He gets statements from all of us, then we’re separated. Finch and Piotr are led away as they take me to medical to remove the tracking device from below my skin. It’s a simple procedure, just an injet to disintegrate the nanotag, it doesn’t hurt at all. Or maybe I’m still too numb. Afterward the jet, my permanent fixture now, takes me to the captain’s office, and by now I can barely keep on my feet. When I sit again across from him at that black desk I just prop my head on my hand, elbow on the arm of the chair.
“Caligtiera and Lukacs are still free,” he says, “and according to you, Lukacs’s interest in the pirates might not be in the best interests of the Hub. So you’ve got a decision to make, Kirov.”
I’ve been making them.
He says, “What do you want?”
It makes me look up and into his eyes. No, he’s not playing with me; there isn’t any trap or hostility in the question. It sounds like a question Falcone would ask except the tone is different and so is the way he looks at me.
I shake my head.
“Yuri,” he says. “What do you want most.”
“If I can get out of this,” I start, unsure where my words are going, where any of this is going, but it doesn’t matter. I hadn’t known that when I followed Falcone into space, and this man is not Falcone. He was the first, but he must’ve sat where I am sitting at some point early on, with the admiral who later adopted him. And I don’t expect any grand commitments from this captain or his ship, he just asks a simple question, and my answer comes with the simplicity of bone-deep capitulation. If he doesn’t listen, then there’s nowhere else for me to go. I just hold the words close even though I tell him. I hold them close because they’re honest.
“I want… Finch. And…” I remember. “Some point I want my family. I know where they are, I just haven’t…”
This stumbling thing, my mind and my words and my intentions.
But he seems to understand. “You know I can’t let you leave.”
I don’t have to nod.
“And my ship isn’t entirely legal. But—it doesn’t stop me from doing what I can. Your staying here, with Finch and Piotr, will be rough. My crew have no love for pirates.”
“Finch isn’t.”
“He’s with you.” Stated fact, and I do know it, but then Azarcon adds, “This may not be where you wanted to end up, but it’s where you are. I can let you contact your family, monitored, and you will help me track Caligtiera and Lukacs and whatever else I need you to do.”
I stare at him. There is resistance to that command. Like there would be with Falcone. Out there in deep space we were equals, but inside of his ship I’m under his benevolence and his whim.
But maybe if I were allowed to just be out there on my own it would be all too easy to find a ship again and start to take what I want, within reason, and then maybe it would build and eventually return to some familiar state, my life. I can see the pattern as if it’s stitched to the stars. So for all the pain this is, being brought low before this man, there’s also a kindness in humility. Self-kindness that tempers arrogance and greed.
“How did you,” I ask, and some part of me still expects him to take me to the brig and forget about me. But he’s calm behind his desk, he’s compassionate in his way and I wish I knew how he survived it. Why did he, why have I, and there was one that killed himself. Too many questions in this weird kind of freedom that isn’t freedom on the outside—I’m still serving some other captain. But Finch is here, and there is no Hanamachi, no clients, no gun to my head to tell me to shoot. They won’t even give me a gun.
And I see he’s thinking about my question and all of the questions behind that one that I don’t need to ask. And of course the answer isn’t simple, it’s not anything I think he will truly share. If it even can be shared.
But he does give this much, and it’s a gift. He hands it to me like one, the kind you shake to hear what’s inside—but not hard enough to break it.
He says, “Listen to your future, not your past.”
The jet from the conference room that I almost recognized escorts me down through the decks, back to the crew quarters. With Finch, I hope. This jet who, looking closer, isn’t wearing a jet uniform. It’s just black, and his eyes are steady and evaluating as we walk, no hurry, and if he’s armed I don’t see it, and I wonder that they set just one slight kid to guard me. Maybe because I’m in no condition mentally or physically to fight anyone or anything, or maybe this kid is deceptive in his stature and his delicate looks.
We are almost to the quarters, I see the guard outside the hatch, when the kid says, “I ran away. Why didn’t you?”
His tone is hard to the point of judgment, and I look at him. Surprised.
Ran away.
And he speaks like he knows me in some way.
It’s not a far leap. Azarcon’s gathered the other protégé here and something in me smiles. The one who Falcone had “let go” on Chaos Station. I don’t know his name, but I don’t need to. This brother of mine. He stares with jewel blue eyes. A color like Azarcon’s son, but different in their thoughts. This one can kill, and maybe he’s one step from shoving me to the bulkhead and doing just that.
“I don’t think he treated me the same as you at the beginning,” I tell him. “Besides, I had nowhere to go.”
“Neither did I,” he says, “but I still ran.”
“I ran. Just eventually.” And because I know he doesn’t want to hear it, I add, “It wasn’t all bad, all of the time.”
We stop in front of the hatch, and this kid, who isn’t a kid despite how he looks, these looks are just deceiving the same as any geisha paint, he says, “You can acclimate to any environment, but it doesn’t mean it’s a good one.”
I ask him, “Here?”
He watches me silently for a minute. No rush for words and no expectation of them. But—“No,” he says. “Here is good.”
Finch waits inside, with Dexter, dark color and vibrant green. And it feels like I’ve walked the entire length of this ship to get back to these quarters, and talked enough to fill an encyclopedia of my life. Or maybe this is just the weary feeling I get when I lose the things that weigh on me like some sort of alien gravity. The heaviness leaves, and if I’m patient enough it can be replaced by something I need, something that would fill instead of drown and let me breathe instead of bleed.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
KARIN LOWACHEE was born in Guyana, South America, grew up in Ontario, Canada, and lived for nearly a year in the Canadian sub-Arctic teaching adult education. She holds a creative writing and English degree from York University in Toronto. Visit her on the Web at www.karinlowachee.com.
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