Chapter 43
Chapter forty-three
Her heart hadn’t stopped hurting since she’d seen those kids for the first time in that shitty little space. Speechless, she couldn’t believe how the Calypsons had discarded and ignored them.
But that was what had happened to her too, wasn’t it?
With the decision made that they couldn’t stay in the cargo hold, more silent Calypsons arrived out of nowhere, ready to carry the kids’ belongings to a new location.
The kids crowded Wynn during the process, keeping space between them and the Calypsons. To realize they inherently trusted her eased some of the ache gripping Wynn’s chest.
While walking through the corridors, the kids continued to grunt and babble, using their hands to communicate.
They’d taught themselves language, and Wynn was in awe of it.
Everything about them amazed her. That they’d survived in such substandard living conditions.
That they’d banded together to create a caring family unit.
They were smart, strong, and resilient. Pride mixed with her hurt and disbelief at finding them in such a secluded existence.
Would the same thing have happened to her if she’d lived in Sector Ten instead of being discarded to CORE territory? She wouldn’t have had the love of her adoptive parents. She wouldn’t have had the benefit of good schooling and excellent opportunities in the scientific community.
She vowed then and there to make those options a possibility for these kids too. They deserved the whole solar system after everything.
An odd sort of peace enveloped Wynn as they took the lift upward, everyone squishing into the lift except Atlas and the other Calypsons carrying the children’s belongings.
Iax had told her it wasn’t acceptable for her to live anywhere else but with him, and she didn’t want the kids far.
They were all relocating to deck eleven, where Iax said some empty quarters remained.
“Did you know?” she asked, turning her body fully toward Iax as the lift hummed around them. “Did you know when they wanted me to take charge of these kids?”
He shook his head slowly. “They did not tell me their full intent, only that I was to collect you, to bring you home.”
The growing tension in her chest eased at his words.
“They also told me it was not safe for you to live as you were,” he added.
The lift stopped, and the door opened, revealing a corridor thriving in the twisting black ropes of Calypson construction, leaves and vines intertwined until it was difficult to determine where the growth began and ended.
A sound of surprise and wonder erupted from Bex.
Wynn cast her a small smile as she followed Iax off the lift.
“This way.” He tilted his head to the right.
Wynn glanced back at the lift. Six faces stared at her with wide, questioning eyes. She gestured with her hands. “Come,” she said, encouraging them off the lift. “We’re finding you a better place to stay.”
Mack took a hesitant step out with Ari on his hip, the girl’s head tucked under his chin and her thumb in her mouth.
Bex followed, holding Dexxa, the toddler’s body slumped in slumber.
Each of the twins held the back of Mack’s pants, their grips twisting in the material, but they stared at her with openly curious expressions and something else that tugged at her heart. Hope.
Wynn swallowed around the emotion threatening to clog her throat, and waved them onward. “This way.” She walked backwards a few paces, then when she was sure they followed, turned around to stay close to Iax.
“Your quarters are on this deck?”
“Yes. As are others.”
He hadn’t even finished speaking when a door slid open beside them, making Wynn twitch and pause.
A Calypson stood there, a man, wearing an outfit that resembled the shirt and pants Iax had worn, though these were a deep blue. He held a tool in his hand, a diagnostic device.
Though nothing about him seemed threatening, the kids all shrank against the bulkheads, and Wynn instinctively stepped in front of them.
The man did nothing for a long while, only stared at them with the same unblinking stare Iax had used on her when he first arrived at her outpost. Then he turned abruptly, passing the kids at a clipped pace to head to the lift they’d just used. The door opened with a quiet swish.
“He will not return,” Iax said after the door closed.
Wynn stiffened. “He’s leaving this deck because of the kids? Because of us?”
“Yes.” Iax turned his head to meet her gaze.
She clenched her fists. “Everyone is going to have to get over it. I’m here. These kids are here. We shouldn’t be treated like we’re diseases. Especially when they were the ones who wanted to collect me.”
Iax stared at her for a long moment, then agreed with a nod. “I will tell them.” His words had taken on a hard edge.
Then he continued down the corridor, and she hurried to catch up. “Are you in trouble? With The Four?” They hadn’t seemed happy with him, though they hadn’t shown much emotion at all.
“I have completed my mission,” he said simply.
That didn’t really answer her question, but it made her say, “They might give you another mission.” They could send him to collect someone else.
“No,” he replied. “They won’t.”
She wanted to ask more, but he stopped in front of a door. It opened silently.
“These quarters are vacant,” he said, stepping into a sparse space.
Wynn followed, and her shoulder relaxed at how normal it looked.
They could have been quarters on any space station, dated in its style, but not overrun with those large, structural ropes that seemed to take over everything else in this place.
A bank of tall windows took up the side opposite the door, revealing an unobstructed view of the nebula in all its glory, colorful and undulating.
Bex gasped, making Wynn turn around, but then the girl was rushing toward the windows, her jaw slack and her hands tight on the toddler in her arms. The rest of the kids followed. The twins pressed their faces against the transparent aluminum as they stared.
Wynn’s heart clenched. “Please don’t tell me you’ve never seen this before,” she murmured, but that was exactly what she was witnessing: kids who had never seen the outside of a cargo hold, who knew nothing of the outside world at all.
Disgust welled up in her anew, followed by a fiery anger that burned through her chest and up her throat with the need to scream.
Iax stepped toward her, settling his hand on her spine.
“We need books,” she said, her words thick. “And computer terminals, or tablets, or even PALMs. I need to teach them… everything.” She swallowed around the sudden dryness in her throat, the gravity of what she was about to take on weighing on her shoulders.
Ari squirmed out of Mack’s grasp, and he set her on the deck. She ran around with her arms spread wide. Maybe she’d seen a ship in the distance and mimicked it. The playful sight calmed Wynn a little. It made her believe these kids would be all right.
Mack put his arm around Bex and pulled her in close to his side, his hand on her hip as they stared out the window together.
Wynn’s breath caught as an extra worry formed in her mind. “Are they siblings?” she asked Iax. “Brother and sister?” She gestured to the pair, who looked to be in their early teens.
He tilted his head, and she got the feeling he was asking someone who was not in the room with them.
“They are not related by blood,” he said finally.
Wynn exhaled a slow, relieved breath. The way they looked at each other, it would take a lot of awkward explanation about genetics if they’d been siblings, and Wynn wouldn’t have relished it.
“Genetics connect only the two lookalikes,” Iax added after a moment.
Wynn nodded, but that got her scientific curiosity going. “Then it’s random? The anomaly thing?”
Iax paused a moment. “No one has predicted it yet.”
It was another thing she needed to study now that she was here.
She wouldn’t assume that Calypson scientists had explored every research path when they couldn’t even teach these kids language.
She would need to analyze their blood, and hers, and try to find connections.
Her mind moved to how big a control group she would need.
She stiffened at her next thought. “Do I have siblings?” And who the hell was her father? Heath Wiseman?
She should have asked Briar Galloway more questions, but she was honestly so disgusted with the woman that if she never saw her again, it would be too soon. Wynn’s true parents were the ones who had adopted her, the ones who’d shown her love and died too soon.
“You do. But they are not anomalies.”
Wynn snorted. “I’m the black sheep, huh?”
It took him a moment, but he responded with a tilt of his head. “It would seem so. And I have joined you in that regard.”
She’d feared Calypsons before coming here. Now she just disliked them intensely. Whatever advantages they gained at being a telepathic hive-mind, they squandered in their lost humanity. Segregating these kids? It was unforgivable.
Or ignorant. But how could they be so ignorant when most of them used to be human? Had they lost all of their empathy? It didn’t bode well for those they’d sent out to retrieve the others like her.
She let out a defeated, choked breath. The CORE was no better. They’d been about to dissect her in the name of science. The Tellusians were even worse, raiding stations and ships for supplies and people. They didn’t care who got caught in the crossfire. Like her parents.
What a messed up system we live in. But as she stared at the kids, who took in the room and the outside world with a fresh sort of wonder, hope bloomed in her like it had on those kids’ faces. Maybe they would all make this system a better place.
The door opened, distracting her from where her mind had wandered. The Calypsons who had gathered the children’s belongings, entered the quarters with their arms full.
Wynn straightened and headed to the slender door at the back of the space, assuming it was the bedroom. The door didn’t slide open as she approached until she glanced over her shoulder at Iax. It opened with a silent whoosh.
“We’re going to need to fix that,” she said. “Make things motion activated for me and the kids.”
He nodded his agreement.
Turning around, she stopped short when she surveyed the room. It was empty like the living space, except for one bed in the center and a smaller window.
“Oh, there’s only one bed here. Maybe they should occupy more than one set of quarters, anyway.” The space wasn’t much bigger than where she’d found the kids.
She’d barely finished the thought when Bex and Mack came at her with a babble of grunts and hand gestures, motioning to the smaller room.
Wynn froze, then let out an apologetic huff when she understood the fear in their eyes. “You want to stay together. Got it.” She lifted her gaze to Iax’s. “Will they bring up the bunks too?”
He nodded once.
It didn’t take long for the kids’ belongings to be deposited and the Calypsons to leave as quietly as they’d come. The six of them poured into this new space, finding the blankets and items they knew were theirs.
It didn’t seem like she’d done enough for them, but at least they had a window and weren’t quarantined like they carried the plague.
Progress. It might be slow in coming, but they were making progress. She would fix this, correct the life they’d led until now, even if was the last thing she did.
Wynn’s throat clogged with emotion, tears threatening to fall, and she realized just how exhausted she was.
Everything that had led her up to this point came crashing down.
The storm on Earth, abduction, torture, the Corvus, the white box, Iax saving her, the journey here, then finding out about the anomalies… it was too much.
She swayed with weariness.
A warm hand on the back of her neck steadied her.
“Come, Wynn Lambdin. You need rest.”
And she did. But she also didn’t want to leave the kids alone. Not after everything.
But smiles broke out across Bex and Mack’s faces as they watched the younger children run out of the bedroom to chase each other in the bigger space. Set against the backdrop of the nebula, Wynn’s chest constricted with a poignant pain she couldn’t name.
“I will tell Mack and Bex how to find us,” Iax asserted. “We are only one door down.”
With that assurance in her ear and settling her mind, she allowed Iax to guide her out into the corridor.