Chapter 8 #3
Nic-coal kneels next to me, hands cupping my chin. When I focus on her, she runs her hands down my arms, touching my prosthetic arm without fear or disgust in her face.
I take a deep breath and inhale her earthy scent. Despite all the trials of the last few hours layering sweat and residue over her, Nic-coal's wild, natural scent cuts through.
Lifting my head, I survey where I am. The kitchen floor. I must have fallen when I… when I remembered.
“Arture?” She bends lower, fingers feeling for a pulse in my neck.
I grab her wrist, not hard enough to hurt her but to halt her. “I'm fine,” I grind out through my teeth.
“You're not. You're sweating buckets, trembling like a leaf, and your eye is practically rolling. If you were a horse, you'd be frothing at the mouth.”
“But I'm not a fucking… whatever that is.” I yank her toward me, and she lands hard against my chest. Now her eyes are the ones which are wide, panic flashing through them.
She calms, mastering herself. “Let go of me, and I'll move away.”
How can she be so calm? Why isn't she frightened?
Why do I want her to be frightened of me?
Instead of letting her go, I say coldly, “Whatever you think you're doing, you won't succeed. I've never failed Samara.”
Never. Even when it cost me my perfect body. It was a small price to pay for the Prif's life.
“Cool, yes, that's great.” Nic-coal wriggles backwards, or tries to, her hips grinding over my stomach. She pries at my fingers that are pinning her wrist in place. “You collapsed, so I want to check you don't have a concussion.”
“Why? Shouldn't you be celebrating if I die here?”
She blinks. “Uh, no.”
“Right, because then you can't get off this planet,” I spit. I get out from under her and rise to my knees, still immobilizing her arm.
“Sure, that's the callous view, and you can keep that if you want. But I still want to check you over, because you smashed your head on the counter when you fell.”
The cold of the ship steals into my lungs. I was vulnerable, unconscious for who knows how long. She could have done anything she wanted to me.
What's her angle?
Her face eases. “I can see you tying your brain in knots trying to understand my actions. Just relax a little and let me help.” She chuckles. “Pretend I'm a friend, if that helps. Your first one, since you keep insisting you don't have any.”
That's it. That has to be her strategy, and she's trying to get me to think it's not by mentioning it.
Leaning close to her pale face, I squeeze, an ache opening in my chest at the flash of fear in her eyes.
“Always insisting friends solve everything. What good are they really?” I gesture at the dead ship. “Where are they now?”
Her lips pinch. “Well, obviously they can't cross stars to chase after us—”
“No one's coming to save you. You're on your own, human.”
At first her face hardens and I think she's going to shout, perhaps scream at me, or smash me with a sedative again.
But then that look returns to her face, and now I know where I saw it before. Ilia looked at me like that. Pained because of my pain, because he knew what it felt like. He knew what losing his purpose felt like, and she… she knows the sting of what I'm saying as well.
I've scored a true blow at last, but instead of triumph, all I feel is nausea.
I let her go and she gets to her feet, turning away from me so I can't see her face. “You're fine. You can string coherent sentences together. You'll live.”
“Nic-coal…” I take a shuddering breath, one which freezes my lungs. The spaceship is really fucking cold, even though the door is shut. Clearly this part of the planet is hot and humid during the day, but the heat disappears at night and the temperature plummets.
“I understand,” she says simply, but it's a punch that makes all my breath leave my body. “I’m going to sleep,” she advises, rubbing her arms again. She trembles, but from the cold rather than any fear.
“How…how will you stay warm?” I ask, pushing past the lump in my throat.
“I'll manage, thanks.” Her small voice is swallowed by the metal walls of the ship.
Standing slowly, I move back to the cushions. “I’ll keep watch here. Nothing will get past me, but if you want to barricade yourself in, do so.”
She nods, still not looking at me. “Good night.”
I watch her leave, and the ship quiets, empty, as if the Nexas managed to strip out all the useful components after all.
I ball and relax my fists, but it doesn't ease the tension across my shoulders.
There's no point in regret. What I said was the truth, even though it was cold.
But she said… she understood.
I settle onto the cushions to keep watch. Like toying with a broken tooth, I replay the memory I unlocked, baring myself to a deep-seated pain, one even more searing than what I did to Nic-coal.
Samara rejected me. She was right to do so, I’d been marred irreparably and was sure to die, but it still stings.
The pulse of her ingrained orders to secure a female and bring her back to Oloria throbs in my bones, and I wouldn’t dream of disobeying them, but…
Samara cast me off. As if my life was nothing to her.
“That can’t be right,” I say, but it’s all murky, the black holes in my recollection resisting when I push.
I force myself to chase the memory anyway, reaching inward, pushing at the edges of the dark in my mind.
Shapes flicker: Ilia’s face, younger, more guarded; Gara’s gentle care; a smell of ozone and antiseptic.
When I try to pull anything into focus, it collapses.
The black holes swallow everything, resisting me, resisting truth.
I dig harder. Pushing, striving, working until something cracks. That’s how perfection is made. Sitting and waiting? That’s not in my nature. I grit my teeth and try again, clawing at the slippery edge of a memory—
A flash of voices.
Pain in my skull. A spike of agony drives me back, and the memory disintegrates.
No… Come on! There has to be more.
But there isn’t. No matter how hard I try, the void pulls everything out of reach, leaving me with nothing but fragments that don’t make sense and a hollow ache where my past should be.
My most recent past is easier, that’s sharp as a scalpel. Nic-coal’s expression, the hurt in her eyes at my words, the disbelief. The way she looked at me like I wasn’t a monster, not until I made her think I was. That, the darkness can’t swallow.
The hours blend into a murky mess except for her face.
As much as she says she understands, no one's ever rejected her. She'll never understand.
I jerk aware. I must have fallen asleep chasing the darkness.
“Drok na,” I mutter into the silence of the ship. Far too silent. I can tell immediately; there’s no life on this ship. It's too quiet.
Heat rolls in from behind me, and I spin to face the main airlock.
It's open.
Nic-coal's gone.