“I’m sorry, Joff,” she said.
“It’s ok.” I pretended to accept it. “It’s for the best. Last time I saw her, I think I broke her heart.”
Maura closed her eyes. “Not the first time you’ve done that.” She managed one of her dimpled smiles.
“I know.” I felt foolish. “Sorry about that. Anyway, Samison’s a better man. He doesn’t chase the stars…at least not like I do.”
She looked at me. And I swore she wanted to laugh.
“We have a room for you.” She pointed down the hall. “It’s here on the bottom floor. But first, you’re going to take a shower.”
“That bad, eh?” I pretended to sniff myself.
“You look terrible.” She made a face. “They should’ve let you shower before they blew up your house.”
“I did shower.” I grinned. “In glass.”
She led me to the guest suite. In a tiled chamber, I showered while soft, unfamiliar music played. I’d never taken so long a shower as then. The warm water poured over me for nearly an hour, and I stood there, soaking it up. The dirt, sweat, and blood that had collected on my skin over many days spiraled down into three drains. I kept waiting to feel cleaner and more alive, but the longer the water ran, the more I floated away.
I closed my eyes.
I remembered walking with my father in fields that were no more.
I heard the sounds of my mother’s laughter in my head.
I felt the cold floors of Doctor Abid’s fortress beneath my bare feet, the chrome walls and endless windows coiling around a snow-capped mountain.
I didn’t know what was happening. It was almost as if I were feeling emotion for the very first time.
I ended the shower, toweled myself dry, and walked into the suite they’d given me for the night. Maura had laid out a set of her husband’s clothes for me: a white shirt, grey pants, and socks, the latter of which I hadn’t worn since leaving Earth. I slid into the clean, dry clothes. Everything was tight, owing to me being far bigger than Samison.
It didn’t matter. I was comfortable.
At least until Maura knocked on the bedroom door.
“Come in,” I murmured.
The glass door slid open without a sound. Maura stood in the half-light, her face ashen.
I knew without asking something was very, very wrong.
When All Other Lights Go Out
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have looked.” Maura shivered in the bedroom doorway.
She handed me the datapad I’d snared from Aly’s hovercar. She shuddered as I took it, her hand trembling as if she’d seen a ghost.
I must’ve been too tired to understand.
“I’m sorry, Joff,” she repeated. Or at least I thought she said it. My ears were ringing. My body knew something had happened, but my mind was slow to catch up.
“What’s this?” I regarded the datapad. “Why are you sorry?”
She put her hand over her mouth and left me standing there in the dark. She shut the glass door behind her. I was alone again.
I looked at the datapad. It felt weightless in my hand, its small screen dark.
I flicked it on.
I’d forgotten how most datapads were synced to Sumer’s information web. They were like skypads back on Earth, only faster, lighter, and practically indestructible.
And they were connected to everything.
The screen lit up. If it had been anyone’s datapad besides Aly’s, I wouldn’t have been able to read it. She’d programmed its display to show our native language.
I scanned the message:
News alert:
Fire at Arcadia’s primary science office.
Windows blown out. Two labs in ruin.
Governor’s bride slain.
I read it again:
Governor’s bride slain.
Calm, I flicked the datapad off and sat on the bed’s edge. The room was black, and my sense of time fading. I lingered on the bed, breathing slower than should’ve been possible.
The only family I had was dead because of me.
I felt the knot tighten in my gut.
My eyes refused to adjust to the darkness.
Terrible visions of Aly screaming, burning, and dying roamed the emptiness of my mind.
What happened next, I allowed for the first time in my life. Quaking, I slid off the bed and went to my knees. My sister’s datapad clattered on the wooden floor beside me. My breaths turned ragged, and my eyes welled with cold, cold tears.
God, Aly.
I’m sorry.
Please…
I’m sorry.
I didn’t understand what was happening. I lost all control. Sinking to the floor, I sobbed, deep and agonizing. It wasn’t just for Aly I wept. My sudden emotion was for my father, whom I’d left standing in the fields beside my house. It was for my mother, who’d been working in an orbital station when the Strigoi had snuffed the sun. For all of Earth, I wailed. I was certain Maura and Samison heard me. If so, they were wise enough not to disturb me.
For with my sorrow also came rage.
I’d never before hated my enemy. I’d never known how. The Strigoi had always been an unknown, so alien in make and inhuman of heart I hadn’t ever been able to find the emotion I needed to feel anything for them.
But there on the floor, overcome with the realization of what I’d lost, I found what I needed.
I balled my fists and pounded the wooden planks. Blood wept in red ropes from my knuckles, puddling beneath me. I didn’t care about my pain. I didn’t care if Maura and Samison smashed the door in and hurled me into the night.
I didn’t care about anything.
The best part of me had died.
* * *
I awoke.
The sunlight filtered in through white curtains. It surprised me to wake in bed, to see light again, to be alive. I sat up against a mound of pillows and regarded the thin bandages wrapped around my knuckles on both hands. I knew Maura had done it, but not when or how. The bandages were coated in repli-skin. I wished they hadn’t been. I wanted to see scars on my hands until the end of my days.
I stood and shambled to the window. I moved like a windblown weed, shaking with every step. The curtains parted on their own, and the powered glass made a small mirror without me needing to ask.
I saw my face.
Black circles ringed the skin under my eyes. My face was puffy, my nose bruised, and my dirt-colored hair a wild mess. Grey lines had settled in the shadow of my beard. I wasn’t a young man anymore.
I’d left Earth as a teenager.
Decades between the stars had taken their toll.
I heard the glass door slide open behind me. I glimpsed Maura in the mirror, though I didn’t dare face her.
“You fixed my hands,” I said. “Why?”
“You came out of your room,” she said. “You were bleeding. A lot.”
“What did I do?”
“You tried to wash your hands off,” she explained. “But you activated steam instead of water. You burned yourself. I came downstairs, but you’d already gone outside. I don’t know what you were trying to do, but I found you cursing and hitting the trees. You said you hated them. You thought they were people.”
“Not people.” I looked at my hands. “Monsters.”
“We brought you back in. Washed you up. Cleaned the floor. Put repli-skin on your hands. Gave you a sedative.”
“A sedative.” I shook my head.
Two sedations in two days, I thought.
Congratulations, Joff.
“I’m surprised you’re awake so early.” She looked worried. “I doubled your dose.”
“Where’s Samison?” I gazed out the window. I hadn’t seen a hovercar near their house. I’d wondered how they traveled to and from Mercuria.
“He’s gone.” She crossed her arms. “A friend picked him up at sunrise.”
“Where to?”
“To the city. He’ll be there for a few days. Wi
th our sons away, he’s accepted a project. And yes, before you ask, he said he’ll do it. He’ll get the images and coordinates you need. Not that it’ll do you any good.”
“He wasn’t worried about leaving me here alone with you?”
“No.” She shrugged. “He knows I can handle myself. And he knows all about you. You’re not violent, Joff. Despite the things you said you’ve done.”
We lingered in silence for a long while, me at the window and her at the door. I watched her face in the mirror, but her eyes were closed. She couldn’t look at me. I couldn’t look at me either.
“You did the right thing leaving me,” I offered.
Maura just shook her head.
“I didn’t leave you, Joff,” she said. “I never had you in the first place.”
* * *
Over the next days, I became a different person than who I’d been.
Or at least I tried.
While waiting for Samison to return with the data I needed, I spent most of my time in the forest. The trees were far more massive than the ones near the little green river, and were packed much closer together. The sunlight barely touched the soil, and the rain slithered down the trunks, rarely touching me even during the hardest of the daily downpours.
I walked in the forest’s shadows.
I lost myself from dawn until dusk.
I dreamed of things far removed from Aly, from Earth, and from the Strigoi horrors.
And on the third eve, with my hands healed and my mind emptied, I decided I would never feel again.
Maura was waiting on the stairs when I returned to the house. The night was cooler than most, and in her hands she cradled a mug of something warm. I looked at her as if to ask, may I sit?
She nodded.
“Samison sent me a message,” she broke the evening’s quiet.
I let out my breath. I wasn’t sure I cared anymore. In my mind, I felt perhaps there might be beauty in everyone succumbing to the Strigoi contagion. Perhaps humanity would come to know peace, and I would receive the punishment I’d earned.
Loneliness. Forever.
“Joff, did you hear me?” Maura pressed.
“I heard,” I mumbled.
“Well then, sit down.” She tugged my wrist, and I lowered myself to the stairs beside her. “He found what you wanted. He considered sending it via datapad, but instead he’s going to give it to me in person. I’m going to the city tomorrow to get our sons. He’ll give me the data on my way out. You’ll stay here.”
“Did he mention—”
“He didn’t.” She cut me off. “I told him not to. Whatever he found, I don’t want to know.”
For that, I couldn’t blame her.
We watched the suns set through the trees. Their last light burned the edges of the clouds, and through the clearing above her house I glimpsed the stars wink into view.
I hated myself for looking.
When the light died, I couldn’t help it. I leaned back on the stairs while Maura sipped her tea. The night opened up to me. I wished my skypad hadn’t been destroyed at my house. If it hadn’t, I’d have used it to count the stars.
“You know…you’re probably right,” I said to Maura just as she rose to leave.
“Probably.” She smirked. “Right about what?”
I gazed at the stars again. “It probably won’t matter. I have no weapons. String reprogrammers are banned on Sumer. The Sabre is damaged. I haven’t tested the quantum engine on the Ring ship in twenty years.”
She blinked. Maura was as smart as any other person on Sumer, but she had no idea what I was getting at.
“I mean, let’s say the Strigoi are hiding near the galactic core,” I rambled on. “Or maybe…maybe even on the galaxy’s far side, eighty-thousand light years away. Even if the quantum drive works perfectly, that’d mean…oh…a twenty-five year hypo-sleep. And that’d mean—”
“What?” Maura was confused. “What would any of that mean?”
…that you might all be dead before I stop the Strigoi, I thought.
“Nothing,” I lied. “It doesn’t mean anything. I’m just thinking, is all.”
She sat down beside me again. “Do you want to talk?” she asked. I thought for a moment she might throw her arm around me and hug me. She’d always been motherly, always sympathetic.
Instead she held my hand and squeezed.
“Talk,” she urged. “Tell me about Aly. Talk about Callista. You know, like you used to. I always liked it when you talked about Earth. You used to say how chilly it was, how your fields moved in the wind, about all the bugs living in the dirt.”
I wanted to talk about those things.
But the truth was: I’d forgotten what they felt like.
I couldn’t imagine the crickets’ songs anymore. I couldn’t feel the wind coming down from the mountains. The taste of Earth’s food, the smell of its trees, and the sounds of snow falling atop my barn…I’d lost them all long before Aly’s death.
“Do you like it here?” I blurted out the question.
“You mean in the forest?” she looked perplexed.
“On Sumer. Do you like this world?”
“Well…” She looked down into her empty mug. “I’ve never known anything else. I have nothing to compare it to. But, I guess I’d have to say yes. Yes, I like it here.”
“Why?” I needed to know. “Why do you have to say yes?”
“Because my sons…they love it here.”
Maura was my only friend left in the universe. And when she stood and walked into her house, leaving the door open for me to follow, I knew.
Her sons. Her family.
I’m going to help them.
Answers
When Maura left to the city, I stayed behind.
I lived alone in her house.
Our bargain was simple:
She trusted me not to punch her floors, scald my hands, or spend all my hours glooming in the woods. And in turn I counted on her to bring back the data her husband had collected.
Even so, I felt cowardly.
And although I did no further damage to her house or to myself, I gloomed far more than I’d promised.
For each of three days, I spent most of my time in meditation. I imagined I was back in my little glass house by the river. No one stopped by to check in or invite me to social events in which I’d never had any interest. I had no duties other than to eat, sleep, and exist.
I woke when I wanted.
I learned to like tea, which Maura had showed me how to make before she left.
I ate well, slept better, and rediscovered a fragment of the calm I’d lost.
And during the slow, quiet days, which were longer than Earth’s had been by more than three hours, I used Aly’s datapad to record entries in a journal. Even though I couldn’t access the pad’s deeper functions, I was able to record my voice. I didn’t talk about anything important. I never mentioned the Strigoi or the stars. I spoke mainly of the trees, the wind, and the rain.
If anyone finds this, they’ll think I’m out of my mind, I thought.
That’s ok. I probably am.
Try though I did, I couldn’t crack any deeper into the datapad. It was probably for the best. I hoped to find the journal she’d always mentioned keeping. I imagined stumbling upon her most terrible secrets. But I found nothing. If Aly had known more about the Strigoi or her husband’s plans, she’d locked her knowledge away in places I’d never reach.
I couldn’t even use the pad to count the stars. I wanted to. Badly. But Aly had used a password to block most functions, and it wasn’t my birthday.
…or hers.
So I toyed with the datapad until I grew bored.
I laid awake in bed, allowing my thoughts to drain.
I savored the simple elegance of Maura’s house, the windows in the back watching over the trees, the smell of the wooden floors.
And while sitting at the table with every door and window wide-open, I decided on something:<
br />
I’m finished with feelings.
I knew I’d never really been meant to have any. I’d long ago forgiven my parents for raising me to be cold, but forgiveness changed nothing. I’d destroyed an entire solar system and extinguished every living thing in it. Grieving for so many lives taken wasn’t something I could manage.
And so I walked in the woods. Talked to the trees. Made my plans.
And on the fourth day, minutes before the suns climbed above the horizon, I saw a white hovercar approach from the south. It wound its way between the distant trees. Its lights glimmered in the dark, illuminating the pale, perfect road.
A part of me wanted to run and greet Samison with a thousand questions. Instead I sat outside the house’s front door with a cup of cold tea in my grasp.
As the hovercar neared, I lost sight of it in the dense foliage near the house. Again, I almost ran to it, but instead sucked in a breath and gazed skyward, where the stars dimmed in the day’s first light.
I heard the car’s hum. I knew it had stopped at the end of the road and the beginning of the dirt path. I expected Maura’s two sons to come sprinting toward the house. They’d been gone for weeks. I was sure they’d be excited to come home.
I should’ve known better.
The hovercar made a few more noises before speeding off the same way it had come. I stood on the top stair, squinting to see anything. Somehow I’d thought I’d hear voices, but I heard nothing.
No wind.
No laughter.
Nothing.
When Maura came up the path alone, I sensed something was wrong. The fragile sunlight made the shadows stretch behind her. I descended the stairs and met her beneath the trees.
“Joff.” The way she said my name shook me. She carried a heavy bag in her arms. She breathed hard, her eyes wide and cold.
She shook her head at me, and I felt the sting of something in my chest. I searched for her emotion and found it.
Anger.
“Did you know?” She advanced two steps at me. I was the tall, powerful man, yet I felt small before her. “Did you?”
Shadow of Forever (Eaters of the Light Book 2) Page 7
