by Ann Aguirre
He was silent. Very silent. Wary. I could feel it through our link in waves of gunmetal gray. Funny. This one was like a shield, flickering to life between us like a force field.
“Wait . . . you’re not allowed to answer? Is that what I’m getting here?” I asked.
“Zara—”
“If you tell me about it, will they still let you go on the Journey?” I felt the shield grow spikes of white ice. Fear. Real fear.
“I can’t talk to you about this,” he said.
“Because of Typhon?” No answer. Paranoid curiosity burned a hole in my head, but I had to give in. I couldn’t push him. He’d shut down completely on me. “All right,” I said. “I won’t ask.”
Warm, orange gratitude burst within me like fireworks, sending tingles down every nerve. I found my fingers moving slowly over the wall, and I could see the whispering warmth of it lingering on his skin. I wanted to ask him if it felt good to him, but it was obvious it did. Maybe too much for comfort. Closing my eyes, I let the strange sensation wash over me, while at the same time fighting the irrational conviction that I’d been lost and angry my whole damn life because I hadn’t had this. A real, cell-deep connection to someone else.
Maybe the Leviathan DNA in me that had fixed my brain had, at the same time, given me an aching kind of loneliness I’d never recognized before.
With a faint shiver, I stepped away and struggled to separate myself, put myself back into my own skin. I still tingled all over, and there was a flushing warmth to my body that mirrored what I’d felt from him.
We weren’t in each other’s heads, exactly, but it seemed we couldn’t avoid being in each other’s nervous systems. I wanted to ask if that was all due to my Leviathan DNA patch, but I didn’t. Some things were too fragile to say out loud.
Nadim said, “I have to go. Typhon is calling,” and I felt him—or his attention—leave me.
It felt cold. Very cold. That was both his withdrawal and a ghostly image of the icy calm he had to put on when facing his Elder. I went in search of Beatriz. By that time, almost seventeen hours had passed since she’d gotten her lists, and she was just finishing up in the equipment assembly room—finally, she had her turn in the box. She looked dirty, exhausted, and triumphant under all that as she pressed her thumb to the last item to mark it complete. I watched one of the massive bins roll back to its assigned spot and wondered what she’d been asked to assemble.
I wondered if it was another weapon. And if she’d even asked.
“Done?” I asked her.
Most of her hair had been tied up in a thick mane behind her, but she used the back of one dirty hand to swipe some loose curls away from her face. “I think so. I could use a long shower—”
We both staggered, because Nadim rocked hard on his side. We hit the wall, and I braced myself against it as he rolled back to the normal axis. Physical contact clicked us together, and—
His pain was so overwhelming that I cried out, and then I went down, smothering in the anguish, in the rage.
CHAPTER TEN
Breaking Faith
“Z? Z, WAKE up! Please!”
For a fuzzy second, I thought it was my mother’s voice, but then a sharp, pungent smell jabbed into my nostrils, and I jerked back to reality.
Reality was me lying flat on the floor with Beatriz kneeling next to me, a snapped capsule in her shaking hands held close to my nose. I ached all over. It felt like I’d been burned in a flash fire . . . and then it faded, slowly, to nothing. I mumbled something incoherent, and Bea dropped the capsule and helped me sit up. It took me a second to remember why I was on the floor, and another to remember the pain, panic, and rage. I shook her off and stumbled to my feet to lay hands against Nadim’s skin.
Nothing. Nothing.
“Nadim!” I said. No response. “Nadim!”
And then he was there. Faint and far away, but there. He didn’t speak, but I felt him.
“Is he all right?” Bea asked anxiously. “Are you?”
I was. Just barely. If he was blocking us deliberately, I knew why.
The sledgehammer of pain had knocked me unconscious. He didn’t want to risk that again. He was suffering in silence, alone, to protect us.
“Typhon,” I said. “Typhon hurt him.” The surety came as a wave, not my memory but Nadim’s, and I didn’t question it. I was angry enough to chew nails and spit bullets, not that it would make any difference to a Leviathan. “Bastard hurt him.”
“But—how?”
I didn’t know. The red aura of the impact stayed with me, and it woke instincts that I thought I’d left behind on Earth. Instincts to hit back.
“We’re here,” I told Nadim. “Please. Come to us.”
Beatriz sucked in a sudden breath, and I knew she felt him, just as I did: a sudden, echoing stab of shame and pain, darkly mixed with anger. I knew that feeling so well.
Abused kids were all the same, deep down. We blamed ourselves. We hurt. We swore it wouldn’t happen again. We swore we wouldn’t deserve it again because that was how screwed up we felt. How screwed up our abusers made us.
“It’s not your fault,” I said to Nadim. He didn’t believe me. I knew because I could never believe it myself.
It still helped saying it, and hearing it: some of the edge bled away from him, like Nadim might return to us. Tentative and wounded, but him.
“Honors,” said Chao-Xing from behind us. Startled, Bea and I both turned and found her and Marko standing there in their dried-blood uniforms and their blackened eyes, watching us. “Step back. It is not wise to attempt to bond with your host at this time.”
“Because your Elder slapped the shit out of him?” I asked. I was ready to try it with Chao-Xing, for sure. “What the hell?”
“Don’t,” Marko warned. I didn’t know if he was talking about my attitude or my intentions, but I could hear some hint of humanity in him. “Honor Teixeira, the Elder has approved your work. You may remain for the Tour.”
“How gracious,” Beatriz snapped, which from her was like shouting in his face. Sarcasm. I liked it on her. “Thank him for me.”
They let that pass without comment, and Chao-Xing suddenly broke from her spot beside Marko and walked directly up to me. In my face. Up close, her eyes were inhumanly different, unreadable. “You are here to learn about the galaxy in partnership with Nadim,” she told me. “Not to question. Be careful not to dig so deep that you dig your own grave.”
She left, and in the chilly silence, I said to Marko, “She’s a charmer.”
“She always has been,” he said. He seemed more himself. Maybe Typhon had cut the connection with them. As I watched, Marko’s pupils slowly shrank down to normal size, and he blinked hard, trying to adjust his vision.
“Hello, Marko,” Nadim said. His voice sounded bland. “I’m sorry I didn’t greet you earlier, but you were not free. You’ll begin your Journey soon.”
“Tomorrow,” Marko agreed. “We came back to say our good-byes to our family. And to sign off on your new Honors, of course.”
“Of course. I wish you well, Marko. You were a pleasant companion.”
“And you—” For a moment, Marko’s calm broke. He looked down. “I’m sorry. I can’t do this right now.”
“I understand,” Nadim said as if he really did. “I will think of you with fondness.”
Marko didn’t say good-bye. He just . . . left. Walked away, and in a moment, I felt the whisper as the shuttle departed Nadim and made its way back to Typhon.
I also felt the continued, muted burn of pain from our ship. Whatever Typhon had done to him had hurt enough to leave marks.
“Nadim? Are you all right?”
“Yes, I’m fine,” he said. Liar, I thought. “I didn’t want Marko and Chao-Xing to go, but I didn’t have a choice.”
“You mean you didn’t want them to go to him,” I said. “Right?”
He didn’t answer, but I was on target. He disliked Typhon. He feared him. He also longed for the
Elder’s approval. It was a sad, familiar story, and I hated that we had that in common, even if it explained why I understood him so well when I hadn’t been with him long.
The quiet startled me when I realized I was completely alone with Nadim. Bea had gone for her shower and probably to drop exhausted into her bed. Even Typhon had withdrawn, presumably pleased with the discipline he’d delivered. It bothered me that the Leviathan didn’t seem to know better than humans in this regard. Some might crack under sufficient pressure and pretend to comply, but others, like me—and maybe Nadim—would fight until we broke our backs. On a deep breath, an old memory washed over me.
I was six years old, maybe, and my teachers found me hard to handle. Intractable. Incorrigible. They were already saying that about me, and my odd medical problems didn’t make me easier to deal with. My father accused me of faking the headaches like I was some kind of a criminal mastermind in elementary school.
The first time my father hit me, he kept saying, “If you cry, I’ll stop. If you cry, then I’ll know you’re sorry.”
For what? Being born? Having pain that the doctors couldn’t diagnose fast enough? I remembered clenching every muscle in my body, especially my jaw, until my teeth ached, echoing into a feedback loop with the awful throbbing in my skull. But I never cried. I never fucking cried.
I refused to give him that victory or let him imagine even for a second that I was sorry.
It had been a long-ass time since anything could compel my tears; I considered them trophies, and I didn’t yield them often. But I could almost weep for Nadim, for the way Typhon had brutalized him. I wasn’t exactly sure why it had happened, but part of me wondered if it was because I’d demanded answers he wasn’t supposed to offer.
“You’re so sad.”
My breath hitched. “Sorry.”
“Because Beatriz left you alone? I don’t think she meant to upset you. She was just tired.”
“I’m not alone. I’m with you.” I flung that out, not a gauntlet exactly, but more of a distraction.
“But I’m not . . .”
Human. A person? Whatever he intended to say, I cut it off by sprawling flat on the floor, bare hands, bare feet. It was like being held safe against my mother’s chest, only it was thrilling too, the first kick of new chem. Our points of contact warmed, and as I held still, the quiet thrum of his energy was countered by my pulse. By the lightning jolt of his surprise, nobody had ever done this before.
“You’re so strange,” he said, and vanished the ceiling so I was swimming in stars. How he knew I wanted that before I did . . . it was perfect.
For a moment, I considered making Nadim angels on the floor. If he mirrored my movements with brightness, as he did when he wanted to direct us somewhere, the pulses of light and color would flutter from my skin to his and back again, a language only spoken by the two of us.
“I want you to know . . . I won’t punk out like that again. I wasn’t ready, and Typhon hit us with a sucker punch. I promise not to leave you to deal with that on your own again.”
The heat of his happiness washed over my hands and feet, giving lie to his words. “You’re not meant to bear my pain, Zara.”
I smiled. “Just you watch me.”
The next evening’s official ceremony, thankfully, wasn’t held on Earth; it was a broadcast, and we could watch and respond when our turn rolled around. Each country called their own Honors, praising the ones who had graduated and were hand-picked to go on the Journey, along with the young recruits who’d made it past their testing week and gotten confirmed. It was bizarre when Gidra contacted me on the console.
“You’re up in ten minutes,” the press liaison told me. “Do your makeup for God’s sake and find a fresh uniform.”
Briefly I considered flying my slacker flag, but that might shame Nadim, and I cared more about his image than my own. So I hurried to my quarters, borrowed some of Bea’s cosmetics, since I didn’t own any, and donned formal blues so crisp that they damn near cut my shins. I got back to the console seven minutes later, pretty good, I thought. Bea got called up before me, and for a few minutes I thought she might choke up at the sight of the holo view of her brothers, sisters, parents, and that opera-singing grandmother all waving to her from her home in Rio. But she got through it and said a few words thanking the world for this opportunity: first in Portuguese, then Spanish, English, and, finally, German. Hot damn, she speaks four languages. And they almost dropped her?
In the background, Bea’s grandmother couldn’t stop crying—proud, happy tears it seemed like—and the camera cut away as the extended family offered a long-distance group hug. On Earth, I thought, Beatriz had a whole tribe; out here, there was only me. I resolved not to let her down.
“You’ll be fine,” Nadim said, reminding me that I was nervous and my turn was coming up. I was standing by, but not prepared, when they connected to my console. What do I have to say to the world?
“You’re on in . . .” Gidra flashed three fingers, two, and then one.
Showtime. I had nothing planned, so the words surprised me too. “I’m dedicating this voyage to everybody in Detroit’s Lower Eight. Maybe they said you’ll never get out. Well, I’m sending a shout-out to folks who feel alone, who feel like hope is something they can’t afford. Your shot is out there somewhere, so reach for it. Stay strong. Zara out.”
I saw my mother and sister sitting together on Mars, looking beautiful even while they cried. I saw my father, in a separate image, trying to get a microphone, because of course he would. And then the media cut to a panoramic sweep of the Lower Eight. People stood on buildings, on cars, shouting and holding signs. Some had nothing to do with me, but I read enough congratulations that my shriveled heart sparked a little. Audio popped a few seconds later, and the only intelligible word I could make out was my name, chanted in unison, by strangers who, on a good day, struggled for life.
“How was that?” I asked Beatriz, not really expecting an answer.
She threw her arms around me. I froze, because hugs were not something I was used to getting. “Amazing. Inspiring.”
“Now you’re just messing with me.” I set her firmly back and looked up at the ceiling. “Nadim? What’s next?”
“In four hours, we depart, and you won’t see Earth for a year. Will you miss it?”
“Yes,” Beatriz said, at the same time I said, with exactly the same conviction, “No.” And we both laughed. “Maybe a little,” I amended. “But my life wasn’t exactly roses.”
“No one’s is,” Beatriz said. “But won’t you miss the sky? The clouds?”
I shrugged.
“You should rest,” Nadim said. “I’ll wake you both in a few hours when it’s time for departure.”
Beatriz left, yawning and stretching. I went to the galley and made myself some coffee, curling up on the sofa as I sipped it.
“Zara? Aren’t you tired?” Nadim asked.
I’d only just begun to listen to how he said my name. Zah-ra, with a faint trill to the R. It wasn’t how most people did, usually from reading it off forms. Generally, they rhymed it with Sara. Nadim’s pronunciation made me feel like a reigning old-days queen.
“I should be. But I’m not, really. So much has happened. I can’t believe that in a few hours, we’ll be . . . gone.”
“Freedom.” His voice had gone low and quiet and warm, and it felt like a blanket wrapping around me. “Except it isn’t freedom, Zara, only the illusion of it. We will still be required to do our duties on the Tour. And we aren’t free to go anywhere we like.”
“You’re bored,” I said.
“Am I?” He sounded taken aback. “I don’t see how that could be true.”
There was some subtext I didn’t quite grasp, but I pursued another line of inquiry instead of drilling for more. “You told me that you hear the stars,” I reminded him. “It must be hard to resist heading out there. I heard it . . . when you dreamed.”
“I don’t . . . !” His denial
trailed off, possibly as he recalled telling us that he’d had what we’d call a bad dream.
I sipped my coffee. “Am I bothering you?”
“Nothing about you bothers me,” he said. “Even when you’re angry. I like the way you shine when you’re angry.”
I laughed. I couldn’t help it. “Shine? I do not!”
“Burn, then. Is that better?”
“Whatever.” For some reason, I blushed, an actual hot flush that traveled up my neck into my face. With my free hand, I touched my cheek, more or less in disbelief, because I once watched a couple from my old Lower Eight crew go at it up against a wall without even blinking. Yep. What is wrong with me?
The blush intensified, and suddenly it was hard to breathe. My fingers flexed on the wall, and then I felt the pulse of his life force. I went lightheaded, because it seemed like I was drinking Nadim through my skin cells.
I pulled away. Sipped more coffee. Tried to slow my breathing.
“I’m sorry. This is different than . . . anything I have known. Beatriz—she fits here with me. But not the way you do.”
I knew what he meant, and that filled me with equal measures of fear and delight. It was blowing my mind that in such a short time, we’d be out of the Sol system. Sayonara, ISS. Bye-bye, Moonbase Alpha. Farewell, Mars Colony Roma. In what world did two teenage girls get to go joyriding on a sentient ship? A future so strange I couldn’t have imagined it.
We’re a team. And in an odd sort of way, Bea and Nadim had already become family. I would fight anybody who tried to hurt them or take them away from me.
Including Elder Typhon.
Nadim might believe his elders wouldn’t do anything shady; I had no such illusions. And maybe my chary nature could save us when the shit hit the fan.
PART III
From //darknet, TRUTHSEEKERS forum, subbed: “True Symbionts: The Real Reason Leviathan Seek Us Out by Ingmar Ström”
*WARNING, CONTENT CREATED by individuals is not validated or endorsed by TRUTHSEEKERS or //darknet*
Over the years, people have attempted basic explanations. The Leviathan seek companions for their travels; they are sentient and feel loneliness. But the truth is never so simple.
