Dark Chains: Third Link (The Children Of The Gods #109)

Yaaf

The three-meter-high concrete wall cast a long foreboding shadow on the dirt path in front of Number One as he walked out of the enclosure gate.

Sullha was behind that wall, but right now the concrete seemed like a much easier barrier to surmount than the chasm that had opened between them after what he'd told her, what she now knew about him.

He could take it back, could thrall the memory away as if it had never formed in her mind, but to what end?

It wouldn't change the truth of what he was.

Eventually, he would need to tell her anyway, and her response then might be even worse because she would feel betrayed that he'd kept it from her for so long.

What would happen when they were fully integrated and couldn't tell where one ended and the other began?

It was already difficult, especially when Number One needed to be just Yaaf and the others had to retreat and give him space.

He climbed into the passenger seat next to Number Seven, who started the engine and pulled onto the service road.

That was a mistake, the collective thought. How can she love you now? She could've loved Yaaf, but she would never love all of us. She won't accept Dave.

Number One had no response because there was none. They were right. He'd seen how Sullha's expression had changed after he'd told her, how it closed up. He'd felt the rejection to the marrow of his soul, and the others had felt it with him.

Instead of trying to defend his actions, he turned to look at the scrubby vegetation that lined the road and the dark shapes of the volcanic ridges beyond. The sun was setting, and the sky was an angry shade of crimson with some purple in it.

You should have waited, Number Four thought. You should have let her fall in love with who she thought you were. Once the feeling was established and took root, you could have introduced the rest of us slowly.

It wouldn't have made a difference, Number One thought. The moment she understood what I was telling her, she closed off, shutting me out.

The Humvee bounced over a rough patch in the road, and Number Seven adjusted the steering without comment.

The others kept the discussion going, not speaking aloud because there was no need.

The collective conducted these arguments in seconds, the equivalent of hours of debate compressed into the time it took for thoughts to form.

The conclusions were always reached together, even when the individual nodes disagreed about the particulars, but today, Number One needed time alone with his own thoughts.

He closed his eyes and retreated into the corner of the hive mind he'd carved out for himself.

Yaaf could still see Sullha's face. The way she had looked at him when he'd told her about the other seven minds that were merged with his, the way her gaze moved from him and shifted to her son, anchoring herself on the one person in her life who was solid and whom she knew everything there was to know about.

Tomek was hers and hers alone, and she didn't need to share him with anyone.

At least for now.

She'd needed that secure connection after the world she'd been constructing about her childhood friend collapsed around her.

Sullha hadn't cringed or pulled away as someone less disciplined might have done upon learning that the man sitting beside her was actually eight men sharing one consciousness, and that the seven others had been privy to every word she'd ever said to him in confidence.

She had just gone very still.

"Are you okay?" he'd asked her. "Are we still okay?"

"It's a lot to digest," she'd said. "Of course, we are still okay. You will always be my friend, Yaaf. That will never change."

A friend.

That was all he could be to her. Whatever had been growing between them, the tentative interest that had been forming a delicate web at the edges of her awareness was gone. It had been replaced with cautious friendship.

Thankfully, she hadn't reacted with fear or revulsion, only with a measured kindness, the sort that was reserved for friends.

She'd reclassified him.

He was no longer Yaaf, the boy she had grown up with and might learn to love as a man.

He was Dave, not an individual, but a collective that didn't fit the image of a person she could've grown to love.

So, she'd moved him back into the category she was comfortable with, to what he had been to her as a boy, or maybe even less than that.

You should have waited, Number Two thought again.

I know.

Then why didn't you? the collective asked, even though the answer floated through their shared mind.

Perhaps they just needed him to say it.

I had to do that, Number One thought. And you know why.

And you know why you didn't have to, the collective responded. There was no immediate need to disclose. You could've waited for after the extraction, and by then, she might have committed to you, and the disclosure would have arrived in a context that allowed for adjustment.

I didn't want to manipulate her into loving me, Number One thought. That would have been deceitful.

It's not about manipulation, the collective rebutted. You would have just given her the chance to develop feelings for the part of you she could understand first. It would have been easier for her and for you.

How can you claim that's not manipulation? Number One thought. She would have fallen in love with a lie, and you would have told her the truth only after she was so deep that she couldn't swim ashore.

The collective couldn't refute his logic, but it wasn't happy with him. She might have accepted us. People adapt.

That was a simplistic assessment that didn't befit their collective intelligence, and Number One let the others feel what he thought about that.

Sullha might have adapted and compromised because to do otherwise would have been too painful for her at that stage, but she would have felt deceived.

The trust between us would have been broken.

I did not want to build a relationship with her on a foundation of lies.

So, you built nothing instead, Number Eight thought. Worse, you destroyed what little had been there.

Number One absorbed the statement and did not respond immediately because the words had delivered a painful blow. He shifted his focus to the empty road ahead and the headlights that were cutting two cones of light through the deepening dark.

I can start fresh and build our relationship on a foundation of honesty, he thought finally. And if all she can give me is friendship, it's still more than what I would have had with a lie.

The friendship was already there, the collective thought. And you managed to preserve it. Perhaps it was the right thing to do after all.

For the first time since they had left the enclosure, there was some sympathy in the way the others considered his action.

Not agreement, because they did not agree with the timing of what he'd done, but recognition that the cost of his choice had been paid by him, and that the part of him that was still Yaaf was the part that had paid it.

She is brave, Number Four said.

And kind, Number Three added. The friendship she offered was an act of generosity. She did not want to wound you, so she found a category of relationship that allowed her to continue being warm to you without requiring her to feel something she couldn't. Not right now, anyway.

Sullha would still act friendly with him.

She would still talk to him about books and her son, and she would still help him compile the list of women to extract.

But she would not touch him again, not the way she had touched him on the bench, with her thigh pressed against his and her hand resting on top of his.

The warmth of that moment had spread through him to the collective, like the first green shoot pushing through hard soil.

But that shoot had been pulled up by the roots and discarded like a weed.

Feeling the pain of his loss, the collective wrapped itself around him, absorbing his grief and helping him compartmentalize it.

Number Seven turned the Humvee onto a service track that led away from the main road.

It climbed the steep ridge and ended at a flat patch of dirt that was used by the maintenance crews servicing the water tower and other facilities.

The headlights illuminated the bare ground and a few twisted trees, and beyond them, the dark expanse of the ocean was just visible through a gap in the vegetation.

Number Seven cut the engine, and in the silence that followed, the sound of the wind moving through the shrubs seemed to intensify.

Number One opened the door and stepped out.

He walked twenty paces from the vehicle and stopped at the edge of the flat ground. The wind was stronger up here, and he could taste the salt in it.

He pressed and held the receiver to his ear for three seconds.

A soft click. Then the faint hum of the connection establishing, and then Onegus's voice sounding clear and immediate as if the man were standing beside him on the ridge.

"Good evening, Number One."

"Good morning. I'm calling to submit our report."

"Go ahead."

"It was done. Kolhood, Hocken, and Hazok are no more."

There was a pause on the other end, and then a letting out of a breath. "Any problem with the execution?"

"None. It all went down flawlessly, and the cover story is in place.

The three senior brothers were killed by Lord Navuh for the grave transgressions of disobedience and disrespect perpetrated by trespassing on the lord's harem.

The harem's human guards reported what they had been thralled to believe to the immortal outer perimeter guards, and from there the news was delivered to every corner of the island.

So far, it seems that the junior brothers and the army have accepted the explanation.

No one has challenged the narrative yet. "