by Jenn Burke
The hesitation fascinated Felix, and for a moment he forgot the pain clutching at his heart. He forgot his needs. Leaning toward his friend, Felix nodded, prompting her to continue.
“There is something you could do for me.”
Felix’s brows crooked together. “Sure. What is it?”
“You advised me to come to you, and so I have. It is time for me to leave this planet. We have been here for three intervals and every day I fear I will become trapped.”
Three intervals? An interval was the ashushk equivalent of a week, or six thirty-hour days. He’d lost so much time. How long had Zed been…Felix shook his head, shunting those thoughts away. He needed to focus on Qek, and why Qek had come to see him.
“I’m sorry.”
Her eyes narrowed slightly and her cheeks smoothed. Again, Felix read her expression clearly. She did not understand his apology. She did not understand that no human should ever have to hear an ashushk’s fears, and that by that very action she’d deepened a friendship he had taken so for granted.
God, would he always be such an ass?
Probably. He had survived the stin, discharge from the AEF and the loss of his family. Hell, life had kicked him in the gut so many times, he should be used to it. Yet still he kicked back.
Felix turned back to the clear bubble wall and noted that the purple light of evening had started to darken the landscape. Soon, the ethereal beauty of Ashushk Prime would be lost for another endless night—not that he’d paid any particular attention to it during the long days. Or, maybe he had, because he knew that dark shadow over there was a curved tree that reminded him of an Earth palm. The ashushk seemed to favor them. They shaded every walkway, and potted versions leaned toward every windowed wall inside.
He pointed to it. “What are those trees?”
Qek clicked, swallowed a few consonants and then translated. “Windward recline.”
“You seriously have a tree called windward recline?”
“That is a literal translation. The trees represent two ashushk ideals, the direction of the wind, which is a prevailing force, and the inclination to lean away from it, which is a restful pose.”
Felix’s thoughts flopped sluggishly around inside his head. He caught the concept, but it sounded too Zen for him. Elias would like it. He returned to Qek’s request and considered all that it meant to him.
Departing Ashie Prime would mean leaving Zed behind. The Guardians had taken his body—for which purpose no one could divine. Elias reckoned they’d taken Zed as a trophy, that the gesture had something to do with the end of the Human-Stin war, and that video, the one that had ended Zed’s career—Major Anatolius defying orders to rescue ten civilians, making him a hero and a problem for the AEF. Elias had often inferred that the Guardian interference at that time, which had ended the war, had not been coincidental. Felix figured Elias simply tried to make him feel better by assigning meaning to random acts.
The Guardians were not going to give Zed back. They’d probably already…Felix didn’t want to think about what they might have done to his body.
Leaving this planet would mean abandoning a portion of his grief. Twelve hours in the space elevator would require him to be either civil or sedated. Felix supposed they’d all prefer the former option. The latter appealed more to him. Otherwise, he would have to pull the fragments of himself together and return to function. He would have to consider the future. His ship, his crew.
Leaving would mean that he accepted the fact that Zed had died.
Qek had waited something like a week to ask him. She had danced with fate for weeks longer than that, because she valued his friendship.
She’d given enough. More than enough.
Felix felt his chin dipping even before he’d decided to nod. The bob of his head was stiff, but he let the motion happen and confirmed it aloud. “You’re right. It’s time to go.”
Chapter Eighteen
“Zanderanatolius.”
Zed opened his eyes, the sight of the starfield as comforting as ever. It had not taken him long to understand that what looked like a vast emptiness of space was actually a room with walls, floor and ceiling all camouflaged by what appeared to be a live stream of space imagery. It had been disconcerting at first to see an endless ocean of black and yet feel something solid under his feet, but now…he liked it. He didn’t really understand why his hosts had chosen such décor, but yeah, he liked it.
He straightened his legs from where they’d been folded under him and looked up, smiling at his foolishness. He didn’t have to look anywhere. The voice had no source he could see.
“Yes?”
“How do you feel?”
Zed’s smile grew. “Why don’t you tell me?”
Warmth brushed his mind—a soundless chuckle. “We think you have adapted very well to this method of communication.”
“It’s…nice.” He let many more layers of meaning drape over that one adjective: freeing, easy, open, honest.
“That is why we use it. You feel calm.”
As always, one word brushed multiple concepts. Calm meant serene, content, peaceful, light, steady. Zed acknowledged that he was all of those things—now. It had taken a great deal of work to arrive at this point. When he’d first awoken, he’d been scattered. He’d known his name and who he was, but memories and thoughts beyond that one surety had come back slowly. His mind and his body hadn’t wanted to blend together again, the weirdest and most awful sensation Zed had ever experienced. He had felt disconnected from his body, as if it were a robotic construct belonging to someone else and only loaned to him. Without the soft, gentle patience of the voice in his mind, guiding him on how to put the pieces of himself back together, he would’ve remained broken. Or his mind would have snapped, permanently, irrevocably.
Through it all, the voice had been a comforting, encouraging presence. A metaphysical shoulder to lean on when his strength waned. It had helped him to keep going when he wanted to give up, reminding him of all the pieces of himself he’d yet to find—particularly those featuring Flick.
A sliver of doubt rose to accompany the peacefulness, one that he’d looked at and tried to address more than once. Should he feel so peaceful? Flick was out there—somewhere. Back on Ashie Prime, maybe, or in the black with the Chaos. Zed wasn’t sure how much time had passed since he’d…well, since he died. Guilt rose up to intertwine with the doubt. He should be pushing to get back to Flick, shouldn’t he?
Something soft brushed his thoughts, like a gentle hand smoothing his hair. The truth settled over him, probably nudged to the forefront by the mental touch, but he accepted it for what it was nonetheless. The physical pain that had plagued him on waking had faded, healed. The emotional and mental pain was a bit more tenacious, and harder to resolve.
He let his gratitude flow through his thoughts, knowing the voice would sense it.
“You have not asked us questions.”
No, he had not. His life had settled into a strange rhythm, one where time had little meaning. He woke when he no longer needed to sleep. He bathed in the small bathroom nestled next to the space room, using the facilities that could have been at home on any human ship. He ate when food appeared on the table beside his surprisingly comfortable cot—delivered there by a means he had yet to understand. In between all of this, he meditated, finding the forgotten pieces of himself and putting them back in place. He had not seen another living creature, but he was never alone. The voice was always at the edge of his perception, there but not heard unless it meant for him to hear. He had gotten the sense that he could engage it whenever he wished, but he’d refrained. Why, he wasn’t sure. Maybe because it was easier to drift in this place, where the rhythm of life demanded nothing from him? He’d needed the silence, the lack of demands, the space to put himself back together.
He needed Flick, too, but that need was muted. It was there, beneath the glued-together surface of Zed’s thoughts and identity, but he avoided looking at it too clos
ely. Not because he didn’t want to return to his lover with every fiber of his being, but because…he was afraid of feeling that much again. Here, now, he existed in a bubble of contentment and no expectation—it was like a warm, thick blanket on a cold winter’s night, held close and comfortable against his skin. He wanted Flick to be wrapped in the blanket with him. Safe, protected, held apart from all the shit in the galaxy just waiting for him to reappear.
“You are confused.” Uncertain, frightened, worried.
Zed nodded. The voice might not be physically present, but he’d discovered it read body language as well as his thoughts.
“We will never harm you.”
“I know.” Strangely, he did. He had been cared for in this place, given a peace he hadn’t experienced since he was a child. His hosts wouldn’t have done that if they meant to hurt him. “It’s not you that…” He stopped, unable to voice his concerns in a method that made sense—and then realized it didn’t matter, the voice already knew exactly what concerned him. “You are the Guardians, yes?”
“That is what you call us.”
That was something he’d figured out early on, after he’d slept and awoken a few times, eaten, and relieved his bladder—all things that had made it clear he was definitely not dead.
“May I ask why I’m here?”
“We have been waiting for you to do so.” The voice paused, but Zed had the sensation it was merely gathering words and concepts he could understand. Since the insistence that he was the Guardians’ proof, whatever that meant, the voice had been careful to choose meanings that were clear to him. “You took into yourself the essence of your enemy. Why?”
“Because my people would have died had I not.”
“No.”
He blinked, frowning. “No, they wouldn’t have died?”
“No. That is not why.”
He gave his head a little shake as he looked at the stars. “I…wanted to fight more effectively. I wanted to—”
“No.”
“What do you mean, no? It’s the truth!” Zed pushed to his feet.
“It is not, Zanderanatolius.” Warmth brushed his mind again, not a chuckle this time but a pat, like how his mother used to tap his nose. “We know you.”
Breathing hard, Zed looked at the stars shifting beneath his feet. They seemed so small, but it was an illusion—he was the speck of dust, and they the giants. He thought back to the war, to his time in the Project, to the covert ops that had preceded it. To the fighting and the bloodshed. To the focus, the determination. To the knowledge that no matter how many stin he killed, he would never make the galaxy right, not ever again. Not when it was missing an integral piece, the man he’d loved and had been taken from him.
Fighting was his purpose, his only purpose. They could have done whatever they wanted to him, and he would’ve agreed to it. Not because he wanted to fight better, but because it just didn’t matter. Zander Anatolius didn’t matter, because he’d ceased to exist.
“I was lost,” he whispered.
“Yes.”
His throat tightened. “I didn’t matter.”
“Yes,” the voice said, the word overlaid with sadness.
“Is that what you’re trying to teach me?” he asked, waving his arm at the room and its starfield. “That I’m insignificant, that I don’t matter?”
“Is that what you want us to teach you? If so, you will be disappointed.”
Zed pressed his lips into a thin line. His arms crossed, bunching the soft, thin fabric of the shirt he wore—a defensive gesture, but one he couldn’t stop. “If you already knew the answer to why, then why did you ask me?”
“Because you had not admitted the answer to yourself.”
No…he supposed he hadn’t. He knew the war had changed him. Trying to slide back into life as a civilian once the fighting was done had taught him that, among other things. But he’d placed the blame on Project Dreamweaver, on the stin poison that lived inside of him. The easy scapegoat.
It was not the Project that had stolen his humanity.
“You sought direction. A purpose.” Another warm touch. “You sought peace.”
Peace, not only with the stin, but inside himself. Yes. A reprieve from the ache that had plagued him for so damned long he hadn’t even recognized it until he’d found Flick, alive and well—and even then, it had lingered. Because despite loving Felix again with everything in him, he couldn’t escape his fate, and he knew it.
He walked over to one of the invisible walls and leaned against it. Its surface was cool and smooth on his forehead. Slowly, he turned, pressing his back to the steady surface, and let his knees fold. He sat with his knees bent, his forearms draped on them, and his head drooping.
“Do you understand love?” he asked.
“We understand the concept of it. It is a bond, a connection. Your poets have described it as two souls meeting and becoming one. It is unique to your species.”
“I knew the ashushk didn’t feel it, but you don’t, either? Nor the stin?”
“Humanity’s capacity for that sort of emotional bond is singular amongst the other races. You are your hearts.”
“And that is why I was lost.”
“Yes.”
“Will I…” He gritted his teeth and then plowed on. He’d already thought it, so the question was a formality. “Will I be able to leave here?”
The voice hesitated. Uncertainty overlaid the next thoughts pushed into Zed’s mind. “We can give you purpose, Zanderanatolius. You can choose to know and work with us.”
“Stay with you.”
“Yes.”
Purpose and peace. He’d find both here—he’d already found the second. He didn’t know what sort of purpose the Guardians could give him. He didn’t know if he wanted to know, either, but the temptation to stay was great. He felt safe here, cared for. Whatever the Guardians’ purpose, he had grown to know them just as they’d learned everything about him. That was the amazing thing—and perhaps the drawback—to their method of communication. No secrets, no lies.
He would be welcome here. Useful, purposeful, safe and calm. Would staying be the right thing to do? Zed stared at the space-covered floor for a moment, then scrubbed a hand over his face. Flick might be better off learning to live without him. Though the Guardians had helped him reclaim his mind and body, through whatever amazing technology they had that could reach into a dead body and pull the core of his self back from the void, he’d never be normal. The difference that had lived in him since Project Dreamweaver was still there—quieter, calmer, but there.
Didn’t Flick deserve someone who could give him normalcy? Didn’t he deserve to leave the war completely behind him? Zed would always be a reminder of the stin and what humanity had had to do in order to survive. With Zed around, Flick would never be able to truly forget being a POW, or the cruelties he’d suffered at the stin’s claws.
Intellectually, he knew staying with the Guardians made the most sense. But…”If I choose not to know?”
A thread of disappointment wove through his mind, but he understood it for what it was—genuine emotion, not a means by which to manipulate him. “We value free will above all else.”
“Is that why you don’t control the other races?”
“Yes. You have aptly named us. We guard, we protect—from yourselves, if necessary.”
“That’s why you allow war. Free will. Freedom to act.”
“Yes.”
“Why did you end our war with the stin?”
“It was time.”
Other meanings reverberated there, and Zed tried to grasp them. Necessary…needed…pain and sorrow…
Accomplishment.
“What did we accomplish?” he demanded.
The voice remained silent, but it was still there. Waiting. Letting him figure it out.
What had happened in those last days of the war to cause the Guardians to end it? There had been no significant battles, no loss of life then that had been gr
eater than any other time. His team had been active for six months, cutting through stin forces on the ground where they could, but they hadn’t made much of a dent in the enemy’s army. Even the video of his team’s heroics had had little impact on either side’s capabilities. It had swung civilian favor back behind the AEF, but it hadn’t resulted in anything that would change the tide.
The warm touch in his brain stroked the memory of the video. “Proof.”
“You said that before. Proof of what?” His eyes widened and his mouth fell open as the pieces clicked into place. “Proof of what we’d accomplished. Me. My team. What we are.”
“Yes.”
“Oh my God,” Zed breathed. What else had the voice said in that first conversation about proof? “Strength, heart, intelligence, spirit. I still don’t—wait.” He pressed his fist to his chest. “Heart. Humans are our hearts.”
“Yes.”
His breath sped up. “Stin are strength, ashushk are intelligence. Spirit is…you?”
“Lift your fingers to your neck, Zanderanatolius.”
It didn’t occur to him to disobey, even with his hand shaking. His fingers brushed the circular scars left by the stin POW who had been a part of Project Dreamweaver—the alien had gripped Zed and the other members of his team in a ritual embrace, flooding their systems with light doses of claw venom, over and over again. Psychotropic, it had allowed them to find an altered state of consciousness. The Zone. Most days, he tried not to touch the scars. He tried to forget they were there and what they meant.
They felt no different since the last time he’d set his fingers to exploring them. He had decided to withdraw his hand when he felt it. A new scar, a straight line running parallel to the two lines of stin claw marks, right in the middle of them. Gently, he pressed down—and felt something beneath the skin. A ridge.
“What…” His voice trailed off, the air in his lungs leaving in a rush.
