Three Months Later… #4
The drozekar’s lights flickered as it checked the probing signal Airik had configured. If it detected another craft using Veynari or similar technology in the nearby solar system, the signal would break. A reverse pulse. As long as it kept beating, they were safe. Free.
“Beep. Beep. Beep. There is no interruption.” The drozekar mimicked its programmer, Iver, with dramatic flair.
“Thank you,” Airik said, the rush of relief nearly escaping as a moan.
Eager to get back to Nora, Airik strode quickly to Torren. A lead-encased room where the humans had insisted he be kept for visual observation, thinking the lining would protect them from the regeneration chamber’s power source.
A body collided with him as he turned the corner of the doorway.
It was the small human with round glasses in front of her eyes. Liv. “I—I’m sorry,” she stammered.
Airik tensed. A chair had been pulled up beside Torren’s chamber. He had seen this chair many times before, finding it out of place when he always put it back beneath the window.
He arched a brow as realization hit him. “You are the one.”
Liv’s skin was much paler than Nora’s, and he caught her blush instantly.
“You sit with him almost every night. Are you a doctor?” One of her progenitors was a healer, but he still didn’t know what this particular human did. She was always everywhere, quiet and unremarkable among the other humans. He noticed her only because Nora liked her.
And because all that time ago, she had been the first human to show him a small kindness when the others had not.
“No.”
“Then why are you here? No one is to have access to him but Davis, Iris, and me.”
She lowered her head, her hands twisting in the pockets of the long white tunic she wore, buttoned up to her throat. “I was just leaving,” she mumbled, stepping around Airik. “I won’t bother him again.”
He recognized it now—what she was doing.
A spark. A curiosity that shouldn’t have been ignited, yet for some maddening reason, this woman was fueling it.
Torren was confined to his chamber. She couldn’t hurt him, even if she wanted to.
But…Airik didn’t think she meant him any harm at all. Perhaps the opposite.
“He likes music,” Airik called out.
Liv, already some distance down the hall from him, paused.
“Any kind of music,” he continued. “He loves it all. Fast. Slow. With words or without.”
She turned her head, as if about to reply. But then she straightened and hurried around the corner without another word.
Airik stared where she’d just disappeared. Had he said something wrong?
It didn’t matter. Having no desire to understand any human but Nora, Airik turned, entering the sparsely furnished room housing Torren’s chamber.
It smelled like the overly sweet-smelling cleaner humans used on every surface of their lives. Though dust had settled on the shelves, the glass over Torren’s face had always been spotless—Liv’s doing, he was now sure.
Cellular activity pulsed on the status panel, but the man lying inside was not what could be considered alive.
Torren’s clothing had been disintegrated by millions of microscopic robots under the chamber’s control, designed for precise repairs within the body.
In this case, nothing could be done except to preserve whatever was left of Torren’s body, which had been cleansed of blood and returned to a resting state.
A biological matrix gel filled the hole in his chest, and, molecule by molecule, Torren’s body reclaimed it until most of it had closed.
But there was still no heartbeat. His arm was half-regenerated.
Neural activity had begun to flicker more intensely on the panels, in a pattern the human doctors recognized as dreaming. Positive signs of life, Iris had said.
But Airik didn’t believe they were positive or even dreams; he thought they were the cries of a mind in unimaginable pain. Torren’s body could now feel how starved it was for air and blood. The chamber kept him alive, but until his heart returned—if it ever did—he was trapped in torment.
The chamber felt cool beneath Airik’s fingers as he leaned over it. Even now, Torren’s lips had curled into a small smile. “I am sorry, brother,” he said, repeating what he told Torren every night, his breath fogging the glass.
Tonight Airik’s body pulsed with tension that even Nora couldn’t ease.
He approached the small window. Mars’s night sky did not rain metal like Ed’un or glow with ice like Vorakon’s.
But it had a beautiful milky scar across the center, as if the heavens had been split open, allowing brightness to flow over their world.
He leaned against the sill, his hands behind his back. Tonight his throat itched with unsaid words.
Mars’s two moons glimmered faintly in the sky. Ugly, misshapen things, but he felt a strange affection for them. Sometimes they appeared together; other times far apart or even alone as they moved at different speeds.
“I relieved you of your sword.” Airik swallowed hard and turned back toward Torren’s chamber. “Wake up and hate me for it.”
He waited, gripping his wrist until Lucky’s bite scar burned. He imagined his friend crashing through the glass, spouting off an insult, then throwing the chair at Airik’s head after learning Airik had debladed him.
But of course, Torren did not get up. The round device humans used to tell time ticked on, and Airik felt more alone than if his friend—his brother—hadn’t been there at all.
He sighed, turning back to the window. “I’ve brought you to a human settlement called Valhalla. Named for a realm where warriors who’ve fallen in battle are brought to rest. Where they’re meant to eat and drink and breed—perfect for you.”
Light streaked across the sky. Airik pressed to the glass, his heart pounding as he scanned the darkness, unsure if it was just the reflection of his own eyes or something worse. His communicator, which connected to the drozekar, showed no sign of a breach.