Annay tilted her head toward him, seemingly intrigued. “I do like a guy who keeps his word.”
Quill leaned in. His breath stirred the hair by her temple. “I—”
“I will not hesitate to drop off both of you at the nearest station if you keep this up.” Gamora strode to the front of the bridge and dropped back into the navigator’s seat beside Drax, but kept the chair facing toward Quill and Annay. She didn’t particularly want a free show—she just held the idle hope that her presence would dissuade them.
Annay pressed the tips of her fingers to Quill’s chest, putting an extra inch or so of space between them. “If you’re not paying me, I’m staying on board. I’ll keep out of your way—although that part is negotiable—but I’m not going anywhere until I have my money.”
“That still seems like a decision the ship’s very important captain should have a say in,” Quill suggested. He stepped away, reluctance in his every move, and raised his hands in surrender. “All right. We’ll reach Vadin in a few hours. Do what you want, but stay in sight. Drax—can you show her around the ship?”
“There are small talking trees everywhere,” Gamora said. “Don’t freak out.”
“Not a problem,” Annay said.
Wistfully, Quill watched Annay follow Drax out of the bridge. Once they were gone, Gamora kicked the vacated pilot’s seat to face Quill. “Really, Quill?”
“What?” He dropped into the chair and spun it around. “We’ve had guests before.”
“We have bigger priorities than your libido. We can drop her off at the station. She’ll live.”
“Thought about it.” He tapped the dash, then spread his hands. A holographic galaxy flickered into existence between his palms. Two planets were lit up brightly: DiMave and Vadin, not far apart. With practiced ease, he plotted out a course. “Thing is,” he said as he worked, “Annay knows her alcohol. I appreciate that in a woman. That black stuff she poured out for me at her bar? Seriously—”
“Quill.”
He laughed. “Look, dropping her off will only delay us. Besides, we do owe her, and we can use her. Kiya doesn’t know about recent Kree–DiMavi relations. Annay does. Plus, she doesn’t have a reward on her head, and she’s an adult. She might prove handy if we need a DiMavi on our side to go the diplomatic route.”
“If that’s still an option.” They’d been on DiMave for less than an hour and left behind a smoking pile of debris. They had ignored Kree borders, interfered with Kree prisoners, and fought a Kree ship. And now they were planning to visit a Kree planet in the middle of a politically sensitive ceremony to confront a DiMavi terrorist-slash-government-advisor who planned on using their friend as a biological weapon.
Gamora did not feel optimistic about diplomacy at this point.
She did, at least, feel better about Quill’s decision to let Annay stay on board. He’d had enough sense to send Drax on the tour instead of volunteering himself—a sign that he was still using his brain.
“This should do the trick.” Quill clapped his hands, and the map fizzled out. “I need to check on Groot. Can you keep an eye on things here? Watch for a tail. Just in case.”
“We’ll have one, sooner or later.” Gamora stretched as she spoke. “We know the Collector will keep chasing us as long as we have Kiya. We’re easy to track.”
“We’re not very low-profile,” he agreed.
“Kiya might be safer somewhere else.”
“Groot needs her.”
“We can park her and the Grootlings somewhere under the radar. I think we can trust her to continue her research.”
“Is that what you want?”
“No,” she admitted. The thought of the Grootlings out of reach and easy prey for whoever wanted to grab one—the thought of Kiya left without back-up if the Collector did somehow find her—made Gamora uneasy. She wanted them close, even if it meant more risk. "But it may be the best solution.”
She should want that, she knew. She should want what was safest for them, and not what was most comfortable for her.
“For now, she stays. With that reward of the Collector’s, I don’t want to risk it.”
She nodded, not showing her quiet relief.
“I don’t know about what happens after,” he continued, answering her unasked question. “We need to figure out how to remove Kiya’s implants and keep her safe from the Collector. We need to find all the Groots and put them back together. We need to stop the Collector from continuing his Guardians two-point-oh project, and figure out how far he’s gotten. We know he has the raccoons—has he worked on them yet? Does he have a mini-Drax and mini-Star-Lord? Is he trying to copy other teammates we’ve fought alongside? I don’t know, Gamora. For now, I’m focusing on what we do know.”
“One,” she said, “you are dying to know about that mini-Star-Lord.”
“No comment.”
“Two, no one expects you to have all the answers.”
“But you do expect me to make the decisions.” He smiled wryly.
“We let you believe that. For the most part, we simply do what we want.”
“Thanks. Real helpful.” He shook his head, suppressing a laugh, and stepped away from the pilot’s seat.
“Peter…” Gamora rested a hand on his arm as he passed. “We let you make the decisions because we have faith that you make the right ones. None of us trust ourselves. Not fully. That’s why we need to trust each other.”
He slowed mid-step and watched her pensively. “I’m not sure what this team would do without you, you know?”
“There’d be no team left,” she told him. “Go see Groot. I have the ship.”
30
PETER peered inside the med bay.
Kiya sat facing the opposite wall, her legs drawn up on her chair, her shoulders slouched. Several mounted screens surrounded her workspace. Dirt lay scattered on the counter, and a little farther away stood a single pot with two Grootlings, both covered in sensors.
Peter paused, setting his jaw. Did the Grootlings know what had happened to the original Groot yet? Would it matter to them? He couldn’t tell. One was stretching, while the other looked at Kiya in concern. She had one pant leg hiked up, revealing a stretch of green skin, and was running her hand up and down the leg in a way that seemed intentional rather than absentminded.
“I thought you and Rocket were planting Groot?” Peter asked.
She jolted and turned toward him. She pulled down the pant leg, hiding the pale green scars that ran vertically along the skin, and let her legs slip off the seat. “Rocket left. I pissed him off.”
“What happened?” Kiya and Rocket wouldn’t ever be friends, but Peter had thought they’d come to a grudging understanding.
“He wanted to plant the splinters he found at the bar. I had…suggestions.”
“And he didn’t appreciate the feedback.”
“He did not.” Kiya grimaced.
“That’s Rocket for you.” Peter ran a hand through his hair. “It’s…Rocket doesn’t have many friends outside this ship. And in our small group, the one person he’s closest to in the whole galaxy is pretty much unkillable. When it turned out that friend might be more killable than anyone thought…” The Grootlings seemed to visibly shrink at the words. “He’s taking it hard.”
“I am Groot,” one Grootling said, sympathetic.
Kiya blew out a breath. She dragged the Grootlings’ pot closer, focusing on them as she spoke. “Rocket said I was being a know-it-all krutacker, and that Groot shouldn’t even be in this state to start with.” A dissatisfied frown grew on her face. “He’s right. I messed up Groot’s life. In return, he tried to help me escape Tivan—and got himself blown up for it.”
“I am Groot.” The second Grootling winced.
“And that’s Groot for you. You’re getting to know the team pretty well.” Peter stepped into the room and dropped onto the examination bed at its center. “Groot has gotten himself blown up for a lot of reasons over the years. I’m not surprised he did it for
you. He knows he can grow back, and he knows you’re harder to replace.”
He leaned back, resting his hands on the flimsy mattress. The bed creaked under his weight.
“You’re saying it’s not a big deal?”
“He doesn’t talk about the regrowing process much, but I asked him once.” Peter peered at the Grootlings. They nodded in unison, inviting him to go on. “It hurts, it’s traumatizing, and it means spending hours or days—however long it takes for us to plant him—without any sort of consciousness. And that’s if we plant him. If we can’t obtain a splinter, or if something goes wrong, he’s gone for good. He doesn’t do it lightly.”
Kiya nodded. She didn’t seem to be taking Groot’s sacrifice lightly, either. If she had, Peter would’ve felt a lot more conflicted about her presence on board.
It should have felt strange for Peter to talk about this—about losing Groot within an hour of it actually happening; about regrowing Groot with two versions of him in the same room, and more than a dozen elsewhere on the ship.
Strange was what the Guardians did, though. All Peter felt as he spoke was a lump of worry in his chest.
Kiya busied herself checking the sensors on the Grootlings. They squirmed under her grasp, giggling when she reached a ticklish spot. “I am Groooot!”
Peter got the distinct impression she didn’t know how to respond.
“It might be an even bigger deal now,” she said finally, hunkering over the Grootlings’ pot. “The last Grootlings I planted grew slowly. A few didn’t sprout at all. I think that the more they need to share the energy, the harder it is to grow a full Groot from just a splinter. Groot knows this. I told him before we landed on DiMave.”
And he’d stayed behind anyway.
Peter had known Groot too long to be surprised. He still closed his eyes for a moment, simultaneously cursing him for his stupidity, thanking him for his kindness, and pleading for him to poke his leafy face out of the earth as soon as he could.
Kiya was still facing away, adjusting a loosely attached sensor. “Even if he grows, planting him the regular way would be a slow process. It might take days to know whether it’s working.”
If he grows. Peter hated the words. If. This couldn’t be happening. Not to Groot, of all people.
“I suggested an alternative to Rocket,” Kiya continued.
Peter would take any glimmer of hope he could get. “Tell me.”
Kiya kept playing with the sensor even after reattaching it, as if trying to figure out where to start. “I’m making progress,” she said after a minute. “You know my theory: that the main problem keeping the Grootlings apart is that each has its own consciousness. So I wondered: If the obstacle is having two dueling consciousnesses, what about when there’s only one consciousness present?
“A while ago, you found the remains of a destroyed Grootling. I asked one of the other Grootlings to try to merge with those splinters to see what would happen. Turns out: nothing. It was just dead wood.”
For a moment, Peter’s hopes had flared. Now they dimmed. This wouldn’t be a solution.
“I tried something else around the same time. I asked a Grootling to try to absorb a sproutling too young to have developed conscious thought—it had only just popped up from the dirt, hadn’t even developed limbs yet. The merge seemed to work. I just couldn’t tell whether it was superficial, or whether there were deeper consequences—until now. I checked the logs when I came on board. While we were on DiMave, that merged Grootling’s energy levels started climbing in a way I haven’t seen in any of the others. I think it worked. Properly.” She turned to Peter and watched him with gleaming eyes, biting her lip. She seemed to be trying to hide her excitement.
Both Grootlings seemed interested, hopeful. Their reaction reminded Peter of the Groot he knew. He was glad to see it, but he couldn’t share in their optimism yet. “An energy surge? Is it possible that when Groot was destroyed in that back room, his energy went—?”
“I wondered the same thing, but the energy surge happened before…that happened. It must be the merge. It succeeded. And here’s my thinking: Maybe we can have one of the Grootlings merge with Groot’s splinters. His situation is different.”
Peter sat up straighter. “Oh?”
“The way all this started…Tivan had recovered one of Groot’s shards, right? He activated the potential to grow a second Groot from that shard, even with another Groot already in existence. That trait was carried forward. Any splinters or branches originating from that altered Grootling could grow their own new Grootlings. That’s how I grew mine. But in my Grootlings, I shut off the process Tivan had activated. I couldn’t have my buyers growing their own supply. I wanted to control the market.” She smiled wryly, seeming to realize how callous she sounded. “I couldn’t figure out 99 percent of Tivan’s notes—most are in some kind of four-dimensional Elder language, I don’t know—but between the one or two snippets I did understand, and studying the Grootlings’ cells myself, I managed to sabotage Tivan’s alterations. It’s not elegant. More like sticking a branch into spokes of a wheel. It shut off the Grootlings’ ability to generate others, but also the ability to regenerate themselves. Once they’re destroyed, they’re straight-up gone. But your Groot…”
“He still has the potential to regenerate.”
“Exactly. The splinters Rocket recovered from that back room aren’t dead—they can still grow into Groot, like every other time he’s been destroyed. They just might not have enough energy for it. If they still have the potential, though, it might mean they can be absorbed. That way, Groot wouldn’t need to grow a whole new body when energy is so scarce—he could combine with an already existing one. Memories and all.”
As Kiya finished, she seemed to withdraw onto her chair. Whenever she got to talking about her research, she appeared to shed her self-consciousness, that wall she’d drawn up around herself. Peter only realized it afterward—when she stopped talking and that wall slammed back down.
She peered at the exit. “Rocket didn’t want to hear it.”
“I’ll talk to him.”
“Yeah?” She managed a half-smile.
If this increased their chances—if it got their friend back sooner—it was worth risking a grouchy Rocket. They could always try to plant Groot afterward. Peter wanted to go up and find Rocket right away, but he stayed on the bed, considering the Grootlings behind Kiya.
“What are you doing with those guys?”
“I am Groot.” One Grootling patted his sensors, as if making sure they were properly attached.
She hesitated, then slowly slid off her chair. “Taking more readings?” She circled the room, flicking on the monitors and projectors scattered throughout. She was so engaged in the work that Peter could almost believe she wasn’t intentionally keeping several feet of distance between them. “Look. The energy patterns the sensors pick up help us see how similar—how compatible—the Groots might be. These two Grootlings are the most similar. See, over here and here…”
She indicated several side-by-side charts. Peter hopped off the bed and examined them closely. The two Grootlings’ readings didn’t line up exactly, but they followed the same pattern. Dips and hills of similar intensity at the same times; similar colors in similar locations on color maps. Peter couldn’t understand the maps for the life of him, but they matched up convincingly.
“Even these two aren’t similar enough to merge successfully,” she continued. “They come closer than the rest, though. Most of the Grootlings are far more different from one another. They’re all Groot, with their unique experiences on top of that. They have the same starting point, but they—”
“Branched off,” Peter supplied helpfully.
“I am Groot,” the Grootlings snickered.
“—they diverged the moment you and Tivan each grew one, then diverged further when I grew mine.” She seemed to be trying her hardest not to smile at the pun. “Add the missing memories and personality traits, and it could be t
hat their minds are too dissimilar to fuse together.”
Peter nodded as she pointed at another chart—this one a table of scribbled notes and numbers.
“I am Groot?” The Grootlings watched in fascination.
“Every time after they try to merge, they’re tired. Not physically—mentally. Like they were fighting to merge, to fit together and override those differences. If there aren’t as many differences to fight, if we can somehow get their minds to line up, we might actually see a successful merge.”
Of all the Guardians’ screwups lately, the decision to take Kiya on board to work on Groot hadn’t been the worst. She was young, but DiMavi chose their interests and specialties so early in life that it hardly made a difference. She was good at what she did—and whether out of guilt, responsibility, or sheer academic interest, she was absorbed in it as well.
Now he just needed her efforts to pay off. Even without new Grootlings being grown, Peter had the nagging feeling that the longer they waited, the worse this problem would get. The Grootlings required more energy as they grew. The ones still out there could be in trouble. And if Kiya was right, then with every passing day the Grootlings diverged further, making it harder to bring them together.
And none of that even touched on the Collector.
Peter rubbed a hand on his cheek. “Could a telepath align the Grootlings’ minds?”
“Could be. Right now, I’m thinking: If you can’t tackle an obstacle in your path, you have three options. One—you remove the obstacle. That means finding a way to smooth over the Grootlings’ differences and sync up their minds. Two—you work around the obstacle. That’s what I’m investigating with the sproutling and shard experiments. Or three—you go through the obstacle. You become strong enough to tackle it. The Grootlings are wiped out after trying to fuse with a Grootling who’s too different; maybe if one or both are stronger, they could keep trying longer, and work around or override those differences.”
“So you’re saying that they need to merge to become stronger, but they might need to become stronger to merge.”
“It’s a theory.” She grimaced. “Science is fun?”
Guardians of the Galaxy: Collect Them All Page 19
