by Jade Waltz
Oeta was their direct link to her father in case things went south. Who knew what waited for him beyond their galaxy? Perhaps he was committing some act of war by trespassing. That was something he had pondered along this long journey.
Despite her interference, he respected the female and appreciated that she wanted to aid Xylo and the rest of the scientists in studying demi-humans and the fertility problems that plagued the galaxy. It was an honorable cause to finish her late mother’s research.
“What is going on over there?” He knew about the condition of Selena’s original mates, but he hadn’t heard that her Circuli princes were having problems, too.
“The princes’ bodies are starting to show signs of weakening,” Oeta replied, strained. “If they continue to decay, we are planning to put them into the Cryopods alongside the others.”
“The only Cryopods available on Destima, outside a vessel, are the five within the Fab Five’s mountain base.” Dread filled him. No one was allowed in their secret hideout other than Z, not even Selena, and she owned the moon. The last thing he needed was to deal with outsiders coming across his private research. Not even his sisters knew what he was hiding. “Others? What are you hiding from me?”
“We have agreed that Odelm and Xylo must be placed in Cryopods until Selena returns. We feared that their injuries were too great to survive for the usual length of time a nestmate can live without their nestqueen,” Oeta explained, the stress of the situation leaked over their mental connection. “Kaica got permission from Sovereign Zirene to relocate the operations to your mountain base. She has taken precautions and removed anything sensitive from prying eyes.”
“No one is allowed in my room!” Kaede growled. “I don’t care about the base. Use it as you like to save Selena’s clan. I know Kaica wouldn’t welcome any unauthorized personnel to roam around our base, but that doesn’t mean I want it to become open to anyone. Do whatever you need to make sure Selena has her nestmates when I return with her, but my room is off-limits.”
“You make me curious about what’s hidden in your room that you are so afraid others will see,” Oeta teased. “Should I be worried?”
“Not any more worried than you should be about being killed on sight,” Kaede snapped. “I’m serious. The condition of Selena’s mates is your top priority. I don’t care what you need to do to save them.”
“Including giving them one of your precious gems?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
Kaede cursed Qraniebi, that flamboyant birdbrain. Of course, he had survived and blabbed about everything that had happened on his precious ship. It was his fault that his crew had gotten close enough to Selena to kidnap her.
The only reason he hadn’t killed the mercenary was that he pitied the male. Q had been used then plucked by those he had hired and trusted. Kaede knew the male wasn’t evil—just annoying. Even though he tolerated him, he wasn’t a member of the Fab Five, so he couldn’t be completely trusted even if he worked behind the scenes for Z.
“Agent B captured Agent Q, and he had to prove his innocence. No thanks to you—”
“He is alive, isn’t he?” Kaede challenged. “He was lucky I didn’t just purge the whole ship, considering the state I found Selena in—” He broke off. “What do you mean ‘Agent Q?’ Qraniebi isn’t one of us.”
“That’s where you are wrong, Agent K.” Oeta chuckled, her mental laughter ringing like bells in his head. “You have missed a lot since you left on your hunt. Your sisters would’ve updated you if you hadn’t rudely disconnected from your family’s network.”
“It was necessary.”
“Oh, I know, K,” Oeta agreed. “But your sisters didn’t know why, and you hurt them—badly. I am warning you now that when you return, you have a lot of explaining to do. Right now, they are second-guessing everything regarding you.”
“Nothing has changed. I am still the same person I was before I left. I just can’t have them connected to me right now.”
“Kaede, I know what those orbs are and how they change you.”
“How? I kept that a secret from everyone but Z.”
There was no use in denying it. Strong telepaths like her were able to pick up on lies and veiled truths over the mental threads.
“I told you, you missed a lot of changes over here. To answer your earlier question, Agent Q became an official member of the Fab Five—”
“Not on my watch!”
“It’s no longer your watch, Kaede,” Oeta snapped. “From my understanding, it hasn’t been your watch in a while, ever since you were assigned to Selena’s side. Not like that matters now anyway. The only thing that does is that I was the one who cleared Agent Q’s name as a favor to Agent B.
“I scried his mind and was able to read and watch everything. I saw what happened with his crew and what you did to Selena. I didn’t miss how you broke that necklace and took that gem, nor when you pushed it into Selena’s chest. Q paid close attention to how her chest glowed as it slowly sealed and started to heal. I saw how you sent her away with his help then abandoned him for B to capture.
“You left an innocent and injured male alone to face your sister’s judgment, knowing full well they would question his involvement in Selena’s kidnapping.”
“I needed to chase down Selena. That’s my responsibility, not staying for the welcome party. Any millisecond wasted would have allowed her to slip farther away from me. Leaving him alive should’ve been enough evidence that I didn’t find him fully responsible for what happened. It was up to those who found him to determine his worth. He got himself into the mess, he could get himself out. While I am glad Z spared his life and he was intelligent enough to ask you to prove his innocence, he isn’t of any importance to me.”
“You are missing one development, Agent K,” Oeta mocked. “By scrying Q, I proved his innocence and devotion to the Aldawi and its royal family. While you are on your personal mission to bring Selena back, Kaica has requested to remain on Destima, bringing the Fab Five down a member. Q requested Z’s permission to travel with B as she leads the rest of your sisters on their search, now that he doesn’t have a ship or crew of his.”
“What the Stars is going on over there? Have you all gone insane?”
“We are doing everything we can to keep things stable on our front,” Oeta replied. Her mental voice sounded strained, making him wonder how poorly things were truly going on Destima. “It’s too late now. If you wanted a chance to voice your opinion on the matter, you shouldn’t have left so suddenly and disconnected from your family’s network. Now B and Q are leading the Fab Five as they follow you in hopes of assisting your hunt. Currently, I am trying to keep relations between Xylo’s fathers and the rest of the villa’s staff peaceful. It seems the old Circuli males were stuck in their ways and needed to be reminded that they weren’t in charge like they were on Circul. Tensions are high and your resistance to change isn’t helping, even though I understand why you didn’t want anyone to know about the orbs yet.”
“Don’t let them use the orbs to heal Selena’s mates,” Kaede pleaded. “They wouldn’t know the weight of the consequences of their actions. I am living with mine every day. It’s eating me up inside that when I find Selena, she will want nothing to do with me because of what I have done to her. I was selfish and made the call for her to keep her alive. I pray to the Stars that she will forgive me for the permanent change I have brought to her life.”
“That is between you and her, whenever you two find each other. I can’t tell you what I would’ve done in your place, because I haven’t needed to make such a decision for someone invaluable to me. Nor would I know what to do if I had woken up being a host to a sentient being without my consent,” Oeta stated.
He was shocked that she had discovered what the orbs truly were.
“Yes, Kaede. Do you think someone like me didn’t catch on when you tried to pass off an object of power as a simple trinket? Both my father and I knew what Selena wo
re the moment she entered the Assembly, and we know what problems would arise if news about the truth spread across the universe. We didn’t want to draw any more unneeded attention to Selena and her necklace since the Assembly already had their focus on her. It has been interesting working here on Destima; while they refuse to speak to me, I can feel their presence on the moon. In fact, I can sense your symbiont listening to us. Aren’t you going to introduce us?”
“Why would you want to speak to it?” Kaede asked, not understanding why she would be interested in something she couldn’t study in person. “You aren’t looking to get one for yourself, are you?”
“No, I would never,” Oeta confessed, her mental voice failing to mask her curiosity. “This discovery is new to me since they aren’t registered with the CEG—for good reason. If others knew of the power they wield and the possibilities they grant their hosts, I fear that we would have a civil war within the CEG on our hands. The other CEG governments already fear the Aldawi’s strength but have stayed out of their border spat with the Quaww. If news got out, I foresee the whole CEG would turn their backs on the Aldawi and swarm them.”
“We wouldn’t allow it,” REI interjected. “The Oetsae are loyal to the Aldawi and no one else. They have discovered our crash site and released us from our underground prison before we all slowly faded and died off. The Sovereign Zirene and the Fab Five gave us an opportunity to pay them back by using our abilities to power their creations.”
“They aren’t abusing or taking advantage of you?”
“Quite the contrary. By allowing us to charge ourselves with their dual suns, we can strengthen our lifeforce and prevent ourselves from fading. Instead of starting a relationship with a host, we have integrated into some of their designs to create living machines—”
“Those robots? Is that why those devices had a presence?” Oeta asked, her mental voice full of shock. “You’ve created a metallic host for them to use until they find a biological one! By allowing them to power your creations, you have essentially saved their lives.”
“Exactly,” REI replied proudly. “That is why we will never betray those who saved us.”
Chapter Five
Selena
“Celyze!” an unfamiliar female voice demanded. “I should be here when she wakes up. You know how scared I was when I woke up in that Vhalxt prison cell. It took me a while to completely trust you and your crewmates. What if she’s like me?”
“No one is like you, Tori,” an unfamiliar male voice muttered. “Believe me, I remember how you… defended yourself against me when I tried to communicate with you.”
“We’ve been over this many times, Celyze,” she hissed in low tones. “It was a miscommunication. I told you ‘no’, but you kept grabbing my arm to get my attention. It was a natural defensive instinct and I’ve apologized to you every time you bring it up. How do you know she doesn’t share that impulse? Zyxel explained she has already tried to escape once, so she is in fight-or-flight mode like I was.”
“Do we really need her in here?” the voice belonging to the male who had injected me asked. “I didn’t tell you to bring her with you when I requested your assistance with my—”
“She insisted on coming after she heard how your patient reacted when she prematurely woke up. I would agree that fewer people is better when trying to handle a rescued victim waking in a strange place. But after you told me how she reacted when she saw you, I believe having Tori here would ease the transition, especially since she appears almost human.”
“Celyze means that she was afraid of your appearance, Zyxel,” the female stated matter-of-factly. “Who wouldn’t be scared wide awake after discovering there was a freakin’ huge-ass snake-man in your bed? Any sane person would!”
“Freakin’ huge-ass snake-man?” Zyxel, who I surmised was the other male voice, repeated. “Celyze, haven’t I told you that you should do something about her native slang not translating well? Can’t you do a memory wipe or something?”
“I am not getting in the middle of this, Zyxel.” Celyze snorted. “Her slang is a part of her native tongue. It would go against my duty as a Cosmic Soul to alter anything about her character. This is the last reminder she has of her life on Earth.”
“You can’t say I didn’t try,” Zyxel muttered. “Fine. Have it your way, Tori, but don’t go near her until I tell you it’s okay. The last thing I need is your Luwyn trying to battle me for your honor and losing for the millionth time.”
“Hey! It only takes one win for him to claim he has beaten you, and when it happens, I’ll make sure to rub it in your face.”
“I will look forward to it,” he mocked. “As long as it’s not when I’m busy trying to save lives.”
The room fell silent.
I didn’t know if they were staring at me, waiting for me to wake up, or paying attention to some more pressing matter. I couldn’t hear the sound of doors opening, so it was safe to assume that no one had entered or left the room. Why had they suddenly stopped conversing?
Keeping my breathing slow and deep, I feigned sleep as I considered my options.
“Vowels?” I thought out loud, hoping to speak to my new companion. Other than speaking with my Circuli mates and Mwe and Oeta, I had never attempted to reach beyond my mental shields for someone who wasn’t already connected to me in some way. Chyox had been the first Circuli I’d reached in Destima’s mental web, but even then, the experience resembled speaking to my nestmates.
How could I reach for someone who was now a part of me? There was no mental thread for me to grab like I usually did.
“Yes, Selena?” His warm voice radiated through me, instantly filling me with relief.
He hadn’t been a strange dream. He was indeed real and inside me, whether I liked it or not. Waking up in this situation, I was relieved that I wasn’t completely alone. I didn’t know what these strangers were capable of, and while Vowels’ intrusion hadn’t been ideal, I was glad he could now protect me from mental attack.
“Are you capable of sensing who is around me?”
“I can, but my range is limited,” he murmured. “My specialty is energy medicine. I can’t scry anything beyond loud thoughts and emotions unless you touch them. If you want to know what they were thinking, it would be more efficient for me to follow your mental thread, but that would defeat the purpose of you pretending that you are still unconscious.”
“Could you please?”
A symbiont skilled in healing was exactly what I would need, especially if I planned to do something extreme to escape. Before I formulated breakout plans, I wanted to figure out exactly what he was capable of.
“There are three beings in this room, whose voices you heard earlier. Zyxel, the Earth-like naga you’ve already met, Celyze, who has a unique mind that intrigues me, and Tori, a female whose morphology is similar to yours.”
“Similar, how?”
As soon as I posed the question, I regretted it. Ice filled my veins with sudden concern that there was a human here. Hadn’t she said that she had been captured and thrown into a prison cell with Celyze? Could she be another demi-human like me?
“The shape of Tori’s body and general aura resembles yours, but your mental shields are stronger.”
“Is she a demi-human?”
“Unknown.”
“How can I understand their words?”
“Now that I’ve finished healing your body, I have been able to focus on translating their languages for your understanding.”
“So, you’re acting as my universal communicator, but instead of being implanted behind my ear, you live in my body.”
“Precisely.”
While I needed time to get used to sharing my body with another lifeform, right now, I appreciated his help in understanding what was going on around me. That would make the coming days smoother—I hoped.
My only other source of relief was that the female didn’t sound stressed or afraid. In fact, Tori seemed relaxed, judging by the
jokes she made with the two males in the room. Seemingly, she was friendly with them, perhaps even more with Celyze.
Maybe I could win her over and convince her to help me escape. Perhaps she would leave with me if she were indeed trapped here as well.
“Does she know that we know she’s awake?” Tori whispered, her voice closer to my side than before. “She can’t trick your medical scans.”
“Well, she does now,” Zyxel growled from my other side. “This is why I didn’t want you in here.”
“Don’t get your coils twisted in a bunch, Zyxel. I was just making an observation.”
When I opened my eyes, I hissed, automatically covering them with a hand to ward off the bright lighting of the room. Why did the medical personnel always turn the room’s lights to full intensity when their patients were trying to wake slowly? It took a while before the Circuli medical team realized that waking to bright lights caused headaches and irritability. Whoever these people were, they hadn’t caught on—or maybe, they wanted the upper hand since I had tried to escape last time.
“Celyze, have you tried communicating with her?”
“That was the first thing I did when I entered this room,” Celyze said. “She must have the same strong mental shields as Tori and the rest of the humans in our crew.”
A sapphire-skinned male stood next to my medical bed, one hand outstretched and ready to grip my wrist. His long hair’s color matched the white speckles that danced along his skin, defining his agile body. A pair of white-and-blue wings fluttered on his back. Without his coloring, I could’ve mistaken him for a demi-human or perhaps a fairy from my stories from Earth.
Humans.
Celyze had declared that Tori was human and that more were aboard. However, I doubted Tori could truly be human. Earth had supposedly been destroyed, along with all other evidence that humans had ever existed. The Yaarkins wanted a monopoly on our species, genetically engineering our children and creating a diverse set of demi-humans by splicing our DNA with other species.