by Frankie Rose
Somewhere close by a water spigot is leaking, and the constant, steady drip, drip, dripping is driving me insane. I can’t shut the sound out. I can’t turn the spigot the three millimeters it requires to stem the flow of water, and so I have to endure the repetitive torture of it, without any way to block it out. So damn frustrating. Darius comes in and out, humming to himself a lot. He’s not a very good singer, but at least his tuneless attempts at melodies ease the dripping for short periods of time. I have no idea what he does as he comes and goes, but often the burning smell of camphor oil and smoke fills the room, or some other light, herbal, vaguely unpleasant smell, and I know he’s about to tend to me, rubbing poultices and thick, cloying substances onto my chest. At first I hated the contact; I mustered up enough mental strength to knock the bowl of ointment from the seer’s hand, sending it flying. I could only do it once, though; my mind was exhausted from the effort of a small, inconsequential action that I’d normally be able to accomplish without a second thought, and I’m pretty sure Darius could tell. He’s continued to use the lotion on me at regular intervals, and for a brief period after each application, it’s easier for me to breathe.
Other times, I hear Reza. She comes and goes, never saying a word, but I recognize the cadence of her footfall, and the cautious, uneven draw and pull of her breathing. The link between us is gone. Even when I force the limits of my mind as far they’ll go, I can’t sense her the way I could before. There’s no echo of her inside my head at all. Nothing. It’s as if the link has been severed altogether, cut through once and for all, and she’s simply…gone. Only she isn’t, because she comes to me of her own volition. She watches over me, and she waits, and I can feel the tension pouring off her. I didn’t have time to analyze the way she was feeling about her memories of us before all this happened. I don’t know if they’ve affected her opinion—or her fear—of me. I don’t know anything, and the not knowing is killing me.
I’m about as vulnerable as a person can be right now; she could use a pillow to smother me. She could overdose me with any number of drugs and potions that Darius surely has to hand. Reza could kill me without even breaking a sweat, and yet she doesn’t. Ending a life has become second nature to me, but I’ve seen how confronting the task can be for others. How their hands shake, and their hearts falter. Stupid, reckless, soft hearts. Mine is carved out of steel.
Time passes strangely. There’s no day and night inside the crevasse that’s formed inside of me. I have no way of knowing how long I’ve lain here for, but it feels as though lifetimes pass, one after the other. I shake and I tremble, and Darius rubs more salve onto my chest. I shake and I tremble. I shake and I tremble. More salve. More sweating. More endless drifting in the dark.
Until…
Eventually, the shaking lessens. The raging fire inside my veins dims to a subtle flicker, and my mind begins to awaken again. It feels as though I’m underwater, deep, way below the surface, where the light cannot penetrate, and I don’t really know which way is up. I begin to feel my body, and I immediately wish I couldn’t. The pins and needles that penetrate my skin feel more like spears. After a while, I begin to feel the tether again, connecting me to Reza. I can’t feel anything through the link. I have no idea where she is or what she’s thinking, but the knowledge that the connection is still there, joining us, is a massive relief.
For once, the void inside me no longer feels like a prison.
I finally sleep.
TWENTY-ONE
REZA
PETTING ZOO
“You’re going to have to go in there and get him.”
I don’t want to climb inside Jass’ head and pull him out of it, but Darius won’t leave the matter well alone. It’s been a week. Nine days during which Jass has stopped tossing and turning, straining against his own flushed, feverish skin, and he’s just lain there on Darius’ cot, silent, still, with an air of death hanging over him.
Darius removes the IV that’s been in Jass’ arm for days, rubbing alcohol onto his skin to clean it. “If he doesn’t wake up soon, his body will begin to atrophy. His muscles will weaken. His cells will begin to die. The flow of blood to his brain is steady, but his internal organs are slowing. The nutrients I’ve been giving him are doing their job, but they’re no match for real food and water.”
I push away from the wall, moving to stand next to my friend. “Maybe a weak Jass wouldn’t be such a bad thing. Now we know he’s not going to die, it might be beneficial to make sure he’s not operating at full capacity when he wakes up.”
Darius gives me a disapproving sideways glance. “Purposefully clipping an animal’s wings sounds like something the Construct would do.”
I think this is the harshest thing the man’s ever said to me. He knows making a comment like that is going to chaff at me. I scowl at him, cursing under my breath. “Okay, fine. I can try it, but the bond’s never worked this way before. I’ve never gone to him. He’s always been the one sneaking into my mind, unannounced. I have no idea how to do it. Or even if I can.” I don’t mention the dreams. Technically, I did go to him on those occasions, but I was unconscious. I have no idea how I called out to him, helped him lift me into the dreamscapes he created, but it must be possible. I just don’t have a clue where to start.
“If he can do it, you can do it,” Darius says firmly. “You’re from the same planet. There’s no reason you’d be capable of anything less than Jass. You just need to focus. Visualize your goal. It will happen naturally.”
I kept Jass’ revelation to myself for a while after Darius had him moved to his quarters. I needed time to process. To understand. To try and figure out what the news that I share a heritage with Jass Beylar might mean to me. I made absolutely no headway, though, and I cracked. I confided that in Darius at least, who made an unimpressed grunting noise in the back of his throat and continued on his work. He completed a barrage of tests, though, drawing vial after vial of blood from both myself and from Jass, poring over the results and all the while frustratingly calm and silent. After much humming and squinting, he gave me his conclusion: Jass and I are complicated. He didn’t learn much, beyond the fact that our DNA confirmed we are indeed from the same planet. Darius suspected the mental link we share could have had something to do with a familial bond, but when he took a closer look, our specific genetic coding was vastly different. We don’t even share distant relatives, let alone close ones.
“I’m going to eat,” Darius tells me, placing a hand on my shoulder. “Perhaps while I’m gone, you could attempt to talk to him at least. Please. For me. Don’t pull faces, Reza. It won’t kill you. At least…I don’t think it will.” He laughs as he leaves his quarters, and once again I find myself alone with the dark-haired man sleeping on the bed.
I’ve spent a considerable amount of time here over the past week, and during that span of days I’ve had plenty of opportunities to study him. At first I avoided looking at him at all, expecting his eyes to open at any moment and find me staring at him, but when the tether fell slack and Jass stopped moving, I grew bolder. I learned the features of his face. The slope of his shoulders. His corded arms. I committed the powerful lines of his muscled chest and stomach to memory. I found myself staring at the fullness of his mouth, unable to look away.
To my horror, I’ve repeatedly fallen back into my newfound memories, replaying what his lips feel like on mine, and each time it’s felt like a bucket of scalding hot water being thrown over me.
I’ve fought and railed as hard as I can to keep such inappropriate, impossible things from my head since then, but…it’s proving harder and harder to accomplish. I’m constantly trying to convince myself that I don’t care about him. That he means nothing to me.
I shake myself, scrambling to pull myself together as I perch gingerly on the edge of Jass’ cot. Without Darius here in his quarters, I feel like I’m intruding somehow, spying on someone while they’re sleeping. Jass isn’t asleep, though. His consciousness has fled inside his body,
and it won’t come out. His body is nothing more than a hollow husk. I don’t know if that makes my awkward, frightening thoughts of him better or worse.
Ever since I felt the connection between Jass and I for the very first time, I’ve done everything I can to avoid it. To shut it out. To close it off, and prevent it from opening up a doorway inside my head. It feels counterintuitive now to do the opposite.
I focus on Jass’ face, the very first twinges of panic twist in my gut. What if I can’t do this? What if he can do things I can’t? And…what if I can do it? Where will stepping into his mind lead me? What dark corners of his psyche will I find myself tumbling through? What the hell am I going to say to him once I find him? And, most worryingly of all, will I be able to find my way out?
Jass’ eyelids flutter, a soft frown marking his face, and I’m hit by the ridiculousness of the situation. He looks so calm. So peaceful. So…breathtakingly handsome. Gods. I bow my head, breathing deep, fighting the urge to get up and run from the room as fast as I can. How can this man be responsible for so much disruption and chaos in the galaxy? How can he be the reason so many children are without parents? Without food? Without water? Without a home over their heads? How can he be the reason I’ve lived in fear for so long now, too petrified to live my life? And how can I still want him so badly?
It just goes to show that appearances can be deceptive. A creature that looks harmless, even approachable and inviting one minute, can be the very same creature that lashes out and takes your head off the next.
The connection pops and crackles inside my head as soon as I seek it out, tentatively grasping hold of it in my mind. I’m shocked by the potent flow of energy that courses through me as soon as I surrender myself to the link. It feels odd. Like a piece of me snapping into place. I’ve always felt as if there was something missing inside me, something absent and distant, lost even. As soon as I stop resisting the connection, it feels so right. As if that missing part of me has now returned and I’m whole again. It’s more than that, though. I’m more than whole. I feel empowered. Alive, and rejuvenated. Like I can do anything. Lying on the cot, Jass twitches, his fingers opening and closing in his dreams. He sighs lightly, and the gentle frown he was wearing eases, disappearing.
The connection pulls at me, asking for more, and a thrill of panic dances up my spine. I should have told Darius to stay. If something goes wrong and I can’t resist this, it would have been better if he were here. He could have forced me out, maybe. Brought me back to reality. I’m alone right now, though; I’m going to have to rely on my own mental fortitude to make sure I don’t lose myself completely to this thing.
Gods, I hope this works.
I hope I’m strong enough.
I hope…fuck, I hope this isn’t the most stupid I’ve ever done.
I release the last, remaining strands of resistance within my mind, holding me back, and I allow myself to fall.
The sensation that hits me is more than a suggestion of emotion or surroundings. It is lightness. It is darkness. It is a blurring and a sharpening of reality all at once. It is hot and cold, and right and wrong, and the dizzying depths of it all surging through me at once makes my heart stutter in the most dangerous way. For a second I’m blind, lost inside a rush of power. A bizarre settling feeling takes hold, beginning at the soles of my feet, spilling upward, and when my sight returns to me moments later, I am no longer in Darius’ quarters, looking down on Jass from above. I am lying on my back, my hands pinned high over my head, and Jass is straddling me, his knees gripping my ribcage between them, his dark hair hanging down over his face like a curtain. And he’s staring at me with such a furious intensity that it seems as though he’s attempting to set fire to me with nothing more than his anger alone.
“You’re not supposed to be here,” he hisses. His hands tighten around my wrists, stretching my arms a little higher over my head.
“You’re not supposed to hurt me,” I snarl back, trying to wrench myself free.
The boy on top of me angles his head, scrutinizing me. His eyes are half-closed, but the gold is there inside his irises, sparking and flaring, as if they possess an energy all of their own, trapped inside them. “For an uninvited guest, you’re making a lot of assumptions about the rules of etiquette,” he whispers. “This is my mind, Reza. You think you can just drop in unannounced and expect tea and cake? Have you met me?”
He’s right. This is his mind. Technically, the rules of engagement in our little war don’t apply here. “Just let me up.” I fight to pull my wrists free from his grasp. “I came to talk to you, not wrestle.”
Jass smirks, the devastating smile starting off small but soon commandeering his whole face. Danger flares in his eyes. “A good thing. You’d never win.” He releases me, pushing back and rocking to the balls of his feet so he can stand up. Free of him, I take in my surroundings for the first time, and my breath leaves my body all at once. We’re in the middle of an amphitheater—one I recognize and that is unfamiliar at the same time. Rows of seating stretch up, up, up, a hundred tiers or more, wrapping their way around the entire amphitheater. Huge, white sails snap and billow on the breeze, giving some shade from the light of a single sun that balances like burnished silver coin in the sky directly overhead. A monstrous bronze statue lies toppled in the dirt at our feet. Huge chunks of rubble and debris litter the ground, and the soft, cloying scent of decay hits the back of my nose. This is a dying, dead place, filled with clamoring voices, and yet aside from Jass and I, there isn’t another soul in sight. I spin around, remembering and not remembering the place all at once.
“This…this is it, isn’t it?” I whisper. “This place. I’ve been here before. This is the coliseum on...on...”
“You can say the word. Earth.” Jass casts his gaze around, too, apparently bored. “And yes. So it would seem,” he replies. “Filled with ghosts. Fucking horrible place.”
I swallow, shielding my eyes against the sun as I search up, scanning the rafters. “Why have you brought us here, if you hate it so much?”
“I didn’t bring us here. You did.”
“That’s not possible. I don’t remember the place in this kind of detail. This is all you. It has to be.”
Jass doesn’t say anything. He watches me as I look around, his arms folded across his chest, his nostrils flared like a blood horse that’s caught a scent. He’s just as magnificent now is he is when he is awake. And, my senses inform me, just as perilous. I have to look away from him for a second in order to gather myself.
“You’ve been spending an awful lot of time watching over me,” he whispers. “Nothing better to do?”
I brush away his comment with neither skill nor grace. “The double eclipse is happening today. The Construct ships will be arriving any second now.”
Jass grins, drumming his fingers against his side. “That’s not true, is it?”
“Okay, fine. It isn’t. But what if it were?”
“Then your seers are all about to die. You are about to die.”
His bland, unfeeling response forms shards of ice in my blood stream. “You’re here, too, Jass. If the Construct does strike us in the sub city, you’ll die right along with us.”
“Maybe. But if they suspect I might be down here, they’ll come and claim me first. I’m not a weapon they can easily replace.”
I take a step closer to him, steeling myself. I want to put more space between us, not close the gap, but…I can’t seem to help myself. “Are you so sure? Col told me the Construct fighters didn’t even try and follow you into the asteroid field when you left The Nexus. Surely they’d have stopped at nothing to pursue you then, if they value you so highly.”
Jass doesn’t flinch at my logic. He remains locked onto me, his face blank, but his mind is far from still. I can feel the activity of his thoughts firing in the very air that surrounds us, lightning fast. He’s doing a stellar job of shielding them from me, though. “Regis clings to his rulebook at all times. Construct edict
dictates resources mustn’t be wasted in situations that offer less than an eight percent likelihood of success.”
I know the rulebook he’s speaking off. It’s a theoretical book—one I studied from cover to cover. Strapped to a chair in the Construct’s re-education center on the Invictus, I learned it line by line, in fact. Jass is right. Regis would never have allowed his valuable soldiers to follow Jass into that debris field without excellent odds of retrieving him.
“I’m their best pilot,” Jass continues. “I can’t be matched, and Regis knew that. Here, on the ground, trapped inside a maze of tunnels, though? He’ll have me cornered with no way out. He will come for me here.”
“Do you want him to?” I whisper.
I look for the confusion on his face. The conflict, urging him in two directions at once, but it doesn’t materialize. “Yes. I need to return to The Nexus.”
“Why?” The word explodes from me, echoing off the broken, shattered remnants of the coliseum where thousands of our people used to gather in celebration. A single, solitary bird wildly flits from the upper tiers, wheeling and spinning all over the place, its cries filling the sky. One second, it’s there, the next it is gone. Jass pretends as if he doesn’t notice it, but I can see the pulse jumping at his neck, the same way it’s jumping at mine. With the ferocious dust storms that pound the surface of Pirius, I haven’t seen a bird take flight in…I can’t remember the last time I saw something so beautiful. Jass blinks, bending down to touch the dirt at his feet with his fingertips. He contemplates the tiny rocks and the grains of sand, no longer looking at me.
“I have a purpose,” he says grimly.
“Death? Murder? Disorder? They are the only purpose you can have if you go back to the Construct. Is that what you want?”
