by T. M. Catron
“I thought you said this room was small,” Nelson said.
“It is,” said Doyle. “It only sleeps two hundred. The others are much larger.”
“Where’s the bathroom?” Carter asked.
Doyle nodded at the doorway in back. “Through there.”
Carter set off for it, muttering something about no lights. A light flashed for him on his way down, the adarria following him all the way to the bathroom. Alvarez followed after him.
“What about when you’re not here?” Mina asked. Could she ask the adarria to keep the lights on, would they sit in complete darkness, or would they follow Doyle around like lost puppies?
“I’m having lights brought up for you.”
Nelson sighed and stretched out on the nearest bunk. “Great. Just great.” He drummed the fingers of his left hand on his thigh as if typing on an invisible keyboard.
“Stay in here unless I come get you. Some of the hybrids aren’t thrilled about you being here.”
“No kidding,” Lincoln said. “And what are we supposed to do in here? Feels like trading one captivity for another.”
“This space is only for sleeping. I won’t leave you here long.”
“What does Dar Ceylin mean?”
“It’s my title. It means commander.”
Doyle turned to Mina and jerked his head toward the door. She looked at Lincoln, who looked like he wanted to protest her leaving with Doyle. But he waved her away, heading for a bunk of his own further down.
Just her and Doyle, then.
After they left the room, aether filled the open doorway, blocking any exit.
“It’s for their protection, not to keep them in,” Doyle said in answer to Mina’s look.
“They won’t like that.”
“Can’t be helped.” He walked toward the end of the empty corridor.
Mina fell into step beside him. “If you’re in command, why are you worried about the other hybrids?”
“Just being careful.”
She put her hand over her chest, feeling the new scars through her thin shirt. The adarria had marked Mina the day before when she was with Doyle under the mountain.
“What if they find out about me?”
Doyle stopped and turned to her. “I want you with me at all times. Unless you’re safe in the bunk room, don’t go anywhere on this ship alone.”
“Where are we going now?”
“Just taking a walk. I needed to get away from your friends for a bit.”
“They have a right to be concerned. Especially after that mess you unveiled in the lab. Are you crazy?”
“Think about it, Mina. A race of superhumans who don’t get diseases, don’t get cancer, don’t die from minor injuries. With enough of them, we can start over on Earth, and use Condarri technology to do it.”
“Now it’s all about starting over? If that’s the case, why didn’t you mention it before?”
“It wasn’t relevant before. I didn’t have access to the labs. And I was still flying under Condar’s radar. Now that I’m in open rebellion, things are simpler.”
Mina scoffed. Simpler wasn’t the word she’d use to describe challenging a technologically superior race from the other side of the galaxy.
“And what happens to the remaining humans?”
“What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean!”
“Nothing happens to them. We’ll coexist.”
“A population of psychopaths living with humans? That will never work.”
“I don’t intend on raising psychopaths.”
“How’s that?”
Doyle sighed. They crossed through into another corridor. Another hybrid passed them, nodding to Doyle and ignoring Mina.
“I don’t think hybrids are as different from humans as they are supposed to be,” Doyle said after a while. “We have a flaw—free will.”
“Free will is not a flaw.”
“It is when you create a new race for the sole purpose of giving orders to it.”
“But they’re still murderers, Doyle.”
“What if they’re not taught to be?”
“Again, I ask you—how?”
Doyle frowned. “I don’t know.”
“Do you even need the lab? Why not just wait until the hybrids have their own children?”
Doyle stopped walking and turned to look at Mina. Finally, he was giving this conversation the attention it deserved.
“I don’t think the hybrids are biologically capable of having children,” he said, watching her reaction.
Mina wasn’t sure what he was worried about. Was he speaking about himself or hybrids in general? She was tired of playing games with him. After all the confusion and heartache and anger she’d experienced the last couple of days, she wasn’t going to let him get by with being vague anymore, not when he had answers she wanted. Her patience had worn out.
Mina crossed her arms in front of her chest and stared right back at him.
Doyle sensed her change in mood and took a step back in surprise--a slight step back, but she noticed all the same.
“Out with it,” she said.
Doyle glanced up the hall. “With what?”
“Oh no. No no no no no.” Mina jabbed a finger in his chest. He narrowed his eyes. “Don’t play coy with me, Doyle. I’m sick of this. Of veiled insinuations and vague answers. Tell me what you are thinking right now.”
Doyle glared at her. “You don’t really want to know what I’m thinking right now.”
“Try me.”
His eyes grew angry, and they flashed. Mina refused to back down.
Doyle took a deep breath but didn’t release the tension in his shoulders. That made her angrier. She pushed him further. How far before he snapped?
Mina knew she was playing with fire, and she knew Doyle’s temper. But she didn’t care anymore. She wasn’t afraid of him—she had never been scared of him, despite his insistence that he wasn’t to be trusted and despite what she’d seen him do over the last two days. “If you can’t be completely honest with me, even now, then what am I doing here?”
Doyle took a sharp breath and blinked. “I thought that was obvious.”
Mina practically roared at him. “Nothing about you is obvious!”
He narrowed his eyes. “You want to say that a little louder? I don’t think the people on Earth heard you.”
Angry that he still wouldn’t cooperate, Mina turned on her heel and stormed back to the bunk room. Or she tried. The increased gravity and her weariness held her back, making Mina’s point less emphatic than she would have liked. Also, she didn’t know the way. Behind her, she heard Doyle follow at a respectable distance.
At an intersection in the corridors, she paused. They had turned here, but she didn’t remember from which direction. All the halls looked the same. Irritated that she would have to rely on Doyle yet again, she crossed her arms and tapped her foot in impatience.
“Enough, Mina,” he said, coming up to stand beside her.
She rounded on him, ready to tell him not to order her around. But the look in his eyes made her pause.
He wasn’t angry. As much as she wanted him to be, as much as she wanted to continue the argument, Doyle was looking at her in defeat.
With that look, her anger abated somewhat. She’d wanted to get a rise out him, not beat him down. As much as Mina tried to hang on to her anger, she couldn’t. Not fully. It slipped away, replaced by more weariness and sadness.
Doyle spoke first, breaking the awkward silence. He glanced up and down both corridors to make sure they were still alone, and then turned to her.
“Do you want to know what I was thinking, back there?” He jerked his head back down the hall.
“Yes.”
“Don’t laugh.”
For a half-second, Mina thought he was joking and almost did laugh, but she quickly saw that he was as serious as she’d ever seen him. Her anticipation grew, and her palms became sweaty.
> “I won’t laugh,” she said finally.
“I always feel like I’ve interrupted your life somehow.”
“Well, to be fair, an alien invasion will tend to do that—”
Doyle shook his head. “No, that’s not what I mean. You know how a researcher will go into a pristine wilderness to observe with the best of intentions, but they always end up changing it in some way before they leave?”
“Yes. There’s a name for it that phenomenon, but I can’t think—”
“That’s the way I feel about you.”
“Like I’m a pristine wilderness? Well, how… flattering.”
“You’re not the wilderness.” Doyle paused to run both hands through his hair. “I’m not making much sense. Look, I get it. You’re mad at me. You have a right to be, and I should have admitted that days ago. But I’ve always had the best intentions for you. All of this”—he gestured around them—“is secondary to that. I don’t want you to change because of me. Sure, I want you to be smart, and I hope I gave you the tools to help you, but—”
“You’ve more than helped me,” Mina murmured. “I wouldn’t have made it without you.”
Doyle cleared his throat. “Okay, we can admit you were in a mess when I met you. But circumstances have been extreme.”
“No kidding.” Mina tried to make the words bite, but even sarcasm failed her at this point. She wanted Doyle to say what he was thinking. And if she distracted him, she wouldn’t get what she wanted.
“Back there,” he said, “the thought occurred to me that we have a real, fighting chance to defeat Condar. But…” Doyle looked uncomfortable, like the words had stuck in his throat.
Indeed, as far as Mina knew, he was in uncharted territory. He never spoke this openly about anything.
“We’ve never talked much about you before the invasion,” he said finally. His voice was deep, calm. “And that’s my fault, I know. I shut you out in the beginning. And then after I wanted to know more, we were separated.”
“Because you threw me out of your ship and sent me on my first skydiving adventure,” Mina said, unable to resist the jab. Then she smiled to soften it.
The corner of Doyle's mouth twitched in amusement. “Yes.”
He placed a hand on her cheek. It was warm and gentle. The gesture was uncharacteristically intimate and completely out of character for him. Mina almost stopped breathing. What was he trying to say?
He sighed. “I can’t take back the invasion, nor my part in it. I regret it now, more than you’ll ever know. And it’s because of you. I wish I had met you, and that I had just been an ordinary man. Not a hybrid, not a commander. Just met you as a human.”
Mina’s face flushed. Whatever she had been expecting, it certainly hadn’t been that confession. “And your comment about hybrids not being able to have children?” she asked. “How does that factor in?”
Doyle dropped his hand. Mina felt the loss immediately.
“I realized I didn’t know anything about your hopes and dreams before the invasion. And I want to know more.”
“Well, they didn’t exactly include children. Someday, maybe, but I had just been so busy with being, well, busy, that I hadn’t given it much thought.”
“Was there anyone in your life before?”
“You mean a man?” Mina couldn’t believe Doyle was asking this. She almost felt like she should check to see if he were feverish or delusional.
His expression was calm as he answered. “Yes.”
“No. No one important.” Now, it was Mina’s turn to feel awkward. Was he trying to tell her he couldn’t give her children? Because between the invasion and just surviving, she hadn’t given children any thought. It wasn’t a loss she lamented because she had never pined for it in the first place. Life would never be normal again. And she and Doyle weren’t— “What are you saying, Doyle?”
“That I regret us meeting like this.”
“I don’t.”
A look of surprise crossed his face.
Mina was a little surprised too. “I know I get angry with you, and sometimes your poor communication skills infuriate me to the point of insanity. There are things about you that I’m still coming to terms with. But if there’s anybody I want to spend the end of the world with, it’s you.”
Doyle blinked.
Mina’s face grew hot. She’d never even articulated those feelings to herself, let alone aloud. And she had just blurted them out to Doyle. She’d been so busy surviving that only lately had she even allowed herself to accept how reliant on him she had become.
Doyle was looking at her intently. For a moment, he looked on the verge of saying something else. Mina braced herself for more revelations.
But the warmth in his eyes changed and became calmer. He straightened, looking looked back down the hall. Mina cleared her throat.
He glanced sideways at her. “The hybrids are warriors, not meant for anything else. We’d have to find a way to make hybrids that could have children though. Or else they’ll die out.”
Mina couldn’t believe it—he was changing the subject. But she had pushed him well beyond his comfort zone, so she decided to follow his lead and let him off the hook. For now.
“And that’s what you want,” she said.
“It’s what you should want too. Without more hybrids and overwhelming numbers, I don’t know how else to defeat Condar. Not right now.”
Mina’s feet and back ached in the increased gravity. The air felt thin. She leaned against the wall, putting her hands on her knees to catch her breath. She didn’t have the energy for this conversation. For a few moments, she had forgotten everything except him. Now, as the conversation transitioned back to strategy, her heartache returned in full force. Mina gazed at the bandanna tied around her hand, a reminder of the people who had died only hours before.
“I’m sorry about your friends,” Doyle said. “I shouldn’t have brought up the other.”
Mina fought the tears that threatened to well up. Worn out and weary, she wouldn’t have the energy to fight them for long. She sniffed and turned back for the bunk room. She tried to smile at him. “Don’t be sorry about that. It makes me feel like there’s hope.”
“For what?”
“Things.”
Doyle walked beside her in companionable silence. That was one thing Mina had always liked about him—he knew when to be silent.
“Solomon was kind to me,” she said finally. “He was just trying to protect his family. In the end, he was killed just for being there.” Mina’s face grew hot for a different reason now, as she remembered her anger. “And I don’t see how creating more hybrids will make this situation better.”
“Condar won’t leave us alone here, Mina.”
“Is that your game, really? To create more hybrids and defeat Condar? Or will you take them somewhere else?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Because you mentioned once before about using the portal under the mountain to leave.”
“Which do you want?”
“I don’t know what I want. But it’s not about me, is it?”
“It can be.” Doyle put his hand on her arm, stopping her.
What did that mean? He was so confusing sometimes. Mina wanted to complain that he was giving her a choice about other people’s lives, but hadn’t given her a choice about her own.
She was tired, too tired to argue again. And she doubted she’d get through to him right now, anyway.
“No.” Mina shook him off and walked on. “I don’t want that kind of responsibility.”
When they arrived back at the bunk room, Mina found a bed not too far away from where Lincoln already slept. Doyle stayed just long enough to make sure everyone was accounted for, then left. Mina thought about stopping him. About telling him she was afraid. About asking him to stay.
And yet, she wanted to be alone. She didn’t want him to see her break apart. She turned to face the wall, covering herself with the blanket from her pack. Doyl
e had told her the pack was unnecessary, that she could leave it on the Nomad. But it was the only thing Mina could call her own even though Doyle had given it to her in the first place. She had felt awkward carrying it through the Factory corridors. Now, she was glad she’d brought it.
Eventually, she cried for her dead friends. For Emily and Solomon, for the other lodgers who had died. Then, without really knowing why, she cried for Doyle.
At some point, she heard him return. He paused at her bunk. Mina pretended to sleep but waited for him to call out her name.
He didn’t.
Doyle ached all over. His struggles with Calla, the Condarri, and the warships had left him weary and in more pain than he was willing to admit. Every step sent new tremors through his spine. And the increased gravity aboard the Factory intensified it until he wished he could crawl into a hole to sleep for days.
And his eyes. Something had happened to them while he was fighting the Condarri at the Lodge, and again when he was fighting the ships. His eyes had burned until he thought they would melt out of his head. The pain had been so intense by the time the aether departed that Doyle thought he would pass out. But when he’d let go of the aether, it had let go of him. Using it all the time was going to take practice.
But maybe he wouldn’t have to rely on it entirely.
Getting into the labs meant they might have a chance to win this war. It would take time, but Doyle could wait. The humans had concerns. He didn’t share them. Adding to the current hybrid ranks would put the odds in their favor.
He didn’t know why the adarria had been keeping him out. They were another puzzle that grew more complicated every time he considered it. And what Lincoln had said nagged at him. Could the adarria be separated from Condar?
A day ago, Doyle would have said no. But after seeing the free adarria in the underground chamber, his entire understanding of them was in question.
He was still surprised they had marked Mina. Had he made the right decision? Doyle had not doubted himself, not in the moment. But after… Mina was still angry with him. She had a right to be. Funny thing about rights—he’d never considered anyone’s, least of all a human’s, until he met Mina.