by Amber Stuart
"Handle what?" I said, looking between them.
Nihkil didn't drop Zarwin’s gaze, but his eyes, if anything, grew blacker.
"Do you agree?" Zarwin prompted.
His tone clearly indicated that Nik had no choice. After a pause, Nihkil glanced at me. His mouth pursed into a frown.
"You have my solemn word, Jamri,” Zarwin said. “Absolutely no harm will come to her. We will make every effort to ensure her comfort. I promise it."
"I don't wish to leave her,” Nik muttered, more to himself than to either of us. “Not even for this."
"You will have to trust me that you will not, Jamri."
"I do not trust you," Nik replied shortly, looking at him.
Zarwin's eyes reacted slightly to the words, turning a darker shade of green. His voice grew more subdued, as well. "Well, then you will simply have to worry yourself for nothing," he said. "I cannot have you on my ship in this condition, Nik. I cannot. Nor would you, if our positions were reversed."
Nihkil turned to me a second time. That time, the look on his face was almost fierce. His words came out somewhere between a plead and a command.
"Close it, Dakota," he told me. "Close the lock. Please."
I stared up at him, not hiding my bewilderment. "I have absolutely no idea how to do that, Nik. You can't possibly think I've been lying all this time––"
"If you don't do it yourself, they will do it for me," Nik said, cutting me off. "They will drug me, in the process. I won't be able to protect you. They will allow me to stay conscious, at least, if the lock is closed... it is morph law."
I couldn’t help but see the desperation on his face.
Even so, there was nothing I could do but shake my head. I felt my own frustration worsen, but I couldn’t give him the answer he wanted.
"Nik," I said. "I want to, but I can't. Is there anything you can tell me, anything that would help me know what to do?"
"Can't you feel it?" he said. "Can't you feel the lock itself?"
And yeah, sure I did.
I felt the lock, or what I thought of as the lock... but it didn’t tell me how to close it, or how to manipulate it any other way, either. I tried to feel it more clearly, while Nik and Zarwin and whoever else watched me. I concentrated on that line from my chest to his, that feeling of being connected to him, but I still couldn’t get any sense of what to do with it. I couldn't even really get a sense of what it attached to, beyond a broader feeling of Nihkil’s body, and a denser feeling of Nihkil himself. Trying to make sense of the mechanism I sensed in that, or what I could actually do with it, felt like trying to catch a fistful of wind.
Eventually, I looked up at him, shrugging helplessly.
There was another silence, then Nihkil nodded.
Taking my fingers in his, he squeezed them gently, then removed his other hand from my shoulder and chest. He stepped away from me then. Walking deliberately in front of me, he faced Zarwin's people openly.
That time, when he nodded, he aimed it at them.
"Fine," he said. "Do it, then."
"Wait!" I took a step forward, trying to put myself back between Nik and them. "Do what? What are you going to do to him?"
"Do not interfere, Dakota," Nihkil warned me.
He moved me carefully but firmly aside, stepping in front of them a second time. That’s when I saw her. A female morph wearing the black uniform of a Pharei soldier stood just to the right of Zarwin.
I watched as she raised her arm so that it hung level with Nihkil's chest.
I stepped forward, intending to get between them again.
I didn’t move fast enough.
A small, square device, similar to a doong but with more features on its hard surface, exploded into life from the palm of the female morph's hand. Lighting up from a deep black to an iridescent blue, it began to vibrate once she pressed something on its underside. Even as my legs jerked me into motion, some kind of net launched towards Nik.
Six pebble-like nodes flew towards him silently, connected to a larger, rounder shape in the middle, and tied together with black snaking wires. They flashed with red and yellow current, lighting up in midair.
Then the entire thing, a kind of disjointed spider web, hit Nik in the middle of his chest.
The force of it also nearly knocked him down. Once attached, all seven of those darker, stone-like shapes, lit up in a reddish-purple color.
Nik’s knees buckled.
I watched in a kind of horrified disbelief as he fell like dead weight, first straight down, then to his back. My reflexes clicked in about a half-second too slow, lurching me towards him, maybe with the thought of catching him, but again, I didn’t manage to reach him in time.
I found myself hanging over him instead, panting, as I watched his body and limbs twitch from where he lay on the tarmac floor. The whole thing happened so fast, I could only stand there at first, my mind blank.
Nik’s face contorted in pain, as if they’d tagged him with a high-voltage electrical prod. I could tell from his eyes that he was losing consciousness, even as his body continued to spasm under the intensity of the charge.
Letting out an angry, frightened yell, I fell to my knees, grabbing hold of the thing on his chest. The thing shocked me... hard enough to knock my hands off him.
When I reached for him again, someone grabbed my arm from behind, twisting it behind my back. I looked up, furious, and found myself staring up at the female morph, who now stood over us, along with Ledi and two others.
“You can touch him,” the female said loudly in Pharize. “But only him... not the device. You will only hurt yourself. You could hurt him, too.”
Panting, I felt my mouth twist in anger.
I was about to yell at her, then thought better of it, and looked down at Nik.
His eyes were already rolling up into his head. I tried grabbing hold of his shoulders, maybe to help him sit up. Again, it was too late; his muscles had already gone soft, and he was too heavy for me to do much with on my own.
I just knelt there, shaking him lightly as his expression smoothed.
Pain lines still lingered around his eyes and mouth, but yeah, I could tell he was pretty much out for the count. All that tension I'd seen as he crossed the hangar with me... all of that life I'd witnessed in his eyes and through the connection between us... that was gone, too. It vanished before I'd really learned to appreciate the difference.
Nik had been himself in that brief period, I knew now... really himself.
The lights in the stones sticking to his chest turned gradually from that blood-red color to a lighter, pulsing blue. Glaring up at the circle of morph surrounding me, I bit my lip in barely restrained fury.
Zarwin alone answered my angry stare. His eyes held a tighter look than before, but he seemed unsurprised by what had occurred.
"It is all right, Dakota," he said. "I will not break my word to him."
"You closed the lock," I said, my voice openly accusing. “You forced it closed.”
"We had no choice," he said. “...So, yes.”
"You could have warned him!" I burst out.
The words weren't adequate, weren't even close to what I'd wanted to say, but I could barely think straight as I looked back at Nihkil.
It didn’t occur to me until later that some part of me had been cut off by that device. I’d been cut off from Nik, in a way that almost hurt. At the time, I just felt angry beyond reason, and confused. Maybe even frightened.
Zarwin seemed to know some of this.
Despite the nonsense of my words, his eyes held only patience. He answered me in that same, maddening, matter-of-fact tone.
"We did warn him," Zarwin said. "You heard me tell him what we would do, Dakota. He knew what my words meant. It is why he asked you to close the lock yourself."
My eyes shifted back to Nik.
His face still carried that look of pain, whatever this jerk-off said about
not harming him. I didn't know how the machine worked. All I knew was how it looked... and felt... which was pretty shitty, frankly. It felt like they’d closed his lock with the equivalent of a nail gun.
When I looked up, still gripping Nik’s arms, I wanted to see remorse in their faces, some sense of understanding of what they'd done.
Instead, my angry stare met indifference.
Still, I saw faint whispers of curiosity somewhere in their appraisal, maybe because I was human, or maybe for some other reason. With that curiosity came puzzlement, in lesser and greater amounts... and not a small amount of pity.
25
CAPTIVITY... AGAIN
I SAT ON a dark green bench, alone for all intents and purposes.
I found myself chewing on the end of a mong stick, trying to calm my nerves. The habit that had struck me as slightly annoying and weird since I’d first seen the humans on Ledi’s ship doing it, now felt almost familiar... even comforting.
Nihkil sprawled on the padded bench next to me, still unconscious, although I'd seen him stir a few times. Studying his face in the quiet since they'd finally left us alone, I wondered if he'd transitioned his way from being knocked out to just being asleep. The metal net still gripped the front of his chest, the smaller stones pulsing blue as Nik breathed under it. They'd handcuffed his wrists and ankles to the supports under the bench so that his body stretched somewhere in the middle, keeping it roughly balanced on the thick pad.
He didn't exactly look comfortable, though.
That Zarwin guy had overseen it all, watching me warily as his guards did the actual work of bolting Nik down. A few times, I got the sense Zarwin was trying to decide if I might be a threat, or if I could find some way to release Nik if they left me alone with him.
I tried, sure.
Mainly, I tried to get the metal spiderweb off his chest.
In theory, if Nik could transform, then he could take care of the cuffs himself, either by making his arms slim enough to escape, or by breaking the cuffs altogether. If nothing else, he would wake up a lot faster, since whatever had drugged him obviously lived in the lock-closing mechanism, too.
Anyway, I figured I had a better chance of tackling the net, even with its electric shocks, than I did of finding some way to saw through the inch-thick cuffs that circled each of his four limbs. So I removed my jacket and my shirt, wrapping them around my hands and working over Nik in a tank-top bra they'd given me on Palarine and the uniform pants.
It took me about twenty minutes to thread the long-sleeved uniform shirt carefully through the net mechanism well enough to get some leverage. As soon as I tried using that same shirt to pull at the largest stone on the center of his chest, though, Nik let out a low gasp of pain, even unconscious.
All of the smaller stones lit up, too, turning back to that blood-red color.
Within seconds, a series of voices erupted excitedly from the speakers in the wall.
"Do not do that, First Worlder... !" the first began.
"Dakota Mayumi! Stop what you are doing! Stop right now!"
"Do not attempt to remove the device!" a third insisted, more angry than the others. "You are harming Nihkil Jamri! Stop what you are doing at once!"
“...You will seriously injure him if you do not desist!"
At least one of those voices sounded like Zarwin, but I couldn't be sure which one through the distortion of the wall speaker. I found myself obeying the collection of them, though, if reluctantly. The pained look on Nik's face convinced me it wasn't worth experimenting until he was conscious enough to tell me whether or not I might be killing him.
After that long-seeming pause, one of the voices added,
“...Yes. You could kill him. If you are wondering if that is possible."
That voice definitely sounded like Zarwin.
Either way, I now found myself stretched out next to Nik on a second padded bench. Propping my feet on the thick cushion, I sighed in frustration at the featureless ceiling, trying to decide if there was anything else I could do. I really couldn't think of anything.
I doubted I would sleep, but lay there, eyes closed.
At some point, I must have dozed off.
A loud sound woke me up.
When my eyes and head jerked up, the door to the cell yawned open, and four morph stood over our benches. They looked different from the original four who bagged and tagged Nik in that hangar, but like those other four had done, they stared at me more like I was an animal than a person.
I followed their stares to Nik, too, relieved to find him still with me, but more so to find him awake.
Nik’s eyes reflected light, despite their nearly black color. From his expression, he looked as if he was still struggling in some way, maybe even in pain, but clearly, he knew where he was.
I still couldn’t feel him at all through the lock. So I watched him instead, trying to understand his expression.
Then a familiar voice jerked my attention back to the door.
"He's hurting himself," Zarwin said, as he entered behind the guards. "It is partly reflex... an unconscious attempt to free himself of any constraint on his lock. It is also partly Nihki's usual stubbornness when it comes to not getting what he wants...”
Zarwin looked like Ledi again, which actually managed to confuse me a little, especially when he used Ledi’s nickname for Nihkil.
I still couldn’t quite wrap my head around how to think about him. I’d liked Ledi, but I can’t say I’d ever trusted him. This Zarwin guy, I didn’t trust at all... much less Nik’s childhood friend, Razmun, who sounded like a total asshole.
Zarwin smiled at me, almost as if he'd heard my thoughts.
“...For all of his intelligence, Jamri's never been very good at backing down from a fight he's already lost,” he added, glancing at Nik. “Have you, my friend?"
Nihkil didn't answer.
Zarwin smiled again, glancing back at me.
"He is hurting himself," he repeated, his voice more explanatory. "He is trying to morph... to change himself... likely to free himself, so he can maintain the illusion of being able to protect you. The net prevents this, however. Just as it prevented you from pulling it off him earlier."
I didn't let my expression change, other than to give Zarwin a hard stare.
"Ah," the taller morph smiled. "You are protective of him, too. That is very good to see, friend of my friend. Many human lock holders manage to remain quite callous towards their charges... a fact that is quite incomprehensible to us morph, who understand the great gift we have been given, when we are granted control over the abilities of a chosen morph. I appreciate that you are not one of those humans, Dakota Mayumi. It appears our Nik was more discerning in giving himself this time...”
Seeming to notice the anger rising in me at his words, Ledi gave a wave of one hand.
"Please do not be offended by my bluntness, Dakota,” he said. “Despite what you might think, Nik is very dear to me... very dear. I, too, would protect him with my life."
I pretended to ignore the overly familiar tone, although it made me grit my teeth a little.
I glanced at Nik, but his expression remained stone, his mouth a firm line as he stared up at the other man. He still appeared to be in pain, but his eyes shielded it more now. I found myself wondering if he really was actively fighting to get free... or if wanting to change, now that his lock was open under the net, was more like a reflex.
When I glanced back, I caught Zarwin looking between the two of us, his expression puzzled.
"You two really are fascinating," he murmured, his eyes on Nik’s face. "I do wonder if you realize, my human friend, how rare it is for a spontaneous lock-ownership transferral to occur, as it did with you and Nik. Unlike the Pharei, I do not doubt its occurrence. I can see it on the two of you, even now... as plain as I see the stars. I wonder if Jamri wished such a thing to make it so, or if it happened outside of his control, too. Perhaps some
more subconscious mechanisms were at work? Beyond him being tired of being yoked to his enslavers, that is...”
I bit my lip to keep from rolling my eyes.
"You really held Nik's lock?" I said. "Before, I mean?"
"I did," Zarwin replied easily. "We grew up together, Nik and I. Did he never tell you of his oldest friend, Razmun? Who tragically died after refusing to respond to the recruitment request by the mammal authorities on our home world? Died of his own stubbornness," he added with a faint smile. "Or so I am told."
“You really do like to hear yourself talk,” I muttered, folding my arms.
Razmun gave me a faint smile.
Even so, his eyes grew a shade cooler.
I found myself reminded of the other time I’d crossed a boundary with him, meaning with General Advisor Ledi. I’d wondered if it was ego at the time, or attachment to the hierarchy under the Pharei. Now I wondered if maybe, in that brief flush of anger, he’d shown me the real person that time, too.
But it’s always easier to pull things apart in retrospect.
“I faked my own death, of course,” Razmun added conversationally, glancing at Nik before his eyes returned to mine. "Personally, I found death infinitely preferable to slavery. I wanted Jamri to come with me. I told him I had a way out of the conscription laws, that I could get us both out, but he refused to accept my offer. Jamri, as he is wont to do at positively the worst times... decided to play it safe.”
Frowning a bit more, Razmun mused, seemingly to himself,
“I've long found it quite an odd paradox, that Nik can use his inherent conservatism to mask and accommodate his darker streak of near-masochism. Even as he uses his more reckless tendencies to the same effect...”
Zarwin met my gaze again, his irises now silver.
"Perhaps a firm hand is needed with him, Dakota?” he smiled. “Perhaps you will be the one to help dear, talented Nihkil to sort out these self-destructive tendencies of his... ?"
Biting my lip, I glanced at Nik.
His face had relaxed somewhat, but he still had a tense look around his eyes as he looked between me and the taller morph. While I got the feeling he wasn't in as much actual pain, I also sensed he still didn’t like me and this Zarwin guy talking.
