Chapter 4 #3
After a moment, Archon looked at me again, and I felt the “keep calm” vibes start to diminish. “I will say that the answer to your question is both. But I will leave it to Kaius to explain. I hope to see you again… Corbin.”
With that, he turned and left the room. However, Cormie remained, perhaps for moral support as I was starting to feel some anxiety creeping back in now that the empathic crutch I’d been given was gone. Whoever they were, I was currently at their mercy.
Kaius crossed to the shallow pool I was in and gestured to the edge. “Would you mind if I sat?”
I shook my head, watching him. Now that he was closer, I could see the same details in his face that I’d noticed in my dream.
The way the corners of his eyes had faint lines despite his youth, as though he laughed a lot.
The way his eyes were so dark and deep, it was like falling into the velvety blackness of the night sky.
And I felt drawn to him. It hadn’t been as obvious in my dream or vision or whatever I could call it, but being in his presence felt…
right. Now that the masking emotions my hosts had been broadcasting were gone, I could feel Kaius in a way I couldn’t entirely understand or describe.
Was that why I had pursued him through the reef? Had I somehow known it was him I had been following? But… how?
Kaius lowered himself down to sit cross-legged on the rim of the pool. He looked at me for a long moment, dark eyes searching my face, and I felt the warmth of his presence in an odd way. It was an awareness I didn’t fully understand and had never experienced before.
“If anything I say gets upsetting, is it okay if I help calm you? We didn’t have a choice before. We needed to do it to save your life. But now that you are no longer in danger, we consider it polite to ask.”
I considered, then nodded. “All right.” It seemed to make sense. I wasn’t certain what he could say that might make me that upset, but I supposed it was possible. I hadn’t thought shock and fear could make me panic enough to need my CPU rebooted, either, yet here we were.
Kaius drew in a breath. “To answer your question, yes, there are things you might prefer not to know, as well as things that might require you to make… choices.” His voice was lighter than his father’s, but I could hear the concern in his tone.
I considered everything for a moment, weighing my options. I told myself I really did want to know, but one thing no one had mentioned was what would happen to me if I decided to just leave. Would they even allow it?
Without the calming vibes for support, I started to feel a twinge of anxiety, since flight wasn’t possible and I didn’t like the odds if it came down to fight.
“What if I said I wanted to leave right now?” I asked slowly, watching his face. I knew I could trust his answer, though I wasn’t sure why. “Your father said you were protectors. Would you let me go?”
“Yes,” Kaius replied, but the word was hesitant.
Still, he held my gaze unflinchingly. “But you wouldn't be allowed to leave with any memory of us. You wouldn’t even be aware that any of this happened. We have to protect ourselves and this place, and we know that if the surface dwellers found out about us, we would be pursued and hounded and never find peace again.”
I could see the truth of it in his eyes, and I found that I was more curious than upset about it.
After all, he made a valid point about what would happen to his people if I told anyone.
“You can do that? Alter memories?” The process of erasing memories was something that ground-based scientists had only discovered in the last decade, and only used in cases of the most severe traumas, like mine.
At his nod, I glanced back at Cormie. “And I assume you would take care of recordings in my CPU?”
“Yes,” Cormie acknowledged. “I agree that this place must be protected. I warned Archon about the greed of certain people in our culture, but in scanning your storage during your reboot, I saw this Mercer person who is on the Nautilus. He is already known to us, and he cannot be allowed to discover us.” He pinged my CPU with an information transfer, showing what he knew about the man.
It seemed that Cormie had picked a side, and it didn’t bother me, especially since my instincts about Mercer were screaming the same thing. And it certainly was interesting, but there were time-sensitive things I needed to consider.
I returned my focus to Kaius. “We probably don’t have long for me to decide, either. They put a repeater to watch for me, and they’re probably already preparing divers to come down to look for me. It’s protocol.”
“Actually, they aren’t,” Kaius replied, and for the first time he smiled, a brilliant expression that arrested my attention so much I almost missed his explanation.
I’d never had anyone smile at me that way, and it made my heart race.
“They are currently the focus of a pod of curiously persistent orca. The repeater was damaged, and the ship is being bombarded with whale song. If any divers are brave enough to try to slip through them, we have other ways of discouraging their investigations.”
I nodded, then realized I’d been delaying things by asking these questions.
It was possible a part of me really didn’t want to know the truth — or had I actually been hoping the Nautilus would come to my rescue?
Either way, it seemed I had come to the end of my ability to stall.
Did I want to know, or did I want to go back without any memory of this place, of Archon and Cormie… and of Kaius?
“I guess there’s nothing more to ask,” I said, then tensed slightly. “All right. Tell me.”
Kaius stared at me intently. “I don’t have to tell you a thing. I can show you… Michael.”
Before I could process his words, Kaius reached out and touched my forehead. And that was when I learned — or perhaps, relearned — the truth.