Aelyx ignored the jab. “Did you really miss your transport?”
Instead of responding, Troy shoved half the contents of a nutrient pack into his mouth.
“Um,” Cara said, “he sort of missed it accidentally on purpose.”
Of course he did. Humans. “Well, I suggest you don’t miss it again. The Patriots think you’re being detained against your will, and my crisis communications specialist wants you to set the record straight.”
“Your crisis communications specialist?” Cara said.
“Don’t ask.”
“No worries,” Troy said. “If I miss my ship again, I might as well stay here, because my CO will put his boot down my throat.”
“Then I’ll make sure you forget,” Cara said, poking her brother in the arm.
Troy flicked the side of her head, but something poignant and bittersweet passed between them. It only lasted an instant, but Aelyx noticed. Until now, he hadn’t realized the intensity of their sibling bond, and he suddenly understood why Troy had “accidentally on purpose” missed his transport home. Cara must have been struggling to adjust to Aegis life more than she’d let on during her nightly calls. She was keeping things from him, just like he’d hidden the latest attacks from her.
The knowledge put a damper on the rest of their conversation, and after they disconnected, Aelyx felt the need to do more. He kept imagining how Cara would feel when her brother left on the next transport. Aelyx couldn’t be there to comfort her, but if he hurried, he might be able to send her a package on the same ship that would carry Troy to Earth. That way, she’d have something from home to soften the blow.
But what? Flowers wouldn’t make it past customs and Cara’s nutrition adviser wouldn’t let her have chocolate. Human females loved faceted rocks set into jewelry, but the practice was so absurd that Aelyx hated to patronize it. He needed a gift that would speak to the heart. Unfortunately, he had no experience in that area.
Once again, he decided to ask David for advice.
He stepped into the hall, finding the penthouse still and silent with nothing illuminating the darkness but a sliver of light leaking beneath the door to David’s room. Avoiding the creakiest floorboards, Aelyx crept down the hallway and knocked softly on David’s door. When he didn’t respond, Aelyx knocked again.
Nothing.
“David?” Aelyx whispered, turning the knob and slowly stepping inside. “Are you awake?” He scanned the room, taking in the neatly made bed, wooden dresser covered in sports magazines and loose change, and a small pile of dirty laundry on the floor. But no David.
Aelyx was about to leave when a clink sounded from the far end of the room, drawing his eye to the bathroom door, which stood slightly ajar. Through the few inches of open space, Aelyx could see part of David’s reflection in the bathroom mirror. Under any other circumstance, Aelyx would have respected the boy’s privacy and left, but what he saw in the mirror made his eyes widen and rooted his feet to the floor.
Below the hem of David’s T-shirt sleeve, a blue elastic band tightly encircled his bicep. Lower, in the bend of his arm, David sank a hypodermic needle into his vein and pressed the plunger with his thumb. Milky fluid disappeared from the vial into his arm, and David tightened his fist, giving a hiss of pain.
Aelyx was no stranger to injectables—he’d used nutrition supplements many times on Earth before he’d learned to tolerate the local food. The act of self-administering medication didn’t shock him in the least. What Aelyx found alarming was the fact that David had used a L’eihr injectable. There was no mistaking the short, sleek design, nor the symbols printed in gray on the vial.
Why was David using L’eihr medication, and where had he gotten it?
When David finished, he removed the blue elastic band and rubbed his arm to restore circulation. Then he opened the door and met Aelyx with the unmistakable open-mouthed expression of a person caught doing something wrong. They both stood there for a moment, staring at the other, David clearly calculating how much Aelyx had seen and grappling for a way to explain it.
Aelyx didn’t know why, but he felt the need to disclaim, “I knocked twice, but you didn’t answer.”
“Uh, yeah.” David kneaded his arm, his gaze flicking up and down in a warning that a lie would follow. “Sorry about that. I should’ve warned you…I’ve got diabetes, so, you know…injections and stuff. It sucks.” He quirked a smile and laughed without humor. “I’ve got track marks, but I promise I’m not a junkie.”
David might’ve had diabetes, but humans dispensed their own medicines for that. He wouldn’t need a L’eihr syringe to inject insulin. Aelyx liked David—had come to think of him as a friend—but he couldn’t risk his or Syrine’s safety by turning a blind eye to what he’d discovered.
“I’m going to give you one chance to explain,” Aelyx said. “Because I owe you my life. But if you lie to me again, the next person I talk to will be Colonel Rutter.” He tried to sound nonthreatening, but he meant every word. “Do you understand?”
David blanched. It was the first time Aelyx had seen him show weakness. A few seconds passed before he nodded. “Can you keep a secret?”
“Depends on the secret.”
“This job,” David said as he moved past Aelyx to shut the bedroom door, “of protecting L’eihrs? It comes with perks. But no one can find out, especially not my CO or Colonel Rutter. At best, they’d stick me behind a desk. At worst, they’d give me a medical discharge.”
Aelyx folded his arms and kept some distance between them. “Why?”
“I have a genetic disorder,” David said. “It’s degenerative and incurable. My dad had it, too.”
“Had it?”
“He died when I was a kid.”
“Oh.” Aelyx knew what that kind of loss could do to humans. He offered a sympathetic nod. “I’m sorry.”
“Thanks.” David took a seat at the foot of his bed and gazed at his folded hands as he spoke. “I always knew I was a carrier, but I hoped the disease would skip over me like it did with my grandpa. But then I started showing symptoms a couple years ago.” He glanced up at Aelyx, delivering an urgent look. “The military doesn’t know. I went to private doctors for all my treatments, because I didn’t want a discharge. I know it sounds stupid, but I kept thinking I could beat this.”
“It’s not stupid,” Aelyx said. His instincts told him David was being honest, and he felt a compassionate tug for the boy. “Sometimes there’s power in positive thinking.”
“And even greater power in L’eihr drugs.”
Now Aelyx understood what David meant about receiving perks. “What are you taking?”
“Honestly, I don’t know.” David studied the inside crook of his elbow, where his most recent wound had begun to scab over. “It’s something experimental. Diseases like mine don’t exist for you guys because of breeding, or something like that.”
“Selective reproduction,” Aelyx said. “Genetic disorders died out thousands of years ago, because the people carrying those anomalies weren’t permitted to pass on their DNA.” He’d always considered it a logical practice, but it occurred to Aelyx that David wouldn’t be alive if his ancestors had been banned from reproducing.
“Whatever’s in this stuff makes me feel like Superman.” When David glanced up again, his face was full of optimism. “I think it’s working.”
Aelyx hoped so. But if David had tried so hard to hide his disease, how did a L’eihr discover it, and who’d acquired the drugs from the transport?
David must have seen the question on Aelyx’s face. “You’re wondering how I got the meds,” he said.
“And who gave them to you.” Frankly, Aelyx didn’t know many L’eihrs who cared enough about humans to put forth the effort.
“I met one of your leaders when he came here for a World Trade meeting,” David said. “Young guy—looked kind of like you, but taller. Real friendly. He’s crazy about humans.”
A young male member of The Way? There was o
nly one possibility and Aelyx didn’t like it. “Jaxen?”
“Yeah,” David said, wrinkling his forehead. “That sounds familiar. You know him?”
“Not really.” Just well enough to distrust any drugs he would give me. But as much as Aelyx wanted to warn David, speaking against The Way was treason—punishable by death. Besides, if David’s condition was fatal, the experimental medication couldn’t make it much worse.
“Anyway,” David said, “he was real observant. I couldn’t hide anything from him. I had the shakes one day and he noticed.” David held up a hand in demonstration, making his palm tremble. “The guy came right out and asked what disease I had. I denied it at first, but when he said he could help me, I came clean.”
“He must have liked you.” Or wanted something.
David shrugged. “I guess so. He asked if I was interested in joining your colony.”
“And are you?”
“I’m thinking about it,” David said. “I lost my mom last winter, and I don’t have any brothers or sisters, so there’s not much keeping me here.”
Aelyx sat down beside him. “I hope you’ll go.”
“Yeah?” David seemed pleased to hear it. “So we’re cool?”
“Completely.”
“And we can keep this between us?”
“Yes and no,” Aelyx admitted. “I’ll try to control my thoughts, but I can only hide so much during Silent Speech.”
“But you can’t silent-talk to Colonel Rutter or my CO, right?”
“Right.”
“Then I’ll be okay.”
For the next few beats, they sat in awkward silence, both fidgeting with their hands and staring at their boots. Finally, David cleared his throat and forced a smile. “So, did you need something?”
Aelyx raised one brow in question.
“When you came in here,” David said with a teasing grin, “and caught me shooting up.”
Oh, right. He’d wanted advice on what to send Cara on the next transport. It seemed so trivial now, compared to David’s troubles. “It’s nothing.”
“Out with it.” David bounced up from the bed and crossed the room to lean against his dresser. “It’s about Cara, right?”
“How’d you know?”
Another shrug. “You only come to me with girl problems. I don’t know why you think I’ve got all the answers, though. It’s been a long time for me, my friend.”
“A long time since…?”
“I got laid.” He laughed casually, not the least bit embarrassed to discuss something so intimate. “I should be asking you for tips.”
David’s unabashed honesty gave Aelyx the confidence to admit his lack of experience. “My tips wouldn’t get you far. I’ve never…well…” He felt his face heating. “You know.”
David’s blond brows shot up his forehead. “Never? Not even with Cara?”
Aelyx shook his head. “She said it was too soon.”
“Ouch.” David sucked in a sharp breath while pushing off the dresser, then clapped Aelyx on the arm. “Tough break, man. But she’s got to be crazy about you. Otherwise she wouldn’t have left Earth, right?”
“I’m worried she’s having second thoughts,” Aelyx confided. “I want to send something to make her feel better.”
“Let me guess—you came to me for gift ideas?”
“Got any?”
“That’s the thing,” David said. “Girls like stuff that comes from the heart—something only you can give them. It has to be personal. I can’t tell you what to buy, or she won’t think it’s romantic.”
Aelyx considered that. Something only I can give her…
“Maybe a mushy letter,” David suggested. “Or glue your picture in a locket so she can wear it over her heart, or some crap like that. Whatever makes her feel closer to you.”
That gave Aelyx an idea, and he found himself smiling when he imagined Cara’s reaction. She would love it. More importantly, he hadn’t needed David to tell him what to send. “I know just the thing.”
Chapter Ten
Cara made several key discoveries over the next week, mostly involving her brother. She learned the reason he loved those nasty cabbage-flavored protein packets was because they reminded him of sauerkraut, which he’d grown fond of during a brief assignment in Germany. During a game of truth or dare, Troy confided that a servicewoman called Melanie Maloney had broken his heart, and that he’d lost his best friend in an ambush two years ago. He showed Cara the scar on his left calf from a friendly fire incident he’d never told Mom and Dad about, and he confessed to watching The Muppet Christmas Carol when he was homesick during basic training.
It was like Troy had this whole other life, and she’d never known him until now. Cara spent every spare minute glued to her brother’s side. She’d even convinced Elle to let Troy bunk with them for his last week on L’eihr. His snoring kept them awake, but Cara didn’t mind. Who needed sleep?
At that moment, he slept flat on his back with one arm hugging a pillow against his chest and the other arm resting beneath his head where the pillow belonged. His metal dog tags hung over his cot and stirred with the breeze from the open window, creating a light tinkle.
God, she was going to miss him.
Cara tried reminding herself that she could go home to visit every year, but twelve months seemed like forever with multiple galaxies stretched between them. She wished they could get back all the time they’d wasted on Earth, holed up in their bedrooms watching Internet videos or texting friends who hadn’t lasted beyond the school year.
The room alarm interrupted her moping in three long, buzzing bursts that rattled her teeth and vibrated the furniture. Cara flipped back the covers and stood, then tugged Elle’s arm. The alarm wouldn’t stop until they’d both scanned their nano-chips and reported awake. Troy didn’t have a chip, so he grumbled a curse and stayed beneath his blankets, scratching himself like a typical guy.
Elle thrust her wrist beneath the scanner affixed near the door, and in response, the system replied in L’eihr, “Elyx’a of the first Aegis, you have no notifications.”
Cara followed suit, expecting to hear the same message in English. “Cah-ra Sweeney,” the computer said, “return after your morning meal and await further instructions.”
Cara made it halfway back to her bunk before she absorbed the message. “Wait. What?” She’d never had a notification before. She turned to Elle, who didn’t appear to understand it, either.
“That’s odd.” Elle pulled off her nightshirt without a care for the male in the room. “But I wouldn’t worry. It’s probably an administrative matter.”
“Maybe I’m getting a new com-sphere,” Cara said. Her transmissions were getting through to her parents and Aelyx, but she kept missing alerts, like the emergency assembly the headmaster had called last week. She’d reported the issue to the devices department, who in turn had promised to look into it.
“I hate to leave you alone, but I have to attend classes.” Elle unfastened her ponytail and ran a comb through her hair. “Troy, can you stay with her today?”
Troy pushed onto his elbows and glanced across the room, then went slack-jawed at the sight of Elle’s bare chest. “Holy God!” he shouted, blocking his view with one hand. “You could’ve warned me!”
Elle laughed and refastened her hair at the nape of her neck. “You humans are amusing. Such a prudish view of your own bodies.”
He peeked through his fingers. “Are you saying it wouldn’t bug you if I strutted around here buck naked?”
“Whoa.” Cara held up one finger. “It would bother me!”
“Go ahead.” Elle swept a permissive hand toward Troy’s cot. “Yours wouldn’t be the first male reproductive organ I’ve seen. They all look the same to me.”
Troy threw a pillow on his lap while trying not to ogle Elle’s boobs. “I’d better stay put for a few minutes.”
Gross. This was why siblings shouldn’t share a room. Cara gathered a towel and a clean unif
orm, deciding to make a run for the showers before she saw something that would scar her for life. But when she reached the communal washroom, she wished she’d stayed behind.
“Look,” Dahla said in flawless English, glancing at Cara from the enzyme mouth-washing station. “It’s our resident chimpanzee.”
Odom spat his enzyme rinse into the sink and jutted out his bottom lip, then made a weird growling noise in his misinterpretation of monkey chatter.
Refusing to let them intimidate her, Cara strode toward the shower. “Chimps don’t sound like that. And besides, you have just as much of their DNA as I do.” She glared at Dahla and flashed her best f-you grin. “Sister.”
The girl’s eyes turned to slits. In one massive step, she blocked Cara’s way until they stood toe-to-toe. “A handful of sacred mud doesn’t make us sisters. You’re an insect, and when the alliance fails, no one will even notice the extinction of your race.”
“Don’t you mean our race?” Cara asked sweetly. “You know, since your ancestors are from Earth.”
Dahla’s hands clenched, but Odom pulled her aside and communicated something in Silent Speech, probably a warning that the consequences of a fistfight weren’t worth it. The two gave her the L’eihr middle finger and stomped away.
When Cara had finished washing, she returned to her room, pleased to find Troy alone and fully clothed, lacing up his combat boots.
“I’m starved. You ready?” Troy patted his belly. “By the way, you missed a call from Mom. She said Tori’s going to sneak away tomorrow to talk to you.”
“Really?” Cara perked up as they made their way toward the cafeteria. It had been too long since she’d heard her best friend’s voice.
“Alex called, too,” Troy said with an eye roll. “I told him to get a life.”
“You’d better be joking.”
“Nope. When you didn’t answer your sphere, he tried mine.” Troy led the way inside the dining hall and grabbed a tray. “Total stalker.”
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