Chapter 1 #2
My quarters were dimly lit with a blue glow when I entered them, and more of my feelings surfaced.
With the door as a shield between me and the rest of the ship, I had less need to act strong and powerful.
Weariness seeped through, then pain, and I stumbled as my chest began to throb.
My limbs were exhausted after I’d worked them to the bone with the weights and machines in the gym.
Perhaps they were right, perhaps I was pushing for too much, too fast. I just couldn’t shake the sense that this upcoming mission was going to change the world, my world.
That it was going to shatter something huge, and I needed to be ready.
The tank took up half my living room, but it was well worth the space.
Blue glowed from within, and the stairs beckoned me to climb to the top and slide in.
The saltwater would soothe me, the coolness curling around my sore muscles like a balm.
This was better than any cure Dravion could have prescribed.
I yanked my shirt over my head with a growl, then kicked off my boots and pants.
The stairs seemed a mile long, each step up making my thighs burn, but then I was at the top of the tank.
I slid in with a sigh so deep and heartfelt that it made the new metal bones in my chest creak.
Not really, but it felt that way, as if they weren’t quite right.
It was just hard to feel like they were a part of me, natural, like they belonged.
I hoped that wasn’t a sign of them failing to integrate, but I was just numb enough, still, that I couldn’t worry about it.
Then I was submerged in the cool water, perfectly balanced to mimic the chemical makeup of the waters of my birth world: Planet Twenty-Two, also known as Rumcas.
I floated beneath the surface and closed my eyes, trusting that the alarm would wake me in time for tomorrow morning’s meeting.
Then I let sleep sweep me away, and with it, hopefully, the rest I’d need.
Rummicaron weren’t supposed to dream, or if they did, they were not supposed to recall the nightscape images in the morning.
It was one of the ways in which I’d always been faulty, and perhaps the reason I struggled to keep my emotion-dampening conditioning in place.
I had always had vivid dreams, but had I known what they would bring me tonight, I might not have surrendered so casually to them.
I dreamed of Bex; I always did. Tonight, Bex was a sleek metal woman with a delicate fin arching from her slender back.
She sat at the edge of my tank and stared at me with soulful eyes that shifted to fierce accusation when I surfaced to reach for her.
“You killed me,” she warbled through a mouth filling with blood.
It painted the water red and kept gushing until my tank overflowed, and the bloody water began to fill up my room.
Bex, the silver woman, lost her shape when she floated to the ceiling, flickered as if she were my trusty cannon, and then became my sister, fragile and delicate.
Bexlin, dying and floating away on a river of darkness, waves roiling and crashing over me, spinning me, tossing me, and I was too small to fight it, my fin aching with pressure, my gills struggling to pull in enough water with life-giving oxygen.
Memory and dream collided in a violent mixture, a nightmare of terrible darkness and aching grief.
I woke, gasping for air, treading water, my maw opening wide at the surface of the tank.
Everything was placid now, as if I had not been fighting for my life in my sleep.
As I clung to the edge, I saw the water that had spilled on the floor next to the tank.
It was transparent, silvery in the blue light, but for a brief moment, it seemed red as blood.
My alarm had pulled me from those nightmare depths, blinking red and humming with a low, pulsing tone through the water.
I turned it off with the slap of my wet hand and gave it a weary glare.
That had not been restful, but the ache in my chest had faded to a dull throb; that had to be good enough.
At least my muscles had recovered from their workout, and I felt solid and strong as I climbed down the stairs.
Good, fine, I couldn’t forget the dream, but I could dull my feelings.
Bexlin was the past, and now Bex had to be, too; that was just the way life was.
I snarled in anger, furious that I was forced to accept that the female constants, real or imaginary, had paid for my life.
I was still fighting with my calming exercises half an hour later when I planted myself firmly in my seat in the ready room off the bridge.
Nobody looked at me this morning, as if they could all sense the anger roiling beneath my gray skin.
Dravion wasn’t present, so I didn’t need to work hard to push the feelings aside; he wasn’t here to sense them.
The Sineater wouldn’t care; if anything, he could eat them and take it all away.
I’d relish that. The last thing I wanted was to choke on the dreadful memories of my childhood.
“What’s the latest intel?” I demanded when Mitnick took his seat and pulled out his datapad.
Asmoded sat at the head of the table, and he gave me a sharp look.
I realized, in my eagerness, I hadn’t let him start the meeting in his usual fashion.
He was not the only one giving me an odd look, so I forced myself to lean back and grin.
“What? I think I’ve lazed about enough. I’m just eager to see a little action. ”
Then, to my own horror, I tried to reach for my cannon, and my fingers found nothing on the table, and nothing in my lap.
Bex was gone, shattered into pieces, and the only parts that remained were fragments of the fake ribs and the repaired flesh of my chest. Even worse, I definitely knew that was pity on the faces of my crewmates.