Sullha
Doctor Petrov hadn't spoken much, and what he had said came out sounding either flat and dry or slightly mocking, but she had a feeling it was an attempt at humor rather than putting anyone down.
The woman was very obviously thralled, and he seemed worried for her, checking her pupils and holding her wrist between his fingers to feel her pulse. He reached over and adjusted the strap of her dress that had slipped down her shoulder and then looked away, seeming embarrassed.
Women who didn't know such tender feelings were possible could not grieve their absence, could not wish for it, could not even imagine it.
It had been deliberate. A caged bird with no concept of freedom didn't know what freedom felt like.
Just as a woman who had never known love would have no choice but to accept a reality where men were universally cruel and a woman's role in life was to submit and suffer under the authority of men.
That was what they had been taught and what their life experience had proven.
They learned a better way could not exist. But now, as the women watched Dimitri gaze adoringly at Mattie, love and respect for her shining through like a beacon, and Doctor Petrov's worried fussing over the thralled woman, they were witnessing an entirely different dynamic between men and women.
One they never knew was possible. It was staggering to take in.
The preoccupation with the two couples kept her mind from spiraling into panic, but when the truck slowed and then stopped, fear surged, drowning out everything else.
The sounds and smells coming from outside the canopy indicated that they were at the harbor, and she knew that even though she'd never been there.
The irony wasn't lost on Sullha. She lived on an island but had never visited the ocean, had never dipped her toes in the sand or in the water. She'd lived her whole life in the enclosure.
A bird in a cage.
For one stupid moment, she missed the safety of that cage, perhaps because she was about to leave the protective canopy of the truck, walk out into the open, and board a ship, in daylight, exposed.
"It's time," Yaaf said quietly, lifting the canvas flap and letting the light pour in.
"Stay close, stay quiet, and I mean silent because we are not shrouding for sound and you don't sound like males.
The shroud will alter your appearance, making you uninteresting to look at.
No one will pay attention to you as long as you don't talk or do something that doesn't fit this image or this place. "
"What about the children?" Rohilah asked in a whisper. "Are you making them look like soldiers as well?"
"No. Since you'll be carrying them, we will make them look like cargo."
The women still didn't move. They sat frozen on the benches, staring at the bright rectangle of open air as if it were the jaws of a beast.
“The guards in the security office have been dealt with,” Yaaf said. “They will not report anything.”
The women still didn’t move.
Sullha understood the paralysis because she felt it too, and Yaaf’s words were not enough to reassure any of them.
"Can you do something to make them relax? To calm them?" she whispered to Yaaf. "Just a little thrall to take the edge off the fear."
He winced. "We can't. We can't spare the energy. We need every bit of what we have left to hold the shroud."
That made sense even though she didn't understand anything about the mind manipulation Yaaf and the other seven did. They were powerful but not omnipotent, and they needed her help.
She turned to face the others. "I know you're afraid because I'm afraid too, but Yaaf and his teammates are going to hide us the same way they hid us in the enclosure.
No one paid us any attention through all of our meetings, and the same will happen here.
We walk out, with Rohilah and me carrying our children and the rest of you carrying the supplies.
We follow Yaaf in a straight line, we don't talk, and we don't look anyone in the eye.
We're simple soldiers following our commander, putting one foot in front of the other.
We don't think past the next step. You've come this far, you can do this as well. "
A few of them nodded, others swallowed, and the scientists and Mattie started to rise.
Sullha gathered Tomek up against her chest and accepted Yaaf's helping hand to climb down into the light.
The harbor was vast and bright and loud with the ordinary commerce of a working dock.
Men were moving, machinery groaning, the smell of diesel and salt and fish, and Sullha walked into the middle of all of it with her son clamped against her chest, and she did not look up or sideways.
She kept her eyes on Yaaf's back, and she put one foot down and then the next, exactly as she had told the others to do, and she did not think past the next foot.
Yaaf's teammates were behind them, carrying boxes too, but she didn't look back to confirm what she sensed. She was too frightened to look, and beneath the fear was the other reason, the one she would not examine, which was that if she looked at their faces she might recognize them from the dream.
Tomek clung to her, his arms locked around her neck, his face pressed into her shoulder.
"This is the secret trip that Yaaf promised," she breathed into his ear, barely making a sound. "Remember? We're going on a sailing trip in a big ship."
"I'm scared," he whispered back.
"I know, my love. I know. It's okay to be scared, but you need to stay quiet."
He nodded, his little nose rubbing against her sweat-slicked neck and his slight body trembling against hers.
They crossed the dock, passing armed men who did not see them, or rather, paid them no attention, because Yaaf and the others were thralling them to ignore the procession going up the gangway.
The metal rang faintly underfoot, singing different notes for different soles, and the hammering in Sullha's chest did not ease even after they passed into the dim interior of the ship.
One of Yaaf's teammates took the lead, and she followed him through a heavy steel door and down a steep, narrow stair, along a passage that smelled of rust and oil and the cold mineral breath of the vessel's interior, until they reached another steel door and stepped through it into a wide, dim hold.
It was a large space, mostly empty, steel-walled, and lit by a few caged bulbs.
Yaaf's teammates had been here earlier to prepare it for their arrival, as evidenced by the stacks of folded blankets along one of the walls.
They were gray and serviceable, but there were enough of them to cushion the floor for sitting or lying down.
It was so thoughtful of them to foresee the need for some minimal comfort.
"There's a bathroom just outside," the one who had led them said, in the island's tongue and then repeated in English for the sake of those who hadn't been born on the island.
"Through that door and to the left. You may use it.
Otherwise, stay here, stay quiet, and wait.
The crew has been thralled not to come to this area of the hold or question any anomalies, but you still shouldn't venture out of this room unless it's absolutely necessary. We'll come for you when it's time."
The women filed in and lowered themselves onto the blankets, and the relief of being enclosed again, hidden again, walled off from the terrible openness of the dock, moved through the group like a held breath finally let go.
Tomek tugged at her. "Mama. I need to go."
"All right." She put him down and took his hand. "We will be the first to check out the bathroom."
Sullha led Tomek out of the steel door and turned left, where she found a cramped room with a toilet and a basin.
"Do you need me to come in with you, or can you manage on your own?"
He looked around the tiny, windowless bathroom and must have decided that it was safe enough.
"I'm a big boy. I can go to the bathroom by myself." He waited for her to step out and closed the door behind her, but she didn't hear him locking it, which was good.
She needed to be able to get in there if something happened. It wouldn't be the first time Tomek didn't aim right and peed on himself. Sullha hoped it wouldn't happen now because she had no clothing for him to change into.
When he came out, Rohilah was hurrying toward them with Bianca on her hip, and Sullha stepped aside to let them pass.
Back in the hold, the others had begun to settle.
Petrov and Dimitri had claimed a corner, the farthest from the door, and were unstacking their boxes.
Dimitri carefully set down a small refrigerator with a glass door.
She assumed that was where he stored the doses of medication that kept Yaaf and the others from losing their coherence.
He'd said that they only had enough for forty-eight hours, and after that they would need to make more, and that was what the other equipment was for.
Mattie was helping them, and Sullha noticed that her hand was bandaged.
"What happened to your hand?"
Mattie looked surprised by the question and lifted the bandaged hand as if she was seeing it for the first time. "It's much better now. Mostly healed. I keep the bandage on to remind myself that I shouldn't do anything more than lift a fork with it. At least for another two weeks or so."
That didn't answer the question of how she'd gotten injured in the first place, and Sullha assumed it was something that had happened in the lab.
Mattie turned the hand around, looking at it with wonder in her eyes. "I'm lucky that the doctor was able to save my hand. After it was shattered by that brute, I thought I would never be able to do anything with it again."
Sullha's breath caught, and behind her she heard a woman gasp, probably Saphira, who could understand what Mattie had said.
"Why were you attacked?" she asked in a whisper, even though she was afraid to hear the answer.
"It's a long story," Mattie said. "But the gist of it was that I was reaching for a phone that I dropped to call the Eight for help, and the brute stomped on my hand to prevent me from doing that.
Didn't do him much good, though. They came anyway and tore him and his evil friends to pieces.
" She glanced adoringly in Yaaf's direction.
"They saved Dimitri and me. We had no chance against the immortal soldiers who wanted us dead. "
Sullha didn't know how to feel about that.
She was proud of Yaaf and his friends for rescuing Mattie and Dimitri, but hearing that they'd torn other immortals to pieces sent a cold shiver down her spine.
It was both reassuring and terrifying.
But then that was true of any weapon, and that was what the Eight had been created to be.
"I'm glad that you're okay." She walked toward the piles of blankets and sat down with Tomek.
Anita was sitting on her other side, in the same spot that Yaaf's teammates had placed her. She was still obviously thralled, and the Eight were probably too busy bringing in boxes and organizing everything to remove it from her.
Doctor Petrov walked over and crouched in front of her, murmuring things in Russian while checking her pupils. He cast a glance at one of the Eight, and when the soldier saw him, he tipped his head toward her as if to ask when they were going to remove the thrall.
"Not yet," the guy said. "After we are out to sea."
Petrov's bushy brows dipped. "It has been too long. She shouldn't be out of it for so many hours. Do it now. Dimitri and Mattie will finish organizing our things while I sit with her and explain."
The guy's eyes became unfocused, and Sullha had a feeling that he was conferring with the others.
After a moment, his eyes cleared and he nodded. "Sit next to her. We will remove most of the thrall but leave a directive to stay calm."
"That's good," Doctor Petrov said.
Sullha didn't know the story between Petrov and the woman, but there was something there, something she wasn't familiar with but craved.
"I have to go," Yaaf said next to her, startling her.
He couldn't just leave them there.
"Go? Go where? Why?"
"There's something I need to check that has to do with why we needed to execute the plan ahead of time. Four of us will stay here to guard you. The other four have to deal with the other matter."
"No." It came out before she could stop it. "I mean, someone else can go, and you can stay."
She did not want him to leave and walk into something so dangerous that he couldn't tell her about it. She needed him beside her, protecting her.
The realization of how much she'd grown to depend on him was scary. Sometime during their clandestine meetings, she had come to rely on him, lean on his strength, trust in his ability to protect her and Tomek.
"Sullha." His expression softened. "I won't really be gone, you know."
"What are you talking about? You're about to walk out that door."
"My body is going to walk out of here, but I am not just this one body.
The four who stay are connected to me. When you look at them, you're looking at me.
When they keep you safe, it is me keeping you safe, so in a way, I'll always be near you, and I will know how you are doing through their eyes and ears. "
She had thought that the other seven were what made him unbearable because she could never be alone with him, never have him all to herself because the others were always there, always inside him, seeing what he saw, but now the same set of facts had been turned on its head.
Now she was glad that part of him would remain with her, defending her and Tomek and the others.
Instead of being unsettled by that realization, she felt reassured.