Chapter 23
TWENTY-THREE
ARTURE
Fragments of memory flicker in and out like faint stars on a clouded night. Pain hovers, sharp and close, waiting to take hold if I dare focus too much. I cling to the fractured impressions, trying to piece them together, but they slip past me like the water in the channel we dug together.
I’m a Pranastock, happily running calculations on a planet’s surface, an essential part of my crew. Numbers flow easily, patterns emerge—it’s all I know, all I am.
Flash.
Gara, his voice a low growl, telling me that a particular plant is poisonous. His tone is insistent, his warning clear.
Flash.
I see myself picking it up, but it doesn’t feel like me. The bulb pinches me, its juices sizzling against the metal of my palm. I don't know why I have it, but I need it. For something.
Flash.
The golden sheen of a compound rises ahead of my feet. I stand outside, confused, unsure of why I’m here or how I got here. I just… know I’m supposed to be.
Flash.
Parthiastocks appear, their movements brisk as they lead me inside. I don’t question them. I don’t think to.
Flash.
Prif Samara’s voice rings out. She speaks the code words, and they hit me like a blaster shot, electrifying all my nerves. My hearts judder, their speed making sense, as if a star chart has suddenly taken form in front of me.
I stand before her, sweat trickling down the scales on my back. My breath is ragged, my body trembling. She’s asking me a question, but my head feels like it’s splitting apart.
“Did you find a new poison?”
This memory stays, it doesn’t flicker or fade. Her words thunder like galloping hooves in my head, and I hear my own voice respond, quiet and weak.
“Yes,” I say.
Samara smiles, satisfied, pacing around me. “Good. Now, there’s a threat to me. What do you do to threats to me?”
“Destroy them,” I answer automatically.
“Yes. Good.”
I glance up at the others in the room with us. “Is it one of these Samarastocks?”
They step back, winding up their arms, but Samara puts a hand out in front of me. All I can see are her glorious red lips forming the sweet words of my orders. “You’ll do anything for me, won’t you, Alpha?”
“Yes.”
Her gaze hardens. “Go eliminate Katyen.”
The name calls to mind a blurry figure. A scientist, her visits infrequent. Her touch cool. Calming.
The weight of Samara’s command crushes me. My knees threaten to buckle, my thoughts twist and warp under the strain.
“I can’t do it,” I mumble.
Pain lances through my right eye, stabbing deep into my skull. “You will,” Samara insists, her voice cold and absolute over my screams.
And I know, with horrifying clarity, that she’s right. I will. I have no choice.
I must have killed Katyen.
“No.” I try to scream. I killed a female.
I'm the reason Ilia was charged with treason.
I'm the reason we were all exiled.
And there’s more—something dark and immense, looming in the recesses of my mind. It draws closer with every heartbeat, chasing me no matter how fast I try to flee from it. I don’t want to see it. I can’t confront it. But it’s there, pacing after me, insistent, and it will consume me if I let it in.
But I have to. I have to. Whatever it is, it’s linked to Nic-coal and why she’s here. I’ll do it for her.
So I turn and I confront it, screaming into its teeth.
Snatches of memory break through. Training, electric shocks coursing through my body. A mask pressed tight over my face. My arms, I can feel my own arms, organic and strong, gripping the edges of a table, trembling in their restraints. The pain is deep, but the fear cuts deeper.
The desperate tossing of my head shows me more Samarastocks, all bound onto surgery tables as I am. The tables tip upright so we can see the glorious golden figure in the middle. She glares at us, and my stomach clenches. What have I done to displease her?
“You Samarastocks are supposed to be my ultimate weapon. Robots are too precious, the science to create them lost, so I will have to rely on organic tissue given form. If there was a way to combine the two, that would be ideal.”
Perhaps one day I will find a way to combine robotics and organic matter, and become her perfect Samarastock. Yes. I clutch onto the table edge.
The Prif’s fingers play over the dials in front of her. Around me, Samarastocks whimper in fear of the coming pain, but I raise my chin. I can endure anything for her.
“You will help me. I need to keep my position secure, unchallenged. I need the threat of war.”
War. Samara’s voice weaves through my body, her words wrapping around my hearts, my mind, threading into every corner of who I am. This is her ultimate aim. Her goal. Yes.
“Not war itself, but the threat of an intergalactic power coming to revenge itself upon us. I will spin an event and convince all the females that the threat is present and real, but to do that, I need your help.”
Yes. I will help. I ball my hands into fists. I will do anything she asks of me.
“On your travels, if you should come across one…” She lingers over the button which will shoot us full of mind-wiping pain. “Take her.”
Yes. Take a female.
“Bring her back here, to Oloria. See me. Then, we move into phase two.”
Phase two. Phase… two. The thought twists into something monstrous, clawing at the edges of my sanity, threatening to drag me into an abyss I can never climb out of.
No. I don’t want to think about phase two. I pull away from the memory, clawing away from the awful truth hidden inside me.
What the Prif wants me to do to that female.
I scream. It doesn’t drown out her voice. It doesn’t erase her command. It doesn’t stop the horror from consuming me whole.
She might as well be here, with me, guiding my every move. Every shadow twists into her shape, every whisper in the wind becomes her voice. I see her, draped in gold, glowing like a goddess. A vengeful, spiteful goddess.
“Well done,” she says, her voice a venomous purr. “You’ve brought me a female from another world. You’ve fulfilled your purpose.”
Her words wrap around my throat like fetters, dragging me down. All I can do is scream. Pain rips through me, but it doesn’t reach her. It never reaches her.
I can’t fight her. I’ve never been able to. Not truly. I’ve always been her slave, and she’s always known it. Every part of me, my strength, my mind, my will, has been bent and twisted to serve her.
In my mind, she leans down, her golden silhouette blurring into something monstrous. Her breath brushes my ear as she whispers, soft and taunting, “Good boy.”
I cough, expelling the liquid filling my lungs. The pain is like a clamp around my chest, but it’s nothing compared to the agony of every beat of my hearts.
I’m a murderer. I killed a female. I committed the worst crime a clone, no, any male, ever can, something against our very nature. The ultimate instruction, and I broke it. My hands shake.
“Are your nanites overclocked to maximum?” a voice asks.
Through blurry eyes, I focus on the green clone next to me. A Selthiastock. I sit up on a cot, looking around.
The healer's tent is a patchwork of necessity and efficiency, draped with faded plasglass panels carrying the stains of time and use.
The air smells of antiseptic herbs, mingled with the faint metallic tang of blood and the musk of sweat.
Dim lights cast uneven shadows across the room, illuminating shelves stacked with vials of serums, rolls of gauze, and jars of salves.
A row of narrow cots line one side of the tent, their sheets crisp, while a low table in the center is cluttered with medical tools, some rudimentary, others advanced enough to rival the labs of the Prif.
The hum of a diagnostic scanner fills the space, blending with the muted sounds of the oasis outside.
How’d I get here?
The Selthiastock rocks back on his heels. “Thank the All-Mother, you’re alive, although barely. Do you remember what happened?”
That’s the problem, I don’t want to remember. But he probably means the event which landed me in here. I recall climbing, seeing Nic-coal, helping a Lautostock who was about to fall… and then another, murderous clone.
I shake my head.
“You fell from the ropes, but a few Parthiastocks and the like tried to grab you, to slow you down. By the time you hit the bottom, it was only a short fall and you weren't going fast enough to kill you. Thank the All-Mother you’re a hardy Gerverstock.” He puts his hand on my shoulder, squeezing briefly.
“Your nanites will repair your legs soon enough. You’ll have lost ground on the physical challenge, but as the plenary won't start until tomorrow, you’ll probably be in time to enter.
You'll only have one question to answer, though.”
How can I communicate to this clone my world has ended?
How do I tell him everything I thought I could be has been replaced by a horrific truth, worse than I could ever have imagined?
I've killed a female. I'm unnatural, a twisted clone lurking in their midst. I can’t save Nic-coal. I’m capable of killing a female, and worse, I’ve remembered Samara’s purpose for bringing her here, and I can’t tell anyone.
“Kill me,” I croak.
“What's that?” He leans close to listen, frowning.
But before I can speak, he glances behind me and scrambles to his feet with a gasp, scales flashing neon green. “Female, welcome.”
And I turn to see the woman I most and least want to see.