by Lauren Esker
Skara and Claudia were left in the dark, stumbling forward. Skara's hip rebounded off something hard, and an entire rack of equipment teetered and fell with a tremendous crash. He caught himself on another worktable, and for a moment he and Claudia stood in the dark, with his arms wrapped around her and the faint green glimmer of the shield surrounding them.
Then Claudia said faintly, "Oh, fuck."
"What?"
"Well, I left my bag behind, and second, I think that was my computer."
"Your what?"
She began attempting to extract herself from his grasp. He banished the shield and let her go with a sting of regret. "Computer," she said, crouching down. "It's what I do my work on. Dammit. Let me just pick that up. Can you get the light switch? Or do you even know what a light switch is?"
Skara set the "illuminate" function on his left cuff and raised his arm. Silver-white light brightened the room.
"Oh," Claudia said. He glimpsed her startled look in the glow before she bent to collect scattered office supplies.
Offices, he was amused to note, were not that different the galaxy over. The equipment wasn't the same, but the rows of workstations were not dissimilar from ones he'd seen from the Galatean core worlds to the Outer Rim.
Unfortunately, it did not look especially defensible. "Claudia," he said, placing a hand on her shoulder. "We need to portal again. They're in your city and they'll be here as soon as they can get back to their ship."
"Yes,"she said, taking in a shuddering breath. She stood and swayed. He steadied her. "Whoa," she said, putting a hand to her forehead. "Dizzy."
"The symbiont is using energy from your body. You'll need to eat when we get where we're going."
"Will it hurt me?" she asked.
"No. You'll be fine. I've done it before. It's just going to make you tired."
"Okay." She clasped her hand on his arm, above the glowing cuff. "Where should we go?"
"See if you can get us to my ship. Once we're on board, we can jump out and put some distance between us and the bounty hunters. You need to take us back to the place where they held you prisoner. Any part of that place you can clearly visualize."
"I—" she began to protest, and then said quietly, "Okay."
She turned away from him and took her hand from his arm. Her fingers moved in that delicate, fluttering motion that seemed to help her concentrate. Skara could only watch, with his entire body one concentrated ache—part pain, part jealousy. If he still had the symbiont, he could have whisked them out of danger with a casual thought.
If he still had the symbiont, he reminded himself, he wouldn't be here and she wouldn't be in danger in the first place.
Claudia dropped her hand. "Nothing's happening. Maybe I'm too tired."
"You're not too tired." He'd done it when he was far more exhausted and stressed than she was right now, though he didn't think it would help to tell her that. "You need to fix the place in your head. Just like with your apartment. It'll be harder because you've only been there once, but you can still do it. See it. Feel it. The smell of the air, the ground under your feet—"
"I was tied to a chair!"
"—The chair under your ass," Skara said dryly. In the glow of his cuff, she gave him an exasperated look. "I'm not actually joking. Any sensory details from when you were there before will help. It's not just the physical details of the place you're trying to evoke. It's the feeling of it. You know how you got to your apartment and—what was the other place you went?"
"My childhood home." Her voice was a murmur, her eyes wistful.
"Yeah. It made you feel safe, right? And you wanted to be safe." He tried not to think about what it might have been like to have had a childhood that evoked feelings of safety. "It's the way a place looks and smells, sure, but more than that, it's the feeling of it. What were you feeling when they held you prisoner?"
"Scared. Annoyed. Frustrated." She made a fist. "Wanting to pop those jerks in the face, if I hadn't been tied hand and foot to a—whoa!" The vivid purple-blue shimmer had begun to materialize in front of her, then winked out at her startled exclamation. "Damn it! I lost it!"
"Don't get frustrated. That won't help." This situation was certainly an exercise in patience for him. He ached from head to foot, and at every moment he expected the bounty hunters to burst into the room. "Pull out that memory. Everything about it. Even the emotions. Especially the emotions."
Claudia made a fist like she wanted to hit him with it, but turned her attention to the air in front of her. Nothing happened this time, and she shook her head. "I just can't. It's like—"
"Like trying to move a muscle when you can't remember how?"
"Yeah," she said, giving him a look. "Exactly like that. Like ... like knowing some people can wiggle their ears or curl their tongues, and trying to do it yourself, but the harder you try the more you can't remember how to move anything at all."
"It's hard at first. Someone else showed me how. Here."
He moved behind her. Claudia nervously stepped away. "What are you doing?" she asked.
"Guiding you. Relax."
He put an arm on either side of her, not holding tightly, but merely providing support. She was warm in his loose embrace, but rigid as a board. She had been nothing like this a few nights ago—active and willing, lean brown legs wrapped around his waist ...
But a lot had been different then.
"Relax," he repeated, feeling a soft laugh bubble up in his throat. "I'm just going to align your body. Okay?"
She hesitated, then nodded.
This was going to take patience, never his best feature, and especially as urgency beat at the back of his brain. He fell back on long-ago lessons, once used to control his fidgeting through interminable hours of a childhood spent, it seemed, mostly sitting on hard benches and waiting for adults to tell him to do things that were difficult, unpleasant, painful, or downright nightmarish. First he calmed himself; then he worked on calming Claudia.
"Be there in your body," he told her, gently nudging her shoulders and arms to align her spine and straighten her arms. "Feel your feet, feel your spine, feel the way your clothes touch your body and the way your muscles tighten and relax."
For an instant he could almost hear it in the voice of his one-time teacher, Tamir, the Galatean soldier who had trained him and the rest of his sept-siblings to fight. Tamir's big, callused hands had repositioned his arms as he was now doing with Claudia.
"That's it," he told her, feeling her body beginning to relax against him. "Sensation is what you want. Your head just gets in the way. It's like that time when you're first waking up, between dreaming and consciousness. You see things, you feel things. You need to see and feel the place we're going to."
Had that been a crash somewhere in the building? Don't think about it. She was pliant against him, and when he nudged her right arm, she raised it. The physical gesture had seemed to help her focus earlier.
"It was earlier today," he coaxed her. "You were tied to a chair—"
"And thirsty," she muttered, "and hungry, and I just wanted those bullies to leave me alone. It was warm and humid, I remember that, and it smelled like—like moss and mud—"
Blue-violet light flared at her fingertips. Flared and faltered.
"Stay in it," Skara murmured into her ear. "You're there. Keep feeling it. You've got it."
That was definitely the sound of a door slamming on their floor. Claudia was so lost in her contemplation that she didn't seem to notice. Skara quietly raised a shield around them as the portal bloomed in the air, a widening slice of night.
The door slammed open and a flash of green light sizzled across his shield. The bounty hunters had come in shooting. Stun, he hoped, but even so, his shield wouldn't take more than a couple shots.
The portal vanished again. Skara could have screamed with frustration. Instead he dragged Claudia down behind a desk.
"I'm sorry!" Claudia gasped.
Skara had to clench his t
eeth to avoid yelling at her. It wasn't her fault; he'd been just as useless with the damn thing when he first got it. Instead he focused on keeping the shield up, despite his growing weariness and the itchiness under his skin. "You did it once. Now do it again."
Claudia started to say something, and then she got an odd look on her face. "Okay," she said.
This time it happened with a suddenness that took his breath away, especially since it happened underneath them. One minute he was crouched behind the desk, the next he was falling. They landed in a sprawling tangle on the floor of Claudia's bedroom.
"I knew it!" Claudia crowed. "I got us here once. I figured I could do it again. I can—whoa—" She put her head in her hands. "I ... I think I'm going to be sick."
Skara rubbed between her shoulder blades. "Good thinking." Actually damn smart. She'd learned to take herself to one reliable place, and she knew the bounty hunters wouldn't be here if they were at her workplace. Assuming they hadn't left any little presents behind. He glanced around, but the only visible difference from the last time he'd seen the place was the bedroom door twisted and splintered.
"I know, I know," Claudia moaned without raising her head from her hands. "I have to make a portal to get us to your ship. I thought I could just get us here and then do it in peace but—oh—"
"Hold on." He scrambled to his feet and went to her kitchen. Most of its contents were unfamiliar, but he sniffed and touched his tongue to various substances until he found a small bag of something sweet that he hoped was sugar. He took it back to the bedroom, where Claudia was still hunched over, clutching her head. "Here. Eat some of this."
"Are you crazy?" she asked, squinting weakly at him.
"You need fast energy. If you have anything you'd rather eat that has sugar in it—"
"Second drawer beside the sink. Chocolate bars. Bring me one."
He did, and she took a tentative, queasy bite, then wolfed down the rest. "Wow. That did help."
"It'll be worse after the next portal, just to warn you."
"But it won't kill me?" she asked nervously.
"No. You'll just feel like hell until you eat something." He smiled briefly. "Ask me how I know."
"Ugh." Claudia rubbed her temples. "Okay. I know that ship will be landing on the roof any minute, so let's rock and roll."
It was almost anticlimactic this time. The portal spread before them, opening onto soft, sweet-smelling darkness with a cascade of soft chirring in the background.
"I don't remember that noise before," Skara said, squinting into the dark. That could be the same fence; it was hard to tell.
"It's crickets." She reached for the bag she'd packed earlier. "C'mon."
They stepped through onto damp grass. As the portal winked out and the flickering violet light vanished from the grass, Claudia made a faint sound and then collapsed so suddenly that Skara thought at first, in his own weary, pained state, that someone had stunned her. He lunged to catch her, and abruptly he had an armload of boneless Claudia. The bag fell from her limp fingers to the grass.
"Claudia!"
He felt for her pulse, and found it strong and fast. It wouldn't hurt her, would it? He'd never experienced worse than a sort of hangover from using it too many times in rapid succession. But she was an original, unmodified Birthworld human. Maybe her people couldn't take the strain as well.
All the more reason to get her back to the ship.
He knelt to sling her bag over his shoulder, then arranged her into a less awkward position in his arms and, by the light of his cuffs, set out for the place he'd parked his ship in a clearing back in the woods. The night sounds of insects and other small creatures were loud around him, considerably more so than on most planets he'd visited. But this was, after all, the planet where most of the life in the galaxy came from. It must have millions of species, compared to the relatively simple ecosystems of other worlds.
Right now he wished there was a little less life on this world. Insects swarmed around him as he pushed deeper into the woods, and he didn't have a free hand to brush them away from his face. By the time he glimpsed the reflective glimmer of his ship in the woods ahead, he was sticky, muddy, and damp from pushing through the dew-soaked forest.
Not to mention the aching discomfort of symbiont withdrawal, growing to the point where he had to push through it just to move. His limbs were leaden, his skin tight and hot and itching.
He looked down at Claudia's still, slack face in the soft glow of his cuffs. If he couldn't get the symbiont out of her, what was he going to do?
Problem for later, I guess.
There was no sign of anyone having come around the ship, but he laid Claudia gently in the long grass and took a quick walk around to make sure the bounty hunters hadn't laid any traps. As far as he could tell, they hadn't been here. He unlocked the ship with a swipe of his hand and carried Claudia inside. As the airlock sealed behind him, he relaxed inwardly for the first time since he'd landed on this gods-forsaken planet. The trapped feeling wasn't gone, exactly, but it receded somewhat. He had a fast ship with good shields; he could run or fight. And he planned to be off this planet as soon as he got Claudia stabilized.
He carried her to the ship's small medbay and laid her in the diagnostic medbed, dropping her bag on the floor. A quick scan showed nothing worse than hypoglycemia and exhaustion, so he gave her glucose and a vitamin injection. She was going to come around any minute, so he scrabbled quickly through his supplies, looking for something to keep him functional before she woke up. A stimulant and painkiller cocktail ought to beat back the withdrawal symptoms for a little while longer. He pressed the injector to his arm and wondered if he was setting himself up for getting addicted to this, too, before too long. Well, that was yet another problem for later.
Sweet relief coursed through his veins. He dropped the injector into the sterilizer and leaned his forehead against a cabinet as tension unwound throughout him, the brittle ache in his bones starting to fade, the headache receding. He hadn't realized how much pain he was in until it went away.
There was still an uncomfortably tight feeling, as if his skin was a little too small. He flexed his hand and felt the way his movements were slower than usual, even with the stimulant in his system.
How much worse is this going to get?
But he knew the answer from his research. It would keep getting worse until he got the symbiont back, or until he died.
And if he took it from Claudia, all he would do was pass his own death sentence along to her.
He tried to push away that thought. Feeling a bit steadier, he retrieved clean clothing from under the medbed and changed out of the muddy, ill-fitting things Claudia had given him. He tossed the used clothing into the sterilizer as well. He could give it back to her when it was clean.
Claudia woke with a sudden gasp. Her eyes snapped open, and she clutched at the bed under her.
"Whoa there." Skara caught her as she started to sit up. "Slow down. You might pass out again if you sit up too fast. Easy does it."
Claudia clutched her head as he eased her to a sitting position. "You weren't kidding," she moaned. "I feel ..."
"Hung over?"
"Yes, and without even having the party beforehand."
"What, my parties aren't good enough for you?" Skara asked lightly, reaching for another injector.
"If that's what you call a party—" She broke off at the sight of the injector. "What's that?"
"A painkiller for your headache and more glucose to get your blood sugar up," Skara said, snapping ampoules into its ports. "Hold still."
Claudia caught the injector around its blunt muzzle as he reached for her arm. "Are there side effects?"
"Not at all. It's just a light painkiller. Are you going to let me do this or fight every step of the way?"
She let go and watched him press it to her arm with a highly suspicious expression. The injector hissed and her expression changed almost immediately. "My headache's gone!"
"Well ... yes. I gave you a painkiller."
"Sure, but they don't normally take effect immediately. On my world, I mean."
"If the state of medicine on your world is comparable to its transportation, no wonder."
Looking steadier already, she gazed around the room, her eyes lingering on even the most normal of items, like the life-support web hanging from its hooks and the row of sterilized injectors in a neat cradle. "Am I on a spaceship? Wow. I'm on a spaceship."
"You were on a spaceship earlier," he couldn't help pointing out.
"Yes, but it's not like I got to see it while running for our lives." She slid off the medbed and Skara caught her with a hand under her elbow as she wobbled. "I want to see everything," she declared rapturously, pulling free.
"I'll give you a proper tour later, but right now let's take off before our friends show up. They're probably already on their way."
"Oh, right." She followed him out into the hall, pausing briefly to take in the sight of the Discordia's vividly colorful walls. Skara would have loved to stop and let her admire them (he was very proud of his ship, a deliberate poke in the eye to the Galateans' industrial-looking ships with their utilitarian paint and bare metal), but he hustled her along instead.
"Where is everything? What's that? Is that the kitchen?" She trailed her hands along a series of purple dots in abstract patterns on a yellow wall. "Does this mean something?"
"It means I get bored easily." They arrived on the bridge and he steered her to a seat. "Here, fasten your restraints. Takeoff is going to be fast and it might be bumpy."
Claudia felt around herself. "What restraints where?"
Skara reached over and pulled down the restraint disc from its position in the headrest of her seat. "Tap it," he ordered, throwing himself into his own seat and plunging his hands into the pilot cradles up to the elbows.
"Oh!" Claudia exclaimed. He glanced over to see the restraint web flow out of the disc and across her torso, while she held her hands in the air and stared down at it. "Oh, okay, that's ... useful. I guess." She squirmed experimentally. "How do I get it off?"
