25. Yaaf
YAAF
W hy? Dumuz said inside the hive mind, and under the single word ran a current of dread so strong the other seven braced against it. You could have stopped at superior hearing ability. Look at her face; she's in shock.
Asira just got me back . Camdor's fear was sharp. If our mother panics and pulls her away from me...
Thank Mortdh, my mother is not here for this. Bardov's thought arrived wrapped in relief, and then in shame because he'd invoked the name of the false god out of habit.
Beneath the individual streams of thought, the deliberation over what to do next was running faster than speech, faster than thought, faster than anyone in the room could have followed even if they could have heard it.
The admission had been made, and it could not be taken back. Well, it could because they could thrall the memory away, but Yaaf was not sorry about his decision to come clean. It needed to be done.
Not all of it , Dumuz said.
Yaaf shook his head. We tell them all of it.
It's too much , Dumuz insisted. They can't absorb all of that at once .
Yaaf let out a breath. We have nothing to be ashamed of. What we are is not less than what they hoped to find. It is more .
His answer to Mirumah had not been a slip. The spokesman's reflex had prompted the response, but he could have stopped at excellent hearing. He hadn't stumbled into the wrong fork. He had taken it with his eyes wide open.
How much is all of it? Ravsoh shifted the conversation to the practical.
I'll start at the beginning, so they can understand how we got to be the way we are. Us volunteering for the program, the enhancement protocol, the rebellion, the isolation, the merge. Yaaf sorted through the inventory at the speed of thought, and the collective sorted with him.
The thralling was already known. The compulsion was already known. The women owed their freedom to both, and every one of them had seen the guards let them walk out of the enclosure, seeing exactly what the Eight had wanted them to see.
Not the skimming of surface thoughts, though. Not yet.
Agreement moved through the link, the individual ripples settling into stillness.
Eventually, the mothers would connect the dots.
If they could enter another's mind to thrall them, they could also enter it to read surface thoughts.
But it didn't need to be spelled out explicitly today.
There was a limit to what their families could absorb in one day, and there was a big difference between learning that the Eight shared their thoughts with each other and learning that no thought in the room was private from them.
The first was an oddity. The second was a dangerous weapon.
"I should start at the beginning," Yaaf addressed their stunned audience.
"To understand how we got to be the way we are, you need to hear what was done to us, why it was done, and what emerged at the end.
It is not a short explanation, and parts of it are not easy to hear, so you should brace for the uncomfortable. "
Chairs shifted, and Mattie leaned toward Sullha, whispering something in her ear, and then Sullha turned to Mattie and began to quietly translate what he had said.
"Like all boys from the enclosure, we were taken to the training camp at thirteen," he continued.
"We all went through the same brutal regimen that turned us from boys into hardened warriors.
Then, almost two years ago, they asked for volunteers for a new program.
We were told we would become an elite unit, that we would become stronger, faster, sharper. The pride of Lord Navuh."
"Did you?" Mirumah asked.
"We did. But we paid a hefty price. The enhancement was done with drugs that changed how our brains worked, and many of the volunteers became unstable and uncontrollably violent. The damage was irreversible, and they had to be eliminated. There were many of them."
Zohara's hand rose to her mouth, and Baruha reached over and gripped Asira's wrist.
"What the Brotherhood didn't realize in time was that not only the violent ones were resistant to control.
The rest of us were no longer as easy to brainwash into blind obedience, and since we were stronger and had abilities the regular soldiers did not, some of us decided to rebel and take over the island.
You didn't witness any of it behind the enclosure walls, but half the resort was ruined, and no visitors could be brought to the island, for which many of the enclosure's women were grateful. "
"We heard rumors," Rohilah said quietly. "We didn't know it was such a big thing."
"It was big. Navuh hid in his mansion's basement along with his harem ladies, and the island was almost conquered, but in the end the rebellion failed.
They executed every enhanced soldier except for the eight of us.
We were spared not out of mercy but to serve as test subjects.
The scientist who created the program was killed in the uprising, and Lord Navuh brought in new scientists to rebuild and improve it.
They needed enhanced soldiers to test the new formulation on. "
Steady, Ravsoh sent, and Yaaf realized that although his voice had not changed, the link had carried the anger and bitterness that his voice had not.
"They kept us in the laboratory," he said.
"In separate cells that were the size of a closet and had glass fronts so they could observe us at their leisure.
We were isolated from each other, and everyone else, and we could barely move because there was no room.
" The next part was the part no one outside the eight of them had ever fully understood, and he chose his words carefully.
"You don't know what that kind of isolation is unless you have experienced it.
We had survived the drugs and the purge, but the silence of those cells came closer to killing us than either one. "
He took a deep breath to steady himself before continuing. "In desperation, we reached for each other telepathically. It began as a way to break through the silence and loneliness. Thoughts pushed through the walls separating our cells. We did not anticipate what happened next."
"Your minds merged," Karina said.
It was the first thing she had said all day, and every head in the room turned toward her.
"Yes," Yaaf said. "It started as a way to communicate among ourselves, but over time it became more. We merged, and with the new combined mind, new abilities emerged."
He paused for a moment to give Sullha time to translate for Mattie and Anita.
"Together, we can do things no other immortal can," Yaaf went on.
"We can thrall immortal minds, not only human ones, and compel them to do what we demand without a word.
You've seen our ability in action. Our shared mind is smarter than the sum of its parts and much faster.
So, when you look at your sons and wonder what was done to them, remember also to wonder what they became. "
The double doors opened then, and Dimitri came through them with Petrov at his side, both of them mid-conversation in Russian, and both of them stopped as if they had walked into a wall of cold air.
"What did we miss?" Dimitri asked, looking at the hostile faces of the rescued women. "Should we leave? I don't think we are welcome."
"It's not their fault," Yaaf told the women.
"And you shouldn't look at them as if they held the whip.
Dimitri and Petrov were brought to the island to salvage a program that was killing us.
Instead, they fixed the drug protocol and made us stable.
We couldn't have achieved what we did without their help, and we owe the peace inside our minds to their formula.
They risked their lives to plan the escape with us.
In fact, we think that the clan agreed to help us only because we promised to bring them with us.
" He inclined his head toward the two men.
"If you need to be angry at someone, direct your ire at Navuh and the Brotherhood, not at them. "
The accusing looks wavered, and then, having lost one target, swung as one toward Bowen.
The Guardian raised both hands in the air.
"I was not part of any decision-making," he said in the old tongue. "And for what it is worth, the clan would have helped you and your sons regardless of who came with them. We are in the business of saving people from the Brotherhood and other evils wherever we can."
Asira put her hand up. "Can you hear what Camdor is thinking right now?"
Don't, Camdor sent.
"He's thinking that you should not have asked that," Yaaf said. "And under it, he is thinking that you used to put your hand up exactly like that when you wanted a second helping at dinner, and that he is glad some things did not change."
Asira laughed, and it eased the tension in the room. Shoulders that had been up near ears came down to a more comfortable position, and Baruha discreetly wiped her eyes.
Zohara looked up at Yaaf, and then shifted her gaze to her son. "Are you ever alone in there?"
"No," Ravsoh said. "And I'm thankful for it.
I was alone in that cell for months with nothing to do but stare at the floor or the ceiling and wait for the next meal delivery, the next shot, the next test. Always afraid.
Always imagining that today would be the day they ended me.
Now I can retreat to a private corner if I want to, but I rarely do that because I don't ever want to be alone again. "
Tears glistened in Zohara's eyes, and she blinked them back as she nodded and looked down at the cup in her hands.
At the next table over, Bianca crawled into Rohilah's lap, and Rohilah's arms tightened around the child, pulling the girl a fraction closer to her body and away from the soldier seated nearest them.