by Selena Kitt
Though she never would have believed it could be so, the shower was actually quite soothing.
“There,” Boone murmured behind her. “All done. You ready to get out?”
K turned to face him. She still didn’t feel able to speak so she just nodded.
Boone studied her face. “You okay? Was it as bad as you thought?”
K shook her head. “No,” she whispered, forcing the words out. “Not bad at all. It was... nothing like I expected.”
He searched her eyes for a long moment. “Well, that seems to be a good thing. Come on, let’s get out before we use up the entire water reserve.”
They stepped out of the stall, dripping and Boone wrapped her in towels. One encircled her chest and the other encased her long black hair. Then he sent her outside into the sleeping area so he could get out of his soaked shorts and dry off himself.
When he came out he was wearing just his black flight pants and rubbing a towel over his spiky brown hair. His broad shoulders were still beaded with droplets of water and tiny rivulets ran down the muscular planes of his chest.
The sight made K stare for longer than usual for some reason—almost as though she was seeing him for the first time. His eyes looked very blue when his hair was wet. She looked away hastily as he approached and went back to the task at hand.
She was sitting on the sleeping platform, trying to work a comb through her hair. For the first time in her life it was giving her trouble—the long strands snarling around the comb’s teeth in a most irritating manner. K jerked impatiently and then stifled a yelp when the motion pulled her hair.
“Here.” Without asking, Boone sat down behind her and took the comb from her hand. “Let me. I used to brush out Shayla’s hair at night when my mom was too busy working to do it.”
K sat silently, not protesting. Though the shower hadn’t been nearly as bad as she’d feared, she still felt tired. All used up, somehow. It was as though the huge buildup of fear and dread had leaked away, leaving her drained and useless. Purity, but she wished she could stop having all these emotions. They were so damn exhausting.
Boone combed in silence for a moment, doing a much better job than she had been of untangling the long strands of her hair. Then he spoke. “All right, darlin’. You wanna tell me what that was all about?”
K stiffened. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Yes, you do.” He turned her to face him, his eyes serious. “You were scared to death to take a simple shower and I want to know why. What happened? What was done to you?”
“Nothing was done to me,” K snapped. “I just... hadn’t had a shower since before I was fitted for my suit.”
“Bullshit,” Boone said harshly. “Look, K, I know you don’t like to talk much about life on Athena but I doubt the story behind this is any kind of state secret. So spill it—now.”
She could have refused him again—should have refused. But somehow when she opened her mouth, K heard herself telling him instead. She kept her voice low, her eyes down as she told every detail.
“In the time before I got my suit I lived with the others in my birthgroup in a kind of dormitory. Or barracks, I guess, would be a better word. We were all genetically engineered to be Paladins and we began our training early. I excelled at nearly all of it but there was one thing that was...” She shook her head, unable to put it into words.
“Go on,” Boone said in a low voice.
“One day a week we had Shower Day. We all dreaded it even though we weren’t supposed to feel anything—we couldn’t help ourselves.” She looked up at Boone briefly and saw that he was listening intently, his eyes narrowed in concentration.
K looked back down at her hands. “The mechanoids would come early, blaring their call to rise. We had to jump out of our bunks quickly or they would give us a shock to get us going.”
“Hell of a wake-up call,” Boone muttered.
K shrugged. “It was the way things were done. You learned to get up fast—I didn’t mind that part.”
“God, it gets worse?”
K’s eyes flitted up to his for a moment and she nodded briefly. “We... the mechanoids would herd us down the corridor and into the shower room. We had to be careful to walk single file and not touch each other because of our non-con bracelets.”
Boone stopped her. “Non-con?”
“Non-contact. We wore them until we were fitted for our suits. Any form of contamination would cause them to emit an electrical charge.”
“This just gets better and better,” Boone growled. “So if you so much as touched another kid...”
“We got shocked, yes,” K finished for him. “It was... the most efficient way to keep us from contaminating each other. From... touching.”
“They were that worried about you touching each other? They had to make you wear your own personal electric fence everywhere you went?” Boone looked like he could scarcely believe it.
“Contamination is discouraged almost from birth,” K said. “Pain is the simplest and most effective way to train.”
“It’s also fucking barbaric.” Boone sounded angry.
K shrugged. “I didn’t really mind the non-cons either. I was used to them—couldn’t remember a time without them. But the shower room... that was different. Worse.” She stopped for a moment, unable to go on. Boone lifted her chin gently so that their eyes met.
“Tell me, K.”
There was an authority in his deep, quiet voice that couldn’t be denied.
K took a deep breath. “It was big and cold—always very cold.” She spoke fast, trying to get the words out before they choked her. “Then the water would come down—so much and so fast it felt like you were going to drown. But if you opened your mouth to try and breathe it would burn your throat. I think because it was treated with disinfectant and other chemicals. It stung your eyes too so you tried to keep them closed. But then the scrubbers would come out...”
“You were saying something about that in the fresher. What were you talking about?”
“They came out of the walls. Steel tipped bristles on long, thin metal arms. You had to hold perfectly still or they might injure you. Several of the males lost a testicle that way and some others had their eyes damaged beyond repair.”
“Jesus!” Boone shook his head. “That’s fucking horrible, K!”
“It taught you to follow orders.” She tried to keep her voice expressionless. “Those who didn’t do as they were told reaped the consequences of their behavior. It also weeded out the weak. I told you there were twenty-six in my birthgroup, right?”
Boone nodded.
“Only twelve of us became Paladins.” K swallowed. “The others—the ones who were too damaged, who couldn’t obey orders or learn to control their feelings— they were purged.”
“Jesus wept.” Boone jumped up and began to pace, his broad shoulders tensed. “No wonder you were afraid to take a shower. K, that is the worst, most inhumane thing I’ve ever heard. To treat children that way.”
“We weren’t children—not really.” K watched him pace. “We were soldiers in training. Paladins. And only those that deserved to make rank survived.”
Boone stopped pacing and turned to face her. “You can’t tell me you think what was done to you is right. That it didn’t hurt you.”
“It was necessary.” K lifted her chin. “I became a better, more controlled warrior because of it.”
“How can you defend what those Purist bastards did to you? They fucking traumatized you, K.”
“They trained us,” she said stubbornly. “Trained us to endure, to feel nothing. And don’t forget, Boone, I am one of those Purist bastards myself, even if you have taken my suit.” She closed her eyes, trying to drive away the memory but it wouldn’t go.
She could still hear the howls of the other children who had not yet learned to master their emotions as the freezing, burning water peppered their unprotected skin like bullets. Her jaw still ached from keeping it clenched tigh
t, enduring in silence. But though she didn’t cry or beg she still hated it. One of the best things about being fitted for her suit had been never having to visit the shower room again...
“K, honey...” Boone knelt in front of her and took her by the shoulders. “I know it’s how you were raised but it isn’t right. Children aren’t meant to be brought up in a barracks by machines with no one to hold them or love them. They shouldn’t be denied the right to touch, the right to feel or fear or love. And they sure as hell shouldn’t be tortured.”
K opened her eyes and looked at him. “It is the Purist way. It’s the only way I know, Boone.”
“And you think you’re a better person for it?”
“I... I know I am.” She lifted her chin. “I am a Paladin. I fear nothing. I feel nothing.”
“Nothing at all? Then what’s this?” Boone touched her cheek lightly. When he pulled his hand away K saw moisture glistening on his fingertips.
“What...?” She stared at the droplets in confusion.
“You’re crying, K,” Boone said in a low voice. “You have been since you started telling me this little slice of hell from your past.”
“I’m not—I can’t be!” She felt a stab of panic. Feeling emotions was one thing but to actually manifest them outwardly...
“Look in the viewer.” Boone nodded at the silvery reflective screen across the room.
K stood stiffly and walked over to it, looking at her image in the viewer’s surface. Sure enough, there were tear tracks streaking down her cheeks. But as she looked closer, she saw that something else was wrong—very wrong.
“My eyes!” She looked at Boone and then back at the viewer. “What’s happening to my eyes?”
Boone came to stand behind her, looking down at her reflection. “Well, you can see a lot more of the white around the outer edges now.”
“Exactly.” K leaned closer, her gut twisting like a clenched fist. “The black of Purity, it’s fading, leaving me. My eyes haven’t been this white since I was a second level Paladin.” She shoved away from the viewer in a sudden frantic movement. “I’m losing it—losing everything I worked so hard to achieve.”
She wanted to run, wanted to get away from herself and everything else, from this whole frightening situation. But Boone wouldn’t let her. When she tried to leave he caught her and held her tight.
“Let me go! Let me go!” K beat against his broad chest with her fists but it was like beating against a stone wall—he refused to release her. Finally, she stopped, too tired to continue, too confused to know what to do next.
“Take it easy, darlin’.” Boone pulled her close and held her. “Let it out. Just let it all out.”
“Let what all out?” K tried to say but she found she couldn’t talk—her throat was too tight. She was crying again—she could feel the wetness on her cheeks—but she didn’t allow herself to sob. She could cry quietly, could retain that much of her dignity, at least.
It was the best she could do but it wasn’t enough. Even as Boone held her, murmuring soothing nothings, K could feel the waves of shame and pain rolling over her. She was losing her hold on the person she had always been—was becoming a stranger, even to herself.
“It’s all right.” Boone stroked her hair which fell like a heavy, damp curtain around her face. “It’s all right, baby.”
K wiped angrily at her eyes. “Don’t call me that—it’s worse than your other nicknames for me. I am not your baby.”
“No, and maybe that’s the problem.” He brushed a strand of hair away from her face and looked at her seriously. “You were never anybody’s baby. Maybe it’s time you had some babying—some tenderness in your life.”
K stiffened. “Why, so I can become softer than I already am? Look at me—having emotions and then expressing them. I’m crying for Purity’s sake.”
“They hurt you, K.” Boone’s voice was quiet and his eyes were bright with unshed tears. “It’s natural to cry when you’re in pain.”
“I’m not in pain,” K protested but there was a feeling in her chest, a tightness like someone was gripping her heart and twisting it until she thought it might burst.
“Your tears say differently.” Tilting her chin up, he pressed his lips gently to her wet eyelids—a touch so soft K could barely feel it. And yet, her heart skittered in her chest.
“What... what are you doing?” she asked, her voice coming out soft and breathless.
“Comforting you,” Boone murmured.
“You don’t have to do that—I’m fine,” she insisted. “You can... can let me go now.”
He gave her a long, appraising look. “Is that really what you want?”
“Of course it is.” K glared at him.
“All right. If you promise not to hurt yourself.”
“I have already given you my word I won’t purge myself until I get my suit,” K said, sniffing. “I shouldn’t have to swear it again.”
“Fine.” Finally, Boone relaxed his grip on her and she was free. But for a moment—only a moment—she didn’t want to move. She wished she could stay there and take the comfort he was offering, could let her tears dissolve the bad memories and make new ones to take their place. The feel of his lips on her cheeks and eyelids had been so soft and yet they made her heart pound...
That was her weakness talking. The growing Impurity that was eating her from the inside out. I must fight it, K told herself fiercely. I must hold out until I can find my suit!
But how much longer could she wait? How much longer did she have before the balance inside her shifted and her emotions ate her ability to reason completely?
How much longer would her eyes remain black?
Chapter Eight
After the shower incident, as Boone began to call it in his mind, things shifted subtly between himself and K and not for the better. Now she was colder and even more withdrawn than she had been to begin with. Boone feared that the emotional break-down she’d suffered after recounting her traumatic past for him might have pushed her too far. Shouldn’t have made her tell you, he told himself. Shouldn’t have pushed. But he couldn’t quite believe that.
Bullshit—she needed to talk. Needed to get it out.
Sure and that’s why she’s back to being as cold as a cadaver. Not that she ever got that warm in the first place.
He argued with himself back and forth but eventually decided that what was done was done and he would have to let it go. He didn’t push K or try to get her to tell him any more about her life on Athena. She would open up or not when she was ready. And he shouldn’t care anyway. K was the enemy—she’d promised to clean his clock in the near future and he didn’t doubt for a second that she was capable of doing it. So why did it bother him so much that she had withdrawn? Why did he ache for her when he thought of what she’d endured, when he remembered the tears in her strange, lovely half-black eyes?
Forget it, he told himself. Concentrate on getting Shayla back. That’s what matters. And it did—he missed his little sister as much as he ever had and was just as determined to get her back. But almost as often as Shayla, his thoughts turned to K. Who was she really under the cold exterior she tried so hard to project? Would he ever know? Did she even know herself?
They continued to be close physically, at least—there was no way she could avoid that. Despite Loki’s veiled hints that the touch-cravings would lessen in frequency at some point, Boone continued to take “time-outs” with her on a regular basis. And since K didn’t object—or no more than she had before anyway—he assumed that she still needed them.
She was also still reading her way through Shayla’s collection of Old Earth literature. Boone often thought the best parts of his day were when she gave him her “book reports” on the various things she’d read. He found that K tended to have a unique perspective on almost everything from Wuthering Heights to Oliver Twist. Some of the reading seemed to disturb her—she wouldn’t discuss Brave New World or 1984 with him at all—probably because b
oth books hit a little too close to home. The High Sentinel, from what little she’d told Boone of him, sounded like he could be Big Brother’s twin. But it was the children’s books she seemed to find the most absorbing.
Boone suspected she had started reading that particular section in the reader because the books were shorter and she was looking to gain more work-out time as per their bargain. She continued to read them, however, because she liked them—or so it seemed to him. He wondered if maybe they spoke to something inside her, nourished the famished child that had never been allowed to grow. K had never had a childhood of her own, not really—perhaps reading was allowing her to experience what she had lost.
