by TM Catron
“There’s no light on the trees,” she observed.
“The light can enter, but not shine out. The Nomad was built for secrecy.”
The bubbling sound filled the cockpit, and the ship hummed quietly as it lifted above the trees. Mina expected to feel the drag of acceleration as the pod shot up into the air and cleared the mountains, but the cabin felt solid and still, as if it were resting on the ground.
“How are you flying this?” Mina asked. Doyle had not touched anything since sitting down.
“The ship takes orders from me through my adarre. The Nomad really doesn’t need a pilot, just someone to tell it where to go.” He swiveled around in his chair to watch Mina while she looked out the window. Darkness covered everything below, and she admired the unobstructed view of the stars, avoiding Doyle’s gaze. Everything he had revealed to her suddenly felt very real.
“You look terrible,” he said.
Mina looked down at her filthy clothes and ran a hand through her tangled hair. She silently agreed, but his comment rankled her nonetheless. “You don’t look so great yourself covered in whatever that stuff is that came out of the Glyph.”
“Blood,” he stood, and motioned for her to follow him out of the cockpit. The first door in the corridor opened for him, and they walked into a small chamber. Stars twinkled opposite the door on a sea of black in a translucent floor-to-ceiling window that took up the entire outside wall. Compelled forward, Mina’s heart skipped as she encountered the odd, electrifying feeling of stepping to the edge of a cliff. She touched the window for reassurance.
The ceiling suddenly glowed with the same warm yellow light that filled the cockpit, and Mina turned away from the window. To her left, a bunk lined the bulkhead that separated the cockpit from the bedroom, one end flush with the window, the other separated from the rest of the room by a metal partition. A narrow door stood on the wall opposite the bunk, a small metal table and chair next to it. The dark grey metal bulkheads looked like stone here, too, and contrasted strangely with the metal bunk and table. Doyle walked over to the smooth blank wall by the door and touched it. A drawer opened into the room, revealing neatly folded clothing.
“I don’t know what will fit you, but you’re welcome to anything in here. Through that door on the left, you’ll find a bathroom where you can take a hot shower.” Leaving the drawer open, he turned to leave.
“Doyle,” said Mina.
He turned to her.
“You have a shower.”
“Yes.”
“Forgetting for a moment that we’re on an alien spacecraft and I didn’t even know aliens needed bathrooms . . . you mean all this time we ran around in the mountains covered in mud, with only cold streams to wash in, and you had a beautiful hot shower ready to swoop out of the sky whenever you summoned it.”
“So?” He shrugged.
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why are you just now showing me this ship?”
Doyle laughed. “If I had known I could convince you to get on a spaceship just by bribing you with a hot shower, I would have told you ages ago.” He left the room, and the door hissed shut behind him.
The open drawer contained several pairs of khakis and other sturdy items of clothing, all too big for Mina. The only things she found that would fit were a t-shirt and a pair of drawstring sweatpants. She pulled them out. When she touched the outside of the drawer, it slid silently back into the wall.
In the bathroom, Mina walked past the tiny mirror and stepped right into the open metal shower. Except cold metal didn’t greet her bare feet, but solid stone. The space didn’t contain a shower head, only a button on the wall. She pushed it, and hot water cascaded over her from above. She reveled in the heat, almost falling asleep as water and steam relaxed her tight muscles and rinsed the grime from her body. When she pushed the button again, a blast of warm air filled the room, drying her almost instantly.
Mina stepped out and finally looked at herself in the mirror. A strange woman stared back at her—sunken cheeks, skin pale despite so much time outdoors. Although she’d always taken good care of her body, it had transformed too, into something leaner yet more muscular, more angular. Small wonder since she’d literally been living on rabbit food and birdseed. A faint pink scar two inches long ran across her ribcage under her right arm, presumably where the “machine” had fixed her ribs. Mina ran her fingers over it, still marveling that she felt no pain at all from the procedure and it had already healed.
When Mina left the bathroom, dressed in the clean sweats and t-shirt, she found the bedroom filled with the scent of freshly brewed coffee. A mug sat on the small desk. She took a sip of the strong drink. It burned her tongue a little as it went down. She’d never tasted anything so wonderful in her life.
After a brief knock the door slid open, and Doyle walked in. He had showered and changed into fresh jeans and a t-shirt. He had even buzzed his hair short and shaved, giving him a clean, fresh look. The scratches and bruises on his arms were already fading.
“Why do you have coffee?” asked Mina.
“I like it. I’m half human, remember? And I’ve lived as a human for years.”
Mina took another sip. “Where are we going?”
Doyle shrugged. “North. I thought we might take a couple of days to rest and decide what to do next.”
“Won’t they know how to find you?”
“Yes,” he admitted, “but they don’t know they need to look for me. Once they find the dead Condarri, they will know a hybrid probably did it. But they won’t know which. And now that Earth is not offering much resistance, more hybrids are scattering, freeing themselves from the Condarri.”
“You weren’t free before?”
“Not exactly.” He gestured for her to sit in the chair while he sat on the edge of the bunk. “The Condarri are a proud race, and cruel. They don’t think twice about annihilating an alien culture or manipulating its DNA to create a new race. But just because I have Condarri grace flowing through me does not place me on equal footing with them. I am inferior, no better than scum, because the Condarri view me as having sullied their own bloodline, even though it was their own science that created me.”
Mina shook her head. “Why?”
“Humans would feel the same way if they knew. And if they found out about us, they would probably start a witch hunt. I wouldn’t blame them—we helped overthrow the human race, after all. They cannot easily overcome the Condarri, but they could overpower the hybrids.”
Mina shifted in her seat. “I wouldn’t want to.”
He looked at her quietly for a minute, then said, “You don’t want revenge for all that’s happened? All those people who died? For your brother? What if I told you I was responsible for deciding which cities and sites to attack first? I can tell you everything, down to the smallest detail. We placed the ships early to lure in the military, then used them to create an EMP so powerful practically nothing could survive it. After that, cities and armies were easy for the Condarri to burn—you saw for yourself, I think. With infrastructure gone, the ships moved from one place to another, destroying as they went. They met very little resistance.”
Doyle leaned forward. “And that’s not everything. I spent time in military installations all over Earth as a spy, gathering intelligence, learning tactical maneuvers, even gleaning from them the best techniques for hand-to-hand combat. And we planted hybrid spies in key military installations to infect secured networks with computer viruses and disable nuclear facilities, just to make sure the Condarri didn’t meet any opposition. Can you truthfully say that if you had the chance to stop it, to destroy the Condarri and the hybrids with them, you wouldn’t take it?”
Yes, she wanted the Condarri gone. She looked at Doyle, waiting for the anger to rise up inside her. But it didn’t. She had watched him kill a human, a hybrid, and a Glyph. Out of those, the human was the only one he had shown mercy. Mina withheld her thoughts, however, and changed the subjec
t.
“So why aren’t you working for the Glyphs anymore? What made you stop?”
Doyle shrugged. “Various reasons.”
“Such as?”
“Maybe the Condarri made a mistake. Maybe I am more human than they think. I have seen how humans have struggled to survive. Obsessed with personal accomplishment and glory, they lack the ability to unite under leadership. Most have done poorly at survival and could not put aside their differences in time to work together. Except you. You didn’t know anything, yet you were willing to learn. And you kept trying to survive even after you realized you had nothing to live for. The Condarri make decisions based on logic, and they would have given up by now if the situation were reversed. But not you. Why?”
Mina was spared having to answer when the humming of the ship changed. Doyle stood and said, “We’re here.”
He led her back to the cockpit. Ahead of them, a vast body of water shone in the starlight. The Nomad glided over it, skimming the gentle waves.
“Is this the ocean?”
“Yes. The North Atlantic.”
They stopped. Mina gasped as the craft hovered over the water for a split second before sliding down into its depths. The murky water turned deep blue, then grey as they plunged deeper and deeper, until only darkness surrounded the ship.
“It can go underwater, too?”
“If the Condarri wanted to find us, they wouldn’t have any trouble, even if we went into the deep mantle of the Earth. We could do that, by the way, if you wanted.”
“What? No, that’s okay. This is fine.”
Doyle smiled. “Hungry?”
Doyle insisted Mina take his cabin. After a simple meal she could not identify—something that tasted like cardboard with a hint of chalk, which Doyle took from little vacuum-sealed packets—she gratefully said goodnight and lay down on his bunk. Thinking of the last twenty-four hours, Mina feared she would have trouble sleeping. But she drifted off immediately, her weary mind shutting down as if it, too, needed to hide.
“Calla. He’s here.”
Calla said nothing. She had sensed him for the last hour. He had answered her summons, as she knew he would. The others feared him and were jealous. Calla did not fear him. And she would question him now as she would any other hybrid. With the death of a Condarri, they were all in danger.
“Doyle,” she breathed as he walked into the camp at last. The starlight did not penetrate the canopy, but Calla could see the expression on his face. He smiled as he walked past the three male hybrids, holding Calla’s gaze until he reached her. He had cut his hair and shaved since last she saw him. And he smelled of soap and water. Where had he found a place to shower?
“It’s Doyle, now, is it?” he said when he reached her.
“What took so long?”
“A Condarri is dead.”
“We know.”
“Did you do it?” Doyle studied her face.
Calla frowned even though she had expected the question. “Did you?”
“No. The Condarri are combing the hills, but they won’t find him.”
Calla stepped toward him in anticipation. “We have been searching,” she hissed, “ever since it happened. But you know who did it, don’t you?”
“Trying to claim the prize, Calla, and make them forget your blunder?”
“You will tell me.”
“No. I will catch him, and we will turn him in together.”
“They already blame all the hybrids. We will be questioned.”
“Not if I can bring them the assassin.”
“You will not leave my sight.”
Doyle looked at her coolly. “Don’t trust me?”
“I don’t trust anyone. Not even you.”
Doyle smiled. “What are we waiting for, then?”
“So who is it?” asked one of the hybrids as they hiked. His voice seemed overly loud in the silent forest. Calla frowned.
“He doesn’t know,” taunted the second. “Or he would have brought the murderer to us already.”
Doyle stopped walking and knelt down to look at something on the dark ground. A boot print. Calla took the opportunity to check Doyle’s tread. It was different from the murderer’s. She knelt down to look at the same print Doyle examined and spoke quietly to him. “We have to get this right. We were the only known hybrids in the area when it happened.”
“If they thought it was you, they would have questioned you already.”
“Have they questioned you?”
“No.”
Calla scrutinized Doyle’s face. He was telling the truth. But his answer bothered her. The Condarri knew he was hunting rogues in the area when it happened.
“Where’s Halston?” Doyle asked as he stood. He said it louder, so the men would anticipate her answer, undermining her authority.
“I could ask you the same thing,” she said, unfazed. “You were in the camp. Why didn’t you get him?”
“He got out right after the fighting started. Coward. I was on the trail of another rogue at the time.”
“Who?”
Doyle didn’t respond as he followed the trail further into the trees.
Calla motioned for the men to fan out. The third one hesitated, unwilling to leave her alone with Doyle. But she wanted to speak freely with him.
“Dar Ceylin.”
“Yes?” Doyle stopped and turned to Calla. She felt the familiar rush of adrenaline when he looked at her, but she swept it aside.
“I want a name.”
Doyle leaned in close.
Calla refused to be sidetracked. “Yes,” she said aloud.
“We’ll do this together. I want credit.”
“You don’t trust me.”
“No more than you trust me.” He leaned in and planted a kiss on her cheek. Teasing.
Calla placed a finger on his lips. “Fine. We’ll play it your way for now, until I get tired of you.”
Doyle broke contact and turned away into the woods, back on the trail of the other hybrid. Calla allowed him to lead—he always had been a great tracker. She did not doubt Doyle would catch the killer, but she had to ensure she was present to share the glory when they turned him in to the Condarri. Dar Ceylin would not get the better of her this time around.
By dawn, Calla imagined she could smell the hybrid they sought, and before long they came upon the remains of a camp halfway up a mountain, near a fallen tree. The ground where he had lain was still warm. Clearly, their quarry knew he was being hunted. They had failed to surprise him.
Doyle calmly analyzed the ground nearby. The others, catching up with them, shook their heads—they had not seen anyone. Then Doyle crouched down, suddenly intent. Calla surveyed the trees in the growing light. Undergrowth had taken over the deadfall, reaching out for the spot of sunlight left by the missing tree. She silently directed everyone to fade into the trees.
Instead of growing lighter, the new day began to darken. Clouds must be moving in, Calla thought. But the increasing darkness was wrong. The light was fleeing.
Calla broke out in a sweat. They’re here. Doyle remained perfectly still as he stared at the underbrush near the tree.
he called out through the adarre. Darkness pressed down on Calla, sucking the oxygen from the mountainside. It was a presence she associated with the Condarri, but they had not summoned her. She sensed the other hybrids’ consternation. She looked again at Doyle through the oppressive darkness. He remained clear-headed.
Above them, one of the hybrids shouted and a scuffle broke out. The darkness lifted abruptly. When she looked around, Doyle had disappeared.
No. She couldn’t lose him. She heard his voice join the fray above and ran to catch up.
“What are you playing at?” said a ne
w voice.
“You are a poor excuse for a hybrid,” said Doyle. “Did you think you could use tricks to hide from us?”
When Calla arrived on the scene, her three were struggling to hold down a new hybrid. Doyle held his hunting knife in his hand.
“Thompson,” said one of the hybrids.
Thompson made another attempt to disentangle himself, but his struggle only earned him a blow to the face from the hybrid who had named him.
Thompson spit out blood and looked at Doyle. “What was that trick with the aether?” he asked. Calla looked at Doyle, too.
“Justice for your betrayal,” said Doyle.
“My betrayal?” Thompson’s face turned red. “What about yours?”
One of the male hybrids looked at Thompson eagerly, waiting for more. Doyle remained stone-faced. “You have killed a Condarri.”
“What?” Thompson’s face drained of some of its color.
“For your treasons against Condar, you will be turned over for execution and your body burned,” stated Calla.
Thompson addressed Calla, but never took his eyes off Doyle. “I thought the five of you handled that?”
“You murdered a Condarri. Condar will personally see to your execution!”
“No! You must hear me—.”
Doyle interrupted, “You are rogue. You waived the right to defend yourself when you abandoned Condar.”
“You can bet I’ll have my say first, though. You’re not so blameless, you and that woman!”
At this, Doyle hit Thompson so hard his head snapped back. His body, still supported by the three hybrids, went limp. They let go when they realized Thompson would not move again.
“He’s dead,” said Calla, turning on Doyle. What was Thompson referring to? What woman?
“He’s not dead,” said one of her hybrids.