by Eileen Sharp
But even if he had to do it over again, he still would. He’d still bait Joshua into meeting him, he’d still lie to them. If he didn’t, there was no hope at all for their father. When torture wouldn’t make Cristian betray his friend, they’d hauled Joshua’s bleeding father in front of him, and electrocuted the older man until Cristian agreed to do what they asked if they would keep Joshua’s father alive.
They probably never meant to keep their promise, but he had to try.
Now he watched Caina slide down the wall and put her head on her knees to cry. Joshua knelt next to her and tucked her under his arm, bending his head down to hers. She reached up and clutched at his sleeve, though she kept her face hidden. The little sounds she made as she let out her grief were almost more than Cristian could take, but he didn’t have a choice. Apparently, he was going to remain conscious through this, just like he’d been forced to for everything else he didn’t want to feel.
“Tell me about the Nostekoi.” Joshua said, his voice flat. Only the scarlet eyes burning like waiting embers gave away his emotions.
Answering with as much clarity as he could manage, Cristian said, “I don’t know m-much about them….except you don’t want to tell them ‘no’. They know everything about…everything. I don’t think some of them are completely human. They’re different, but I don’t know exactly how. It’s some kind of army.”
Even as he spoke, he started to shake. He lay there, tensing his muscles and trying to stop it. The tremors had been constant since he was captured. At first, he thought the trembling was a reaction to the torture, but when it wouldn't quit, he began to fear that he wasn't just damaged on the outside; he was crippled somewhere deep inside. He didn't even know what he was afraid of. He just was. All the time.
If Joshua noticed, he didn’t say anything. “So all they wanted was the colony? They murdered my mother and tortured my father for that?”
It didn’t surprise Cristian that Joshua didn’t know how much his family fortune was worth. His amnesia had left peculiar cultural gaps. Didn’t everyone have money to buy jump ships? Couldn’t everyone afford to attend an elite academy in another galaxy that all but guaranteed a seat on the Alliance Council? Cristian’s family was pretty well-off, even wealthy, but they were nothing compared to the massive weight of the West family finances. Like other colony owners, everything they did financially reverberated through the twin galaxies and twenty-five planets.
“Yes.”
Trying to offer more information, he continued, “I don’t know w-where they took me. They hit me with plasma before they took me anywhere. I only s-saw the inside of one building, but it was huge. It had a landing bay for at least fifty ships, and the rest of the building could have been its own city. It was like they w-wanted your dad to give in, but if he didn’t, they had a plan B.”
“They didn’t need my father. You were plan B,” Joshua said, his voice angry.
Cristian answered, his voice low and ashamed. “I d-didn’t know what other choice to make. If I didn’t help them find you, they were going to k-kill him.”
Joshua had turned away, and Caina’s face remained buried in her arms.
He was just about to give up when Joshua’s shoulders sagged. “Thank you for trying to save his life. I just wish you hadn’t dragged Caina into this. At least you did what you could,” Joshua added.
He said it like he understood the slim hope for his father’s survival. Cristian had seen the Nostekoi in action, and he was pretty certain that at this point, Joshua’s dad was dead. Whether they would ever get some kind of confirmation of that, he didn’t know. He also didn’t know how long his friend would be filthy rich. If the West holdings were now in the hands of the Nostekoi, Joshua would only be able to use credits so they could track him.
Dylan spoke, and Cristian realized he’d forgotten he was there. “We’ll be at the nearest med clinic in three hours. I’m going to call my wife to let her know where I am, and get some sleep.”
Joshua found a blanket stashed in one of the compartments, and wrapped it around Caina, sitting by her side. She wasn’t crying so hard anymore, but she didn’t lift her head either.
Cristian’s knee was a throbbing, stabbing agony now. He closed his eyes to try to ignore it.
“Pull the rest out,” the man with the scar on his cheek said.
The touch of cold metal and the whirring of the drill couldn’t drown out his screams. “Please, please don’t…NO!”
Cristian twitched awake. Had he spoken aloud? The rest of the cabin was quiet, so he hadn’t. This time.
Chapter Twelve
Oasis
JOSHUA FOUGHT anger and grief. He missed his mother, and he was worried about Caina. She needed her mom. They both did. Their mother had been the first one to see his loneliness when he sat bewildered and lost in the hospital. She had known that he needed a place to call home. She had been the door into the family and the glue that kept them all together. He couldn’t quite fully believe she was dead and he wouldn’t stop looking. He would find his parents no matter how long it took.
Caina lay curled up in a sleeping alcove, her eyes closed, either sleeping or pretending to sleep. She let her hair fall over her face, something she did when she wanted to be left alone.
The doctor slept on his back, one arm over his eyes, as quiet as death. He was a deep sleeper, apparently.
Cristian twitched in his sleep and said things out loud like, “no, don’t” and “please”. Joshua shivered when he thought of what the Nostekoi had done to him. They’d broken him in a matter of hours. As betrayed as he felt, Joshua could not help feeling sick at his friend’s suffering.
It was all too much pain. It rocked him to the core, shifting his sense of reality. For a moment he had the strange sensation that he could make it all go away, that he could somehow just not feel anything. Suddenly dizzy, he collected his thoughts. He needed something to focus on.
Thinking about the announcement of Remington’s new premier, he searched for information about the other colonies. Suddenly he remembered the party and how many new premiers there were.
His skin prickled as he read down the list of colony changes in the last two years. There were usually about three to four colonies per planet, and all twenty-five planets had changed at least two or more premiers. The revelation unfolded, splaying out across grief, rage, uncertainty, and reason. What happened to his family had already happened to others. He only needed to follow the changes.
He remembered one of the kids who had left school, and his father had been a premier. Nic Carelli. He’d dropped out of sight a month before the year ended; it had been odd timing. His friends got a message saying he was going on vacation.
The more Joshua looked at the names, the more chagrined he felt. He knew five of them, and they’d dropped out of sight one by one in the past year. He hadn’t even been curious. True, he wasn’t good friends with any of them, but still…was he that oblivious? Their stories were pretty tight, though, in his defense. One of them had even been rumored to be expelled—Danny Jansen. He was a sophomore and no one thought he’d make it to his junior year because he was such a troublemaker.
Had they all been hunted down?
He signed in to the academy’s site and found Nic’s cell. He hit it and waited for an answer.
The screen returned a message saying that connection no longer existed. He scrolled through the school directory again, trying to remember who else knew Nic. Kirk something…his best friend. Kirk Whitaker sounded right, so he tried that one. A face flickered onto his screen and his heart jumped, anticipating some kind of lead. Kirk was a huge, muscled rugby player. His neck took up half the screen.
“Hey Kirk, it’s Joshua.”
Kirk rubbed his eyes. “Hey, man.” He looked surprised, but that was to be expected. Neither of them had hung out or anything. Joshua was sure Kirk knew who he was—Joshua’s red eyes had made him notorious, whether he liked it or not.
“I’m looking for
Nic. Have you heard from him lately?”
“He’s not talking to me. I don’t know what his problem is. It’s weird.”
“Yeah, I think he’s in trouble.”
Kirk’s eyes narrowed, which made him look mean, but maybe he was just thinking. “That’s exactly what I thought, but no one knows what’s going on.”
“He’s not the only one who’s gone missing. You remember Danny Jensen? He left in the middle of the school year and no one seemed to notice. It’s strange.”
“I noticed Nic was gone but no one seemed to be talking about it. I’m glad you said something.”
Joshua felt a twinge of guilt. Just like everyone else he’d been willing to continue on with his life without too much curiosity about the people who had left. Until now, when his parents had become one of the missing. “When was the last time you saw him? Is there any other way to reach him?”
“I saw him right before he left. He didn’t even tell me about the vacation. His family has an island off the colony, the St. Aloysius colony on Invictus.” Kirk paused. “I could meet you there. I didn’t want to stalk him because he sounded like he didn’t want to talk to me, but it doesn’t feel right, you know?”
“Yeah, I know. I have a stop to make first, but I can meet you there in six hours.”
Kirk hesitated. “I had plans and…” he stopped and then threw up his hands. “You know what? I can do that. We’ll figure out a place to meet when we get there.”
“Okay. Talk to you later.”
Joshua signed off. It was promising, and not. If Nic had escaped he might have some more information on the Nostekoi. Joshua could spend a lot of time running around galaxies. The Alliance barely kept representatives for all of them. Picking the colonies off one by one wouldn’t be that hard, especially over two years.
∆∆∆
Cristian was burning up. The yellow sun baked down on the cracked earth and the open, empty sky. Cristian looked down at the thin cracks and envied the dark spaces under them. There was a place on this planet where the sun did not scorch, but he was far from it. His tongue was thick in his mouth and his skin peeled in the merciless heat.
Joshua had told him to wait here. It had been days. He didn’t know why he was waiting, but it was important. Like bigger than this sun-burnt-hard-ball–of-dirt-planet big. A hot wind blew across the desert, sucking away any sweat on his body. He didn’t think he could stand here any longer.
He blinked. A thin, dark shadow spread out from the burning horizon, and reached toward him, promising cool relief from the relentless heat. He prayed that it would finally touch him. The edge of the shadow flowed over the desert and the wind turned cold. He fell to his knees as the shadow crept over his face. Finally. Now they could begin.
Begin what? The desert faded, and he was in The Room again. The glass walls shimmered as the man with the cold gray eyes walked toward him. “It doesn’t have to be like this.”
The straps on his arms and legs tightened. He pulled at them, not because he thought they’d break, but because he couldn’t help himself. Someone was putting a head brace on him, pressing down on his forehead so hard he thought his skull would crack. They put pins in his temples, ignoring his screams. Robotic fingers pried his eyes open, and a thin needle moved toward his right eye. Horror swept through him. He screamed again as the needle pierced the membrane of his eye. It retracted and he shook uncontrollably with relief that it was over. Then the needle moved to his other eye.
“Hey.” He jerked awake at the sound of the familiar voice. It was Joshua, standing over him with a frown.
There was little hope that he wasn’t screaming out loud in his sleep. Even awake, his thoughts were so vivid he sometimes heard himself speaking them aloud. Whatever barrier that had existed between his conscious awareness and his unconscious responses had been worn thin.
“You were talking in your sleep,” Joshua said. “Sounded like a nightmare.”
Cristian closed his eyes and the glass room flashed under his eyelids. He looked back at Joshua. He could read the pity in his friend’s eyes, and it stung. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be. I wish I could have done something.”
It was almost comical, but Joshua acted like he could have stopped the Nostekoi. For a moment, Cristian felt relieved of his own shame. Joshua had no idea what the Nostekoi were like. Joshua would have done exactly the same thing he had done, he would have begged for mercy even when he knew there wasn’t any.
“They aren’t going to c-catch me again,” Cristian said. He wouldn’t tell Joshua exactly what he meant, of course. What he meant was that he would set the plasma on red and put the gun in his mouth. Capture was not an option.
Joshua stared at him. “You’re going to get better. Doc will take care of you. He’s the best.”
“Yeah, I know.” His body was burning up. He hadn’t noticed it before, but the heat from his dream was still there. So his leg was infected.
“I’m going to wake up Caina and Dylan. We’re approaching Apollux.”
From the moment Cristian entered the Apollux med clinic, his suffering began to dissipate. The window to his room looked out to a tropical beach, palm trees waving in a light breeze that washed over his fevered skin. A med tech in dark blue scrubs gave him a sweet-salty drink that made him pleasantly drowsy. His tense body melted into the cool sheets.
He’d heard of Apollux as a resort but none of the descriptions of its tropical beauty conveyed how deeply the turquoise-colored sea, the pure white sand, and the soft breezes penetrated into his aching, battered psyche.
Dylan stood in a corner talking to two other med techs. Cristian didn’t know what the doctor had diagnosed him with, but the initial treatment felt pretty good already.
He felt a hand in his, and looked over to find Caina next to him. Her hair was tied back from her face, her wide green eyes red from crying. Her hand was smaller than his, fitting in his as if it were made to be there. He would do anything if he could bring her mother back, but he couldn’t.
“You don’t have to stay. I’m going to be all right,” he told her.
In response, she laced her fingers through his. “I don’t have anywhere else to go. We’ve decided it’s too dangerous for me to go to my cousins right now, and besides, I want to be here.”
The fever heat began to leave his skin and he was more than drowsy, he was downright loopy. He caressed her hand with his thumb. “That’s nice.”
He realized what he was doing and let go of her hand. “I’m m-medicated,” he said.
Why did he feel so good around her? How drugged was he right now? Everything went black.
He woke, alone. It was night, and the window was still open. It was big enough to take up half the wall, and it almost felt like he was outside. The night was soft and breezy, the scent of orchids and the sea filling his senses. His knee didn’t hurt anymore. Actually, he couldn’t feel his leg at all. He wiggled his toes, and they moved, to his relief. They’d just numbed it.
His head was clear. He wasn’t shaking and afraid anymore. That was a new development. And he hadn’t awakened from a nightmare. He drew in a deep breath, the air filling his lungs. He could almost imagine nothing had happened in the past few days. He was just on a tropical beach, taking a vacation during the school break.
Did his parents know where he was? The good feeling dissipated a little. He needed to tell them he was fine; even as oblivious as they could be, they still cared. His wristband sat on the table next to him. Was it safe to use it? He doubted it. This worried him, but without the deep, paralyzing anxiety that consumed him before.
Somehow, the fear just sat like a brooding giant far away in some corner of his mind. He could open the memories if he wanted to, but he felt like it was his choice, as if the fear was there, but contained. It wouldn’t spring out and overwhelm him like it had before.
He reached up and felt the wounds in his scalp where the head bracket cut into him. He had plenty of cuts to explore. They wo
uld all become scars no one could see, at least not unless they looked closely; one on the back of his neck, an incision in his lower spine, one on his abdomen and his mess of a knee. None of them would ever tell the story of how gruesome it had been. Maybe like the scars, the memories would become less painful, or just fade away.
It was odd to have suffered so much in such a short space of time, and then to bask in sheer bliss. He looked out the window. This planet only had one moon, shining silvery white against the dark sky.
Joshua was off somewhere on his quest to find his father. Cristian felt a twinge of guilt about that. Should he be with him? The image of the last time he’d seen Joshua’s father came back with sharp detail. Stewart West was strapped to a metal grid on a gray plasticrete wall by his wrists and ankles, stripped down to his trousers and bare feet. His body had gone rigid with each jolt, and he groaned when the electricity hit him.
The Nostekoi tech at the grid controls watched Cristian without any expression. He was a lean-faced young man with thick, brown hair and thin lips. His cheekbones were high and his eyes sunken. Like the rest of the Nostekoi, he had inhuman strength. He’d thrown West against the wall so hard Cristian could hear the older man’s back crack. At first, Cristian was afraid that the Nostekoi and broken the older man’s spine, but Stewart was still able to stand.
Cristian had only endured Stewart’s agony for a short time. Two hits with electricity and he’d agreed to find Joshua.
When he’d given in, Stewart had looked up at him, his blue eyes sharp. There was no condemnation in that gaze. He’d been in the hands of the Nostekoi as well, and must have known what they’d done to Cristian.
The Nostekoi could not stop Stewart’s final piece of advice to Cristian. He’d locked eyes with Cristian and said in a hoarse voice that carried across the room, “Do what you can.”