2. Sky #2
A second signal breaks into the ring projection.
Bryklor’s icon appears before either of us accepts it.
My middle brother has never respected closed channels, locked doors, or polite society.
His image blinks into the projection from a moving transport, jungle green and hard sunlight flashing behind him.
“Who has mate sickness?” Bryklor demands.
“No one,” I say.
Zymlor says at the same time, “Sky.”
Bryklor’s grin spreads. “Oh, this is excellent.”
“It is not excellent.”
“It is excellent for me. I am dying of boredom. This might be the most fun I have had since we arrived. Watching a mate take you down.”
I press two fingers against the bridge of my nose. The gesture is too human, so I lower my hand. “Why are you in this channel?”
“Emergency alert. Brotherly concern. But now that I have heard mate sickness, I am here for the entertainment. What did I miss so far?”
“Nothing,” I say.
Zymlor speaks over me. “He found his mate. She works for Layn. He thought he could resist by getting vaccinated. There, you are all up to date. Oh, and he is going to try to fight it.”
“Fight it.” Bryklor grins wider. “Come on, big brother. You can’t fight it. Impossible. Even for the heir to the throne.”
He squints at me through the projection. His skin is darker than mine from weeks under the Brazilian sun, the blue undertone warmed almost violet. “You look terrible.”
“Thank you.”
“Not human terrible. Our terrible. Skin pale, eyes more orange than gold, ears doing that butterfly flutter they do when you don’t feel well.”
“My eyes are fine. And my ears don’t flutter.”
“They are winging so hard, I am worried they’ll take flight.”
“Bryk,” Zymlor warns.
“What? He is the one who finally found a mate and tried to stab himself out of it with an emergency pen.”
“I did not stab myself out of anything.”
“No, because it failed.” Bryklor’s grin widens. “Which is funnier.”
I switch the projection window to corporate logistics because if my brothers are determined to make this humiliating, I will drag them into useful work while they do it. “How is Brazil?”
Bryklor’s grin fades into suspicion. “It’s fine. Why?”
“Any trouble?”
“No. Everything is perfect. South America may be the only good thing about this blasted cold planet.” He shifts, and sunlight strikes the side of his face.
Behind him, huge leaves blur past the transport window, wet and bright and alive in a way New York’s streets cannot compete with.
“The air actually touches skin here instead of biting it. These people complain about humidity as if warmth could ruin them. I may stay forever and let New York freeze without me.”
“You are not staying forever,” Zymlor says.
“I said may.”
“You threatened to abandon the entire operation last week because an insect looked at you.”
“It had knives on its legs.”
“It was a grasshopper.”
“It wanted blood.”
Despite myself, my mouth twitches. Bryklor has fought smugglers, pirates, trade ministers, one assassination attempt, and Father before breakfast. Earth insects remain his truest enemy.
“How are the shipments?” I ask.
“Moving. Slowly, because every human document needs three signatures. The expanded Amazon sites are producing a higher yield than expected. Zymlor’s preliminary numbers were right.”
“They usually are,” Zymlor mutters.
Bryklor looks back at me. “If we keep this pace, we can double medical allocation within two cycles.”
Medical allocation.
The words steady the room. For a moment, even Beatrice’s scent loses ground to memory.
A nursery on Layn. Thermal cradles lined in silver cloth.
Tiny hands inside warming gloves. My cousin Sael’s daughter, Talia, curled small under layered blankets.
The sickest children stop shivering first. Their bodies stop wasting strength on warming and begin conserving for surrender.
Aldar Syndrome was rare when I was young.
Now it moves through family lines and outer provinces with the patience of a master hunter, picking off our most vulnerable.
Children lose the ability to hold warmth.
Their skin cools no matter how high the incubators run.
Their pulses slow. Their auras dim at the edges.
Before Earth coffee, we carried them outside during the red hours.
Three hours of sun a day. That was all our world gave them.
Three hours beneath a red star, the only sun that helped, while their mothers watched the timers and the healers pretended the blankets would hold through the night.
Sometimes they did. Too often, they did not.
Then Zymlor discovered what coffee did inside us. Warmth that lingered. Circulation that improved. Small bodies that held heat for six hours, then eight, then twelve. It was not a cure, but it was time. For a dying child, time is not small. Time is another night alive.
“Talia’s latest numbers?” I ask.
His face stays neutral. “Low. Better after the last medical roast, but not stable. Sael’s wife hasn’t slept in two days.”
Bryklor looks out the transport window. “She stopped shivering yesterday. Sael thought that meant the fever broke.”
It does not. We all know it does not. Quiet consumes us before Zymlor breaks it.
“This is why we are here,” Zymlor says, softer now. “Why you sit in that glass tower running the media hub. Why Bryklor argues with customs officials and fights insects. Why I keep trying to convince Layn soil to love a plant that rejects it every chance it gets. The children need the beans.”
“I know,” I say.
“Do you?” Zymlor asks. “Because if mate sickness takes your judgment, you could put all of this at risk.”
Both brothers stare at me.
I regret every choice that led to this office. “She is not my mate,” I repeat before I close the call on their warnings and jokes. My words are clear. One thing isn't clear.
Who am I trying to convince, me or them?