Chapter 6
SIX
The blade came out of nowhere.
Jarran was crouched between rows, loosening soil around the base of a grain stalk, when the image slammed into his head.
A curved black blade, spinning end over end through dim light.
Fast. His right hand shot out and snatched the air.
His fingers closed around nothing, but the grip was exact.
Thumb against the hilt guard, index finger bracing the pommel, wrist angled to absorb the rotation.
He’d caught it with a precision that came from somewhere deep in his muscles.
He stared at his closed fist. His heart pounded. He could feel the weight of the weapon, the balance of it, the cold metal warming against his palm. Then the feeling faded, and he was holding air, kneeling in dirt, breathing too fast.
The implant hummed at the base of his skull. A low, steady vibration. His pulse slowed. The tight, sharp feeling behind his eyes softened. He unclenched his fist and pressed his palm flat against the soil.
This was the third fragment today. They were coming more often.
The first had hit during his morning meal.
An orange-yellow sky streaked with purple clouds.
Heat pressing down on his skin. Sand under his feet.
Vastness in every direction, and underneath it, a sense of loss that was so heavy it squeezed his chest and made his lungs struggle to breathe.
He’d stopped chewing and stared at the wall of his quarters until the image passed.
The second came while he was watering the back rows. A sound. A boy’s voice, laughing, echoing off stone. Close, then far, then gone.
And now the blade.
He wiped his hands on his pants and stood.
His body felt tense, coiled, his muscles holding a readiness that didn’t match the quiet of the agricultural bay.
He rolled his shoulders and stretched his neck and tried to shake the feeling of being someone else.
The implant hummed again, softer this time, and the readiness faded.
He heard the bay doors open. Evie’s footsteps, quick and light, coming down the central aisle. He turned and saw her, and the tight feeling in his chest loosened.
She was carrying the blanket. His blanket, folded over one arm. In her other hand she had her equipment bag, and she was chewing on her lower lip, which he noticed she did sometimes when she was thinking. She stopped a few feet from him and tilted her head.
“You look upset.”
He probably did. He could feel the scowl on his face, the tension in his jaw. He sat down on the edge of the planting bed and rubbed his hands together. Dirt ground between his palms.
“Memories,” he said, waving a hand. “Fragments. Coming fast today.”
She set her bag down and sat beside him. Close, but not touching. “Tell me.”
“A blade. Black, curved. Spinning.” He mimed the catch, his hand snapping out and closing. “Caught it. My hand knew how.”
She pulled the tablet from her bag and opened the scanner. “Can I record while we talk?”
He nodded. She activated the device and set it on the planting bed between them, angled toward him.
“When did this happen?”
“Just now. Few minutes ago.” He flexed his fingers. “Also this morning. A sky. Orange, yellow. Purple clouds. Hot. Sand.” He touched his chest. “Felt heavy here.”
“The desert sky.” She made a note. “You’ve responded to an image with a similar scene before, in our sessions. Was this the same feeling?”
“Stronger. Not just feeling. I was there. Could feel the heat.” He rubbed the back of his neck, where the implant sat. “Implant activated after the blade. Calmed things down.”
“Good. That’s what it’s there for.” She made another note. “Anything else? Memories? Dreams?”
He shrugged. “A dream last night. It woke me up.”
She lowered the tablet. “Tell me about the dream.”
He took a breath. The dream was hard to talk about because it was partly images and partly feeling, and the words for it were hard to find. “A boy, not small, but not grown. In a tunnel, underground. Stone walls. He’s throwing knives at the wall. Over and over. He’s practiced. Good at it.”
“What else?”
“He’s hungry. And he’s waiting for someone. Someone who was supposed to come get him.” Jarran’s throat tightened. “No one comes.”
Evie was quiet for a moment. She didn’t push. She didn’t ask him to try harder or dig deeper. She just sat with him and he couldn’t explain how grateful he was for that.
“Have you had this dream before?” she asked.
“No.” He closed his eyes briefly. “I never used to dream.”
“Jarran.” She said the name as if trying it out to see how it sounded.
It was a familiar name. A name he identified with, but it was jarring to hear himself called it after being referred to as Patient Nine for so long.
Evie went on, maybe to not make a big deal out of it.
“I think the boy in the dream might be you.”
He’d thought so too. He just hadn’t wanted to say it. “Why would I be in a tunnel?”
“Well, according to what I’ve been told about you, you were abducted by raiders when you were in your teenage years. That tells me this might be an autobiographical memory. The hunger, the waiting, the knives. These feel like things that happened to you.”
“Happened to me.” He turned his hands over and looked at his palms. The calluses from the planting beds, the dirt in the creases. These hands had caught a blade from the air without thinking. These same hands planted seedlings and picked fruit. “I was…abducted?”
“Yes. Your family could not find you,” she explained in a soft voice. “They feared you were dead.”
“But I wasn’t.” He pressed a hand to his chest. “I am here.”
Evie nodded. “You are.”
“What happened…” He frowned, searching for the words. “…in between?”
Her expression changed. It shuttered, and Jarran had been looking at her face long enough to recognize when there was something she didn’t want to say. “There are some gaps.”
“Was I a bad person?”
Evie was quiet for a beat. “You were a lot of things. I’m still trying to understand all of them.”
He knew what she was trying not to say, now. She’d dropped her gaze and the skin around her eyes had tightened. His stomach dropped. I was a bad person. He didn’t like that. And he didn’t like that Evie felt like she couldn’t tell him the truth.
“The person I was waiting for,” he said, moving on. A throbbing pain pressed behind his eyes. “In the tunnel. Who?”
“A parent, maybe?” she suggested. “Or someone you trusted?”
He nodded. “Someone who didn’t come.” He pressed his fists against his thighs and breathed through the swirling mess of emotions.
“Or couldn’t.” Evie reached out and laid the blanket across his shoulders. Gently. She unfolded it and spread it over his back and arms, tucking the edge around his nearest shoulder. Her hand brushed his neck, briefly, and then she pulled back. “Your family loved you.”
He started at the warm weight around his shoulders. “Don’t want to talk about this,” he said roughly.
“Okay,” she replied. “Thank you for lending it to me yesterday. I’m sorry I forgot to return it until I was mostly up the lift.”
He pulled the blanket tighter. It smelled different now. Clean, but also like her. It had the warm, pleasant scent he associated with her. “It’s okay. They give me new ones every cycle.”
“I know, but still.” Her shoulders lifted, then dropped.
“Could you stay longer today?” he asked. He hated to ask.
She looked at him. Her expression was hard to read, but her lips curved and she put the tablet away. “Yeah. I can stay.”
They sat in the dirt. He didn’t feel like talking, and she seemed okay with that.
The bay was quiet around them. Grow lights overhead flooded the bay with light.
Water misted from the irrigation lines in timed intervals.
A few other patients worked in distant rows, but this section was his. No one came near.
After a while, the tightness in his chest eased enough that he could think clearly again. He pulled off the blanket and folded it carefully. He was too warm, sitting so close to her. “Want to learn something?” he asked.
“Always.”
He shifted forward onto his knees and moved to the row of toramdo plants before them. They were tall, heavy-stalked, with dark green leaves and clusters of small red fruit growing along the stem. He pointed to a thin shoot growing from the joint where a leaf met the main stalk.
“Suckers,” he said. “They grow here. Take energy from the fruit.” He pinched the shoot between his thumb and forefinger and snapped it off cleanly. “Remove them and energy goes to fruit instead.”
“So you’re pruning the plant to redirect its growth.”
“Yes. This one.” He pointed to another sucker, lower on the stalk. “Try.”
She leaned forward, and he caught the clean scent of her again. He watched her brown hair fall forward over her shoulder as she reached for the sucker and pinched it between her fingers. Her hands were slender, her fingernails short and clean. She pinched, but the shoot bent instead of snapping.
“Harder,” he said. “Quick. Like this.” He demonstrated on the next plant over, a fast, decisive pinch.
She tried again. The sucker snapped off. She held it up, grinning. “Got it.”
“Good.” He felt his mouth curve. “You could be a farmer.”
She laughed. It was pure music to him, but she didn’t get up and leave. They worked side by side for a time, moving down the row of toramdo plants, snapping off suckers.
“Why these plants and not the others?” she asked, nodding toward the grain row behind them.
“Grain doesn’t sucker. Grows straight. Toramdo spreads. Wants to grow everywhere.” He snapped off a thick sucker that had started developing its own leaves. “Have to focus it.”
“So you’re the enforcer of the toramdo section.”
“Enforcer,” he repeated with a shake of his head. The word sat strangely in his mouth. He didn’t know why. “Just pruning.”
“How do you know which ones to take off and which to leave?”
He studied the plant in front of him. “Below the first fruit cluster, take them all. Above, leave the strong ones. They’ll make more fruit.” He pointed to a sucker growing above the lowest cluster of red fruit. “This one stays. See the thickness? It’s worth keeping.”
“And the ones you take off? Those are wasted energy?”
“Yes. Plant tries to grow too many branches, but can’t feed them all. Better to choose a few and give them everything.”
She was quiet for a moment, working on the next plant. “That’s a pretty good life philosophy, actually.”
He didn’t know what a philosophy was, but her tone was warm, so he let it go.
“Does the fruit taste good?” she asked.
“Sweet. A little sharp. Better when it’s ripe; another few cycles.” He touched one of the red clusters. “These aren’t ready yet. Still hard.”
The rhythm of the work settled him. His hands knew what to do, and showing Evie made the knowledge feel useful.
He watched her work. Her arched brows drew together when she concentrated. Her full lips pressed into a line when she was deciding which shoot to pinch. She tucked her hair behind her ear when it fell forward, a quick, automatic gesture she probably didn’t notice.
He noticed. He noticed everything about her.
She stretched to reach a sucker higher on the stalk and her shirt pulled against her back.
His eyes followed the curve of her waist. Something tightened low in his abdomen.
The same heat he’d felt when she’d touched his temple, but steadier now.
Slower. He knew what it was this time. He remembered the sensation, or his body did.
Arousal. The pull of a male toward a female he wanted.
He looked away. His hands found the next sucker and snapped it off.
He wanted to kiss her mouth. The thought arrived clear and fully formed, without confusion.
He wanted to press his lips to hers and feel the warmth of her breath and know what she tasted like.
He wanted to touch her face and her hair and the curve of her waist where her shirt had pulled tight.
His cock stirred, thickening against his thigh, and he shifted his position and angled his body away from her.
But it was more than that, and he knew it.
If all he wanted was to put his body against hers, the ache wouldn’t be this deep.
He wanted her to stay longer. He wanted her to use his name again.
He wanted to hear her laugh, and he wanted to be the reason for it.
He wanted to sit in the dirt with her and teach her things and watch her face when she figured them out.
He kept all of this to himself. He was good at keeping things to himself. He’d had a lot of practice.
“I think I’m getting the hang of it,” Evie said, stepping back to look at the row they’d pruned.
“You’re a good learner.”
She smiled at him. Full, warm, real. His chest ached.
“Same time tomorrow?” she asked, gathering her equipment.
“Same time.”
He watched her go. The lift doors closed, and the bay went quiet.
Stars, she was so kind to him. She treated him with a respect he hadn’t earned and probably didn’t deserve.
But despite her calling him “Jarran” once, he was still Patient Nine.
Still a male with a broken mind, with an apparently dark past, and with no future that he could see beyond this bay and its walls.
Evie was here because she was a doctor and this was her job. One day, she would leave. She would return to her home planet, or get a job with a new patient, and he would be here: kneeling in dirt, growing vegetables for a ship full of people who called him by a number.
She would never want him. He understood that clearly.
He was a project. A patient. A set of readings and a damaged brain she was paid to fix.
Whatever he felt for her lived entirely inside him.
She would not feel it back, and he would not burden her with it.
Evie deserved better than a male who couldn’t remember his own past, and one whose past, from what he’d gathered, wasn’t worth remembering. She deserved someone whole.
He wasn’t whole. He might never be. And wanting her didn’t change that.
He picked up the blanket she’d left. Held it against his chest. Breathed in the fading scent of her.
Then he set it aside and went back to his plants.