Chapter 14 Yaaf
YAAF
"We are on vacation, so to speak."
The words were like fuel poured on fire.
He knew what she meant, and something hot and corrosive rose in his chest, flooding his veins with a chemical urgency that the collective immediately registered.
Calm down, Number Three thought. You're spiraling.
The collective mind tried to absorb the rage and dissolve it, but Number One wasn't ready to let it go.
Vacation meant the men weren't coming. It meant a reprieve from being summoned to the breeding building and forced to service a stranger.
It meant a temporary pause in the systematic breeding that had defined Sullha's life since the same day he'd been marched away, and she'd been left behind to enter her own type of hell.
Thirteen wasn't a birthday most children in the enclosure ever looked forward to.
Many of the boys thought that becoming soldiers would bring them glory and looked forward to their transition, but they were not happy to leave their mothers and sisters behind, knowing that they would never get to see them again.
Release your anger, Number Five thought. You are going to frighten her.
I'm not saying anything to scare her.
Your body language is doing the talking, Number Three contributed. Your shoulders are tight, and your jaw is clenched. You have to relax.
Their attempts to moderate were only fueling his anger further.
You need to pull back, Number Four reasoned. She's warming up to you because you were gentle and careful until now. The rage and aggression you are projecting will remind her of those who harmed her and undo all the progress you've made.
They were right. He could feel the anger reshaping his posture, tightening the tendons in his neck, and turning his face into a hard mask. The rage was not directed at her, but she wouldn't know that. She would sense it and get frightened of the big, angry male who was sitting too close to her.
Forcing the anger down was not going to work, so he released it into the hive mind and let the others absorb it. They couldn't eliminate all of it, but their efforts were enough to make it manageable.
"Tell me about your son," he said, pivoting to a more positive subject.
A more suspicious person would have questioned that, but the mention of Tomek did exactly what he'd hoped it would do, and Sullha's face transformed.
The default expression of guarded wariness dissolved, replaced by luminosity. Her eyes brightened, and her entire body relaxed as if the mere thought of her child was a key that unlocked the version of herself she kept hidden behind the protective walls.
"Tomek is so smart. Too smart, sometimes. He asks questions that I don't know the answers to, and when I tell him I don't know, he gets this look like he can't believe there are things that his mother hasn't figured out yet."
The collective cataloged the description and cross-referenced it against Number One's childhood memories. Yaaf had been like that too, asking questions that his teachers couldn't answer and being puzzled by their inability or refusal to explain.
"He's kind," Sullha continued, and the brightness in her eyes intensified.
"He gives up his treats if he can delight others with them, and he helps the smaller ones climb the equipment in the playground.
" She chuckled. "Last week, he found a little lizard in the yard and built it a little house out of rocks and stocked it with leaves. He got so upset when it left."
She was talking with her hands now, one gesturing freely while the other still held an okra pod. The animation in her voice and body was so different from the careful control she'd projected only moments ago that it was like watching someone step out of armor.
"He sounds like a good boy," Number One said.
"He is. He's the best thing in my life," she said without hesitation, with absolute and unapologetic conviction.
Then the brightness dimmed, pulling back. "Being smart and kind are wonderful qualities, but they are not going to do him any favors where he's going. He needs to get tough and strong."
She looked down at the okra in her hand and turned it over slowly. "I need to teach him to be harder, but I don't know how to do that without breaking what's good about him. And even if I could, I don't want to. I don't want my son to change. I love him just the way he is."
The knot behind Yaaf's sternum tightened. He remembered what the camp commanders called boys like Tomek. Soft fruit. Something to be squeezed until the softness was gone and only the pit remained.
He had been a soft fruit once, but he'd been wise enough to hide it and strong enough to survive whatever had been done to him.
He wished Sullha's son wouldn't have to go through what he had gone through, and maybe he wouldn't. Sullha wasn't going anywhere without Tomek, which meant that they were taking the boy with them when they escaped the island.
But in the meantime, the woman he cared about, his best friend, was agonizing over how to prepare her child for the same machine that had processed thousands of immortal soldiers, turning them into killers, and the rage surfaced again.
Change the subject, Number Two advised. You are both spiraling.
Number One searched for something to redirect her with and landed on a question that seemed innocuous enough.
"Do you want more children?" As soon as the words left his mouth, though, he realized it might have been the wrong thing to ask.
Sullha's expression closed off, she straightened her spine, and her chin lifted, the combination suggesting that he had crossed a boundary even though he hadn't meant to.
"That's not up to me," she said flatly, as if she were reciting a declaration. "It is up to Mortdh."
The words sounded rehearsed, delivered with the typical smoothness of someone who had said them many times, because that was what everyone expected her to say, and not because she believed in them.
She could just tell him that she didn't want more children. He would understand. But maybe this was about something else?
The collective was curious, the hive mind reaching into Sullha's, and Yaaf didn't stop it because he was curious too.
They did it gently, the lightest possible touch, just skimming the surface thoughts and listening to what was already there.
A memory. Recent, vivid, and tinged with the conspiratorial warmth of a shared secret.
Sullha was sitting in a circle with five other women, all of them holding cups of reddish tea.
The color was distinctive, deep crimson fading to pink at the edges, and the smell, though he was experiencing it through her memory, was floral and slightly tart.
Hibiscus. The women were drinking and exchanging conspiratorial glances over the rims of their cups, as if they were participating in a secret ritual.
They believed the tea affected their fertility, reducing the likelihood of pregnancy enough to make a difference over time.
Whether it was true or just a sustained collective belief, the women were drinking it deliberately and consistently with the understanding that this act of quiet rebellion was never to be discussed with anyone outside the circle.
The collective withdrew from Sullha's mind and analyzed what they had found.
The women had been subtly sabotaging the breeding program in the only way they could.
The results were not dramatic enough to draw attention or invite retribution, but whatever small success that had achieved gave them satisfaction.
They were resisting by making small choices within the narrow margins available to them.
Did hibiscus tea actually reduce fertility?
It was a question for Dimitri or Petrov, who would know whether it contained any compounds that could affect conception. Most likely, the women were benefiting only from the psychological comfort of believing they were doing something to change their circumstances.
Either way, it didn't matter whether it worked or not. What mattered was the act itself. The fact that these women, who had been told since birth that their bodies belonged to Mortdh and their purpose was to produce children for the Brotherhood's army, had found a way to quietly say no.
There was no reason to challenge her statement. She had no reason to trust him with her small act of rebellion, and his hinting that he knew about her secret would accomplish nothing except alerting her that he'd peeked into her mind.
"Of course," he said, responding to her recitation about Mortdh's will with the same neutral tone she'd used. "Mortdh decrees life and death."
Sullha's shoulders relaxed.
"Where is Tomek now?" he asked.
"In class with the other little ones. Saphira is teaching them their letters and numbers this morning." A hint of the earlier brightness returned. "She's a wonderful teacher. She makes learning feel like playing. Tomek loves her classes."
"Is she teaching them to read as well?"
"The little ones aren't reading yet. The older children are." Sullha shifted, leaning back on her heels.
The position was more comfortable, more casual, the posture of someone settling in for a longer conversation. She wasn't trying to end the interaction. If anything, she was making room for it.
"Did the library get any new books?" he asked.
Sullha's eyebrows rose. "You remember that? It was so tiny when we were growing up."
He nodded. "Four shelves against the wall in the common room. Twenty-three books, most of them falling apart."
"It's better now." She tossed the okra pod she'd been holding into the basket and brushed the dirt from her fingers.
"A lot has changed in the last four years.
Lord Navuh decided that he wanted smarter soldiers, so the men he started bringing in for breeding have been different.
Scientists. Engineers. Doctors. Educated and intelligent men instead of the brutes that we had to endure before. "