Symbiosis

by Nicky Drayden

  “I don’t understand,” I tell Adalla. “She was right here.”

  Throttle fish knock up against the sides of our boat, desperate for a meal. I shoo them away with my oar.

  “You’re sure you didn’t dream it?” Adalla says. “The way you described your nightmares, they always felt so real.”

  “I couldn’t make something like this up, ’Dalla,” I say. I bite my tongue, realizing I’ve used her nickname. It feels wrong now, implying a closeness between us that no longer exists. “Besides, it couldn’t have been a dream, because if it was a dream, then we’re screwed.”

  Splashes rise up all around our boat, fish tails turning the water’s surface to foamy bubbles as they slap against it. Seconds later, every single throttle fish in this cavern races for the exit. I get the feeling we should be doing the exact same thing, except our boat is facing in the wrong direction, and our bodies weren’t made to navigate these ducts so quickly. Through the fog, an abomination approaches us. I know what it is—who it is—before she’s totally visible. I can feel her in my bones.

  Her skin is the color of lichen, a dull green gray, rough as tree bark. I’d expect that after four years of being embedded in the walls of this duct, her movements would be stiff and lurching, but she moves with the grace of a Matriarch. The spots where she’d been connected to Zenzee tissue have scabbed over. She has adorned herself in a gown made of throttle fish fins and a chunky necklace crafted from their skulls. Despite her adornments, she is not any closer to looking human. New appendages erupt from her forearms, slick, glistening tentacles, long and thin, like another set of fingers that nearly reach her toes. They move independently, one of them extending gingerly toward me.

  “Sister,” she purrs. “I knew you’d come back to me eventually. I’ve been waiting.”

  I shake away my fear. My contempt. “Our Zenzee is in trouble. We need to get her to fight back against the Senate’s orders. We know you have a connection with her. With the others, too. Tell them all to stop fighting.”

  “I can tell them anything I want. It’s the humans who control them that are the problem.”

  “There has to be a way,” I plead. “Our Zenzee went against our will when we tried to decouple her from the Klang’s Zenzee. It must be possible.”

  Sisterkin nods, her tentacle tip tracing down my cheek now. I hold back a shudder.

  “Death does stoke an emotion so intense that it is capable of slipping beyond human control,” she says. The way she says human, it’s as if she no longer considers herself to be among us. “There is one way to end this war, but to do so, a Zenzee must die.” Sisterkin quirks her lip. “Or must appear to have died.”

  “We’re listening,” I say. “We’ll do anything.”

  “Good. Because what I am about to share with you has a price.” Her tentacle snakes around the back of my neck, gently nudging me closer to her. “Once you are done, once the Zenzee are safe, you must return to me, Seske. I want you to rule beside me. I don’t want to be lonely anymore. Even the throttle fish avoid me now.” She touches her necklace of throttle fish skulls, as if she hasn’t the faintest idea of why.

  I swallow the lump in my throat. I said I’d do anything, but . . .

  Adalla’s lip trembles. Her fingers twitch, as though she wants to reach out to me, but there’s still so much bad blood between us.

  “You hesitate,” Sisterkin says. “We don’t have time for hesitation.”

  “You’re asking her to become a monster,” Adalla growls, ever my protector. Old habits. Those twitchy fingers are at the hilt of her knife now.

  “I’m not asking anything,” Sisterkin says with a nonchalance that has the ring of finality in it.

  Adalla takes an aggressive step toward Sisterkin. “I won’t let—”

  “I promise. I am all yours,” I say, before Adalla has a chance to do something we’ll all regret. “Just tell me how to save our people.”

  Adalla stares at me, unnerved, but what choice do I have? I’ve disappointed her so many times. I’ve upturned our whole world. The least I can do is try to save it.

  Sisterkin smiles, and it is both beautiful and wretched. “There is an organ . . . one you assumed had no function. It doesn’t, in life. It only activates when the Zenzee has died. I will tell you how to bypass the mechanism that keeps it dormant. Once the beacon flashes, all Zenzee in the vicinity will become stricken by an incalculable grief so intense, it will override all other functions. The war will end. For now, at least. It will give your people enough time to regroup and come to your senses. You should take Adalla and that big knife of hers with you. There is no external access, so you’ll have to cut your way through.”

  “How do we get there?” Adalla asks.

  “You’ll need a map,” Sisterkin says. “Lucky for you, you already have it.” One of her tentacles stretches out and touches the middle of my forehead. A memory surges forth—not my memory. Another person’s, from another time, upon another Zenzee. But I retrace their steps, and it’s like I’m there.

  I know exactly where we need to go.

  It is not ichor that fills my mouth. The blood that flows after each of Adalla’s cuts is not liquid at all, but a pungent gas that burns the lungs. Sisterkin hadn’t warned us that we’d need re-breathers, and by the time we realized we should have them, it was too late to turn back. The gas is lighter than air, though, so we’re able to stoop down to catch our breath near the floor every so often. After ten minutes of grueling, physical work, Adalla has yet to ask for a break. She’s sweated through her dress, the fine silk clinging to her skin, and I’m able to make out each and every raised scar upon her back. Her body is like a machine. Slash, rip. Slash, rip. Dip for air. Then do it all again. And again.

  “You never stop working,” I say as we’re catching our breath, both of us on our knees. She stares at me through the green-tinged air.

  “What?”

  “Since the day you got assigned to the heart, you never stopped. I always knew you were meant to be there. And I wanted you to be there more than anything, but I never imagined it would take all of you.”

  Adalla grunts in frustration. “We don’t have time for this. I need to get back to—” She stops herself right as she raises her knife, realizing she’s doing it again. Avoiding me. Losing herself in her job. It must be one or the other. Maybe it’s both.

  “There was always some emergency,” I tell her, ready to say what’s needed to be said for a long time now. “There was always a life that needed saving. You’d come home, we’d make love, then you were gone again. Our bed was always cold. Even when you were in it.”

  Adalla’s lips purse, as if she wants to say something, but then she’s back on her feet. She slashes, rips. Slashes, rips.

  Dips for air.

  “So that’s your excuse, then, for why you strayed?” she spits. She’s not concentrating on her breath, pulling up before I can get a word in. She keeps slashing this time. Slashing and slashing and slashing, and my lungs feel like they’re going to rip through me. I dip. She doesn’t. I’m left alone, on my knees with my thoughts.

  “It’s not an excuse!” I shout out. She might be surrounded by fouled air, but she can still hear me. I stay on the ground. “What I did, I’ll never forgive myself, and I don’t expect you to forgive me, either. I know now is not the best time, when you’re trying to save the world again, but if we die in here, I want you to know that I know I fucked up. I should have told you how lonely I was. How much you made me hurt.”

  The slashing stops, but Adalla doesn’t dip.

  “Adalla?” I say.

  “I still feel them,” she says. “The scars on my back. I know I told you the pain had faded over time, but it hasn’t. I still feel them like the day you laid them upon me. I know why you did it, but it doesn’t ease the hurt. Working focuses my mind away from it. But when I’m with you—when you touch me . . .”

  “You’re there on that day all over again?” I offer.

 
“Mmmm.” Adalla grunts. Slashes, rips. I finish up my breath and try to catch up with her. She’s gotten way ahead of me, still refusing to dip; whether it’s superior lungs or grudge-fueled spite, I can’t tell. But by the time I catch up, I’m lost for what to say to attempt to comfort her.

  “You were like my star,” Adalla continues, breath worryingly thin. The edges of her mouth curl down, then she stoops to catch some clean air, but when she comes back up, things are still murky between us. Literally and figuratively. “You were like a beacon of death, drawing me toward you. I couldn’t turn away. I couldn’t even dare to want to. Because I loved you as much as I hated you. And eventually, it got to the point I couldn’t tell the difference between the two.”

  She looks pleadingly at me, but my heart is blank. My mind, too.

  Adalla sighs. “Presdah says I need to forgive you. She thinks I won’t be able to truly move on and settle into our relationship until I do. I’ve been working on that. Honestly, it was a lot easier when I thought you were dead.”

  Adalla makes a hefty slash, and the path of carved flesh opens up into a large, domed chamber lined in dull gray hexagonal plates. They clack and echo as we step upon them, flashing a violet-tinged white beneath our feet. Adalla and I make our way to the center, spinning around to take it all in. From the ceiling, hundreds of coiled vines hang down like fancy chandeliers, each ending in a large dewdrop.

  “I feel like we’re in a ballroom,” I say. My voice echoes. No . . . more than an echo. My voice comes back distorted, pitched higher and lower, getting louder and louder.

  I feel like we’re in a ballroom.

  I feel like we’re in a ballroom.

  I feel like we should be dancing.

  We should dance.

  Dance with me.

  Dance with me.

  Be with me.

  I clap my hands over my mouth as Adalla and I exchange looks. Her face sours. “We need to figure out which cord to pull,” she says to me.

  We need to figure out which cord to pull.

  We need to figure out which cord to pull.

  There’s no way we can pull this off.

  We need to cut the cord.

  We need to cut the cord.

  Cut the cord.

  Back off.

  The bite in Adalla’s echo gives me chills.

  The main cord that Sisterkin mentioned is hidden among all the coiled vines, but Adalla’s keen eye finally spots it. Now we just need to detach it from the ceiling.

  I gesture to Adalla, making scissor cutting motions with my fingers, then point to the cord hanging in the center of the room, hanging just out of reach. Blacker, thicker than the others. Glistening. I point to my back and stoop down on one knee. She mounts my shoulders, and I heave myself back up. She’s all muscle and heavier than I anticipated, but the pressure fades some as soon as she’s got a grip on the cord. She tugs on it with all her might, but it’s slick and keeps slipping. Sisterkin said that dislodging the cord from its base it will trick the organ into thinking our Zenzee is dead, at which point this death organ should spring to life, but we’re not having much luck so far.

  I don’t want to speak again. I have no idea what truths my echo will get at this time, but we’re running out of options and time. We’re insulated from most of the sounds and tremblings of war, but I know it’s still raging outside of this little time bubble Adalla and I are trapped in.

  “Hold tight. I’ll tug at your waist,” I whisper, hoping the echo won’t pick it up, but it seems to have made things worse. My words boom back at me.

  Hold tight. I’ll tug at your waist.

  Hold tight. I’ll tug at your waist.

  Sorry, I’ve wasted your time.

  I’ve wasted your time.

  I’ll waste your time.

  What a waste.

  I shake the voices away, and once Adalla has a good grip, I pull, yanking her this way and that. If this doesn’t work, she’s going to have to climb all the way up to cut it. Or try to. The gravity feels different here, more intimidating. A fall from that high up could mean broken bones or worse. Finally, she drops down a few feet as the cord starts to peel from the ceiling. I’m able to get my hands around the cord, and together we pull until both our feet are touching the floor again. We heave against it until our bodies ache, until my shoulders feel like they’re about to pop out of their sockets. Finally, with a sickening plop, the cord pops free from its base, and plummets down into a neat pile.

  Adalla and I tumble to the ground, slick with sweat and whatever substance the cord was drenched with. We attempt to catch our breath, waiting for something to happen. Waiting for anything to happen. Neither of us dares to speak a word. Finally, one of the dewdrops pulses violet light. Another joins it. And another. The flashing quickens and intensifies, and the plating around us starts to glow as well. Adalla and I jump back to our feet, looking for the exit seam, but it’s too late. We’re all disoriented now. And it’s only getting brighter.

  I close my eyelids, but they offer no reprieve. The light becomes heavy, like a blanket laying on top of us. I can taste it, both sour and sweet. I breathe it in, and it fills my lungs. I look back at Adalla and I can see through her. Her bones, her heart beating, and all the thousands of little veins and arteries leading throughout her body. Her chest rises and falls with each breath, her milk ducts like the petals of two beautiful flowers.

  I’m a hundred percent certain that being exposed to whatever this is will kill us, if not now, eventually, but still, seeing Adalla like this, I wouldn’t trade this moment for the world.

  The light is so heavy now, I can no longer bear to stand. I lower myself down to the floor, feeling the blanket squeeze me. But when I find the strength to lift my head, I see that I’m still standing there, exactly as I was. I see inside me, the wreck of my womb. Spots within me that I wouldn’t dare call human. And then I’m solid again, skin and all, and Adalla and I are tugging at the cord, once again attached to the ceiling. Then we’re walking backward to the exit seam, and with a hefty reverse slash, it’s sealed up again.

  We’re traveling back through the bile ducts now, only in reverse, exactly as it happened. The vision blurs in spots, like when Sisterkin had emerged from the fog to reveal herself. The memory tugs sideways, another sitting on top of it. This time, I hadn’t intervened fast enough, and Adalla had thrown herself at Sisterkin, knife brandished, ready to protect me from the monstrous thing my sister had become. But Sisterkin is ready for her, a tentacle ripping the knife from her hands and a stiff forearm sending Adalla flying back into the boggy water. I punch Sisterkin, then strangle her with her own necklace made of skulls. I flinch as she reaches her tentacles around my neck and does the same. We are at an impasse, both of us dying, but it seems like I am dying a little bit faster. My vision fades to blackness. Death welcomes me.

  But instead of leaving me feeling hopeless, I’m supercharged with power. I explore more of the paths not taken and am intrigued with what awaits me. I trace back through time, recalling various memories that branch this way and that, reliving alternate realities as if they’d actually happened. I dare to ride all the way back to that fated moment in the study with Doka. I find eight different versions of the day I’d ruined our lives. In four, I don’t give in to Doka’s advances. We share an awkward moment looking into each other’s eyes, then continue with our research. Kallum comes down, serves us tea. We all laugh, taking a well-earned break before getting back to work. Then things diverge right before we are to meet with the Senators to present our case:

  Madam Wade is murdered, just like before.

  Doka is killed by Madam Wade’s murderer.

  Doka is assassinated in the Senate chambers.

  I am assassinated in my sleep.

  In the first echo, after Madam Wade is murdered, the attempt on Doka’s life aboard the Renmoor ship succeeds. All four of these echoes end in war and destruction. Humanity is decimated, at least in our little pocket of space.


  In the echoes in which Doka and I fuck, three times it is, frankly, amazing. We connect. I almost feel vindicated, knowing that there’d actually been something meaningful brewing between us. Instead of him dozing off and dreaming, we talk afterward, his finger tracing along my collarbone, down between my breasts, around my navel and back. I feel as though our souls have been intertwined. Two of the times, Kallum catches us in a kiss so deep, so passionate, that he turns us in immediately. There was no disguising that kind of hurt. Doka and I are jettisoned out of the third ass, locked in each other’s arms. And a little way down the line, war ends humanity again.

  One time, we aren’t caught, escaping Kallum, but only barely. We continue our affair in quiet, and after months, we dare to Ride the Deep Silence—fucking in our Zenzee’s mouth. We’re brave and reckless when we’re with each other, and we venture out near the tentacles. We make love there, space biting at our backs, stars in our eyes. Doka really puts the “deep” in deep silence, and he thrusts so hard and with so much desire that we lose our grip on the tentacle and go tumbling right out of the mouth.

  We don’t die right away. We’ve got our protective covering and our re-breathers. We could call for help, but we both know that being caught like this would just lead to getting tossed into space from the Zenzee’s other end, this time without any gel.

  We die in each other’s arms.

  It’s not the worst way to go, but without us to stop the war, humanity still ends.

  Then there is this echo, the one we’re caught in, with the bad sex, and the hidden affair, and Madam Wade’s murder, the failed attempt on Doka’s life, the discovery of Sisterkin, and the escape from death and subsequent start of new lives in the Klang’s refugee camp. I dig through hundreds, maybe thousands of echoes—all in a matter of seconds—and yet this is the only one in which humanity perseveres.