Without thinking, she pushed herself up out of her seat. She had to get out of here, get away from Gabriel. Never mind that she wasn’t sure she’d even be able to open the door of this conference room without his assistance.
She hadn’t made it more than two strides before he was beside her, his hand clamping down cruelly on her arm. Despite the pain, she wouldn’t allow herself to cry out. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.
“Do you really think you have any say in all this, Trinity?” he asked. His grip tightened even more, and she couldn’t help wincing. How long would it take for those bruises to appear? Not very long, probably.
She didn’t respond, but only glared at him. What would be the point in speaking? He knew he held all the cards here, and trying to protest that reality wouldn’t change anything.
“You forfeited your rights when you committed a crime,” he said. “You belong to us now. Do you understand?”
That was wrong. Even accused criminals had rights. Rights to a fair trial. Rights to contact a sympathetic party, whether friend, family member, or advocate. She’d been given none of those things, because she was no ordinary criminal. She had something the Consortium’s intelligence arm wanted. Now she was an asset, something to be ruthlessly exploited.
Her heart was hammering so hard in her chest that she was sure Gabriel must hear it pounding. Not trusting herself to speak, she nodded.
“Say it.”
A lump seemed to have formed in her throat, preventing her from speaking. She swallowed, hard. “I understand,” she whispered.
“Good,” he said. “Now, let’s get to work.”
* * *
There were a depressing number of candidates to bear his child. Most of them quite young, not having yet made a sayara match. A few somewhat older, possibly unlucky souls like him, women who had lost their partners through some misfortune.
And then there was Leizha.
He’d blinked in surprise and almost dropped his handheld when her name and image appeared on the screen. Jalzhin had sent him information on all the possible applicants, saying that Zhandar should choose the one who most appealed to him. Apparently, the Ministry had been sending out feelers for some time, searching for young women who were of the proper age and temperament to be suitable.
When Zhandar had asked whether these women knew the identity of the man they might possibly be matched with, Jalzhin had shaken his head. “No. They are given a general description, along with a few particulars of your case. But they do not know your name, or your position.”
That had been somewhat reassuring. However, as he gazed at Leizha’s image — not that it revealed much, since of course she was hooded — Zhandar began to wonder. True, most of these women could know nothing of who he was. But Leizha had worked with him almost every day for the past two years. She knew of the loss he had suffered. She knew how old he was, where he worked, where he lived. It wouldn’t have been that difficult for her to put the pieces together and realize that this man the Ministry was setting forward as a possible future partner was none other than the person she’d been quietly pursuing — in her mind, if nowhere else — for the last few months.
“Perhaps it would be better that way,” he mused aloud. Since he was now alone in his apartment, it didn’t matter. No one was there to hear him speak, and besides, he sometimes worked through problems this way, voicing them out loud, as if actually hearing them gave them more substance, something he could wrestle with.
Elzhair used to tease him about his habit — “talking to yourself again?” — but she’d always smiled as she’d done so. She understood why the process was important to him.
And now he was utilizing it to possibly choose her successor.
No, not that. Whoever he selected, she wouldn’t truly be Elzhair’s successor. She would be some strange counterfeit, an impostor, bound to him only because of that insidious drug the Ministry’s scientists had devised.
Frowning, he set the handheld down on the tabletop, then rose from his seat and went to stand at the window. Because he was alone, he’d divested himself of his heavy robes and had on only the close-fitting tunic and pants that were customary to wear beneath the billowing hooded cloak. There was no danger of anyone seeing him thus unrobed, however, as the glass of the window was treated so that he could see out, but no one could see in. The sun was setting, sending a brilliant golden glow over Torzhaan, making the tall buildings sparkle and the leaves of the plants in the rooftop gardens turn almost bronze.
It was beautiful, and yet it still awoke an ache within him. He’d often stood with Elzhair thus, watching the sun go down. Most of his kind preferred their widely scattered homesteads in the countryside. Cities were a necessary evil, and part of the reason why so many felt the need to go on retreat after a few years of work in a population center. But he had always loved these towers of glass, which should have been cold and sterile, but weren’t, because of the work he and others like him did to make every roof and balcony bloom with life.
“At least I know Leizha,” he said. True. They had spent many hours together, overseeing the irrigation systems that fed the city’s gardens, choosing the plants that would flourish, conducting seminars on how best to care for these precious living resources. He knew something of how she thought. The sound of her voice was familiar to him.
But to be together in such a way….
“Can I do that?”
He had no answer. Jalzhin had assured him that the drug would topple those barriers, create an attraction where none should have existed. But there could not be any artificial conception beyond that. They had developed the drug, but the scientists had been unsuccessful in fertilizing a female Zhore’s egg. There was something missing, something that could only occur during actual intercourse.
To be that intimate with Leizha?
Perhaps it would be easier with a stranger. He had put the mere notion of such physical acts out of his mind for many, many months. That was not to say that he hadn’t enjoyed it very much when he was with Elzhair. He’d heard that the Gaians and the Eridanis thought the Zhore odd and cold, in the way they covered every inch of their bodies and never, ever touched one another in public. That was not because they were cold, however. It was the very opposite. Their blood ran hot when with their partners, a heat that could only be quenched in hours of exploration of one another’s bodies. Why, one time with Elzhair, they hadn’t risen from their bed for nearly an entire day….
Zhandar had to push that thought aside, as even now the memory stirred the need in his body, waking a desire he could do nothing to satisfy. Well, that wasn’t precisely true. He knew that all he had to do was make his selection, then send the information on to Jalzhin. And soon after that — very soon, based on the other man’s hints — the woman of his choice would be sent to him. A small purple pill, and then he would want her as he’d once wanted Elzhair. Simple as that.
Or perhaps not so simple.
He picked up the handheld and activated the screen. Although it was taboo to reveal one’s face, save to one’s immediate family and sayara partner, and perhaps a few very close friends, Zhandar wished he could see Leizha’s features. Perhaps then he’d know whether he was making the right choice. Unlike humans or Eridanis, the Zhore did not base their attractions on physical appearance, but rather spiritual and intellectual compatibility.
Even so, he would have given a lot right then to be able to look into Leizha’s eyes.
* * *
It had been a long black sleep, one in which uncounted hours passed. When Trinity finally blinked at the darkened room around her, her eyelids felt gummy, lashes pasted together the way they once had been when she’d had a bad fever as a child. Everything seemed to swim around her.
But then there was pressure on her flesh, someone’s fingers wrapping around hers. She’d floated in darkness for long that she instinctively latched onto those fingers, clinging to them the way someone drowning might grasp their rescuer’s
hand.
Gabriel’s voice. “How do you feel?”
Realizing it was his fingers she clutched so tightly, she let go at once, then forced her eyes all the way open. She lay in a hospital bed. Tubes ran from a machine placed off to one side and terminated in her left arm.
No, wait…that couldn’t be her arm. The skin was black as night and yet shimmered with all the colors of the rainbow at the same time. And when she jerked in shock, staring down at the unfamiliar limb, she could see the scales rippling as her muscles moved beneath that alien skin.
One of those hateful chuckles. “Yes, the operation was a complete success. No rejection of the foreign tissue so far. But the doctors want you to stay in bed for another twenty-four hours. After that, you’ll be able to get up.”
Even though she hated to display such weakness in front of him, she had to know. Almost of their own accord, her fingers reached up to touch her face, to explore the contours of her cheeks and nose and chin. Yes, that felt like her eyebrows, like her mouth. The bones underneath hadn’t changed. It was only the skin that lay on top that was so very, very different.
“I suppose it will take some getting used to,” he added. “On the other hand, I think it suits you. It brings out your eyes.”
She wanted to scowl at him, but it hurt. That was when she realized she ached all over, as if someone had shoved her in a sack and then kicked her repeatedly. Well, maybe that wasn’t too far off the mark. It wasn’t every day that you had your entire epidermis replaced.
All right, not exactly replaced. According to Gabriel, she was still underneath there somewhere. She certainly didn’t have the strength or the courage to make a tiny little cut in that new skin and find out for herself whether her own human skin lay untouched below it.
Off to her left, a door opened, and a doctor entered the room. At least, Trinity assumed the tired-looking woman was a doctor. She came over and peered at the readouts on the machines, then tapped a few notes on the handheld she fished out of the pocket of her scrubs.
“Everything all right?” Gabriel inquired.
“Healing nicely,” the doctor replied. “I understand the need to speak with her, but try not to tire her out too much.”
“Of course.”
Brisk fingers against her wrist, feeling her pulse, and then the doctor made a final notation before letting herself out again.
“How long?” Trinity finally rasped, the words feeling like sandpaper against her dry throat.
Gabriel didn’t reply at first, but instead lifted a blue plastic cup from the bedside table and held it against her lips. “Try some ice chips.”
She let them slide over her tongue and then down her throat, cool, soothing. “More,” she whispered.
Obliging her, he tipped a few more of the chips into her mouth. She hated feeling like this, like she didn’t even have the strength to lift a plastic cup. And she hated even more that it was Gabriel Brant helping her, watching her helplessness and somehow taking a perverse pleasure in it.
Then he said, “Three days.”
Three days of her life gone. Three days she’d swum in darkness. She remembered nothing of the surgery, which was probably just as well.
It hadn’t all been dark and empty, though. For some reason, she recalled a man’s voice, soft, deep, speaking words she’d never heard before, a language of sibilant sounds and rounded vowels, one that seemed to wrap around her and warm her.
“Zhara sel tranhir?” Gabriel asked, and she responded automatically,
“Zhahir en trallen.” Then her eyes widened. “Was that…?”
“Yes. Zhoraani. We had the sleep conditioning going the entire time you were out.”
Trinity blinked. Yes, Gabriel had said that her language training would go on in the background while she swam in unconsciousness, would be implanted in her mind so she would not have to spend rigorous weeks or even months learning the alien tongue, but she hadn’t thought it would be this easy. She hadn’t even stopped to pick out the words, but had replied as naturally as if she were speaking the Galactic Standard that she’d known all her life. What they’d said was,
You are all right?
I am fine.
Was it possible that this insane plan might actually have a chance of succeeding?
“Your accent is very good,” he said. Then he reached down and touched a strand of her hair. It, too, was black as night, startling against the white hospital gown she wore. If she hadn’t been so tired, she might have flinched.
“Sleep now,” he added. “We can talk again tomorrow, after you’ve gotten more rest.”
Trinity wanted to protest that she’d already slept for days, but for some reason, she couldn’t find the energy to speak. Instead, she felt her head sliding back against the pillow, lassitude overcoming all her limbs. Maybe she’d had enough of darkness, but it hadn’t yet had its fill of her.
* * *
The next morning, she asked for a mirror. Yes, she knew she was changed, altered to become a facsimile of something unutterably alien, but she needed the evidence of her own eyes to tell her it was all real.
“Go ahead,” Gabriel told the nurse, who hovered near the door, looking anxious. “She’ll need to see sometime.”
The nurse nodded and then fled, returning a few minutes later with a small steel-framed mirror approximately ten centimeters square. However, she didn’t give it to Trinity, but rather to Gabriel, as if she wanted him to be responsible for any reaction Trinity might have to her altered appearance.
He smiled. “I’ll call if I need you.”
And of course the nurse went right back out again, closing the door behind her. Trinity still didn’t know his exact title, but it was fairly clear that Gabriel’s word was law around here.
Gazing down at her, he turned the mirror over and over in his hands. Stray images reflected in its surface and then disappeared — the blinking lights of the machines overseeing her recovery, the muted fixtures overhead, the face of the man who stood next to her bed, with those gleaming charcoal eyes and ironic mouth.
But not once was she able to catch a glimpse of her own reflection.
“Please,” she whispered. She knew by doing so she was giving in to his need to see her subordinate to him, but right then being able to see what they had done to her was far more important than playing mind games with Gabriel Brant.
Wordlessly, he handed the mirror to her. She took it from him, her fingers touching the cool surface. Strange how the information transmitted to her brain from her skin didn’t seem any different. She’d worried about that, wondered if having the world translated through another race’s flesh would change her perception of it. But no, the mirror felt like a mirror, although the hands holding it were so incredibly altered.
A long pause. She was conscious of Gabriel’s eyes on her, but she didn’t dare glance up at him. Bad enough that he was there at all. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of seeing the fear in her eyes.
Then she slowly lifted the mirror toward her face.
The eyes were the same, although their blue-green shade now seemed intensified a hundred-fold because of the night-black skin around them. Her lashes were as sooty and black as her hair. And that was her nose, and the high, wide cheekbones. Strangely, her mouth seemed the most different, although as she looked more closely, she realized its shape hadn’t been altered, only that it appeared so changed because it was more or less the same color as the rest of her skin, and she was used to wearing deep-toned lip stains that contrasted with her fair complexion.
So…it was her, that reflection, and yet it wasn’t. It was Trinity Knox, translated into Zhore.
“Well?” said Gabriel at last.
“It’s…different,” she managed. A silly response, but she really didn’t know what else to say. She wasn’t about to confess to relief that she could still see herself in there, if she looked closely enough.
“True.” He moved closer to the bed and took the mirror from her. “You’r
e beautiful, Trinity.”
She did slant a glance up at him then, sure he was teasing her in the cruelest way. And perhaps he was, but she couldn’t tell for sure. He looked serious, the ironic glint gone from his eyes. For once, he wasn’t even smiling in that smug way of his.
“I don’t know about that,” she replied. How shaky her voice sounded. She could only hope he’d attribute that tremor to her continued recovery from the surgery she’d undergone.
“I do.” He set the mirror down on the bedside table and turned back toward her. “So how do you feel today?”
“Better, I suppose. I don’t hurt as much. My head still aches, though.” Which was only the truth. She’d woken up with her temples pounding. Her thoughts had seemed to ring with alien syllables, sounds that she could only translate if she didn’t concentrate too hard.
In a way, it had reminded her of being twelve again and having her talent — or curse, depending on how you looked at it — descend on her. At first, she’d thought she was going crazy. The inside of her head had sounded as if someone had turned on every channel in their entertainment unit simultaneously. It was too much, and she’d missed almost three weeks of school, writhing in bed, hands pressed against her ears, until slowly she began to build up the barriers she needed to keep out other people’s thoughts. She’d had no one to assist her; it had all been trial and error, pushing at the voices in her head until they finally, mercifully left her alone.
Well, unless she wanted to hear them. She’d learned to focus on a particular person, if she needed to know what they were thinking. It wasn’t nearly as much fun or as interesting as she’d thought mind reading might be, once she understood what this particular gift of hers entailed. People’s thoughts tended to chase one another, round and round, and as for their opinions of those around them…well, they weren’t nearly as charitable or as complimentary as Trinity had hoped. She’d quickly learned to keep them all at bay. It was just easier that way.
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