Chapter 19
NINETEEN
ARTURE
As I sit alone in the stark, silent cell, the weight of our sentence settles over me like a suffocating blanket.
Exile. The word repeats in my head with a strange, hollow resonance.
They’ve cast us aside, labeled me and my crew as traitors, and now we’re to be sent away, abandoned to a barren world with no life, no civilization.
A ship with an autopilot, nothing more, not a real pilot like me, will ferry us to our isolation.
I try to swallow the dread, but it clings to me, thick and unrelenting.
To keep myself grounded, I run the numbers.
I trace my gaze along the angles of the walls of my cell, calculate the distance from the floor to the ceiling, estimate the degree of the curves in the reinforced metal.
I measure the space between every rivet and seam, assigning values, creating formulas.
It’s something to hold onto—something logical, precise, something which doesn’t twist and turn like the dark, nameless fear lurking at the edges of my mind. It keeps me steady. Keeps me sane.
Footsteps echo down the corridor, each one loud against the silent hum of the cells. I turn toward the sound, the shadow of a figure growing longer against my bars as it approaches. A Parthiastock steps into view, his eyes cold and emotionless.
My stomach tightens as he unlocks the door and gestures for me to follow, his unspoken command as sharp as any spoken order.
I obey, falling into step behind him, focusing on the rhythm of my footsteps and calculating the number of paces to each cell door we pass.
It takes twelve steps to reach the next door.
I cling to the pattern, in the symmetry of the halls, the soothing regularity of the architecture.
Numbers keep me from losing myself. If I always know where I am, I'll never be lost.
After what feels like an endless march through sterile corridors and calculated turns, we reach the outside and a car.
The Parthiastock gets in and I follow, because I can’t do anything else.
Questions rise in my throat but I swallow them down, bury them under numbers as I calculate our flight path.
The constant, reassuring beat of numerical certainty keeps me company as the car flies out of the justice area toward the women’s compounds.
We land inside Prif’s compound. My body tenses, but I keep my expression carefully blank, not daring to betray even a flicker of emotion. I know better than to question, to resist. To do anything but obey.
The Parthiastock leads me to a room—a small, isolated cell, bare and clinical, with a wooden table and a grate in the center.
There, standing in the dim light, is Samara herself.
Her presence fills the room, casting an air of authority so palpable that I instinctively lower my gaze.
She studies me with a calm, calculating stare, her gaze unwavering and sharp.
“Listen carefully,” she says, her voice as steady as steel. Then, she utters the phrase, “Rise and wake. Surgere ac excitare.”
The words strike a chord deep within me, reverberating through my thoughts, pulling me into sharp focus. Like a hand reaching into my mind, gripping tightly and yanking my true self back to the surface.
The fog of my existence dissipates, leaving me alert, focused, my hearts racing.
The words were a code phrase, meant to unlock Samarastocks in deep cover like me. My breath comes fast, chest heaving as if I’ve run a long distance. All the numbers I’d been running, the angles and measurements that had been soothing my mind—they’re gone now, replaced by a clear, singular purpose.
I'm a loyal Samarastock, and I've been undercover.
My mistress asks, “Do you remember who you are?”
I shift into a Samarastock. Like putting weighted chains down, my hearts are finally able to stop their constant drumming. My vision swims, and I lurch forward, Samara hastily moving back.
I managed to catch myself and stand tall, nausea souring my stomach at my weakness. “Yes. I'm yours.”
Samara’s gaze is unyielding. “Good.”
Behind me, the Parthiastock shifts into a Samarastock, gold scales gleaming. He’s whole, with two strong arms and a matching dark gaze, perfectly symmetrical. Disgust simmers off the sneer he gives me, but I focus only on Samara. My world.
As I breathe, as my hearts slowly decelerate after so long under strain, memories start raining in, clashing with my identity as a Pranastock.
The pilot on Ilia’s missions, a staunch crewmate loyal to Oloria, tries to blend with the Samarastock, a tool created by Samara and loyal only to her.
It’s oil trying to mix with water, and my head splits trying to hold both my identities in my mind.
Ilia, saving me.
Ilia, welcoming me onboard as his new pilot.
Gara, patching me up.
Gara, overseeing my wellbeing as a member of the crew.
Dom, a shadowy threat, able to skim my unwary thoughts.
Dom, who makes sure I eat when the calculations get too much.
I’m being pulled apart mentally. I have to drop one identity, I have to, or I’ll shear in two.
Samara watches me struggle. “Your intel over the years has been somewhat useful. I’ll have to do this again.”
“Thank you for your praise,” I manage to gasp. Sweat stands out on my scales, and my chest constricts as if I’m being crushed.
More memories crash into me. The years of Parthiastocks coming in quietly whilst I’m in the maintenance bay for my arm, taking me to Samara’s compound.
Of her, saying the keycode phrase, dragging my true self to wakefulness.
The hours of reporting where we’ve been, what I’ve seen, but never how it made me feel.
She never wanted to know about Ilia’s strong leadership, Gara’s dour humor, Dom’s protectiveness.
She only wanted to find evidence of wrongdoing, and each time I’d leave the session feeling as though she scraped out my insides with a carving laser.
I hang my head. I can’t remember how exactly, but I’m the reason Ilia was arrested and brought to trial. It was something to do with me. Screwing my eyes shut, I try to swallow down the Samarastock, the craven coward who reports on his teammates' every move, betraying them at every turn.
I want the sweet oblivion of the Pranastock. I want to belong among my crew, part of them, for however long we have until she destroys us.
“I have a final mission for you,” she says.
No, I want to beg. But I can’t refuse. It’s impossible to disobey Samara.
She leans in, her voice barely above a whisper, yet each word lands with deliberate, precise weight. “You are to sabotage the ship you’re exiled in.”
My hearts nearly stop. “Sabotage?”
“Yes. Activate the guard robots with indiscriminate targets, set the ship to malfunction, blow the airlock partway through. However you do it isn’t important, only that you do. Shara stopped me from imposing a death sentence on that Gerverstock, but it’s only a postponement. I can’t risk my plan.”
At least with exile, we had a chance, however small. Samara’s ordering me to kill them all, and… myself.
It’s a stupid question to confirm if she wants me killed as well. I could be an impediment to her plan if I'm discovered, I have to be destroyed.
“Of course, Prif,” I intone.
“Very good,” she purrs, laying her hand on my forehead briefly. Such a fleeting touch, but I’ve never had a female hand on me before. A faint, nagging hesitation echoes in the depths of my mind, a sliver of something that feels wrong, but the impulse is fleeting, snuffed out as she speaks again.
“You will forget these orders,” she commands, each word binding to me as deeply as the nanites in my blood. “Forget what I have told you. Forget who you are, apart from the mission.”
My ears ring. Her words echo in my head and my hearts, looping over and over like an unbreakable chain. They tighten around my thoughts, pushing away any lingering doubts or resistance. There is no questioning, no hesitation. The mission is everything. Nothing else matters.
The last fragments of myself slip away, dissolving into the greater purpose she’s bestowed upon me, and it’s a relief to sink back into the blissfully ignorant Pranastock.
It was me. I betrayed them. I tried to kill us all. I’m the reason the bots powered up and attacked; I’m the reason we crash landed on Earth. I only failed because of Ilia’s tenacity in saving his crewmates.
I’m no hero.
I’ll never be worthy of Nic-coal. I can't have anything for myself, let alone her. I'm leashed to Samara, and the mere thought of serving someone else, let alone mate binding, sends painful spikes into my head.
No, I’m Nic-coal’s now. I push back, holding onto the part of myself that wants to stay. Original orders from the Prif echo in my head, clear and undeniable, overriding everything else. The intensity of the command flattens me, a relentless surge of orders tearing me apart from the inside out.
Take a female from another planet. Bring her to Oloria. See the Prif. The thought of defying the Prif’s directive brings a fresh wave of pain, like the eye reinstalling into my brain.
I clutch my head. No. I have to stay with Nic-coal. I have to!
A twisted, desperate, cowardly thought creeps in: I want the oblivion of a Pranastock, the numbness with the numbers that lets me stop thinking, stop feeling.
No choices, no conflict. No guilt. Life was easy, unthinking, and simple as a Pranastock.
I shift.
The cool detachment of a Pranastock wraps around me like armor, sealing away the agony of longing for Nic-coal. I can’t be with her, I cannot belong to her. I belong to the Prif.
I straighten up as a pilot. Once again I move with precision, each step a calculation.
“Arture?” Nic-coal’s scared, gathering the covers around her naked body, eyes wide. Although her fear registers with me, it doesn’t move me. While I let her touch me, she doesn't truly reach inside me.
She licks her lips. “Arture, speak to me. Does it hurt?”