by C. S. Wilde
I can’t breathe. I’m not sure if I was breathing before, but now I’m choking, trying to swallow air, but there’s none in these barren lands. Can’t scream, only gasp. The atmosphere pulls me in a thousand different directions. The water in my eyes evaporates into a thin cloud that blocks my vision. All the water in me is boiling, and I’m freezing at the same time, my fingers turning to a deep, rotten purple. I slam my hands over my eyes to stop the water from coming out, the forces of this planet collapsing onto me.
Can’t breathe!
“Exhale, Miriam!” Sol’ut-eh’s voice booms in my mind.
She fetches me up and races toward the base, her big, heavy boots ramming on the ice. My body swings in her grip. I let go of the little air I have left because she told me to exhale. This eases the pressure attempting to explode me from within.
My mind is spinning, there’s the base ahead, faint lights, so blurred. Sol’ut-eh runs until she plows through a door, turning mid-way in the air before slamming her back against a wall. She has cradled me from the impact. Now she’s dropped me and jolted toward the open door, quickly pressing a button that closes the entrance. A loud beep, red lights, can’t breathe. Everything starts darkening.
Another loud beep, a faint, green light in the pitch black. Air rushes into my lungs. Gasp, cough, wheeze, inhale. Again. Ages pass as my body gets accustomed to proper air pressure and breathable air.
“What happened?” I gasp, eyes darting across the small, metallic room we’re in, chest heaving up and down, my brain thumping against my skull. We’re in a pressurization chamber.
Sol’ut-eh removes her helmet and slumps against the door. She shakes her head, her big eyes wide and her snout half agape. “I-I have no idea.”
16
-James-
I drop on my seat in the flight deck and watch the pitch black background outside, cut by rushing white dashes, just like in Star Trek. Even with an impending sense of doom pressing down my shoulders, I can’t avoid feeling a bit of exhilaration. I’ve been to space twice now, and not many people back on Earth can say the same. Actually, I don’t think any human has travelled beyond the moon, so I’ve literally gone to where no man has ever gone before.
On my right, Zed steers the ship, sitting up straight on his captain’s seat. He wears a grey suit with a pleated skirt.
“Are you really going to keep dressing like a businesswoman the whole way to the Orion nebula?” I ask.
I figured he’d be wearing clothes that were more suited for space travel, like tight astronaut body wear, or at least shirts, pants and boots. Certainly not high heels. We took some clothes suited for rough terrain before we left the Earth, and still, Zed brought along four pairs of business attire, which seriously made me doubt his intelligence.
“It’s part of my vessel,” Zed says as he types on the console. “It’s hard to explain, human.”
“For the thousandth time, the name is James, not ‘human.’” I roll my eyes. “And the suits aren’t glued to your skin, you know.”
“That would be unpleasant.” Zed grins and shakes his head. “However, this body and the clothes, and the makeup, they feel like the same. It’s quite hard to adapt to a new body. Keeping the same façade helps.” He blows air through his red lips and then fixes his attention outside, where a blue plasma is closing us in a tunnel of shifting lights. I never get tired of watching the golden rifts swim over the blue plasma, like a firestorm underwater. “I don’t mean to be rude, James, but you’ve never been in a different body than the one you were born with, so you can’t understand what it is like.”
He’s so wrong. I tap his back and say, “You’re looking for normalcy, something consistent. Routine.” A smirk comes out. “That’s my element, or at least it used to be.”
An earthy, rather masculine chuckle bursts from his full red lips. “Certainly. Plunging through space and breaking all the rules to save your mate fits the category of ‘normal.’”
I can’t help but smile at his attempt of irony. “I didn’t say normalcy is what I got, just what I liked.”
Zed’s perfectly manicured eyebrows knit together and his slender shoulders tense. “You’ve abdicated a lot for her, haven’t you?”
A knot clogs my throat. I try to swallow it down, but it sticks like tar on concrete. Yes, I abdicated a lot for Miriam: the chance of a normal life, to raise a family of our own—vessels are sterile, so Miriam can’t have any children. Not to mention that the whole mind-reading thing can be really annoying.
“Yeah.” My tone comes out husky and shallow. “But I’ll keep doing it for the rest of my days, and it’ll be worth it as long as she’s with me.” I glance at my empty palms and my breath hitches in my chest because Miriam isn’t here. Suddenly, all the weight from before comes crashing down upon me, and I’m not sure if I can breathe properly. “I need to find her, Zed.”
“We will,” he says.
I know a whisar can’t feel pity, but I could swear that’s what I see in Zed’s brown eyes and pressed lips.
Soon the blue plasma funnel disappears and we’re back at nearing light-speed, the outside now filled with white lines against a pitch-black background. I bite my lower lip and pull a dry, thin bit of skin with my teeth. “When will we get there?”
Zed doesn’t glance at me as he says, “Your unease is disturbing, James. Can’t you distract yourself again? Talk about my clothing choice, it seemed to amuse you.”
Enough distractions. Miriam is in danger, every tick of the clock puts her farther away. I’m constantly terrified that I’ll never reach her. I’m so close to losing the most important part of my life.
Zed must’ve read my mind, because he says quietly, “We’ll be there soon.”
I appreciate him trying to assure me, but… “Dude, we agreed you wouldn’t read my mind.”
“Sorry. Old habits.” His lips curve up in amusement. “Dude.”
Zed is a less grave version of Chuck, probably because he’s still a whisar pre-teen and hasn’t been through half of the stuff Chuck went through. Which means he can be surprisingly fun, sometimes.
Another positive aspect of this journey—and I need to focus on those until we get to Orion’s belt— is their food replicator, something akin to a microwave with a black pearly surface. I won’t lie, when Zed showed it to me, I squeaked like a little girl because the replicator is a dead ringer to the ones they use in Star Trek. As soon as my girly squeal came out, Zed burst out laughing, then immediately covered his mouth with his hand, as if he had said something terribly wrong.
“You’re hungry,” Zed states. I’m pretty sure he just read my mind. “We should eat.”
Zed puts the ship on auto and we go to the replicator room, a small squared place with metallic cupboards hanging around the smooth, round replicator. A tiny, round window on the left shows us the white dashes outside.
As soon as our food is ready, we sit at the metallic table in the middle of the room. A generous chunk of Angus beef and mashed potatoes fill the center of my tray. Zed’s contains something that looks like squid and smells like shit.
“Zed, if you like routine and balance, then why are you risking so much?” I bite a piece of Angus beef. I’ve been wanting to ask him this question since we started our trip. “I mean, I get that you’re a researcher nerd—”
“I believe you call yourself a nerd as well?” He nods at me with a raised eyebrow.
“Whatever, we’re nerd pals, but you could get killed if whisars found out you’re helping me.”
Zed offers me a chunk of the weird squid and I promptly refuse. “You don’t know real food until you’ve tasted an ukula,” he says, his mouth full in the most unladylike manner, which is super odd. Outside Zed’s this business-like Barbie, but on the inside he’s an over-achieving child—which is remarkable considering he’s as smart as a human adult. Possibly more.
“Way to avoid my question,” I say, stuffing my mouth with mashed potatoes and beef.
Zed stares out the window, w
atching the pitch-black outside and the white dashes that slash across it. “All logical arguments go against one opening a dark safe. It’s madness, a choice made by sick, inferior minds. And yet, the famous Ah’rbal-ack-to opened his, and so did his former disciple, Miri’et-eh. And their minds are far from inferior.” He takes another bite of the ukula and stays silent. I sense there’s more, so I give him the time he needs. “Perhaps I’m also willing to abdicate safety and normalcy for knowledge. I need to at least understand what it’s like to feel a strong emotion.” He clears his throat and straightens his back. “As an experiment, that is.”
I smile and pat his back. “Make sure to let me read the dissertation.”
“Any dissertation on the subject would be forbidden.” He frowns. “But I could share the results with you. Assuming we don’t get caught and die searching for your mate, that is.”
I need to work on his sarcasm.
In the flash of a moment, Miriam’s voice screams my name, piercing my ear drums and cracking me from inside as if I were made of glass. A cold, gripping claw suddenly tears at my spine, and I feel like I’m falling into a black hole. I can’t breathe as invisible forces pull at me from so many directions, and a scream rips through my throat. A fierce cold washes over me and the tips of my fingers start blackening. No air, no escape.
Then the flash passes and I’m gaping at a wide-eyed Zed. Air rushes in and out of my lungs in big gulps, heart beating wildly against my chest. I glare at my fingers. They look healthy and normal.
“What happened?” Zed stands and checks under my eyes, then presses both fingers under my jaw to check my heartbeat. “You’re as white as a Fallarian polar bear.”
“I-I don’t know.” I look around, chest heaving up and down, mouth so dry. “But I think we need to hurry.”
17
-Miriam-
The Medi-tez resembles a white, bulky pen marker with two needles at the bottom. Usually medical tools look like a round orb, but this is one of the older models. Its pair of metal stingers puncture my fingers with the speed and precision of a sewing machine, peeling out rotting skin and muscle before injecting new tissue in the gaps. Then the Medi-tez coats the wounds in microscopic layers of skin patches.
Sol’ut-eh handles the tool with the ease of an experienced tattoo artist. She peers at my wounds from behind a big magnifying glass supported by a flexible pole attached to the table. Bright lights outline the round lens, shedding light over my wounds. From behind the glass, Sol’ut-eh’s piercing blue eyes look gigantic.
I feel no pain, just a light pressure squeezing my fingers as she goes along. One milligram of whisar anesthetics has been enough to help me withstand the procedure.
“Has frostbite damaged your tongue?” Sol’ut-eh asks without paying any attention to me.
The tool sheds layers of black skin and muscle as it works on my index finger, exposing raw flesh and the tip of a bone, but soon it injects muscles and tissue into the gaps, and then it coats the wound with new skin grafts.
Sol’ut-eh has already fixed my toes and the tip of my nose, so my fingers are what’s left.
“I don’t have much to say,” I answer with a sore voice that sounds like it hasn’t been used in years.
My entire body turned into a giant ice crystal, and I took a stroll in an atmosphere that should’ve exploded my lungs from inside before freezing me to death. Such a deep, molecular transformation is unheard of, and I not only went through it, but came back in one piece. Almost. I watch Sol’ut-eh and the needles forming new skin and muscle over the tips of my fingers. By the stars, I forgot about James and me, I forgot about everything. I lost myself in pure wonder as I gazed into the jaw-dropping beauty of the universe. It’s hard to explain how wonderful it was, and how terrifying it all became at the end.
I shift in my seat and Sol’ut-eh sends me a chiding look, so I try to focus on the space around me. The medical station is a squared room with white walls and floor. A metal closet stands at the opposite end, near the small porthole that shows the storming weather outside. A gurney with a hole in the middle rests under the porthole. Our “operating” table, a metallic square not much bigger than a garden table back on Earth, is located much closer to the door.
“How many whisars live in this base?” I ask.
Sol’ut-eh shrugs. “Fifty-three.”
“Isn’t this medical station too small for the population of the base?” I glance at the lonely gurney.
She raises her brow, but her attention never leaves the tool or my fingers. “We’re cautious creatures.” This with a hint of a smile.
Sol’ut-eh is a sensible rebel, which is unheard of. Rebels and reason are two words that do not mix well together, and yet, here she is, a walking, breathing contradiction. How she moved on after watching her mate die is a mystery to me.
“You hated your brother.” The words come out before I can stop them.
“Hmm?” She keeps focused on regenerating my hands.
“Chuck, you hated him for not helping you.” If I had been in her shoes—for a moment I was—I’d hate Chuck for what he did. I’d hate him to the end of my days.
“For a while,” she says with a quiet voice. “But he freed from Werhn-za’har’s influence shortly after, and he apologized profusely. I suppose Famda Seven was his moment of revelation. Ah’rbal-ack-to, I mean, Chuck, blames himself for it to this day, but that massacre wasn’t his fault.”
Indeed. It was Werhn-za’har’s.
Sol’ut-eh blows air through her lips, her attention focused on the needles and my fingers. “Mother would go insane if she knew that both her children opened their dark safes.” She chuckles. “Oh, her precious Ah’rbal-ack-to, dead, and now living as a human child. The look on her face…” She shrugs. “Good thing she’s dead, I suppose.”
“You’re the leader of the rebels. Wouldn’t that be worse than Chuck’s situation?”
She lets out a sad smirk. “As I said, good thing she’s dead.”
I bow my head to her. “My deepest apologies. I have been improper.”
“You were not.” She lays the tool on the table and turns off the lights on the magnifying glass. She pushes it away over its hinges so she can face me. “It’s the circle of life, is it not? ‘The genes have been passed, so our ancestors live within us.’” Her lips curl as she speaks from behind gritted teeth. “‘Rejoice.’”
A whisar parent only cares for their child’s survival because they want their genes spread. There’s never an emotional connection, not like humans have. Once our progenitors pass away, we say, “It’s the circle of life. The genes have been passed, so our ancestors live within us. Rejoice.”
Funny that we’re not allowed to rejoice or grieve in any way. Like Sol’ut-eh said, we have no choice.
I have memories of my parents, though, strange impressions of Mother cradling me and Father swiveling me around. I can’t be sure, but maybe, just maybe…
“Time eases anger and sorrow and pain,” Sol’ut-eh says, mostly to herself. “They become a part of your routine, always there in the back of your mind.” She swallows dry. “But I’ll never forgive Werhn-za’har for turning my brother into his goon, and for what he did to my mate and the millions who perished on Famda Seven.” A spark filled with bitterness flickers in her eyes, a hint of fury in the flash of a second.
“If I were in your place,” I say, “I would not forgive him either.”
Werhn-za’har committed genocide, and at the same time, he saved me and James. Chuck too. We owe our lives to a murderer, a schemer who hid behind a mask of kindness and wisdom. But why did he save us? And why did he change my vessel?
“Werhn-za’har is neither good nor bad, simply a tangled mess of gray lines.” Chuck leans on the doorframe of the medical station with his arms crossed. “I will remind both of you that if it wasn’t for Famda Seven, civil war could’ve broken out all those cycles ago.”
Sol’ut-eh’s eyes widen and she speaks through gritted teeth, �
�Blood should never be the price for peace.”
He shrugs. “And still, isn’t it always?”
Sol’ut-eh stands up and clomps toward him, every step an iron hammer. “You can’t possibly defend—”
“Never,” Chuck raises his hand. “But what would you do in his place? If, by murdering sixty million of our kind, you could grant a choice to every remaining whisar in the galaxy?”
I’ve known my former mentor long enough to know that he’s testing her by putting Sol’ut-eh in Werhn-za’har’s shoes. He’s pushing her to the edge.
Sol’ut-eh bites her lip and stares at the floor, then turns to me. “Do you know why I joined the rebels after Famda Seven?”
I shake my head.
“I was never given a choice.” She points to Chuck. “My brother, Thor’nack, none of us had a choice.” She sneers. “But life is made of never-ending cycles, Miriam. You give and take, then you give, and then you take again.” Her words hang heavy in the air. “One day, I’ll make Werhn-za’har go through the same pain, I promise you.”
Chuck pushes, “Is that your answer, sister? You’d do the same atrocity he did?”
Sol’ut-eh walks around in circles, her tail swinging wildly behind her. “Do not ask such questions of me, brother.”
He steps toward her, chest puffed and brows knitted. “Would you become the same monster he did if it were necessary?” His voice booms, and for a moment, I’m not watching a twelve-year old speak, but my former mentor, a force of nature to be reckoned with. “If it meant a victory for the rebellion, would you do it?”
Sol’ut-eh shrinks at that, avoiding eye contact. She sways on her feet left and right. “I’m not a genocidal murderer like Werhn-za’har.” Her mouth curls as if she just tasted something bitter. “But I wish I were.”
Chuck nods with a soft smile on his lips. Whatever test he threw at her, his sister passed.
“Werhn-za’har tampered with my body,” I mutter, something dark and sharp swirling inside me. Whether he’s evil or not—or simply a tangled mess of grey lines— Werhn-za’har is the one who doomed me, and the only one who can, theoretically, save me. I turn to Chuck. “Where is he?”