Chapter 11
Chapter eleven
Wynn’s breath caught in her throat at the earnest expression on Iax’s face. Another sense of familiarity wove through her, but he’d said they’d never met, had even seemed regretful about it.
And how the hell could she tell that? His expression rarely changed.
I’m sorry.
She stared at the wilting sapling in her hands, then looked up at the confusing person in front of her.
“What are you apologizing for?” He’d helped her with a speed that had stolen her breath, both when he had plucked her out of the path of the pot, and when he’d assisted with saving the plant.
“For touching you without your permission.” His gravelly words made her shiver.
Her hand lifted toward where their skin had connected. The small spot on her forehead tingled, an electrifying sensation that traveled down to her throat.
“You were trying to help me. I get that.” His head tilted like he didn’t understand her words, so she added. “Apology accepted.”
And because she couldn’t bear to stare at those glinting, inquisitive eyes any longer, she turned away. Walking farther down the central work area, she stopped at a different cupboard, bent down, and pulled a robocleaner from beneath.
Iax remained in place as she knelt and placed the robocleaner on top of the broken pieces and dirt on the grated flooring. The beetle-like robot hummed and whirred as it did its job between her and her unpredictable guest.
She stood to tend the bruised sapling, hoping it lived despite its fall. After making sure it had enough soil and fertilizer, she set it on the opposite workspace to monitor it instead of returning it with the others of its age.
And through it all, Iax watched her.
It was confusing, the sensation of calm that slowly replaced the dread and fear she’d experienced over the past few hours. Like he’d promised, he hadn’t harmed or changed her. He’d helped her. He’d even apologized.
And she had until the storm abated to convince him not to take her with him.
Her stomach clenched. How was she supposed to do that? She’d wanted the chance to persuade him to abandon his task, but didn’t know how to approach it.
And this storm wouldn’t last forever. With her fields drowning in acid rain, she didn’t want it to.
She worked for a long while before Iax moved, walking through the space to stop every now and again at another part of her germination process. She remained aware of him, listening to each footfall. Then always, he would return to where she planted.
His scrutiny should have bothered her, but it didn’t.
She worked, he walked, and she didn’t call it quits until her stomach grumbled.
Wynn set down her trowel and placed the last pot on the shelf before rotating it upward. She knew exactly where Iax had stopped, examining the damaged sapling a few meters away.
Brushing her palms against her pants, she turned to him. “Are you hungry?” What did Calypsons eat?
His head lifted, and he stared at her for a long moment. “Yes.”
She nodded once, then turned away from his probing gaze.
The moist air of the greenhouse changed to the drier air of the lab as she crossed the threshold. She passed through the small hallway into the living space, then stopped.
Iax’s glasses lay on the floor. Another dual urge surged up inside her, both to crush them beneath her feet, to deny what they represented, and to pick them up and return them to him.
Movement rustled behind her, and tension stiffened her shoulders. She remained in place while Iax strode past her, stooped, and swiped the accessory from the ground. Then she was off again, heading toward the kitchen.
She stopped again when she saw the UV-suit sitting on the counter. Without dwelling on her derailed need of escape, she snatched it up in her arms, moved to the hallway, and shoved it inside the wall compartment before returning to the kitchen.
Her plan had been to order a pasta dish from the dispensary, but the need to act, to do something made her jittery. She could return to the greenhouse, throw herself into work again, but she’d already promised herself she would eat. That she would feed Iax too.
New purpose rose inside her. Wynn stepped up to the dispensary and ordered a collection of vegetables instead of a complete meal. Next came the largest cooking pot from beneath the cupboard. She filled it half full of water before setting it on the burner at the far end of the kitchen island.
Thwack. She dropped the cutting board beside it and was already slicing into a potato by the time Iax crossed the threshold from the living room. He stopped on the other side of the counter.
Chop chop chop went her knife. The slice and thud against the board soothed the turmoil inside her. She turned the pieces in the opposite direction. Chop chop chop.
With one swift movement, she used the flat of the knife to scoop the cubes off the surface and tossed them in the pot beside her. Plop plop plop. They sank into the water. All the pieces went inside, then she grabbed the next potato.
“What is it you do?”
She twitched at the question, his gravelly voice sending shivers over her arms. Her fingers tightened around the knife.
Blinking, she refocused on the cutting board. Chop chop chop.
“I’m making soup,” she said after her continued silence felt like intentional rudeness. Plop plop plop. She dropped more pieces into the pot.
“Your machine would make soup.”
When she lifted her head, she found him staring at the dispensary on the back wall. That meant he knew how it worked, that it was pre-programmed and could synthesize thousands of recipes from the bio-matter stored within its mechanisms.
It was how most CORE citizens ate.
“Doing it myself is relaxing, focuses me. Foster—” Her voice cracked.
It hurt to say his name aloud. She cleared her throat, concentrating on her potatoes again.
“My colleague liked to make soup from scratch. I helped him sometimes.” She didn’t want to forget her friend, no matter how disturbing the memories of his death.
A shrug lifted her shoulders as she dropped more pieces into the pot. “He and I would cook together at least once a week. He always said that things tasted more delicious when done by hand, and I think he was right. Nothing from the dispensary ever tasted as good as one of his soups.”
It helped thinking of him like this instead of the way he’d died, the images that haunted her nightmares. “Everything done by hand, that’s what he always said.” She resumed her chopping. “It’s why we plant all the seeds ourselves instead of using machines.”
Swallowing that thought down, Wynn pressed the control beside the burner, and a padded seat extended next to Iax. He stepped back, his eyebrows raising at its appearance.
“You don’t have to stand if you don’t want to,” she said, jerking her chin at the seat.
He stared at it a long while before he awkwardly parked one butt cheek down in a way that made her think he didn’t use chairs often.
Did Calypsons ever sit?
The question created an itchy sensation across her skin. She refocused on her vegetables, willing it to go away. A carrot, a turnip, and an onion. She chopped everything up and slid it into the bubbling water.
Her stomach grumbled again, reminding her she’d promised him food, and a soup made from scratch wasn’t fast.
“Here,” she said, moving away from the counter to the dispensary. “I’ll get you something to tide you over. What would you like?”
She glanced at him over her shoulder, but her hand hovered over the controls when she saw his pinched frown. “What do you like to eat?”
He stared at her for a moment, then said, “Anything that provides sustenance.”
The vague answer uncovered buried pettiness. Bland it is. She pressed the button for soup, then chose number ten. The door slid open, and a bowl of steaming broth slid out a moment later.
She set the soup in front of him and stared. He took a deliberate moment to examine the food, then picked up the spoon and slurped it.
His eyebrows shot up. “This is good,” he declared.
“It is?” The only time she ever ordered the plain broth was when she had an upset stomach.
He nodded once and took another bite, then another, the movement speeding up until he was practically shoveling it in his mouth.
She could have gone back to her soup preparation, but watched his subtle expressions instead. How old was he?
Her thoughts returned to what he’d told her about himself already. “They say Calypsons don’t die.”
His hand stopped halfway to his mouth.
“That they live forever,” she added.
He lifted his gaze to meet hers, and that silver glint didn’t scare her as much.
“How old are you?” She lifted her chin. “Do you know, like in Earth years?”
He lowered his hand, the soup in the spoon dripping back into the bowl. He tipped his head before answering. “The Earth has rotated around the sun twenty-nine times since my origin.”
She gripped the countertop. “Your origin? Your birth or when you became Calypson?” He’d said he was a child when he’d arrived in Sector Ten.
His head straightened. “I became Calypson after six rotations of Earth around the sun.”
They were close in age.
“I can’t believe your parents sacrificed you like that,” she muttered. “You were so young.”
His head tilted again, and his eyes became distant.
“It was an attempt to save my life,” he said after a while.
The two of them remained frozen, staring at each other, as seconds passed them by. Emotion welled in her throat. “You were sick?” It wasn’t unheard of for a new disease to develop in a colony, one that spread faster than doctors could cure.
“Yes.”
She swallowed. “Have you spoken with them, seen them, since?”
He blinked, his gaze unfocused. “No.”
“Then they’re still bastards,” she muttered.
With a touch of her hand, she ordered a packet of spices from the dispensary, added it to the boiling water, then continued with her vegetables.
Chop. Chop. Chop.
Plop. Plop. Plop.
She didn’t stop adding ingredients until she noticed Iax’s bowl was empty.
“Are you full?”
He met her gaze. “Full of what?”
A stilted laugh erupted from her lips. She smothered it quickly.
Foster would have followed that with full of shit, but she shook her head at herself as said, “Did you get enough to eat?”
A silent beat passed before he replied. “It will sustain me.”
Didn’t really answer the question, but she wouldn’t quibble over word choice.
But as soon as she refocused on her repetitive chopping, her mind obsessed over what he’d told her. His parents may have been trying to save him, but not going with him? Of sending him out to Sector Ten without knowing what would happen to him? A little boy completely alone?
Cowards.
Her temperature rose, and it had nothing to do with the boiling soup.
She scooped up the pieces of the carrot and dropped them in the pot before grabbing the last potato. Her knife came down with a little more vigor than before. Chop. It split the oval root vegetable in half, and she turned it sideways.
Chop. Chop. Chop. Thud.
“Shit.” She dropped the knife as stinging pain shot through her hand. Her knuckle burned where the knife nicked her. Stupid. Stupid. How dumb to get so caught in her head that she stopped paying attention to what she was doing.
She reached for the towel hanging against the counter, then jerked backward when Iax stood in front of her, inside her personal space. A startled noise emerged from her throat.
“You are hurt,” he said, a frown furrowing his brow as he stared at the towel covering the wound.
“Just nicked myself.” She stepped backward, but he followed.
Wynn swallowed at the way his eyes narrowed, like he could eradicate the injury with a thought. She kept walking backward until her ass hit the counter that ran the length of the back wall.
“Allow me to see. I can help.”
She shook her head. “It’s fine. I can grab a regenerator.”
The frown on his face intensified. “I want to help you.”
A disbelieving laugh erupted while her hand throbbed where she clutched it against her chest. She’d told him it had been okay to touch her earlier because he was trying to help. Now he wanted to justify another touch?
The longer he stared, the more shivers crawled up the back of her neck and over her head. Fizzy anticipation bubbled in her stomach. That brief contact in the greenhouse was burned into her skin, and she wanted to know if it would feel the same if he touched her again.
The tips of his boots stopped a fraction away from her bare toes, but he didn’t reach out. Her skin buzzed with awareness while her thumb throbbed in pain. She had to tend to it, or it would scar.
Another laugh wanted to surface at the irony, but she swallowed it down.
He didn’t back off, and she found she didn’t want him to—as much as she should. Tentatively, she lifted her towel-covered hand off her chest and extended it to him.
His shoulders lowered as he took her hand in his, carefully unwrapping it.
A bright red smear stained the white towel.
Her knuckle throbbed in time with her heartbeat, but she’d never been averse to a little pain.
A surge of blood rose when he removed the pressure.
He cradled the towel beneath her wrist, a barrier between their skin that she frowned at.
“How are you going to do anything without a regenerator?” she murmured, then lifted her gaze.
A wrinkle of concentration marred his forehead. It was… sort of adorable.
You’re losing it.
She’d believed he would change her into a mindless zombie only hours ago, and now she thought him adorable?
He stole away that thought when he lifted his other hand and placed it over hers.
A gasp ripped out of her as their skin connected. Tingles burst across her flesh where his fingers brushed her wrist, then exploded up her arm and over her shoulders.
Then came the uncomfortable heat. It raced through her, beginning with her thumb, chasing away the tingles. She inhaled a hissing breath. Her internal temperature rose, becoming hotter where her injury lay beneath his hand.
His gaze lifted to hers, and her breath caught in her throat at the way he looked at her. She should run screaming, but couldn’t move as the heat slowly ebbed away, and the tingles returned.