one description. Still, no proof of such a condition existed, only the notes of theorists.
I’m psychic?
True, Phaira could sense when Sydel was being nosy. And she heard Sydel yelling her name when the bombs went off, even though Phaira was on the other side of the Vendor Mill….
The whole idea made her head hurt, so she went back to the message.
Find the missing Hitodama.
What was a Hitodama? Why would Sydel leave that kind of message for her? If only for her eyes, which she suspected it was, she couldn’t bring it up to her brothers. Not yet, anyways.
Information first. Then she could move.