by Kelly Jensen
Gael’s cheeks flushed a deeper shade of red. Dust, he was pretty when he blushed. Gael reached for the tunic, his fingers brushing over Bram’s. Their gazes collided and held.
Was today the day their tentative friendship would develop beyond incidental touches?
Bram hadn’t spent a lot of time imagining how they would progress from friends (hopefully) to lovers (a hope pinned so far along the wall, it was almost out of sight). He’d spent a lot of time fantasizing, though. He’d caught Gael looking at him on occasion and wondered if Gael fantasized too.
He’d pinned another hope about halfway along the wall for that one, for while their brief exchange of messages hadn’t been flirtatious in any way, Bram had formed the notion Gael had picked him as much as Alkirak. That he hadn’t accepted an invitation to the other side of the galaxy to be with someone he couldn’t imagine being intimate with.
Now their hands were touching and there wasn’t a lot of space between them.
Bram leaned in.
Gael didn’t lean away.
Aavi’s scream was faint, but it landed between them like a ringing bell.
As Gael ran, Aavi’s scream burned a path along his synapses, igniting fear and memory. When he reached the tunnel entrance, he heard things crashing behind him. Not stopping to see what he’d knocked askew, Gael followed the echo of Aavi’s distress up the looping tunnel until he rounded the corner into the workshop. The sight of her huddled on the floor in front of one of the benches slammed into him like an invisible wall. Gael stopped in the doorway.
Bram smacked into him from behind, nearly knocking him down. “What happened? Where’s Aavi?” he said, somehow pulling Gael upright as he pushed through the door.
Aavi’s whimper drew them both into the workshop, Gael falling to his knees as he approached her. She had one arm cradled against her chest, and her new tunic, one he’d just finished stitching the night before with fanciful sun patterns, was dark with blood.
“What happened?” Bram asked.
Terror had nearly frozen Gael in place. Blood didn’t belong here, on Alkirak. Surely they’d left violence back on Zhemosen?
“Get it off. Get it off,” Aavi moaned.
From his crouch in front of her, Bram reached forward. “Let me see, sweetheart.”
Still moaning, Aavi curled herself tighter.
Gael thought he might throw up. All that wet and glimmering red. He sat back on his knees and drew in long, slow drafts of air until his head stopped spinning.
“Shh, shh.” Bram was patting Aavi’s hair. “It’s going to be okay.”
How does Bram know that?
“Let me see your arm.”
Keening softly, Aavi extended her arm. The source of all the blood wasn’t visible for a moment, just dark and darker streaks, then a deep, ragged gash across the meatiest part of her forearm.
Bram muttered something that sounded like a curse and grasped Aavi’s other hand. “Gael, help her keep pressure on this. Sweetheart, hold your arm tight, okay? Real tight. You hear me?”
“I want it off,” Aavi moaned.
What, her arm?”
Bram grabbed Gael’s hand and clamped his fingers around those smaller and slicker than his. Bile burned a path up the back of Gael’s throat as the smell of the blood seeping between his fingers wafted upward. Not metal. Warmer than that, richer—like turned soil.
“Tighter, Gael.”
Gael squeezed his eyes shut and his fingers down.
A vacuum opened next to him—Bram’s absence as he rose and searched the workbench. Then there was a ripping sound. Gael opened his eyes. Bram had his shirt off and was tearing it into strips. Then he was beside them again, wrapping Aavi’s arm.
“Move your fingers.”
Gael did so.
Bram wrapped his makeshift bandage all the way along Aavi’s forearm, tied it off, and bent down to scoop the girl into his arms. “Let’s get her inside. Kitchen. First-aid kit is next to the cool room.”
“Okay.” As soon as Gael stood, the world swayed again. A saw blade rested on the workbench, the serrated edge glistening with smears of blood. Now the scent of metal hit him. He swallowed and swallowed again. Not now, Gael. Not now. Aavi needed him. Bram needed him to be sensible.
Somehow, he got his feet moving. The nausea had faded by the time he reached the kitchen, but not his panic. And questions were piling up, one after the other.
Bram dropped Aavi into one of the chairs facing the table and pulled her arm out, away from her body. “Okay, the bleeding is slowing down. Aavi, honey? You still with us? Can you tell us what happened?”
“She was using one of the saws,” Gael said.
“What?”
Gael located the big blue plastic box on the shelves next to the cool room, pulled it down, and carried it to the table. “A small saw, I saw it on the bench.” His brain and his stomach wouldn’t be able to cope with the idea of Aavi near one of the machine blades. He set the first-aid kit in front of Bram and flipped it open. “Wh-what do we need?”
“Water, disinfectant, new skin patches. I think the cut is too wide for stitch tabs or glue.”
Aavi had started crying in hiccupping sobs.
Bram stroked her hair, leaving a bloody thumbprint on her forehead. “What happened?”
“I was trying to cut my bracelet off.”
“But why? Doesn’t it have a release?”
“No. It’s not mine. He put it on me, and it keeps buzzing. Ow, ow, ow.”
Bram was unwinding the dark-stained strip of shirt. “Who, Gael?”
Gael felt faint again and not because of all the blood. He’d asked Aavi about the Band, but he hadn’t pressed. Could it contain some sort of tracking device? If so, how far would it reach? Would the signal extend as far as orbit?
“Water, Gael.”
Startling at Bram’s harsh tone, Gael moved to the sink, where he filled a basin with water and grabbed the box of disposable cloths.
Bram cleaned the wound, applied disinfectant spray and a skin patch, and wrapped her arm in a new bandage. Then he pulled her wrist a little closer and studied the bracelet a moment before glancing up at Gael. “What is this?”
Gael pulled out a chair and bent his shaking legs until his butt touched the seat. “I don’t know. I thought it was a Band. Aavi, have you received any messages since we’ve been here?”
She nodded.
Gael’s skin prickled.
“Have you answered them?”
“No.”
Oh, thank the sun.
He turned to Bram. “We should, um, probably get it off her.”
“Why?”
Gael drew in a deep and not-at-all-fortifying breath and said, “Aavi isn’t really my sister.”
Bram’s eyebrows flew up and his mouth dropped open as Aavi shrieked, “Gael!”
Gael took Aavi’s hand and squeezed tight, absurdly grateful to be doing the calming this time. It wasn’t that hour before dawn when he woke up fighting with a pillow, yelling, blinking away visions of blood and brains and the horrible weight of a gun in his hands. With that deep dragging loss in his chest, the hole Aavi could never fill but tried to.
“It’s okay,” he murmured, sure his words were a lie. “I won’t send you away. You’re my responsibility now.” That at least was the truth. He didn’t dare look at Bram. “Where I go, you go.” Aavi nodded, and the tears brimming in her eyes rolled down her cheeks. “But you’re going to have to tell me what’s going on.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Aavi, sweetheart.” Bram smoothed her hair back again, his thumb moving over the smudge he’d left before. “We can’t help you if we don’t know what’s going on.”
Gael’s pulse kicked up at the sound of that we.
Aavi’s story tumbled out in a chorus of hiccups, quiet words, and tears. “I am—was owned by the Vorss family.”
“Owned?” Bram asked.
Gael’s stomach turned over. “She was a slave
.”
His worst fear. The fate he’d fought against since he was eight years old—for himself and his brother.
“Slavery is illegal in—” Bram’s thoughts seemed to catch up with his tongue, for he finished more quietly “—Muedini space.”
Gael gave something between a headshake and a nod. “The Bhotan system is in Commonwealth space.”
His stomach continued making odd gestures in his middle. Aavi was a slave and he’d killed—no, he’d witnessed the execution of a family member. He’d suspected the visitor was important. Rivalry between undercity families was a well-established fact. The bald man would be more than simply missed, then. Burning sun. And Aavi?
“Were you also a slave?” Bram asked.
Gael shook his head. “Generally, it’s something you’re born into. Or fall into if you can’t find an indenture or accumulate too much debt. The family I worked for had slaves, but I wasn’t one of them.” Yet.
Relief lightened Bram’s expression briefly before a bitter look replaced it. “Did you have family, Aavi?”
Aavi’s eyes filled with fresh tears. “My mama died giving birth to me.”
And her father could have been any of the number of men either employed or owned by the Vorss family. A glance at Bram showed he’d probably arrived at the same conclusion. “How do you two know each other, then?” he asked.
“I saw Gael in an alley one day and followed him,” Aavi said.
“Simple as that, huh?” Bram’s eyebrows rose in skeptical arches.
“Not exactly,” Gael put in. “I didn’t know she was following me.” A shiver worked its way out from the core of fear he carried inside, and it was with some trepidation that he waited for Aavi to explain what had happened before she jumped down from the balcony. Or why she’d been on the balcony. In the alley.
Aavi only sniffled quietly.
Bram moved on. “You just, what, walked away?”
“I didn’t like being a slave.”
“Does . . . Holy hands, what do I call them, this Vorss family? These people who owned you. Do they know where you are?”
Aavi’s voice quavered. “I don’t think so.”
Bram leaned back, the chair creaking under him. “I wish you two had told me all of this the day you arrived.”
“I didn’t know most of it,” Gael said. But he could have guessed.
Bram scowled at him. “A girl wraps herself around your waist, calls herself your sister, and you just roll with it?”
“I remembered her from the alley. From that day. She asked for help, and I brushed her off. It’s different down there. I had worries enough of my own without a kid following me around. I didn’t know what sort of trouble she was in.” May he burn on the untended sands of an equatorial island for that lie.
He hadn’t wanted to know who Aavi was and where she’d come from. This had been his fresh start, damn it. He’d left Zhemosen behind! That should mean they’d left the ugliness of the undercity behind as well.
Bram was shaking his head.
“Can we get the bracelet off her?” Gael bit his lip. “Should we even try? Do you think it could be tracked this far?”
“Yes, yes, and I don’t think so.” Bram pushed up out of his seat. “Wait here.”
He ducked back into the tunnel, leaving another of those odd vacuums behind. When had Bram acquired such a presence? Maybe the weight of him—as a person—increased the longer Gael knew him, which was an unsettling thought on top of everything else. Surely Bram would ask them to leave now.
“I don’t want to go back to the city.” Aavi sniffled. “I want to stay with you and Bram.”
“I want that too,” Gael murmured, leaning forward to squeeze her hand. “It’s good here.”
Her gaze met his, and he saw his own longing—for a home and a family. For something good. For life not to be confusing and shitty and scary.
Bram returned with a pair of wire cutters. He secured them around the bracelet and chose a setting. Seconds later, the bracelet fell away with a small wisp of smoke. Gael eyed it for a second, almost expecting the broken twist of metal and circuitry to bounce off the table and bite him. Then he snatched it up and ran for the door.
“Gael, wait!”
He kept running, through the open airlock and across the lower terrace. He stopped half a meter away from the edge, still wary of the long drop into nothingness, and tossed the Band as far as he could. The sun had just passed over the near edge of the crevasse, but enough light remained to glint dully against the metal before the bracelet dropped out of sight.
He hoped it would miss every ledge on the way down and end up at the bottom of a mined-out pit, corroding in the poison mists—its signal cut off, leaving a blank space in the universe where Aavi had once been. He hoped it would take every horrible thought, feeling, and memory with it.
But even he wasn’t that naïve.
Bram watched from the shadow of the terrace door as Gael flung the bracelet into the crevasse and then leaned away from the edge of the terrace as though afraid the thing would fly back up again. He looked so small out there against the void—but defiant at the same time. It was the same posture he wore around Aavi sometimes. Even though Bram had suspected that Gael and Aavi were not related by blood, there was a bond between the two that went beyond a chance encounter in an alleyway.
He also knew Gael was hiding something. A lot of somethings. He was quite open about many aspects of his past, but always trailed off when the conversation veered toward family.
Bram didn’t know if he was any sort of judge of character, but he liked to think he could tell a rotten egg. Gael didn’t stink. More, he came across as abandoned, and that thought inspired a protectiveness Bram strived to keep under control. He hadn’t invited Gael out here to be a project or a ward. He wanted a companion. A lover. A partner.
Bram left the doorway and moved quietly across the terrace, stepping around the small plot Aavi had started tilling for a kitchen garden. He paused just behind Gael, thought about what to say for a beat or two, then simply touched the back of Gael’s shoulder. Only as his fingers landed did he consider the folly of his gesture. But Gael didn’t jerk forward or lose his balance. He seemed to have expected the touch. Had been aware of Bram’s presence.
Another fact floated to the surface: Gael always seemed aware. No, alert.
Gael half turned. Tragedy and fear painted his face, and without wasting any more thought, Bram pulled him in. Now Gael stiffened, but only briefly, before clutching at Bram, his fingers curling into Bram’s bare back.
“I’m sorry,” he said against Bram’s shoulder. He started to tremble. “We’ll go. As soon as you’re free to take us back to Landing, we’ll be gone.”
Bram indulged in a gesture he’d wanted to make since they’d first met. He cupped the back of Gael’s head, fingers moving into soft brown curls, and held him close. “Shh. Shh.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Stop.”
“We’ll—”
“You’re not going anywhere.” Bram winced at the neediness in his tone. “Unless . . .” The hair along his arms rose up with a sudden prickle. What if Gael wanted to go? Bram leaned back, making it easier for Gael to disengage, if he wanted to, and talked himself out of imagining one step now being the first of Gael’s journey away from him.
Gael glanced up, obviously upset, but not enough to cry. He’d hit that verge a few times since landing on Alkirak, but never seemed to slip over it. Why?
Bram wanted to kiss him. Wanted to return to that moment on the sofa where their hands had brushed, when Gael had looked at him with something other than fear and distress. But before he could lower his head, light flashed through the darkening sky and the prickle along his arms became an entirely different sensation.
Cursing, Bram loosened his grip on Gael, but kept hold of one arm. “We need to get inside. There’s a storm coming.” Bram tugged him back across the terrace. “Go check on Aavi, make sure she doesn’t
come outside. Seal the door after you.”
“Where are you going?”
“I need to make sure the animals are all right.”
“Do you need help?”
“Check on Aavi first.”
Gael gave a quick nod and ran inside. Bram followed him in and waited for the door to the living quarters to seal before turning off toward the ramp that led up to the working level and farm. He tapped his Band as he went, checking for the alert that should have come down the pipeline from the sensors he’d placed northward along the crevasse.
Storms swept down the long, deep canyons with a measurable frequency. They were a mark of the changing atmosphere and would probably worsen before the terraforming efforts on Alkirak stabilized. They’d all been warned to build accordingly. A mild storm meant lightning, wind, and little risk of poison clouds. He might even get some rain. If it was a bad storm, he’d pray the deflector field over his crops didn’t fail and that the rising mist didn’t corrode his turbines.
The field had already activated—triggered by the change in barometric pressure. It wouldn’t stop a high wind, but should protect his crops in the instance of mist and poison rain. Bram quickly scanned the terrace to make sure nothing had been left lying around. He couldn’t afford for tools and equipment to be blown away. The darkening night showed only regular rows of soybeans and corn. The dark cluster of the experimental patch at the end. As he moved, he checked the turbines, cycling through the readout on his Band for each one. All functioning normally, but there was something odd about the power signature from the bank of batteries he used to store electricity.
Check the batteries first or the cabling at the base of each turbine?
Seeing as he was already out here . . .
Wind buffeted him as he started back across the terrace. He really should have grabbed a rebreather from the rover. Bram checked his Band again. The display wavered, making the numbers hard to read, but they were all green. If he hurried, he should be fine. The shield protecting his crops would protect him too—if the batteries didn’t fail.
The cable housing at the base of the first two turbines was intact and a quick check of the power signature showed nothing amiss. An intense gust of wind dropped him to his knees and a new fear crawled along his back. The turbines were designed to withstand greater storms than this, but he’d never be complacent about a wind that could knock him down. He half ran, half crawled to the third turbine.