by Jayne Faith
The room was long and narrow, with hospital beds set in a row across one of the long walls and heavy transparent plastic curtains separating the beds. The energies of the Offered were subdued, dampened by the medication that kept them asleep while they recovered. But I could already feel distinct tendrils of the dark angel’s energy rising above the background hum of the others. It was like a delicious aroma carried on an otherwise ordinary summer breeze.
The doctor and I walked slowly past the foot of each bed as he described the procedure for inserting the spinal implant at the base of the skull and the recovery, which was less a healing from the implant itself and more a chance for the neurons of the spine to rearrange and join properly with the device.
I half-listened and nodded every so often, but my eyes were glued to the still figures under the white sheets.
I felt the energy of the dark angel, giving me her precise location, before I reached her bed. And just before I came to her, I noticed the names displayed on the small screens attached to the foot of each bed. We passed a muscular young man with handsome, angular features. His screen identified him as Orion.
Next was the dark angel. I wanted to know her name, but when I stepped into the space that allowed me a view of her, I couldn’t seem to tear my eyes from her face.
I tried to absorb every detail. Her dark hair fanned out around her head and shoulders, contrasting sharply with the white pillowcase. Brows a slight shade lighter than her hair framed her eyes in subtle arches. Her nose was delicate and a bit narrower than what would be considered ideal, but somehow balanced with her other features—lower lip a bit fuller than the upper, slight hollows under her cheekbones, small ears. Even with the stress of her departure from her home world and the implant procedure she’d just undergone, her skin glowed with vitality. It had a subtle golden quality, naturally sunkissed.
The doctor was still talking, but I was transfixed.
The dark angel’s lashes stirred as her eyes moved under her eyelids. I held my breath as her eyelids slowly opened. Her energy swelled in a crescendo and thundered into me, a heady tidal wave. For a moment that seemed to stretch out and yet end all too soon, her blue-gray eyes met mine. Then her lids lowered and her energy quieted, as if I’d imagined the last few seconds.
“Doctor, should the patients be waking up so soon?” I asked in a hushed tone.
I glanced at him as he raised his brows in surprise. “Not for several more minutes at least.” He looked up at the monitors mounted over the dark angel’s bed. “This one is still under. If any were waking too soon, an alarm would sound.”
I nodded, but I was sure of what I’d seen. Just before we moved on to the next bed, I remembered to glance down at the dark angel’s screen.
Maya.
Her name was Maya.
8
Maya
PASSING THROUGH THE portal that connected Earthenfell to Calisto was like walking through some strange underwater dream-window. The light of the portal had a physical quality to it, seeming to cling to my skin like a thick mist. When it grew painfully bright, I squeezed my eyelids closed, trusting that my feet would find solid ground as I continued to move forward.
I knew when I’d passed through because the air of Calisto felt immediately foreign. It was lighter, thinner somehow, and much drier than I was accustomed to. And it was empty of anything reminiscent of home. No scent of harvest or chimney smoke. No weight of decaying autumn foliage. Not even a whiff of trash, sewage, or other human-generated smells.
When I opened my eyes and blinked away the spots left by the bright light of the portal, the first thing I saw was a thin sliver of red-orange light disappearing over the horizon. I inhaled and my heart lifted as sudden emotion swelled in my chest. There were sunsets on Calisto. I gasped again when I realized there was another disc of light in the sky, a small yellow-orange sun still shining.
Two suns. My sorrows muted for a moment as I marveled at the wonder.
“You have arrived on Calisto,” pronounced a voice in a lilting accent.
My head whipped to a woman who stood at least half a foot taller than me. Her eyes were wide-set and hooded, and her skin the gray-taupe color of the Earthen foothills in late autumn. She was the first Calistan I’d ever seen, and I couldn’t help but stare. I’d imagined Calistans to look more . . . alien. She did look exotic to me, but not quite as strange as I’d expected.
I silently chided myself. Even children knew that the Calistans were distant biological relatives of the natives of Earthenfell. Calistans were “alien” because they’d lived away from Earthenfell for many thousands of years, and we had evolved separately from them. On the outside we were obviously different from each other in some ways, but I knew from what I’d learned in school that genetically Calistans and Earthens were very close to identical. After all, we’d both descended from the same ancient Earthen ancestors.
The woman surveyed us coolly, her upper lip curling. “I am Akantha, Mistress of Tournament. Do not address any Calistan unless I give you permission to do so. Follow me.” She flipped a beckoning finger at the first Obligate in line.
I watched the Mistress of Tournament, fascinated. The way she moved was subtly different than Earthens. Her gait seemed more sinuous and graceful, with her long limbs and slender neck giving her the quality of a dancer.
But there was something sharp about her conduct toward us. Even after only a glance and a few spoken words, it was clear she found it distasteful to be dealing with us. And that she offered no explanation about what was next just added to my tension. I gripped the jar of soil as if it held my own beating heart, trying to see ahead to guess where she was leading us.
We filed along a wall with trees peeking over the top of it. It seemed to be late spring on Calisto, by the verdant appearance of the trees. Assuming that Calisto had seasons as we had on Earthenfell, anyway.
When my gaze rose above the trees, my breath caught. The dark angular structure beyond had to be the palace. Lord Toric was somewhere up there.
The palace was beautiful, in a foreboding way. It was constructed of some sort of smooth material the color of gray-black slate. Narrow towers—or perhaps just decorative spires—knifed upward into the reddish-purple Calistan sky.
Movement on a high balcony of the palace caught my eye. The breeze was stirring curtains on either side of the balcony, and a lone figure stood at the railing. It was too far for me to make out details, but the figure appeared to be a Calistan man. A curious tremor, a frosty-hot sensation, vibrated up and down my body. I shivered as my heart thumped harder in my chest.
“Maya, keep walking,” Orion whispered behind me, and I jumped, not realizing I’d slowed enough to allow a large gap to grow between me and the Obligate ahead.
I took a few running steps to catch up. Akantha was taking us into a portico, a walkway with a domed roof and open sides sectioned by slender columns. When I lost sight of the palace, I felt a faint tug of disappointment.
As we toured through more covered walkways, we encountered several Calistans, and I couldn’t help staring at them. Even the shortest Calistan was taller than all of us Obligates. Their skin colors ranged the spectrum of grays and browns, from the delicate gray of an Earthenfell cloud to a dark umber nearly the same color as the rich soil in my jar.
Every Calistan we passed bowed his or her head at Akantha, but she did not bow in return.
Just as we reached a smooth gray door set into the side of a slick-looking windowless building, it struck me that the only natural things we had encountered were the trees over the wall. The ground we walked on was a pebbly-looking brown rubber surface that at first glance I had assumed was dirt, but it was some sort of artificial flooring. I lifted my jar and inhaled the scent of soil. It was such a potent reminder of home, and I had to swallow back tears.
Thoughts of Earthenfell rushed to the forefront of my mind. What were Mother and Lana doing? Were they back at home yet? How would Lana fare without me when work in the orch
ard resumed on Monday?
I pulled my lips in between my teeth and bit down hard, trying to steel myself against the tide of emotions rising up. I forced myself to look around, to focus on my surroundings.
We’d entered some sort of facility with white plastic-looking walls lining the hallways and a smooth floor made of slightly springy gray-and-white mottled tiles.
In the stupor of grief at leaving home and the disorientation of passing through the portal, I’d failed to truly consider what would come next, and the space offered almost no clues.
When we passed a pair of Calistan women, they leaned toward each other and whispered. When their eyes fell to the jar in my hands, their expressions shifted from curiosity to a sort of hungry awe.
I turned my head to one side to whisper over my shoulder to Orion, “Where are we going?”
A sheen of cold sweat slicked my palms as we came upon a group of four Calistans dressed in tight-fitting white clothing. They stared intently at each of us and equally intently at our jars.
“I don’t know,” Orion said. “Maybe a medical exam?”
If we were in some sort of medical facility, it was nothing like the neighborhood clinics we had on Earthenfell.
Akantha turned and stopped, pinning me with a hard look. “Do not speak to each other unless I’ve given you permission to do so. This is the last warning you will get, and it goes for all of you. If you’d like to test me, it would be my pleasure to demonstrate your punishment.”
She brandished a stubby metal wand. When she pressed a button on it, the end of it glowed white hot and a blue arc of electricity bowed outward. I drew back and clamped my elbows to my sides, not daring to breathe until she put the wand away.
Akantha took us around a left turn that dead-ended at a door. She gestured to a cabinet next to the door. “Place your vessels in here.”
Though Akantha had not yet treated us with any particular cruelty, she clearly had no qualms about ordering us around and treating us like annoying wayward children. I’d always wondered how the overlords would address and treat Earthens. We were their servants—slaves—both here on Calisto and back on Earthenfell. We worked the land of Earthenfell to keep it fertile for when the Calistan Lord, either the current Lord Toric or some future Lord, would lead his people back to Earthenfell and reclaim their ancestral home. And we supplied the Calistans with food and a wide variety of goods.
I had no idea if Akantha’s treatment of us was better, worse, or typical of how we’d be treated by other Calistans. My stomach tightened into a hard ball. I suspected that worse was yet to come, but the most difficult part was simply not knowing what awaited us.
As we obediently placed our jars on the shelves of the cabinet I glanced at the other Obligates. I knew a few of them by name, and recognized most of their faces from when I was still in school. Orion was the only one I’d spoken to recently. I would need to become familiar with all of them. They would be—they already were—my competition.
Akantha opened the door, revealing a long room with plastic curtains dividing narrow beds made up with plain white linens. “Choose a bed and lie down. Do as you are asked by the medics.”
I went to one of the beds toward the middle, and Orion took one right next to me. The plastic curtains allowed light through but distorted what was one the other side.
My heart tapped a rapid nervous rhythm as I fidgeted with the folds of my dress.
I heard the door open again, and then the shuffle of many pairs of feet entering. Calistans dressed like the ones we’d seen in the hallways walked passed the foot of my bed. One, a man with light taupe skin and a shock of short black hair, stopped when he reached me.
He held a small, flat monitor and a pointed object that was mostly concealed in his large hand. Extending the monitor toward me, he said, “Speak your name.”
I did as he asked.
He attached the monitor to the foot of my bed and came around to my right side. “Sit up and tip your head down. Hold still.”
I caught a glimpse of the object in his hand. It had a wickedly sharp tapered end. When he raised it, I sucked in a gasp, suddenly realizing what it was.
An implant, like the ones the man who weighed our collection bags and the woman who directed the Selection had at the backs of their necks.
I started to shake my head and tried to lean away, but the medic’s hands were lightning fast. He wrapped his fingers around the side of my neck, and a sharp prick of pain zapped between my shoulder blades and zipped the length of my spine.
My entire body seemed to melt, my muscles softening, and my nerves numbing. There was a soft click and an impact that pushed my upper body forward like I’d been rammed from behind, and then I was falling.
Falling . . . back to the pillow at the head of the bed. My brain swam in a dizzy swirl, and eons seemed to pass before the back of my head finally contacted with the pillow.
My eyelids closed, blotting out the world.
A moment later—or maybe it was an hour, I had no idea—I heard voices. Male voices, I thought. Definitely Calistan accents.
My eyelids seemed to weigh a hundred pounds apiece, but they wanted to open. I couldn’t move my limbs or even feel much of anything, but my eyes wanted to see who was talking nearby while I drifted.
At first I saw only bright light. From the light, two figures took shape. One was talking, but I was not interested in him.
The other was looking right at me, his blue-green eyes so intent, as if he were trying to absorb me through his gaze.
It was him.
I don’t know how I knew, but I was sure: this was the man who’d been standing on the balcony when I’d first stepped onto Calisto.
I wanted to pour myself into those exotic eyes, but my eyelids grew too heavy. My senses numbed again, those mesmerizing eyes and the voices fading away.
*
The throbbing at the back of my neck was the first thing I became aware of when I awoke again. The remnants of a dream, of aquamarine eyes, tried to solidify in my mind, but slipped and faded away before I could clearly recall it.
The muscles of my neck and back cramped, and I froze with a groan. Through clenched teeth, I breathed into the spasms, and once they passed, I moved more cautiously.
The sighs and groans nearby told me that the other Obligates were rousing, too.
I raised a tentative hand to the back of my neck and brushed it with my fingertips. I winced at the feel of the metal disc, but there was no pain. Just the throbbing, which I’d at first taken for the throb of a swelling wound but now realized it was a faint pulse at the site of the implant, in sync with the rhythm of my heartbeat.
The rest of my body felt different, too. A silent buzz seemed to reverberate in every cell. My attention was somehow sharper. Heightened. No, it was my senses that were more aware.
I felt more alive. As if I could feel my own blood singing through my vessels, feel on the air the night-black of the dress I wore and the bleached white of the sheet against my bare arm, sense the radiance of every object and person in the room.
My heart pounded as I tried to take it all in.
“Rise and move to the foot of your bed,” came Akantha’s voice from somewhere in the room.
I did as she commanded and drew slow breaths, trying to calm my pulse. Looking back and forth, I saw stunned faces with wide eyes. More than anything, I wanted to ask the purpose of the implants in our necks. On Earthenfell, we’d been told only that Earthens who had implants, who worked directly for the overlords, needed the implants for communication. My eyes widened in apprehension. Could the Calistans read our thoughts through our implants?
I turned to Orion and our eyes met. I raised my brows, and he responded with a slight dazed shake of his head.
“You will be allowed a brief meal and break to use the facilities, and then Lord Toric will receive you at your formal introductions,” Akantha said.
Finally, a clue about what to expect. I looked down at my rumpled bla
ck dress and tried to smooth the creases across my stomach. Would we at least get fresh clothes to go before the alien Lord?
Back in the hallway, Akantha opened the cabinet and nodded at it. “Retrieve your vessels.”
A curvy Obligate with waves of golden-blonde hair pinned up behind her ears appeared to be trying to get Orion’s attention. She moved close to him and bumped him with her elbow a couple of times. When Akantha’s back was turned to secure the door of the room we’d just exited, the girl stood on tiptoe to whisper in his ear. Kalindi was her name, if my memory was correct.
Orion looked down at her in question, and then cast a furtive glance at Akantha. He seemed about to respond to Kalindi when Akantha finished with the door and looked down, reaching for something in her pocket.
Another female Obligate, a lithe young woman with a sprinkling of freckles across her button nose and stylish bobbed hair the color of sherry wine, had also been trying to catch the eye of one of the male Obligates. That young man had the same muscular build as Orion. Perhaps they’d both come from machinery.
Others had also been shifting and jockeying while Akantha’s attention was elsewhere, I realized.
Unease crept through me like a chilly morning mist. I wasn’t quite sure what was going on among some of the Obligates, but I got the distinct impression that it was something I needed to decipher.
The freckled Obligate didn’t seem to notice that Akantha had turned her attention toward us. The girl pulled at the young man’s arm and gave him an imploring look. The first part of what she said was lost in the rustle of shoes and clothing, but I distinctly heard, “. . . to work together as a pair.”
She might have gotten away with it if the hallway had not gone silent just as she’d finished whispering.
Akantha narrowed her eyes as she stalked to the girl. When the Calistan whipped out her hand, I thought it was to strike the Obligate. Instead, she grabbed the girl’s wrist and pressed her short wand against the girl’s arm.
The Obligate screamed and writhed, trying to yank her arm away. Akantha held the wand to the girl’s arm for a couple of seconds and then let go, and the Obligate stumbled backward, crashed into the wall, and fell in a heap to the floor. She moaned in agony, holding her arm.
