by Hanna, K. T.
Mathur nods, his hands sorting all of his tools back into their places against the wall. “That girl is determined to find a way to fix everyone and everything.”
“And if there isn’t, she’ll barrel on ahead and find one.” Dom smiles at the thought, though worry nags at the back of his mind.
Mathur clears his throat and hesitates a moment. “She is a special girl, Dom. You should keep her safe.”
“I plan to. I’m never going to put her in that much danger again. I owe her—”
But Mathur interrupts. “Do not owe her. Owing is never something you should build a relationship on.”
Dom laughs. “We don’t have a relationship.” But even as he says the words, he knows they’re wrong. “We don’t have that sort of relationship,” he amends.
Mathur smiles. “Perhaps not, but you have an amazing bond and synchronicity. Do not ruin it by trying to change it in any way. Let what you have be because it works for both your needs.”
“Cryptic.” Dom nods and re-crosses his arms as Thirty-Five starts to stir.
Mathur taps the domino on the arm and elicits an almost immediate response. “How are you feeling?”
The domino moves its head from side to side and stretches its arms out. “Better. Not so…off.”
Dom cringes as the metallic clang resonates through the room. He nods at Mathur and leaves, hoping the man will figure out a way to make that noise more like a real voice.
Ever since Sai received the dream-message that ended with Dom rushing through the bowels of Alpha, Dom is extra-careful. He makes his way through the practically deserted hallways toward the maintenance levels in order to check on sensitive areas. Those areas someone might sabotage. They can’t afford the Damascus tracking their fleet. If they fulfill their mission and wipe out the Exiled, the people of the GNW Protected Conglomerate are doomed.
He’s not found anything since the initial one, and he knows the odds of finding something are very low considering they’re back in the middle of nowhere and haven’t had any attacks on Alpha since. Still, he feels a need to be cautious, just in case.
The wheel wells are safe and free from tampering. In fact, the motor side of the Mobile is perfectly maintained. Other repairs might utilize used parts, but the engines are of paramount importance. Sometimes he has a strange feeling in his gut when he’s finished with one of his inspections. Maybe it’s relief at finding everything in order, but sometimes he could swear he wanted to find something wrong. Because something wrong would mean the need to spring into action. Sitting around allows too many quiet moments when the darkness starts weaving itself back into his thoughts. Poisoning his decisions.
The sheer inaction of waiting for Kayde to get Ebony ready for distribution grates on Dom’s nerves. He’s been over all the routes to the detainment cells in Central in his head, and he knows he can’t possibly help Bastian, but sitting around and waiting isn’t helping keep the parasite at bay either. It nags and pushes him, trying to worm its way in through his impatience. When it comes down to it, Dom’s guilt at not having prepared for an ambush on Bastian weighs on him.
Dom could definitely make his way into the compound and work his way through the facility and probably get right next to Bastian. But with the amount of security that closed around his friend when he was captured? There’s no way he could get them both out of there alive.
Dom sighs and scuffs his foot against the floor as he heads back to the lab. This lack of freedom, of forward momentum, is eating at him.
“Dom?”
Sai’s voice startles him, and for a split second he loses control of the human visage he maintains so easily. Just a little, enough to sharpen the contours of his body and face. But she doesn’t seem fazed. She never does.
“Sai.” He nods at her and continues to walk. “Were you looking for me?”
She glances around her, cheeks flushed. “I was. It’s just…” She bites her bottom lip, the way she always does when something is troubling her. A strand of her black hair is twisted around one of her fingers, and she tugs gently against her head as if unaware of it at all.
“Training room?” he asks her, pausing. It’s not like he can do much to help with the others while Mathur is using his healing anyway. Harassing Kayde for a timeline will just irritate the scientist.
Sai grins, and her shoulders move that tiny bit, like they do every time she feels relief. Sometimes, like now, her brow will stay scrunched up in thought as she tries to sort through her overactive brain. Dom leads the way in silence, knowing she’ll speak when they get there. He wonders if she knows just how much she holds him together.
“Well?” he asks, taking up his habitual pose against a wall, one leg bent so his foot rests against it. One of the students once whispered that he stood that way to be cool. He knows because he overheard it, like he overhears a lot of things people don’t realize—things they say out loud as well as in their heads. In truth, it’s his favorite position because it gives him leverage to phase, spring into action, or kick by angling off the wall. But others don’t need to know that. He’s fairly sure Sai would understand his reasoning, and after all, that’s all that really matters to him.
For others, he doesn’t mind appearing to be “cool.”
“I was thinking.”
“Which you seem to do fairly often.” She blushes and looks away. His tendency to quip at people is a bad habit courtesy of Bastian. Dom makes a mental note to tone it down…again. “Sorry.”
“No, I’m just being sensitive.” She smiles, making her whole face light up. “Anyway, when you saved me and tapped into my own healing, you gave me this edge of power. Mathur’s prosthetic never needed the precision healing that my graft has.” She takes a breath, and he can almost see the thoughts linking together as she gathers them. “My synaptic connections, the joints where the adrium melds into me, weren’t only encouraged by my surgeon, but by myself—frequently. And your boost, this ability you have to add psionic strength to mine, to magnify it…we have to be able to use that, right?”
Dom nods slowly. “Do you mean linking the other dominos with healers as a sort of battery?”
“Kind of?” She scrunches her face up in thought, and Dom fights the impulse to laugh at how it distorts her expression. “More like—if you can bolster healing, can’t you bolster other psionic energies?”
Dom runs the idea through his mind. Hasn’t his own ability to self-heal been slightly enhanced since he combined wills with Sai to save her? Perhaps. It’s a solid idea. A good one.
He realizes he’s been mulling this over a little too long, from the way the hesitance lingers in her eyes. So he smiles in an attempt to soften the wait. “Sorry. This time I was thinking. It makes sense to start with what we know.”
“What we…” Sai smiles, full force again. It’s not a whimsical smile, but more of a spring-into-action expression. “You mean help Mathur direct the dominos’ abilities inward because you can keep yourself intact.” She starts moving toward the labs, and he falls into step with her.
Dom nods, glad they figured out what was missing. While he can heal himself to a certain extent, he can’t heal others without access to their own abilities. Why should Mathur be doing all the work if the dominos can help?
“You ready?” She’s watching him, her eyes intense, like she’s trying to see through him. Her concern for him as a person has always been refreshing.
He nods. “I’m just thinking over any other applications for this. It has to have endless possibilities.”
She frowns this time. “I’m not sure—there could be snags we run into. They may not be able to do what you can do.” She steps into the lab, Dom following her closely. “After all you’re…unique.” The grin is sweet, a wistful tone to her voice.
Dom smiles in return and is about to speak when Mathur does instead.
“What is it they may not be able to do?” The old man doesn’t look up from the table where he works, but the inflection makes it clear he could hear them
long before they entered the room.
“Link and help boost psionic power.” Dom positions himself in sight of the main entrance to the room, eyes flitting between the occupants and the door.
Mathur raises an eyebrow. “Link? Like how you did with Sai when she was injured?”
Sai nods, her smile spreading, reaching her eyes. Her enthusiasm is catching. “If Dom could act as a battery for me, what’s to say they can’t? What’s to say that they can’t heal or at least help heal themselves even to the small amount Dom can without someone to guide them? It would be much faster for you.”
Dom watches his maker, still fiddling with something he can’t see, and moves closer to watch. While actually being a domino makes him an expert in some of the ways they function, it doesn’t give him any insight into how these are different, how they were created. He may understand the concept, but not the practice.
Mathur straightens and Thirty-Five blinks as it sits up, focusing on each of the room’s occupants in turn. The eyes flicker through a rainbow of colors for a moment, a slight hum whirring with them until they stop on a strange sort of silver with an underlying blue hue. Dom watches, wondering if his own have a backing color or not.
“I was originally not aware of Dom’s ability to help you. It was not specifically built into his makeup, but that does not mean it is not there.” Mathur pauses and watches Thirty-Five for a short time before continuing. “I cannot be certain that this capability is also built into the others. They did not follow my design correctly, and the melding of the human and alien halves is not as seamless as with Dom.”
“But there’s a chance?” Sai pushes the point, her smile gone.
“There is always a chance, Sai.” Mathur’s gaze bores into Sai, and Dom wonders what he’s missing out of this conversation.
She relaxes. “Then we try—or you do. It has to be you, Dom. I may have thought of this, but the initial instruction has to be you.”
“If they cannot access the same healing channels as Dom, it will be moot.”
Sai nods. “I have training to get to. Let me know how it goes?”
Mathur focuses on her for a moment. “Of course.” As she leaves the room, he turns to Dom. “Then we try.” The scientist looks around and motions Dom to the far end. “You take Twenty-Seven. I still have work to do with Thirty-Five.” Dom hesitates but moves where he is told. While he distinctly remembers connecting with Sai after her accident, and accessing his own healing centers before that, he’s hesitant to try it in a foreign mind.
Twenty-Seven sits on a gurney, back straight, legs switching through several different adjustments. Its eyes focus on Dom, such a pale silver that they’re almost clear, and he clears his throat. “You doing okay?
Twenty-Seven blinks, mimicking the human action with perfection. “I am…doing well.” Its voice doesn’t grate as much as Thirty-Five’s. There are human qualities enhanced by alien overtones. It’s really quite melodic.
Dom nods and takes Twenty-Seven’s hands in his own. “Close your eyes and empty your mind,” he murmurs and does the same himself. It’s easier to just show them instead of instructing them—to lead by example. Until now, that human adage has never made complete sense to Dom.
Twenty-Seven’s mind is sharp. It’s immediately obvious to Dom that its slowness of speech doesn’t come from a dull mind, but from a lack of interaction with people who talk to it as a person. Which would include Dom. He cringes momentarily before concentrating on the task at hand.
Taking his cue from Sai’s mind, Dom begins to show his pupil how to center its mind. All dominos can do it as a reflex, but in order to see if it can access the same minute healing ability that Dom has, it needs to be deliberate so he can help direct it.
Twenty-Seven follows directions well, mimicking what Dom demonstrates, right down to the dissembling of the intricate walls that make up a domino mind, an inbuilt psionic protection. Dom examines it for his own reasons as he teaches his sibling. Because the construction is slightly different, maybe there’s something he can learn for himself to help keep the parasite out of his mind.
Twenty-Seven grasps the concepts easily and is reinforcing and adjusting its own wards in minutes. Dom takes pain-staking measures to make sure the domino knows where its alien DNA melds with its human side.
He frowns as he realizes their center is a bit off; it’s not exactly where Dom’s is. The healing point is slightly removed, in a more out-of-the-way place, and Dom slows his instruction to get a handle on how to approach it.
There’s this raw splotch sort of off to the left side of Twenty-Seven’s mind. It’s larger than Dom’s own healing center and seems to be bleeding out in a way familiar to how the parasite works. Even as he gathers his will to show Twenty-Seven just how to go about pulling it back, healing the surrounding area and clearing its mind, it strikes Dom as how dangerous being a domino is without knowing to use their healing ability.
And then it dawns on him. He shows his student how to properly infuse a trickle of psionic healing power in his genetic makeup to keep the parasite at bay and build its own human-alien connections.
“I think…” he says softly, “I believe that the only thing holding the parasite at bay is the innate healing from the psionic DNA you chose to create in us, Mathur.”
He can feel the heat of Mathur’s gaze on him. “That is what changed things? The strain of DNA?”
Dom nods ever so slightly, most of his attention still intent on guiding his pupil through the rest of the parasite clean-up. He can feel the resistance from the alien portion even through the connection. It sends a shiver through him.
He withdraws from Twenty-Seven’s head and, still holding its hand, waits for it to come out of the light trance. Those clear silver eyes blink at him, recognition and thanks expressed clearly. “Thank you.”
Dom shakes his head. “It’s partially our fault this happened. You’re all…” He pauses. “We’re all in this together.” Dom doesn’t try to smile. From people’s reactions, he hasn’t quite got it right yet, and this sense of camaraderie he suddenly feels for his siblings is something he doesn’t want to spoil.
Twenty-Seven studies him for a few seconds before nodding slowly. “We are. We all are. I can show someone now. We should be able to…” It pauses for a second, as if searching for how to phrase what it wants to say. “To…expedite the process.”
The offer isn’t a strange one in the least. A bit younger, slightly less refined, but they’re essentially what Dom is. It’s mildly disturbing, but he’s not sure when the GNW stopped attributing them sentience. “Excellent. Next one for you, and next one for me. Once everyone understands how the process works, you have a lot of intensive self-healing to follow through on. Adrium makes us strong, but in this case it is our biggest weakness if left unchecked.”
Twenty-Seven nods and attempts a smile that Dom finds far more friendly than his own. “It was consuming us.”
Dom nods, disliking the suddenly heavy ringing in his head, as if his own parasite heard and wants to talk about it.
The sooner Mason’s salvage team returns, the sooner he can grab Sai and begin the Ebony distribution.
The day stretches on. Probably because they haven’t stopped in so many hours, he’s lost track of it. It’s not like Dom needs sleep, but a break every now and again to get his bearings is always a good thing. They don’t have the time for it. Twenty-Seven has already guided several dominos through the process, as has Dom. Those who’ve been guided don’t always have the confidence to show others, but they stand close by to help just in case.
Sai has been working non-stop since she came back from her training group. Already tired when she arrived, Dom keeps an eye on her out of habit. She seems worn, but determined, as usual.
For his own part, Dom has had several difficult cases. The parasite leaches differently in each of the dominos. So far, not one has been too far gone—barely. Sixty-Three was a close call, but with some rest and several more assisted
sessions, it should be fine in the long run.
Dom never realized quite how extreme the case of the parasite in the adrium was. His own healing was mostly automatic until the failed wipe the GNW performed last time. The speed with which the parasite attacked him was painful and difficult to control, but it seems that same wipe affected all of his siblings as well. Only they didn’t know how to deal with it or even what it was.
Forty-Three is his last patient, and an oddly heavy sensation settles in Dom’s stomach as he finishes up. Time weighs on him, but if they don’t get this done, they lose their best shot at beating the Damascus. He withdraws after being certain his pupil has the process under wraps and glances over at Sai.
Hip jutted out to brace herself against the steel table in front of her, she looks like she’s only still awake through sheer willpower.
They’re done. All forty-eight of the remaining dominos understand how to reach inside themselves and heal the pathways left by the internal parasite trying to worm its way into control. Even Marlene came in for a period of time. The trickle of power that she has is almost insignificant, but learning some techniques has helped her aide Jeffries.
He watches Sai, the stubborn set of her jaw, the hair that’s come out of the ponytail she usually wears, the barely visible line of shorter hair from her own synaptic reinforcement. Her determination helps feed him better than any parasite could hope. She’s the reason he’s become so human, and so she’s the reason he has to stay that way.
Finally, she’s done and reaches out a hand to steady herself. He makes it to her side in three purposeful strides. “Enough,” he whispers in her ear as he reaches down to scoop her up. She’s not a cooperative person by nature, but being caught by surprise gives him some advantage. Plus, sometimes he likes to imagine she likes it if he carries her. Just him.
“You should have been in bed hours ago.” He speaks softly, and she rests against his chest. It feels good to carry her warmth with him, to hold someone so tangible.
“Sorry,” she whispers so softly no one but a domino would have heard.