by C. R. Jane
As we laid there in the bloody paradise of our own making, I saw that Thane looked pensive and a little bit worried. Not exactly the look I thought he would have after what we had just shared.
"What's wrong?" I asked, stroking his arm softly as I spoke, his skin slippery under my touch because of the blood that coated his flesh.
"I think it's time you met my mother," he said. I saw the guys exchange looks with each other. I rolled my eyes; they were never going to stop.
"I'm sure I know at least some of your secrets at this point, but you should probably just tell me why you want to go visit your mom now, while we are fugitives from the Vepar government," I said in what I hoped sounded like a fierce voice.
Derrial laughed at my attempt. "Okay pet, tell us what secrets you think we’re trying to keep from you," he asked in a patronizing voice.
"What about the fact that you think that the Council's experiments are making the Vepars lose control and go crazy. That wouldn't be why you wanted to visit your mother now, would it?" I asked Thane in a heated voice.
All of the guys’ jaws dropped.
“I heard you on the spaceship. I'm not telling you how, just in case I need to listen again, but I know a lot more than you think I do now."
Thane got up, took a towel out of a cabinet nearby and started to wipe himself down. I was pretty sure that wasn't going to even come close to wiping off all the blood coating him. We probably needed to shower several times and maybe just destroy this room; I didn't think it could get clean.
Before anyone began to answer any of my questions, Corran walked over to the far wall, and opened up a drawer next to the bed. I admired the way his taut muscles moved under his skin. He pulled out a small rectangular device that looked similar to a cigarette lighter. He opened up the top and pressed a button.
I watched in amazement as beads of blood started to rise up in the air from where they had been plastered all over the sheets, floor, our bodies, and the walls. The blood droplets gathered and zoomed towards the machine, disappearing into it somehow even though it was way too small to hold all the carnage of the room. After just a few minutes, the room, our clothes, and everything else was perfectly clean, like I had just imagined the mess we had just made.
"Better close your mouth, kitten. You wouldn't want a Daygar to get in," advised Corran with a laugh.
"What the hell is a Daygar?" I asked. "We say flies usually when we’re talking about closing your mouth, is a Daygar similar to that,” I asked, confused.
The guys were all openly laughing at me at this point. "The Daygars are monsters that eat your tongue while you are sleeping. They're not real, but we tell children that in order to get them to behave,” answered Derrial.
I thought about Bruda’s similar tale about parents telling the children about the Khonsu to keep them in line. Clearly these people had a different idea of appropriate stories to tell their children than humans did.
"I'm going to be closely monitoring any stories we tell our children," I announced to all of them.
Immediately there was a soft look in all of their eyes, you would've thought that I had just given them one million dollars or something like that. "What?" I asked suspiciously.
"That's just the first time you've really talked about actually having children with us," said Corran softly.
I stared at him. "I thought that was a foregone conclusion considering I could possibly be pregnant already. Although, I guess there's no chance the child would be one of yours though, is there?” I asked, a wave of sadness and frustration welling over me.
It was bad enough to be forced to be pregnant. But then to not even know who the father was? What if he was a monster? What if I was growing a monster's baby? What would we do then?
"We can't worry about that right now. And there's always the chance that it could be one of ours. Our sperm was used in the experiments since I was in charge of them," Corran explained.
He must've seen the confused look on my face, because he answered before I could voice my question. "That whole God complex that us scientists have. If we were going to create new life, I wanted that life to be because of me," he said, not sounding a little bit embarrassed about it.
A thin tendril of hope rose up in me, even though I knew that I should tamp it down.
"But I'm sure everything was labeled. There’s no way that the Council would've allowed one of your sperm to be used in an experiment with me after everything that's happened," I said, my hopes dashing into pieces at those thoughts.
"That's probably true," said Corran. "But there's still a chance that it could be one of ours if you are even pregnant.”
I nodded. If I believed that enough, maybe it would come true...right?
"Now that Corran has managed to clean us all up, let's get out of here,” Thane commanded, breaking the suddenly heavy silence.
"To see your mother?" I asked.
Thane nodded. "I want you to meet her. But… I also want to check in on her. I usually visit her once a month when I'm on Veon. I know that they've taken a lot of the affected Vepar to her facility, so I want to check on the security precautions to make sure that she's safe."
My heart melted at how worried he sounded. All of them were so layered. It felt like I was always discovering new things about them. Thane’s concern over his mother's safety was just another layer. It had been a very long time since she had been any form of a parent to him, but I could tell that she still meant so much to him.
"Let's go," I said.
Thane and Derrial spent a few minutes mapping out a route to the facility. It was obviously a risk going there since it was a risk going anywhere public right now. They didn't think that the Council would put resources toward scoping out the facility, but you never knew. It was apparently common knowledge among the higher ups where Thane’s mom was kept.
We would have to don disguises when we went into the building though, just in case the staff had been alerted to our “most wanted” status.
Finally, we were off. Zipping through the Vepar sky, I watched the myriad of colors underneath us, I once again marveled at how I'd ended up on this crazy planet.
The trip was short. Only an hour passed before we were there. We stopped about a mile away so that the ship’s sensors could detect the area for any of the Council or its army. When none appeared, except one in one of the facilities’ buildings upstairs who had gone crazy, we flew in closer and landed in a patch of woods outside the facility.
Corran disguised me as a blonde with two Vepar horns the color of ebony coming out of my head. The guys disguised themselves as well and we left the ship. There was no way that anyone would recognize us in these getups.
I wasn't sure what to expect as we got closer to the building. We were about to walk into what basically amounted to a Vepar insane asylum. I wasn't sure what insanity looked like here considering I was pretty sure Zeni had been insane and she had still been allowed to roam free. Their standards for what counted as crazy must have been a little different from Earth’s.
From the outside the facility looked similar to other Vepar dwellings I had seen, except it was a lot larger. In fact, it was almost as large as the Khonsu arena had been. Except this was in the familiar dome-shape of most of the Vepar dwellings.
It was perfectly white on the outside, a light dusting of silver sparkles peeking out from the pristine whiteness. It was impossible to tell what the front of the building was and what was the back since there were no visible doors or windows.
I followed the guys to the building. We stood there in front of the blank wall, which I assumed had to be the front, and we waited. After what felt like ten minutes, I jumped back in surprise when a holographic image of a beautiful Vepar woman appeared in front of us.
"Please state your name," she said in a perfectly calm voice. The tone of her voice was so calm that it evoked images of meadows and rippling streams just by listening to it. It was the perfect voice for a place like this whose inhabitants
were probably the opposite of calm.
"Aeryn," Thane said, not giving a last name. Corran had hacked into the facilities database when Thane’s mother had been first admitted and inputted several aliases for them all into the system. They now had several names with security clearances to be used with their different disguises. I guess the guys had always believed in being prepared.
“I'm here to see, Lania,” Thane continued, cutting off my thoughts. The hologram nodded.
"Please wait," she stated before disappearing.
Lania, that was a pretty name. I wondered if she and Thane looked alike.
I was nervous when a door appeared in the previously smooth wall and we walked in. Even though by the sound of it, Thane’s mother wouldn’t talk to me very much, I still had an innate need for her to like me.
The inside of the facility was the same stark white as the outside. Apparently the Vepar had come to the same decision as facilities on Earth, that the mentally ill needed the serenity of white rather than the chaos of the other colors.
We went down a long hallway with no windows or doors. There was no sign of anyone else although I thought I could hear faint yells and screams from beyond the walls. I started to feel claustrophobic. Corran must've sensed my distress because he grabbed my hand in his and squeezed it reassuringly.
After a time, we came to another wall and stopped in front of it. The hologram appeared again.
"Lania is having a good day today. Please be advised that she continues to suffer from intense hallucinations and is prone to outbursts of anger that can lead to physical violence. Today she has been allowed to freely move around her room. Please make sure that you are not carrying any sharp objects or other items that could be used as weapons," the hologram told us.
Thane’s body had stiffened at the robotic way that the hologram spit out his mother's medical information, like she wasn't a living being, just another statistic in a computer. I felt a rush of pity that I knew Thane wouldn't appreciate. What had his life been like, having a mother who suffered from issues like that?
It made me think of my own mother and the fact that she was still missing. Soft was what I thought of when I thought of my mother. Her voice, her mannerisms, the feeling of her skin. Everything about her had been soft and loving. I wondered if years of torture under the Khonsu had knocked that out of her. If she was alive, would she be joining Thane’s mother at a place like this?
I shivered just thinking about it. After Thane nodded his understanding and the rest of us all nodded as well, a door appeared in the wall. It slid open, and we walked into another white room. There was a white metal bed in one corner of the room. It looked like it had been wrapped in some kind of padding. I supposed so that she wouldn't be able to hurt herself on it. The room was empty of any furnishings besides a large screen that was embedded into one of the walls. On the screen played a slideshow of various images that I recognized as different places around Veon. Soft smooth music played from hidden speakers in the walls. And there, sitting on a white pillow on the floor in front of the screen, was who I assumed was Thane's mother.
She turned to look at us as we came in and her face lit up with a stunning smile. She was gorgeous, as were all the Vepar, but she had a certain look about her that was different from the other Vepar that I’d seen. There were deep lines around her eyes and her forehead unlike other Vepars. She also had a certain sadness in her stunning blue eyes, the same blue eyes that I stared into whenever I gazed at Thane’s face.
"Visitors," she said delightedly in a raspy voice that sounded more like it was a result of screaming than how her natural tone was. "I don't have visitors often," she said self-consciously, running a hand through her hair. "Don't mind the mess. I told Thane to pick up his toys, but you know how little boys are," she continued.
No one had mentioned to me that Thane’s mother was so far gone that she wouldn't recognize him. I watched the devastation flicker in Thane's eyes and saw how it turned into resignation. I suspected that he always held out hope that his visits would go differently than this and that she would actually recognize him.
"Little boys are mischievous," Thane told her softly. He approached her slowly, as if he were approaching a wild animal. He crouched down in front of her. She watched him; eyes wide. "How are you today, Lania. My name is Aeryn," he said in that same calm, gentle voice that sounded more like Corran than it did him.
"It's been an excellent day. I tended my flowers, I picked some food from the garden, Thane and I skipped rocks on the pond out back. My husband should be here soon. I'm sure you and him will get along wonderfully," she said.
Thane nodded. He continued to ask her questions, inquiring after her health and trying to get her to tell him how she was being treated at the facility. It was hard to do since she was stuck in an alternate reality. Not once did she ask him why he was visiting her. I wondered why that was.
After a while, she took her attention off of Thane and looked at us.
"And who have you brought with you?" she asked, giving me a big smile as she spoke. Thane stood up and walked over to my side. “Mot- I mean Lania, I'd like you to meet my mate, Ella," he said, wrapping his arm around my waist and walking me towards his mother. She stood up off her pillow and held out her hand. "It's so wonderful to meet you, Ella. My, you are a lovely girl. Just the kind of girl I could see my Thane marrying someday."
It took me a moment to remember that I looked nothing like myself, and a pang of sadness hit me that I may never get the chance to have Thane introduce me as myself.
I clasped her hand in both of mine. "Lania, it's a pleasure to meet you. Your Thane sounds like a lovely boy."
That must've been the right thing to say, because Lania launched into a million stories about Thane as a young boy. I listened in rapt fascination, hoping that they were real stories and I was getting more clues into my mysterious mate’s past. I knew he would never tell me these stories himself.
She was in the middle of a story about when Thane had tried to capture a Khonsu by himself at five years old, then she suddenly stopped talking. She began staring off into the distance as if she could see something else in the room other than us.
With a high-pitched scream, she began to thrash and moan. Her words were garbled and nonsensical, and she leapt at Thane with her hands outstretched like claws as if she was going to tear him apart with her bare hands.
"Lania," Thane said soothingly as he grabbed her, holding her hands to her sides as she thrashed and screamed in his arms. Tears streamed down my face as I watched Thane. His hands were trembling, and there was pure agony on his face as he held down his mother. The door behind us suddenly opened and a stream of Vepar clad in white doctor’s coats rushed into the room. One of the staff, a Vepar male close to the same size as Thane, with dirty blonde hair and two small, lime green horns on his head, pulled a syringe filled needle out of his pocket as he approached Lania.
"Is that necessary?" Thane asked brokenly.
"Her episodes have been getting worse as of late. The only way to calm her down is to knock her out," he answered stiffly.
I hated seeing them administer the injection. It reminded me of all the times that a syringe had been used on me.
The medicine worked instantly, and soon she went limp in Thane’s arms. He helped the staff move her back to bed and tenderly pulled the blankets up to her chin. The staff left as quickly as they had come in. Alone again, Thane patted his mother's shoulder gently, pressing a kiss to her forehead softly. "Sweet dreams, mama," he whispered, and his pain was so tangible it was like I could see his heart breaking.
I wanted to give Thane a hug, but I could tell it wouldn’t be welcome at the moment. Thane liked to grieve privately, and he probably hated that we were in the room to watch him right now.
“Should we go?” asked Derrial calmly, as if nothing had happened.
Thane nodded and stepped away from his mother, taking one last look back at her as we left the room. I finally couldn'
t help myself, and I grabbed his hand in both of mine. I brought them to my lips to give them a gentle kiss in an attempt to provide some comfort.
His sad eyes looked at me, and I watched as they briefly warmed at my touch.
We had just taken a few steps down the hall when a door to the left of us opened. A Vepar with a yellow stump on his salt-and-pepper flecked hair walked out of the room accompanied by a staff member. Looking closer at him, I realized that it looked like his horn had been sawed off.
When he saw us, immediate recognition lit across his features. I didn’t know how this was possible since we were disguised. From the stiffening shoulders of my mates, it was clear that they recognized him as well. Derrial suddenly grabbed me around the waist, as if we were going to have to run at any moment.
"Still using the same disguises, are we?" the Vepar sneered at us. I looked at him in shock. How would he have seen these disguises before? He didn't look at me, he only had eyes for the guys.
"Nice to see you all walking around free, while I’m stuck in this hellhole," he spat at us. We had all stopped in the hallway, facing each other. The staff member was looking back and forth between us confused.
The Vepar finally glanced at me. "And who do we have here? Is this the human bitch that you betrayed me for? It’s a nice Vepar mask she has on. I would love to see what she really looks like," he snarled.
My eyes widened and I rubbed a hand across my face, making sure that my disguise was still in place and you couldn’t see it pulling away from my skin or something.
Derrial started to pull me down the hallway, away from the altercation taking place.
"I did everything I was supposed to for you," he yelled angrily. "Did you find her and decide that you wanted to keep her from the Council? Is that why I’m stuck in here?" he asked.
I stopped and pulled away from Derrial, who had still been trying to urge me forward. What was this man talking about?
He saw my confusion and began to laugh, an eerily crazed laugh that fit in with this place perfectly.
"You must be something special." He leered at me. "The other girls we harvested for the Council didn't make any of these assholes so much as blink."
