by Jenn Burke
He’d taken a class on etiquette back at the Academy. It had been the only class he failed, and looking back, it had been a deliberate slight on his part. He’d bucked the system because manners meant nothing to the son of a disabled mechanic and a woman with a disease only the rich were vaccinated against. Credits didn’t drop into the hands of the polite. Neither did food, medicine or shelter.
“I should not have to explain diagnostic process to you, Fixer.”
Qek’s reasonable tone grated—not because she was right, because she didn’t sound emotional enough. Felix knew that if he turned around, he would see the strain in her face. Qek’s features had not wrinkled into a smile in days, and her clicks held only the regular cadence of thought.
And she had more than one reason for concern, didn’t she?
Were her clicks slower? Her skin paler? Her attitude more reserved? He hadn’t asked after her health the entire time they’d been planetside—less than an ashushk week, more than a Standard week. Had Rhyniche levied Zed’s sentence in ashie or human time?
He couldn’t remember.
With another soft growl, Felix constrained the urge to break something, anything. Several things. Anything marked with an AEF logo. Ass-wipes. They hadn’t left yet, but neither had they intervened further.
Felix rocked his head back and forward so that his forehead smacked against the bubble. White light flared behind his lids—because, like a coward, he’d closed his eyes—and pain lanced down the sides of his face. His teeth rattled.
“Ow,” he muttered, opening his eyes to a pattern of dancing spots. “This shit is harder than it looks.”
“Fixer.”
Felix peered sideways at Qek and frowned at the visible concern in her large, unblinking eyes. He pushed off the wall. “I gotta go make sure Zed hasn’t Zoned in the tub.” A monitor would alert half the island if Zed tried to breathe water, but there were no fail-safes against cooling water and pruning skin.
Halfway to the bathroom door, Felix turned back. Qek had taken his station by the bubble wall and it seemed she saw as little as he always did, morning mist notwithstanding.
“Qek.”
She glanced up.
“I…” I’m sorry for being such an ass. Except he wasn’t sorry, and he didn’t know how to be anything else but an ass. Felix drew in a deep and careful breath. “How are you doing?”
Qek tipped her head in a very human gesture. “Are you inquiring after my health?”
“Um, yeah.” Felix twirled a hand uselessly at his side. How did you ask someone if they felt as though they might suddenly…change? Outside of shared interest in spaceflight tech—any tech—he really didn’t know much about the ashushk culture.
“Will you know?” he asked quietly.
Thankfully, Qek did not ask him to clarify his question. “There is not a lot of data available on the gendering process. Much of it is…” Her hesitation was uncharacteristic and worrying. “Conjecture. Like your myths and legends.”
“That makes no sense.”
“Given that we as a species are so curious?”
“Yeah.” Ashushk curiosity was legend, hence their propensity for scientific discovery. Their agile brains were capable of thought processes even bio-interfaced humans could not match, but all that power would be wasted without the imagination to use it. So why did they have so little data available on the gendering process?
“Every culture has its mysteries. This is ours. Gendering is…” Another odd pause. “We do not have a religion, but the procreation of our species is considered a sacred covenant.”
“Covenant.” As always, Qek had chosen the perfect word. But nothing she had said truly answered Felix’s question. “How much time do we have?”
He had not accepted the fact he would lose Zed. He would not accept losing two friends. Could not.
“I do not know.”
“Can you leave, if you feel something?”
“I do not know.”
“Would it be safer for you aboard the Chaos?”
“My place is here with my friends.”
Felix wished he’d asked to see those databases, that small amount of information it had probably taken Qek minutes to absorb. Two months ago, this would have been a puzzle they’d tackle together. He wiped his right hand on his pants, smart fiber tickling his sweaty palm, then held it out to Qek, unsure how to initiate the contact she sometimes gave—sure he’d botched it several times over the past few weeks.
Qek’s smooth palm slid along his. How odd that he invited a touch from the one member of his crew least inclined to give it. Felix closed his fingers around Qek’s hand in a brief clasp. “I can’t remember if I thanked you.”
“Your gratitude was never in question.”
Felix let his hand dangle at his side again, where his fingers sought loose threads and found none. His pants were too new. “Come find me if…Don’t let it happen. Don’t let them take you away…” Fuck. What if he was encouraging Qek to turn down the ultimate honor?
Qek saved him from further dithering. “If I can, I will let you know when I need to go.”
A sigh gusted out of him and his shoulders drooped as if they had lost their only support. “Good. Okay…good.”
See, he could not be an asshole for five minutes a day.
He found Zed dressed and staring at himself in the mirror. His posture had the quiet stillness of an empty Zone. “No mist in there, babe.” Felix curled his arm around Zed’s and guided him away from the reflection of himself. A man could go insane looking into his own eyes and Zed had enough fucking troubles.
Zed followed him docilely enough, a small mercy. Felix didn’t know if Zed worked at keeping himself offline, or if the lack of stress played a part. Not having to Zone in order to keep his crew safe. The inhibitor had helped—Zed seemed more lucid when awake, and the amount of sleep he was getting could only be good for him. But he still Zoned, and when he did, he dropped deeply into the altered state and stayed there for longer than a handful of minutes. When he emerged, his headaches were clearly evident. Felix could almost feel them.
He hadn’t understood how fewer, deeper Zones could slow the degradation, not when Zed was in so much pain, but the AEF visit had changed all of that. Zed’s frightening display of skill and agility proved he was still very much online in some respects. Still dangerous. Felix had almost taken it as a good sign until afterward, when Rhyniche shared the news that the inhibitor no longer had any effect. The active Zone had flipped another switch to the off position.
Zed stopped moving when Felix stopped prompting, and Felix swallowed a sudden rush of anger. It burned his throat and dropped back to his gut where the rocks ground together, churning, breaking down, abrading him from the inside. For a second, he wanted to smack his fist into the side of Zed’s skull. Wake up, damn it! His fingers itched and curled, and a fist formed. Felix knocked it into his thigh, hard enough to leave a bruise.
It wasn’t the first.
“Felix Ingesson.”
Snapping his chin up, Felix looked into Zed’s eyes and saw he had returned. “Welcome back,” he said, words stretched tight.
Zed’s brows twitched together and Felix knew he fought another upsurge in the constant ache gripping his skull. He reached up to smooth away the furrow marring Zed’s forehead and then stroked his cheek. Inside his gut—his chest—the rocks rumbled toward an avalanche.
*
“Secondary testing is complete.”
Thank every fucking deity. And their children. And damn the ashushk for having such inscrutable features. Rhyniche appeared thoughtful in the vague way of its species, however, and the gentle cadence of clicks indicated it had more to say. Felix gathered the shreds of his patience and then simply gripped his knees, fingers digging into the flesh on each side of the bone. The pain focused him and distracted him from the near constant need to break things.
“What have you determined?” Qek asked. She had taken on the role of spokesperson ea
rly on, when it became clear Zed missed most of every conversation and that Felix had difficulty not flying into fits of foul language. Nessa asked the scientific questions, Qek the reasonable ones. Felix contemplated his lack of decorum.
Elias’s chair squeaked against the floor as he shifted closer, and Felix turned to pin him with a look. Don’t come any closer. Elias ignored him and settled the chair right next to his.
“We are ready to explore treatment,” Rhyniche said.
“Explore?” Felix all but spat the word. He tried to wrestle his features into contrition, but probably ended up resembling a hopped-up wastrel. Elias put a restraining hand on his arm. Felix turned his efforts to not shaking the offending appendage off.
Rhyniche regarded them with ashushk sympathy. “This is a journey for all of us, Mr. Ingesson.”
Felix pressed his lips together and nodded stiffly.
“When can we begin?” Nessa asked.
Zed chose that moment to scoot forward on the lounge where they’d parked him. Before anyone could react, his feet hit the floor and he was off. He didn’t make for the door. Instead, he halted in front of a stand of monitors and became still. Felix recognized the posture. This was the new Zone. Zed found a point of focus—a mirror, a section of bubble wall, a holo projection…last night, it had been Felix’s face. He did not appear to fixate on his view, however. Instead, he just went completely blank, features slack, breathing deep and slow.
Felix got up and moved behind to grip Zed’s shoulder gently. “Zed. You need to come back, babe.” Heat touched his ears as he considered their audience, but he didn’t soften his tone. “It’s Felix. Felix Ingesson.”
Zed continued to drift, obviously lost. He could be that way for more than an hour.
Swallowing, Felix turned to Rhyniche. “We’re running out of time.”
Had it been yesterday he’d said the same words to Qek? Or the day before?
Zed had not moved. He was so still, it seemed he hardly breathed.
“This treatment. Do you…” Felix shook his head. Did it really matter if it worked? Yes. His chest heaved with the emotion he could barely contain, all of his anger—rage—and sorrow. “When can you start it?”
“Right away.” Rhyniche turned to Nessa. “If you concur?”
“I would prefer to get Zed’s consent before we move forward.”
“What if…” It was the question that had dogged him for days. What if this Zone was the last? What if Zed didn’t come back to them this time?
“He’s still very lucid, and he has a right to have a say in his treatment.”
Felix studied the line of Zed’s shoulders, so straight and square. Sometimes, when they were alone and Zed stood this still, Felix hugged him. Put his arms around Zed’s broad chest, tucked his head into a rigid shoulder and drifted with him, the warm scent of Zed’s skin a small balm for his spiky thoughts.
“Okay.”
Talk became small while they waited for Zed to leave the Zone. Soon, an awkward quiet enveloped the room. Felix remained on his feet, standing near Zed. His knees and back ached. He shifted to relieve the gathering stiffness and at that moment, Zed inhaled sharply and folded forward. Felix grabbed the closest arm, Elias leaped forward to catch the other and together they arrested Zed’s fall. Ness stepped in a moment later, hypo in hand.
Zed managed a rueful look. “It won’t help.” Pain etched deep lines around his eyes and furrows across his forehead. Even his full mouth had narrowed.
“I can increase the dose.”
“I don’t want to sleep anymore, Ness. I’m so sick of sleeping.”
Nessa had no immediate answer, and in a rare moment of empathy, Felix understood her quandary. Not all patients required rest and for Zed, in particular, the hours he spent absent consciousness already far outweighed the hours he was present. More sleep wouldn’t change that ratio. Ever.
Nessa tucked away the hypo as they guided Zed back to his chair. “We were discussing a possible treatment.”
The creases on Zed’s face deepened for a second. “Treatment?”
Qek put forth the question no one else was brave enough to ask. “What is your prognosis, Rhyniche?”
“Based on Mr. Anatolius’s experience with the neural inhibitor, we have determined which chemicals are incompatible with human physiology and which have no effect at all. Given there are chains of amino acids we both share, we have attempted to alter the building blocks of the inhibitor, or switch, if you will.”
Spreading gray hands, Rhyniche looked up at Zed. “One of three things will happen. Your body might reject the substance entirely, which could cause catastrophic organ failure.”
“That’s not a fucking fix,” Felix said.
“No, it is not, and if we had more time, we would conduct more tests. As it is, we have dosed cultured cells with good results, and skin tests have been encouraging.”
They’d done what now?
“Batch 23B is viable?” Nessa asked.
The medical personnel fell into a discussion of the results that had led them to attempt treatment. Felix tried to follow but couldn’t. He was too tired and too heartsore. Instead, he leaned into Zed and took more comfort than should be sensible from Zed’s arm curling around his shoulders, strong fingers digging in hard enough to leave a bruise.
Elias soon broke into the discussion. “What about the other two things?”
Rhyniche clicked and produced a quiet hum.
“You said one of three things and then outlined what we’re all hoping was the worst-case scenario.”
“Oh, indeed. Organ failure would be dire.”
Even human medicine could grow new organs, if the patient had the credits. Zed had the credits, but his most valuable organ could not be regrown. Brains were one of a kind.
“The second option is that the chemical will not have enough ashushk or human markers to be recognizable, and will pass through Mr. Anatolius’s body without affecting him.”
“That sounds like a waste of time,” Felix said.
“But it would give us a lot of clues as to what to do next,” Nessa said.
Fuck clues.
“The third option?”
“The one we all hope for,” Rhyniche said, face wrinkling into a subdued smile.
A cure, a way out of hell for Zed. A balance between the chemicals affecting his body. Absurdly, Felix felt like weeping. Tears burned the back of his eyes and his nose itched.
“Enough talk,” Zed said. His voice rumbled through Felix’s side. “When can we get started?”
Chapter Fourteen
After fighting a war for eight years, Zed had thought he’d known the depths of exhaustion. It had become second nature to him to function on an hour of sleep, two hours, however many winks he could grab between missions. And then he’d signed up for Project Dreamweaver. The exhaustion he’d felt up to then didn’t even compare to the bone-deep fatigue he experienced during the experiments and training.
The past few days had introduced him to a whole new level of tired. Not physical—between the ashies’ neural inhibitor and Nessa’s pain meds, he hadn’t slept so well, so soundly, since before the war began. No, his fatigue was all mental, and the gap between his body and mind was growing larger every day. Every hour.
He didn’t need Rhyniche’s unofficial countdown to know he was going to break soon. He could feel it. Fuck, he almost prayed for it. He was at the point that if this ashie treatment didn’t work…
Don’t go there.
His exhausted brain listened to him, thoughts skittering away like cockroaches from a light source. He lay back on the bed and watched Flick at the window-wall. Rhyniche and its crew would be ready to conduct the treatment…soon. Zed had no idea when. Time had ceased to have any meaning.
He wanted to care what the outcome would be, he really did. But he was so fucking tired.
“C’mere,” he said, his voice soft.
Flick looked at him, but stayed at the window.
> “Please.”
With a sigh, Flick left the window-wall and walked over to the bed. He stood there, staring down at Zed. Between the ashie light and Zed’s own fucked-up vision, his eyes looked hazel—their true color. It struck him that he was actually seeing Flick’s eyes as they’d been so long ago, the first two times he’d said goodbye. His cropped blond hair had settled somewhere between purple and gray in the weird spectrum of Ashie Prime. Shadows grasped at the lines of Flick’s face, making the ridges sharper, his scars more prominent.
It was still a face he loved.
He hadn’t decided if saying that to Flick now would be a gift or a curse. As always, his timing fucking sucked. They’d never got it right, first cluing in that they could be more than friends the night before being separated for years, then choosing to make a go of it only a few months before the war with the stin broke out. And now this.
Flick settled onto the bed and Zed leaned into him, hoping that the Zone would leave him be for enough time to talk to Flick. He might not be able to mark time’s passage anymore, but he knew he didn’t have much left.
He rubbed Flick’s arm, feeling the tension that seemed to never leave his lithe frame these days. Flick’s muscles felt like steel cords, tight and unyielding. Zed bit back the apology and shoved down the guilt—they’d been there and done that, and it didn’t help either of them.
“I’ve got some stuff I want to say while I can,” he started.
“Zed, no. I don’t—”
Zed lifted a finger to press against Flick’s lips, then traced the lower one with his thumb. “Please.”
A sigh shuddered out of Flick and he sank back into the pillows beside Zed’s half-reclined form. The weird disconnect between his tired mind and rested body pulled him in two directions. He wanted to hold Flick and offer comfort, and be held and take comfort. The disparate needs reverberated in his chest, making him shift for a moment before he leaned his head on Flick’s shoulder and let out a long, slow breath.