16. Induction #2
His face changes.
The tiredness goes. The flat silver of his eyes hardens by a degree I did not think the silver had left in it.
“Do not ask me that.”
“Kesh—“
“Do not.”
His hand on the sidearm tightens.
The weapon comes up half an inch.
“I am going to let you have the last three minutes without talking, Torres. You have asked enough. I answered what I answered because you asked, and I did not expect to be asked, and your tracker is going to hear what I told you through the speaker on the exterior wall, and that will, in the way it will, be the last honest accounting I give of myself. That is a gift I have given you. I am not going to give you the rest.”
He steps forward one meter.
My body wants to step back. My training says do not give up ground to a Draelith male. My body wins the argument.
I do not move.
I hold.
The second impact on the corridor wall. Closer. A third sidearm discharge. A male screaming — cut short.
Two contractors down. One to go.
Kesh takes a second step toward me.
Three meters.
My right hand at my side. The scalpel in my palm.
My left hand, which I let it drift to my hip, reads as nervous to him.
The MP blade at my ankle is still inside my kit.
I have not drawn it. I will not draw it until I have to.
A Draelith male who clocks a second blade does not extend me the benefit of the reach distance he is granting me.
The console behind him chimes.
A second amber light goes green.
“Chamber at twenty-five percent saturation.”
The speaker pipes the status in his voice — the console is announcing in Kesh’s recorded Draelith baseline because he set it up to.
The ceiling manifold hums.
A warmth goes across my skin.
The pheromone compound hits me.
It is — not what I expect. It is not heavy. It is not chemical. It is warm, the way a summer afternoon on a body you have been neglecting is warm. My skin prickles. My heart pounds in a way I cannot choose for it to stop.
SENTRY, on my private channel, the prim register gone tight: Natalie. “Your pulse has elevated beyond baseline. You are in distress.”
“Yes.”
“I am logging. I have requested Tael’s overlay pair your biometric feed to his emergency channel. He has acknowledged. He is aware.”
“Thank you, SENTRY.”
My body is responding.
I can feel it responding.
I do not want it to respond.
“Kesh.”
“Yes.”
“What is this?”
“Saturation. Twenty-five percent.”
“It is—“
“I know.”
I am warm in places I do not want to be warm.
My hand at my side. My hand at my hip. The scalpel in my palm.
The warmth spreading. My body — the body that has been running on Tael’s chemistry for five days, the body that last night took him the way it took him and chose to not mark him and waited — that body is responding to a compound it has not consented to responding to.
The horror of it is the warmth.
If this were a chemical assault, I could brace myself. If it were pain, I could brace. It is a pleasure. It is my body’s system being hijacked into saying yes in a register I did not authorize it to say yes in.
A third impact on the corridor wall. A door slamming. The sound of Tael’s body — I know the weight of him against a wall, because I have spent all morning learning it — hitting the class-three door of the induction chamber.
“Nat.”
The voice through the speaker on the exterior wall.
Wrecked.
The Nat goes through me the way the compound is going through me, except the Nat is a register my body chose, and the compound is not.
I close my eyes for a half-second.
I open them.
Kesh is three meters away.
The console chimes.
“Chamber at fifty percent saturation.”
My pulse is in my ears.
The warmth is not warmth anymore. It is a pull. My skin is asking me to be touched. The demand of a nervous system that has been chemically told there is a compatible Draelith male in the room and is prioritizing contact over operational math.
Kesh’s canines — I see it in the change at his upper lip — begin to drop.
Involuntary.
He did not choose to.
His body did.
His silver eyes go to me in the way I have, in the last five days, watched Tael’s silver eyes go to me when he was about to put his mouth on me.
It is not, on Kesh, the same.
It is the same biology in the wrong male.
“Torres.”
“Don’t move.”
“The compound is — I cannot stop the drop, Torres. My body is going to move whether I want it to move or not. The peak is two minutes away. At peak I will cover the distance between us and my canines will set the mark. The compound overrides the discipline. I told you.”
“Don’t move, Kesh.”
“I can’t, Torres. Mira is my true bond, but Tael must be punished. Feel MY pain.”
He takes a third step forward.
Two meters.
Another slam at the door. The frame warps a quarter-inch. Tael’s breathing through the speaker at a register I have, in the last ten minutes, stopped being able to name.
“Nat — hold — I am almost through—“
My pulse in my throat.
SENTRY, tight: “Natalie. Your biometric profile is approaching the threshold I am not calibrated to manage. Please hold.”
“Copy, SENTRY.”
The compound on my skin. My body wants to walk toward the male in front of me and let him do what his body is going to do. The want is not my want. The want is the compound. I can feel the want not belonging to me.
The knowing does not stop the wanting.
It is the worst thing my body has ever done.
I raise the scalpel.
Kesh sees it. His sidearm comes up. The canines are down now — visible at his lip, longer than a healthy Draelith’s because the surrounding tissue has receded.
He takes a fourth step.
One and a half meters.
“Don’t, Torres. You will not reach me before I reach you. The compound is weighting you. Your reflexes are at seventy percent. Your aim is at sixty.”
He is right.
My hand with the scalpel is, by my sense of it, slower than my hand was in the upstairs chamber. The warmth is pulling at my muscles. My body is being asked to welcome him and to resist the welcoming at the same time.
A fourth slam at the door.
The frame warps more. A seam in the transparent wall beside the door cracks.
Tael’s voice, wrecked, through the speaker —
“Natalie. Natalie. Hold.”
I hold.
I hold with the scalpel up and my back to the door Tael is trying to come through and Kesh one and a half meters from me with his canines down and the pheromone saturation climbing through my body and the knowing of what is happening and the not being able to stop my skin from saying yes to what my mouth is saying no to.
Kesh takes another step.
One meter.
His canines. His eyes — flat silver, dying, the same biology in the wrong male — are on my throat. The exact spot where Tael did not mark me last night. The spot I held my thumb to his throat and waited.
The spot Kesh is about to take.
The console chimes a third time.
“Chamber at seventy-five percent saturation.”
Another slam at the door. Louder. Closer to through than any slam yet. The transparent wall cracks up the seam. The frame gives another inch.
Tael is one slam away.
Kesh is half a meter away.
My body is on fire.
I bring the scalpel up to the mate-mark spot on my throat.
I will cut my throat before I let him mark it.
Not because I would rather die than wear a mark. Because the spot is Tael’s. I held my thumb to the matching spot on his throat last night and chose to wait, and no one gets to take the choosing. Not Kesh. Not the compound. Not the room somebody invoiced for.
Kesh does not stop.
The compound overrides him. The same way it is overriding me. The dying silver-eyed male in front of my throat is, by the chemical reading his body is carrying out of his control, no longer running on Kesh Vorrin’s discipline.
His hand comes up.
Not to the sidearm. Not to the blade. To the back of my neck. The cradle a Draelith male’s hand makes at the back of his pair-identified female’s neck when he is about to set the mark.
The hand is warm.
My body responds to the warmth.
I hate the warmth.
I hate it in the register of a woman who has had a hand in the exact same place on her body and who is now feeling the same chemistry from the wrong male.
My scalpel is at my own throat.
My hand, with the scalpel, is shaking.
I am going to have to cut.
I am going to have to cut myself to keep him from marking me.
The console chimes.
“Chamber at one hundred percent saturation.”
The manifold above us hums to a peak. The warmth is no longer warmth. It is want, at a register my body cannot refuse. My hand with the scalpel trembles against my pulse. Kesh’s face is six inches from mine. His canines are fully dropped. His silver eyes are on the mate-mark spot at my throat.
Somewhere far down, in the last room of myself that is still mine, a voice with my accent is taking notes for the report I will file if I live: airborne. Involuntary. Eleven minutes from first exposure to loss of motor priority.
A fifth slam at the door.
The frame shears. The wall cracks to the ceiling. Still not through.
A sixth slam.
Tael’s voice through the speaker, no longer words, the sound a pair-identified male makes when his mate is, at the moment of the sound, one second from being marked by another male.
Kesh’s head bends.
His canines at my throat.
The scalpel at my own.