Chapter 28 Dom #2
I take her chin, turn her head to face me, so I can see into her beautiful blue eyes. Sharp, yes. Sharp enough to cut herself again and again.
‘Whatever happens, Law-rah, know that you are incredible. Strong. Intelligent. A marvel.’
Her face crumples. The walls warp, twisting, shivering. As if there's something trying to get in.
Or out.
The walls give an ominous creak. This place won't last. She's experiencing emotional distress.
Because of me?
I say, ‘I respect all your boundaries. I’ll leave, simply open the door and send me back.’
The knock sounds again. Insistent, but gentle.
Law-rah stares past my shoulder, clinging onto me. ‘I… I have to tell you something.’
Walls crack, but she doesn't seem to see. Emotion seeps in, cloying and thick, the tide flooding inside. Grabbing her, I try to lift her up, but the ceiling presses against my shoulders, forcing me down into it with her.
Her voice drowns me. ‘Dom, I’ve been faking it this whole time. There’s nothing I can do. It’s a system I don’t understand, it took me years to learn our laws and how to work with the courts. The trial is in hours, and it won’t be enough. I’ll lose you.’
‘Yes.’ She and I both know this to be the truth.
‘They’ll kill you.’
‘Yes.’ I pull her tighter to my chest. When was the last time I held her in my arms? They ache now, the pain too much for me to bear. She’s my final comfort.
She closes her eyes. ‘Like my dad.’
The floodwaters bring memories: an older male human, laughing. Sitting at a table, lifting us to a seat next to him. Flicking through paper substrate sheets, clearing his throat and reading aloud.
Then his face all over those papers, in washed out grays or full glaring color. Being led away by other males, his head lowered, hands cuffed behind his back.
‘He… he was arrested, too.’ I say.
‘Yes.’ Law-rah’s pain turns boiling, acidic, eating at us.
‘And worse. It wasn’t his fault, but the lawyers made out like it was.
It was the software, it malfunctioned, said there was more money in his store than there was.
The court collected all the evidence except what we knew: that daddy wouldn’t ever steal.
He got ten years, but he only served six before he… he...’
The rising waters lap at my chest. It won’t be long before they cover us completely. Her mind whirls, conflicting emotions rushing past me, sinking into me. Despair. Hopelessness. Trying so hard to fight, but not knowing how to.
‘It wasn’t your fault,’ I tell her. It’s the truth. From all the memories swirling around me, Law-rah had nothing to do with it.
But she could also do nothing to stop it.
The walls rumble, sending ripples through the flood of despair. ‘I know. But it still happened. It shouldn’t have, but it did. The system killed him.’
The waters climb higher, churning with the thick, oily weight of helplessness.
Only a small glint of gold shines in the center: her.
Not the child clutching at newspaper pages, but the woman who stood back up.
Law-rah. Pacing courtroom halls. Locking her voice around trembling truths.
Holding broken systems to account with nothing but words sharpened into weapons.
‘I couldn’t save him,’ she whispers. ‘So I swore I’d save others.’
A flicker, sudden and bright, rises from beneath the water. A courtroom. A client too scared to speak. Law-rah standing in front of them, steady and sure. Her words build shelters in the storm. They don’t always hold, but she builds them anyway.
I sink beside her, letting the full weight of what she carries roll over me. This is what drives her, this is her purpose, the most incredible purpose I’ve ever heard of a female having. The need to put something right that was torn apart in front of her.
‘You’re not faking it,’ I murmur. Soft, and sure.
She stiffens beside me. Like she doesn’t believe it.
I continue, ‘The fact that you’re still fighting this hopeless battle is testament to your character. However this case turns out… that’s what you should take away. That you chose to fight.’
The water doesn’t feel like it’s closing in. It feels like it’s listening.
And so does she.
Her fingers twitch beside mine. The current slows.
Snap. A beam falls from the ceiling. The walls waver, then collapse backwards, the water swarming out with it. Beyond lies darkness, dust twinkling in the dark sky like distant stars.
‘I’m sorry. This is all me,’ Law-rah admits as the mental landscape breaks apart. ‘I… I was diagnosed with an anxiety disorder. I thought therapy would sort it, I try to hide it as best I can. You’re too close, and this… this closeness is too much. And yet, I can’t stop it.’
Her words choke me harder than any collar. My arms lock around her, fierce, as if I can shield her from herself. ‘Law-rah,’ I murmur, pressing my forehead to hers.
‘I should be stronger,’ she whispers. ‘I should have fixed it by now.’
A low growl breaks from my chest. ‘No. You are strong. Stronger than me, stronger than most. You keep fighting even when your own mind drags you under. That is not weakness.’
I hold her tight to me, but I offer scant, temporary comfort.
Once I’m euthanized, she’ll be alone again.
‘You have learned to open yourself up again.
You suffered a grievous loss, and use that to fuel your passion, but you walled yourself off in the process.
Your fears feel real, but know, through it all:
‘You are free, Law-rah.’
Her grip on me tightens. ‘I’m so scared, Dom.’
‘I’m here,’ I say, but how long can I promise that?
‘I don’t want to be alone.’ She meets my eyes, her beautiful betrillium blue glazed with tears. ‘I… I want—’
Pain interrupts, slashing down my side. Law-rah flinches, and I pull the pain back before more zaps across to her.
I open my real eyes, trying to hold on to the heartbreaking vision of Law-rah, interspersed with three purple Parthiastocks. She needs me, and they’ve pulled me away from her.
I bare my teeth at them.
“He’s awake,” one of them intones, putting his veralash away. Judging from the throb on my scales, he must have whipped me with it to shock me into my body.
“He wasn’t asleep, he was away,” the Apex mumbles. His Bases grab hold of my legs, forcing me to face the psychic. “Batch number 8774-3D0M, I’m here to extract your confession of murder.”
“You won’t find anything,” I tell him.
The Apex shoves into my mind none too gently, as if he was expecting a massive shield up against him, and crashes into the mind-sync between me and Law-rah.
That I won’t allow. I spit at him aloud, “Get out.”
‘Who are you?’ Law-rah snaps.
The Apex is shocked silent, his Bases gasping in a ripple as they too see Law-rah.
“You synced with a female?” one of them breathes.
“Yes.” I bite off the word. “Get out of the connection, respect her privacy.”
‘Get out of him entirely,’ Law-rah snaps back.
The Parthiastocks fall to their knees with a clang in the metal cell.
‘What is it with Parthiastocks and their knees?’ my human mutters.
One of the Bases presses his face to the floor. ‘Female, we regret we have orders from the Prif. We cannot obey you.’
‘We will each take ten lashes in penance,’ the other adds. ‘Now, 3D0M, open your mind to my Apex. He’s none too gentle with those who resist.’
‘I’m open and willing—’ I begin, when Law-rah hisses.
‘He’s not saying—or thinking!—anything without his lawyer present. What questions do you have for my client?’
The Bases cower from Law-rah's sharp voice, but the Apex comes forward. ‘Give me all your memories surrounding your mission to rescue Katyen Al Aura and any interaction with said esteemed female.’
I'm about to comply when Law-rah slams up a shield between us and him. It's a small shield, something an Apex could mentally step over without issue, but the fact she threw one up makes me stumble. She's improving.
But Law-rah doesn't seem to notice, saying, ‘The best thing here is to establish exactly what type of information they're requesting, so we don't give them everything but still comply with their inquiry.’
I suppress a smile. ‘Or, I can do this.’
Letting go of all my barriers is hard when I'm in pain suspended above hostile Parthiastocks who won't hesitate to kill me, but easy when I'm sharing with Law-rah.
I let the memories slam into the Apex because he can handle it, and gently guide Law-rah above the rush so she can see without being overwhelmed.
Ilia saying we have a new mission. Gara trying to isolate what she needs by sniffing a sample from the female, then inhaling deep lungfuls of air on whatever planet we land on.
Nevare, Arik and I keeping watch for sentient life forms, navigating around clusters of intelligence.
Arture piloting us tirelessly, desperation rising with each planet hop.
Soon Ilia orders us to take useful resources so we can return with something at least, but then the dreaded call comes.
We’d failed. She'd died. We had to return to Oloria.
‘But how is it your fault?’ Law-rah asks, puzzled.
‘It isn't,’ I agree with her.
The Apex sifts through the memories. ‘Nothing here to suggest poison. No contact with the female Katyen Al Aura at all.’
‘Good, at least there's that.’ Law-rah's mental voice simmers, her anger building up.
Anger on my behalf. It's endearing, seeing her get ready to fight for me, a mere Base.
‘You’re not a mere Base.’
‘I am.’ I let all my mental walls down for Law-rah, throwing open the doors to my room, allowing her to sample whatever memories she chooses.
Tentatively at first, she explores my earliest recollections, of seeing Arik for the first time, feeling something, then meeting Nevare and both of us knowing he's on the same mental frequency as us. Joining to make our trio, sleeping all together with the hum of their minds surrounding me.
Of me and Arik making sure Nevare eats.
Of learning early on how to pull pain from my wave brothers, because seeing them hurt ached more than the strikes they would have received.
‘Oh, Dom.’ She latches next to me. ‘You've been through so much. How are you so kind?’
I don't know how to answer that.
The Apex says, “Next.”
My chains extend, lowering my legs to the ground. Are they going to give my shoulders a reprieve? They halt when my boots hover a finger width above the floor. Drok na, no rest for me.
One of the Bases holds up a thick metal collar, fastened with buckles and snaps like the belts in a space hopper. His face hardens as he approaches me.
‘What is that?’ Law-rah demands.
He places it around my throat, tightening the straps, my chin forced up.
‘I don't know—’ I begin, when he pushes a button on the side.
It whirs, a heavy buzz grinding against my scales and jaw, and Law-rah is gone.
Gone.
I roar, reaching out for her, swiping mentally at nothing. I lurch for the Parthiastocks, but again, nothing meets my grasp.
Cold, dead silence rings in my head.
I've been cut off from my psychic ability.
“What is this?” I croak.
“Anti-Parthiastock technology,” the Base rasps. A brief flicker of pity shines in his purple eyes before he grimaces and turns away. “Murderer,” he adds.
“No. Wait. Don't do this to me. I… I can't…” Silence. Utter and cold and cruel, empty and ringing with only my own thoughts, my own panic.
I scream.
I scream until I fall unconscious, only waking when the air in the cell shifts. Opening my eyes, I'm confronted by a bulky Parthiastock. A single one. He regards me coolly, eyes black in the dim light of the cell.
“Surgere ac excitare,” he murmurs, staring at me as if I'm supposed to know what that means.
When I don't react, he sneers and turns away, lifting a pad to his face. “Not one of us, mistress,” he reports quietly.
Not one of who?
He looks over his shoulder at me. “Should I kill him? It would look like he expired from strain on his hearts.”
Immediately I struggle, rattling the chains. “My hearts are strong! Who are you?”
I shouldn't have bothered with a verbal challenge. I reach out toward him as the Parthiastock listens to whoever’s on the pad with him, but my mind grasps onto nothing. The collar cuts me off, alone.
He walks out of my cell, the door sliding silently shut behind him.