Chapter 28
Rogue Element
Everyone's stupid when they're in love and having amazing sex, and we were no different. Which is why we didn't realize what was happening earlier; it's why we didn't think to act sooner.
I woke up in the middle of the night, drenched in sweat and gasping for air.
Next to me, Araxis was still sleeping, his good ear pressed against the pillow; I could see the ghost of his pale skin next to me, so still that for a moment I wondered if I'd brought my nightmares to life – but I watched as his chest rose in a breath, his quills rustling softly behind him.
A lance of relief shot through my chest, even if it wasn't enough to chase away the fragments of my dreams.
I slipped from our bed and walked into the hygiene room, closing the door as quietly as I could. And then I sat on the floor, shoved into the corner, pressing a towel hard against my face while I tried not to have a total fucking meltdown.
No one cares about my dreams. But I guess they were noteworthy that night because they were different.
I dreamt of violence. The feel of gristle beneath my knuckles; the spray of viscera from the back of a skull; the crunch of a throat beneath the spasm of my palm. Black eyes, wide and panicked, staring up at me as I squeezed and squeezed and felt nothing at all.
The face that I choked the life from had been the Naival's, and then it hadn't been. My fingers twitched in the towel I was holding as I gasped for air, half-smothering myself so that I'd stay quiet.
In my dreams, it was Araxis. And I had him up against the wall – I was good against a wall, he'd said – my fingers latched around his throat as he scrabbled against me, desperate to get away.
And then we hadn't been standing up: we'd been in bed and I'd been choking him all the same, and he'd thrashed beneath me in a perverse mirror image of what we'd shared earlier that night until he'd gone quiet and still and I had felt nothing.
I'd said I wanted to be able to kill someone, I thought deliriously, wildly, pressing the towel hard against my face as tears leaked out of the corners of my eyes. Why the fuck had I wanted that? Why had I thought that was a good idea?
We have to rewrite your instincts. But with these?
I stayed there on the bathroom floor for what felt like an eternity, although it was only an hour or so.
When I finally drifted back to bed, Araxis was still sleeping, although he stirred slightly when I slid back under the blankets with him.
He reached for me, drawing me close, curling his body against mine.
His hands on my tense body, his face nuzzling against the plane of my trembling shoulder, his breath calm and even against my feverish skin.
I didn't let myself fall back asleep. I blinked into the darkness, wondering about what I'd made myself into, the dark parts of myself I'd kept half-alive on a diet of misery and betrayal and every awful thought and impulse I'd shoved away over the years.
If I'd been desperate for scraps of affection, what had feasted on the glut of suffering I'd been feeding that forgotten, loathsome corner of my soul?
Was this the wickedness we'd been warned about?
If you go too long without absolution, was this what happened?
I discarded the thought immediately, but there was some visceral quality to the idea – that I'd let something awful grow inside of me and now it was ready to break the bonds I'd wrapped around it – that kept circling in my mind, pacing its cage, again and again and again.
But I'd done well, hadn't I? I'd saved Araxis's life.
I'd acted – swiftly and decisively, he said – and that was what had made the difference.
It didn't matter that Creche Naival had come for us, because Creche Thiel had me. Wicked, yes; dangerous, yes. Deadly.
It was thinking about that, how they'd slipped on to the ship behind us, that made something jostle gently in my mind.
I let my eyes drift shut, trying to remember.
The brin had been putting a panel breaker away when we'd pulled up the video feed.
That was how they'd gotten in; I'd seen it a hundred times on broadcast dramas. And –
I frowned, blinking my eyes open, and shifted so that I could get to my wristband, which I'd scooped up from the shelf on my way back from my little episode in the bathroom. I called up the display in the dimmest possible light as Araxis slept against my side, arm draped across my torso.
Question for you in a professional capacity, I wrote carefully. Do panel breakers work on new security systems? Like, the ones on ships with biometric scanners?
I waited for several long minutes, letting my stare drift down to Araxis, cast in the dim purple light from my wristband.
Shadows caught beneath the sharp line of his jaw, his features peaceful and calm as he slept against me, sated.
He looked at the violence I had enacted and he felt gratitude, pride.
Nizanin saw something almost mythic in me.
But, god, fairy tales aren't just filled with heroes, are they? There are monsters too, and I was increasingly sure that I was a monster, even if I wore a pretty face. But it was a mask I could keep wearing. I had to. I had to.
My wristband pulsed against my skin and I pulled up Valerie's response.
Panel breakers only work on older models.
The new ones are an absolute bastard to get into if you don't have the right biometric data or an access code.
I mean, I can do it, but on the outside of a ship, that generally means hacking in zero-g, which is not my favourite thing to do.
We generally prefer stealing access codes.
A moment later, another word floated up above my wrist. Why?
I'll fill you in later, I wrote so that she'd leave me alone, and then I nudged Araxis gently. He stirred against me, blinking blearily. "Hey," I said, voice low. "We've got to go check the cargo hold."
Araxis pushed himself up immediately, rubbing at his eyes. "Was there another alert?" he asked, hoarse with sleep. He shifted to swing from bed, crest bristling behind him.
"No, it's not that," I said, climbing out of bed and starting to haul on my discarded clothes, crumpled in a heap on the floor. "But – Araxis. How did Creche Naival get on the ship?"
"They had a panel breaker," he said as he went through the motions of stepping into his own clothes, there in the darkness of our bedroom where he'd just flicked the lights to the lowest possible level. "We secured the hold before we came up with the mechanical lock, so –"
I watched as the realization came over him like it had me. He stiffened, turning to look at me, eyes wide.
"We have a new system." Araxis's crest whispered in the quiet of our room. "A breaker would not suffice."
"Exactly," I said. "And Nizanin?"
"I gave them a code; it expired once our meeting concluded.
There will be a log. I cannot imagine –" Something complicated flashed across his features.
"I cannot imagine Creche Naival would collaborate with the Unbound.
And if they had, certainly Nizanin would have killed me, Sashen.
It would not have been difficult. They would have killed me, and they would have taken you away.
" He said the words, spoke into existence this other timeline, and the upright line of his shoulders curled forward, pain flashing across his features that had, not long ago, been so perfectly peaceful.
As if the thought of losing me was worse than the thought of his own death.
"Hey," I said, crossing the space between us so that I could reach and run my fingers through his quills. "That didn't happen. I'm okay. You're okay, and we're going to figure this out."
He nodded, tipping his head forward so that he could inhale deeply against my neck; his hands pulled me in close, holding me in a way that felt a little desperate. As if only by holding me could he be certain that he had me.
I thought I'd done a good job of putting him back together the night before, but maybe everything that had happened – the rumours, the writ of propitiation, the attack, our imminent departure to Xitera, everything with Vivith – had left cracks spiderwebbing through his composure.
I could pour myself into them, though. I could help hold him together. And then, when it was just the two of us, he could come apart, again and again, just like he needed.
"Come with me to the hold," I said, carefully choosing my sentence structure. Maybe what he needed was for me to lead the way. I could do that for him. I could be his in the way he was afraid to want. "We can look over the records, see who's been coming and going. We'll figure it out."
Araxis nodded against me. He went to step away, but I caught his wrist. "First," I said, "You're going to sit in front of the couch, and I'm going to braid your crest. And while I do that, you're going to check in with everyone and find out how preparations are coming along.
I bet Vivith has been up all night." I said it like a shared joke, but I meant it: they'd fucking love a chance to show that they didn't need breaks.
Araxis was quiet, his chin tipped down, so when he did look up at me, it was through those dark eyelashes.
"Yes, Sashen," he murmured, and the words sounded like relief.
I tapped the lights on a little brighter while he settled on the floor, and I gave him his wristband and set to plaiting his crest while he flashed through a dozen message chains.