by Jenn Burke
Nessa’s wallet chimed and she pulled it out of her pocket and flipped it open.
“Ness?”
“Here.”
“Is Fix with you?”
She looked up at him, her expression completely unreadable, then said, “Yeah.”
“The…fuck.” Elias hissed and the connection popped. “It was the Guardians. Qek and I were making arrangements and the Guardians came. They…God. They took him, Ness.”
Who?
Felix really didn’t want to ask. He really didn’t have to.
“They scanned us all and then they took Zed’s body.”
Chapter Sixteen
“Zanderanatolius.”
“Annadolus.” Frustration makes his brows drop. He grits his teeth, then tries again. “Annadolis. Annadolees.”
Her bright smile wipes away the hint of tears that crowd his vision. She looks at him with kind gray-blue eyes that are so much like his own and he feels warm all over. “You’ve almost got it,” she says, her voice full of encouragement. She brushes a thumb under one of his eyes to erase the evidence of his frustration. “It’s a tough name, I know, but it’s yours, baby. Someday, it’ll just roll off your tongue.”
He sticks out his tongue and tries to look at it, wondering how a word could roll off it.
She laughs and taps a finger to his nose. “Try again. An-a-tol-ee-us.”
His mouth forms the sounds before he whispers them, slowly. Then, taking a breath, he tries again. “Anatolius.” His eyes widen as he realizes he said it. He said it! “Anatolius. Anatolius! I’m Zander Anatolius!”
“Breathe.”
“I know it hurts like a bitch, son, but just focus on your breathing. In and out, in and out.”
Nope. Not breathing is better. Anything is better than the spearing pain in his head. His eyes are closed and he fears opening them, fears what he’ll see. He hears a moan and it takes him a moment to realize it escaped his lips.
“We’re gonna transport you back to the base. You hear me, Lieutenant?”
He tries to nod, but that’s even worse than breathing. “Wha…” His tongue feels thick and unresponsive, but the voice knows what he’s asking.
“What happened?” A snort seems to echo. “Looks like you got caught with your pants down, sir.”
Pants down? “‘Tack? Terr—terror—”
Another snort. “Nah, I don’t think pissed-off wives with a shovel fall into the terrorist-attack category. Just keep breathing, sir. Focus on that. Memories will come later.”
He does what the voice says. Breathes, keeping it even, keeping it steady. And he drifts.
“Trust.”
A shoulder slams into his, harder than necessary, getting his attention in her unique—and occasionally painful—way. He turns to look at his assailant’s wide grin and sparkling emerald eyes. She is almost bouncing with excitement.
“You ready for tomorrow, Major?”
The rank is still new, still shiny, and he likes hearing it—something she knows, so she says it a lot. It’s a little pleasure, one she indulges, because she knows him better than anyone else left in the galaxy.
“I’m ready,” he says, offering her a smile. He doesn’t feel the emotions underneath the smile that he knows he should—he doesn’t feel much of anything, anymore.
“We’re gonna be the difference. We’re gonna turn the tide. The stin are gonna shit their pants when they see us coming.”
“I know.” Futile wishes flit through his mind and his smile falters.
“Hey.” Her shoulder bump is more gentle this time. “He’s cheering you on. You know that, right?”
He wrinkles his nose. “He’s been dead for six years, Emma. He’s not cheering anyone on.”
She shrugs and looks up, as though she can see the stars instead of the barracks ceiling. “You don’t believe there’s something after we…you know?”
“Life after death? Like heaven, hell, that shit?”
“Or something.”
He watches her for any clue that she’s having him on. He sees none, just…a peaceful sort of expression. As if the thought of something after comforts her and that makes him wonder. If shit goes south tomorrow on their first day of this new project, this experimental training, will that be the end? Or will he see…
He shakes his head. “Well, if there is, I hope to hell he’s doing something more interesting than watching me.”
“Oh, hon.” She smiles and leans her cheek on his shoulder. “If he’s out there, he’s watching you and cheering you on. Trust me.”
“Zanderanatolius.”
His name rolled around in his mind, not quite a command but not something he could ignore, either. The cadence of it wasn’t quite right, the syllables mashed together, but he could understand it. He knew it labeled him, who he was, all his thoughts and memories, dreams and wishes, hopes and emotions. His identity, his self. The knowledge wrapped around him like a blanket, comforting and warm. He knew who he was, and that was the greatest gift he’d ever received.
Secure, anchored to his self, he floated somewhere between waking and not. He didn’t mark time passing, didn’t count the number of breaths he breathed. He simply was, and that knowledge was comforting too. When had he last just existed, with no thought to plans, no worries about what the future would hold, and without coming up with contingencies to combat challenges and obstacles? Had he ever?
Slowly, his sense of self grew to incorporate his body, not just his mind. His limbs felt heavy, as though they were weighted, but warm and without any pain. He blinked and only then realized his eyes were open, staring at a starfield that stretched overhead and out to the sides. The sight should have sent panic rushing through him, and on some distant level, he felt a twinge of it—but he remembered soft, vague commands. Breathe. Trust.
He could do both.
“Am I dead?” he asked the stars.
Is this what Emma had been thinking of when she talked about the afterlife? Would he have the chance to watch over Flick, to see him live his life? That would…well, it wouldn’t be okay, but it would be something. Something more than he’d expected.
Had he expected this? He couldn’t remember.
“You are not dead.”
The voice came from everywhere, and nowhere. Zed turned his head, looking for the source, but already knowing he wouldn’t find one. He was alone in a sea of stars, floating, breathing, trusting. Not dead. Unless the voice lied, but…no, he believed it.
“Are you…” A dozen different names for human deities ran through his head, a trove of information Zed hadn’t been aware he’d stored. What label to choose? Generic was probably best. “Uh, a god?”
“We are not.”
Okay…what else was there? Demons? Devils? But they were sort of gods, too, weren’t they? Zed watched the stars, his thoughts tugged away from the questions by the serenity of the black ocean. He drifted again, floating in time. He was nothing but a speck in the vastness, an atom. Any questions he might ask, any plans he might make, meant nothing. Less than nothing. It was…a freeing thought.
What will be, will be.
Breathe. Trust.
“Do you wish to know, Zanderanatolius?”
The specifics of the question rolled over him in gentle, warm waves, nudging against his thoughts—and he understood, suddenly, that he was not hearing the voice with his ears. The words appeared in his mind, but…they weren’t words, they were thoughts. Ideas, concepts, emotions, layers upon layers that shaped themselves into an echoing phrase, one that reverberated with meaning beyond the labels his brain applied. It was the oddest sensation, but not a frightening one.
“You know me,” he whispered. How could it not? The voice was there, permeating everything, drawing on his knowledge and combining it with wisps that he could only barely grasp the existence of, in order to form new ideas, new concepts, to learn and grow.
“Everything,” the voice confirmed.
A million concepts flew thr
ough Zed’s mind: memories, emotions, thoughts, hopes, identity, morals, culture, values and so many more, all him, all with his label. He sucked in a breath. The voice knew more than he had ever thought to share with anyone.
“We like you.”
Zed laughed, the sound unfettered and genuine. As said by the voice, like meant so much more than like, encompassing approval, respect, admiration and…hope? That was difficult to comprehend, why a disembodied voice would attach hope to Zed. When put up against all of that meaning, like seemed simplistic—but also perfectly simple.
“You are proof.”
“Proof of what?”
Wordless, nebulous thoughts filtered through Zed’s mind, concepts that went beyond his comprehension. His brain couldn’t find labels for them. The warmth and lassitude in his limbs kept him from trying too hard. The intangible river flowed around him and he let it, and he realized for the first time—though, truly, he’d already known—that it was an alien presence in his head, who now knew everything that made up one Zander Damianos Anatolius.
That was…it couldn’t be good, right?
Panic flared, a distant flame, as he remembered the training that had taught him what to do in the event of being captured by the enemy. He tensed, and the connection between his mind and body started to solidify.
“Breathe,” the voice said. “Trust. You are our proof, and you will never come to harm by our hands.”
“I don’t understand.” Zed looked to the right, at the stars, and to the left, at more stars. Though he still felt warm, safe, some of the heaviness in his body lifted, as though a sedative was wearing off. His train of thought grew more purposeful, questions poking through the haze. “How did I get here? Why am I here? Where—” Oh, God, where was Flick?
“You are our proof,” the voice said again, as though that explained everything. It didn’t—even with the fuzziness shredding, Zed couldn’t follow the reverberations of that word. “Strength, heart, intelligence, spirit. Proof.”
“I don’t—” He tried to sit up, but pain lanced through his body. The warmth faded, though he still felt the edges of it. It just couldn’t hold up to the fact that everything hurt, as though someone had scraped every last centimeter of his skin with the flat of a razor, then used him as a punching bag. What the hell? Before he could ask, before he could do more than just attempt to get up, his limbs grew slack again, and his eyelids drooped. The questions he’d started to grasp for faded, along with everything else.
No, he didn’t want to sleep. He wanted…he needed…
Where are you, Flick? Why couldn’t he remember?
“Rest, Zanderanatolius. Then tell us if you wish to know. It is your choice.”
Chapter Seventeen
For a moment, a single golden moment every time he awoke, Felix existed in a place where he almost believed Zed hadn’t left him. Eyes closed, he could imagine the warmth at his side was a man, that he could hear the soft snore his breath deepened to in the early hours—that he could smell his skin, his hair.
For six days, Felix resisted opening his eyes for as long as he could, but the illusion always faded before he let the world in. The awful weight of loss would crush him, pin him to the bed. He would blink his eyes open and enter the second round of denial, resist the urge to turn his head and confirm that the warmth beside him was nothing but a pillow, the scent a shirt he’d dug out of Zed’s pack, the scrape of breath his own.
On the seventh day, he lay there with his eyes closed, already aware of the lie, the truth, the pain of his loss, and wondered if he could have done something different. Something more. Something…less. Had he been responsible for Zed’s rapid deterioration? If Zed had had less to worry about, namely a lover, would he have held it together longer?
If Felix had died in the stin work camp, or succumbed to his injuries after…if he’d been taken out of the equation, would Zed be alive?
Or was it his simple lack of belief in a higher power? If the seventh day actually meant something to him, other than the relentless passage of time, would Zed be lying next to him now?
Sucking in a ragged breath, Felix punished himself for sins real and imagined by rolling away from the pillow he wanted to hug. His gaze fell on the small vial of pills Nessa had left him and he ignored those too. Oblivion beckoned, but he had to pay for his trespasses first. He sat up on the opposite side of the bed without gathering up the black shirt and pressing it to his face. He denied himself the scent of Zed. He opened his eyes.
Outside the bubble, dusk gathered. The long days of Ashie Prime messed with his internal clock as much as the sedatives. His days and nights were purely subjective and not constrained by the passing of real time. He measured them by periods of wakefulness and longing, for Zed, for another dose of nothingness. Even assisted, his sleep wasn’t restful, though. He woke stiff and sore, as if he’d spent the night clinging to the edge of a cliff. The sedatives were supposed to keep the nightmares at bay—and they did, but only just.
Over the ocean, sunset mists thinned to streamers, layering the sky in brushstrokes of color. It should be beautiful. It sort of was. Sure beat staring into nothing but his reflection, or slipping into memories that left him aching and alone. Rationally, he knew he had to pull himself together, that he couldn’t continue to drift between the nightmares and the quiet death of drugged sleep. He couldn’t keep yelling at Nessa every time she touched him, or refusing to talk to Elias. He couldn’t ignore that for every hour he whiled away, Qek risked her livelihood and freedom. His crew was hurting too. They hadn’t loved Zed the way he had, but they’d liked him and had welcomed him into their family.
Right then, though, staring at yet another beautiful Ashushk Prime sunset, he could not find the strength to form a plan otherwise.
His door chimed. Felix didn’t answer, he didn’t see the point. Whoever it was would come in anyway, concerned that he’d slept too long, not slept at all, or had torn his room apart in the grip of another nightmare. They wanted to check on him and he’d stopped telling them to fuck off.
Sure enough, the door swished open and light footsteps padded into his room. Felix remained seated on the edge of the bed, eyes pointed toward the mist, but he acknowledged his visitor, if only because she was something of a novelty.
“Hey, Qek.” The casual greeting was callous—and he was an asshole. What if it had been Nessa at the door with news that Qek was gone, that his delay had cost her everything? Felix sucked in a breath and held it. He couldn’t deal with another loss.
“How are you feeling, Fixer?”
“Like crap.” Qek valued honesty.
“I am sorry to hear that.”
Felix turned to look at the friend he had all but ignored in his grief. Qek had not approached farther than the threshold. She stood with her hands linked behind her back, her posture reminiscent of a banker with bad news. Her smooth face indicated a quiet, pensive mood.
Oh, God…
Why did he have to keep reminding himself what her friendship meant to him?
Felix turned back to the mist and exercised the only control he’d mastered over the past few days, that of banishing tears before they burned the back of his eyes or clogged his nose. His chest hitched once with the need to sob, then fell still. He would not cry, could not. He was not a boy; tears wouldn’t change anything and he had the awful feeling that if he did give in, his tears would mean the end. That he had given up, given in.
Quietly, he said, “I’m sorry I’ve been such a shit friend.”
Jesus. Now he’d have to apologize to Nessa and Elias too. Then they’d show him smug smiles and start coddling him even more. Or expect him to get out of bed. Or cry.
“I do not require my friends to hold to any standard. They only need be themselves.”
“You’re a better man than me.” Feeling Qek prepare a question, Felix held up a hand. “It’s an expression. You’re a better person.”
“I am a different person.”
Felix turne
d back around. “How come you haven’t been pestering me like Ness and Eli?”
Qek’s face wrinkled gently. “The ashushk process grief differently to humans, but it was my understanding you preferred to be alone.”
“You got that right. I don’t suppose you tried to share that insight with them?”
“I did not, because they needed to tend you.”
Well, damn.
Feeling the annoying press of tears again, Felix turned away and scrubbed at his face. He swiped the heel of his palm over both cheeks, removing any evidence of his weakness. Maybe he hadn’t been strong enough. Had he let Zed down because he was broken inside and not properly reset? Brittle, and just plain moody. Not…healthy.
Maybe he was just a bad person and the galaxy, or the gods he didn’t believe in, needed to teach him a lesson.
Did thinking that make him conceited?
Fuck.
Felix dragged in another deep draft of air, held the breath until his lungs twitched, and breathed out. He peeked over his shoulder at the guest he’d left in the doorway, the one who didn’t seem to mind that he sat facing away, clad only in shorts that probably weren’t visible behind the rumpled sheets. Waving at Nessa’s favorite perch, the slack lounge under the window, he said, “Have a seat. Stay a while.”
Qek’s quiet presence offered the comfort Nessa wanted to give him and, with a sudden sharpness, Felix craved the ashushk’s company. He understood the method behind Nessa’s madness; she prodded and poked to keep him from slipping into oblivion and, for the most part, it worked. In contrast, Qek’s quietude offered solace and above all, Felix craved peace. An end to his misery.
“What about you, Qek? What do you need?”
“I need only for my friends to be well.”
“That’s a bullshit answer. Everyone needs something for themselves.”
The ashie inclined her head to accede the point and moved to sit on the low lounge. Forehead wrinkling and smoothing, she appeared to consider his statement, and then she said, “I have lived for ninety-one of your Standard years, which is about a third of my expected life-span, if I do not gender.” Her skin tightened and loosened. “I have tended many needs in that time, throughout what many ashushk consider to be their childhood. The first third. Right now, my needs are simple. But…”