There All Along (19 page)

T
hey are stronger than you are.

They are faster than you are.

They are more relentless than you will ever be.

They will never stop.

It had been drilled into every recruit since childhood. The Wirthera were the enemy that could not be defeated, only held back. No soldier joined the Sheirran Defense Force believing he or she could be part of destroying the Wirthera, only that they would most likely give their lives in service to keep them from consuming Sheira the way they’d already devoured and ruined so many other worlds.

He was nameless, but not completely without memory. He knew the Wirthera could not be defeated. That had never stopped him from believing he should try. Three cycles, that’s what he remembered. Three cycles he’d spent leading his troops in the fringes of his own galaxy, far from home. Far from the life he’d had before his father had shamed him into no longer ignoring the family legacy of service. But what life had that been? All he could recall were the three cycles of cold and lonely space, fighting an unseen enemy, defending the people and world he loved against the attacks not of the Wirthera themselves, but of their advance scouts. Keeping his world a secret to keep it safe.

Fire. Smoke. The clang of metal on metal. Screams. The brightness of starfire, so beautiful and deadly.

Pain, always pain.

He could not be sure what had gone wrong, only that the hornets they’d blown up had not all been destroyed. One must’ve gotten away, back through the fields of starfire that helped to protect this galaxy from detection. Found its way home. Returned with its bigger brother, an advance Wirtheran fleet.

There’d always been rumors, of course, that the Wirthera were sneaky, distrustful even of their own technology, that sometimes they send their own troops to explore rather than relying on the fleets of hornets. That was how his ancestors’ world had been conquered, by suspicious Wirtheran ships scouting on the tail of a horde of hornets. His family had been one of the few that managed to escape, fleeing ahead of the giant cruisers that had surrounded the small planet and systematically began consuming every resource and obliterating all traces of life.

Those ancestors had found a second home far away, not like their home planet of lush green jungles and vast seas, but instead of deserts and sand. They’d mingled and joined with the native population and homesteaders from other nearby worlds to make a new life, and generations later, their people were still hiding and fighting against the insidious, never-ending Wirtheran forces.

Stronger. Faster. More relentless. His captors had proven themselves to be that and so much more. The Wirthera had an inhuman capacity for cruelty and an insatiable curiosity.

They made . . . experiments.

He had listened to the sounds of his shipmates’ screams for days. Locked in a featureless cell, no visible door or window, just smooth, polished metal that vibrated without cease and made his entire body ache. Naked, with nothing soft to lay on. Nothing to eat or drink.

Periods of blackout, when they took him. When he woke, only the pain was left to show something had been done to him. It had been better than when they stopped making him unconscious, when they left him awake to watch the slit opening in his cell in place of the nonexistent door.

Metal arms had cuffed him, dragged him free. The Wirtheran ’bots were different than the ones he was used to—perhaps constructed with the faces of their makers, they were alien, insectile things with multiple limbs and jointed bodies. They made no noises, no cooing chirps or whirrs or buzzes. Their silence was terrifying.

In a different room, full of tools and instruments, they strapped him onto a gurney. They’d probably done it dozens of times before, but this time he was awake, fighting the bonds. It didn’t matter that he knew he couldn’t get free; the instinct to fight and survive overwhelmed all reason.

And then . . . they came. The Wirthera, covered in their plated armor. He choked and gagged on the stink of them. He screamed at them to show their faces, but they made no answer. Always silent. Never ceasing.

After a while, he begged for them to make him unconscious again. Not long after that, he begged for them to let him die. That was when the dreams began.

Then it no longer mattered what they did to his body, because he had the dreams. In some small part of his mind, he knew the sexual pleasures offered to him were all part of the experiment, though what purpose they served he couldn’t begin to guess. He knew the flavors of the food he ate at the banquets they laid out for him were as false as the caresses of the women, that all the other joys he experienced were also not real. And yet the dreams were so much better than the pain or even the monotony of being in the cell that there came a day when he begged for them to take him, to do whatever they wanted, if only he could be in the dreamworld again.

That was when the real pain had begun.

H
ow is he?” The screen flickered, first stretching, then shrinking the Rav Aluf’s face.

“He’s . . . improving.”

Teila didn’t bother fiddling with the controls. The sound was fine, and she didn’t need to see her father-in-law’s expression to know he looked disapproving. She continued slicing the pellet of milka as she talked. She knew it would annoy him to see her doing what he’d call menial labor, but he seemed to forget that even with the money the SDF paid her for the care and keeping of its cast-offs, it wasn’t like she could afford a retinue of servants. Besides, she liked working in the kitchen.

“What does that mean?”

She gave the screen a sideways glance. It would also irritate him that she wasn’t giving him her full and direct attention. “It means that he’s improving. As they all do. Slowly. It takes time.”

“His memory?”

“He remembers plenty,” Teila said. “But only the bad things. Much of the time, he thinks he’s dreaming this place. Me. That he’s still being held by the Wirthera.”

The Rav Aluf muttered angrily. “I thought being here would be best! That he’d return to his own mind sooner, but now I see I was wrong. I should’ve taken him home.”

“This is his home!” Teila put down the carved blade and turned to the screen with her hands on her hips. “This was his home for years before you played upon his guilt and made him a soldier!”

“He was my son and an excellent soldier!”

“Yes,” Teila said. “And he was also an excellent husband. My husband. And he’d have been an excellent father, had he been given the chance.”

The Rav Aluf looked suddenly so much older. Defeated. He rubbed a hand across his eyes. “Would that he be given the chance now, daughter. For that, we can both ask the Mothers.”

“My hands are tied,” she said after a minute. “I can’t tell him his real name or who I am to him. All I can do is be a wife to him as best I can, even though he doesn’t know me. I told you to take him. You didn’t want to.”

“Do you still want me to?”

She hesitated, then shook her head. As his nightmares had eased, she’d seen more and more glimpses of the man she’d married. In fact, Teila was ashamed to have even suggested his father remove him—though she’d never have admitted it to him.

“Do your best.” His tone made it clear he didn’t think it would be good enough.

It was futile to retort. He would never soften toward her. Still, her anger manifested itself in words she had no time to say before he’d ended the call, and Teila had to satisfy herself with working out her anger on the milka pellet. It was in shards by the time she was finished. Ruined for anything but pudding.

Stephin was the only one who liked milka pudding—everyone else took theirs solid or not at all. So after the treat had set and was ready to be eaten, Teila climbed the stairs to look for him. At this time of the day he was supposed to be taking lessons from his teachbot under the watchful tutelage of his amira, who was skeptical about the benefits of trying to educate a child so young. She often tried to sneak him out of the lessons, claiming there was plenty of time in adulthood for him to learn different languages or career skill sets, so it was no surprise to Teila when she found her son missing from the study room, though the ’bot was operational and droning the first one hundred useful words in Fendalese.

It was a little more disconcerting when she couldn’t find him in his bedroom, or the living space they shared. Nor could she see him from any of the room’s three glass walls, overlooking most of the lighthouse property. Amira Densi was supposed to know better than to allow the boy to play along the sea unattended. Fenda children were born knowing how to swim, but Stephin was not Fenda. He could so easily step out to a depth over his head and be swept away.

“Stephin?” Teila moved through their shared quarters, but her boy was nowhere to be found.

Amira Densi she found dozing in a patch of sun at the end of the corridor. For an instant, Teila was furious, but when the amira let out a small snore that vibrated her whiskers, she reminded herself that Densi was an old, old Fenda. The Sheir natives lived so many more cycles than the homesteaders who’d come to populate the world. A nap in the sun was probably unavoidable for her.

That understanding did nothing to stave off Teila’s growing unease. But before she could shake Amira Densi awake, she heard her boy’s familiar lilting laughter from down the hall. From Jodah’s room.

Teila set off at a run—Stephin didn’t sound like he was in distress, but she wasn’t going to take a chance. Slipping through the doorway, she stopped short at the sight of Jodah sitting upright, Stephin on his lap. Both heads of identically curly dark hair bent over the tablet in Stephin’s hands. The boy was showing Jodah some of his favorite animations.

Teila had watched them all a dozen or more times, could’ve recited them word for word, and her son had watched them far more often than that. He pointed excitedly at the screen, bouncing on Jodah’s lap. Jodah looked puzzled, but he was looking at the screen from a normal distance. Almost as though he could see it.

“I don’t understand,” he said. “Why do they have to catch the colored balls with those straws?”

“Because it’s an excuse for them to dance around singing silly songs,” Teila said.

Jodah looked up. He definitely saw her. His eyes widened and his lips parted, just a little. He looked . . . ashamed.

“Your eyes?”

“I can see,” he told her. “Everything was blurry when I woke up. But then this little one came in with this tablet, and at first everything was still unclear. But then as I watched, I noticed I could see the figures on the screen, not just fuzzy blobs.”

“That means you’re healing.”

He looked at her, his pale gray eyes narrowed. Despite the scabs and bruising still so prominent, it was a look she’d seen many times. Calculating. Working through the pieces of a puzzle. “Where am I?”

“Adarat vi Apheera. The lighthouse.”

His lips curved and his head tilted. “A lighthouse. I’m in a lighthouse.”

“Yes. On the edge of the Sea of Sand.” She’d told him this before, but kept her voice carefully light, her expression neutral, trying to see if there was any sign of recognition. This had been his home for ten years. The place where he’d met and married her. It was the place his father had chosen to bring him so he could find his way back to himself.

Jodah’s gaze grew shuttered. He shifted Stephin off his lap. “I’m tired now.”

“Stephin, come.” Teila held out her hand for the boy, who reluctantly did as he’d been bid. “We’ll let you rest. I’ll be back with something for you to eat—”

“I’m not hungry.”

“You should eat,” she said gently. “I’ll bring a tray.”

“I said I’m not hungry!”

His shout startled the boy, who began to cry. Teila gathered him close, but Jodah was already on his feet, advancing on them both. She hadn’t forgotten how tall he was, or how broad. But she’d never seen him this way. Menacing and dangerous. She’d never seen him as a soldier.

Instinctively, she pushed her son behind her and held up a hand. “You’re scaring the boy! Stop it!”

Jodah moved fast and was on her in two long strides. One arm reached for her and he closed on her throat. Not squeezing or hurting, not yet, but the promise of it was there.

Teila kept her voice steady. “Stephin. Go find Amira Densi. Now.”

Her boy was so good, so obedient. He went at once, yelling for the amira. Teila met Jodah’s gaze without flinching or showing the fear rising in her.

“Who are you?”

“My name is Teila. I’m the—” His fingers squeezed a little, still not hurting, but the pressure gave her pause. “Lighthouse keeper.”

“Why am I here?”

“To rest and recover.”

“Why a lighthouse?” Jodah’s pale eyes went dark from the wideness of his pupils. “Why not a medica?”

She had no easy answer for that question. Why were any of them sent here to recover instead of a medica, other than they all had injuries that mere medicines and surgery couldn’t cure? That there were too many soldiers who came back and not enough places for them to recover? Before she could answer, Jodah moved closer, his hand still at her throat, the other moving to fist in her hair and tip her head back a little. His breath gusted over her face as he muttered into her ear.

“You aren’t real.”

Teila closed her eyes. He could kill her in a heartbeat. Snap her neck. Throttle her. If she gave him the wrong reply, the nanotriggers could be engaged. He could turn. The problem was, she didn’t know what she was supposed to say.

“I’m real,” she breathed.

He let her go so suddenly she sagged forward and had to grab the doorframe to keep herself from falling. Jodah backed away from her, disgust splashed across his face. She couldn’t tell if it was for her, or for himself. He turned his back, shoulders hunched.

“That’s what they want me to think,” Jodah said. “So they can break me.”

S
he’d told him his name was Jodah, but that felt like a lie, and if the name she’d given him wasn’t true, how could any of the rest of it be?

He worked his fingers, one by one. His wrists, elbows, shoulders. Feeling every ache along every nerve, in every bone. He’d been broken, he remembered enough to know that. Put back together, but like a shattered vase, incapable of holding water.

He studied his reflection. The eyes blinked when he wanted them to. The mouth opened and closed. This was his face in the mirror, but he didn’t recognize it.

The ever-present agony was becoming memory, but that too could be a trick. They took the suffering away, only to return it a deca-fold. When he shattered the mirror with his fist it made a new, fresh pain, the shards of glass slicing at his skin. Making him bleed. Dispassionately, he watched the bright drops splash from his wounds onto the white tile floor. Then he wrapped his hand in a towel until the bleeding stopped.

The woman had brought him a tray as she’d promised. The food on it was real—not broth or pudding or ration paste, but thick slices of bread and milka, a portion of grains and greens. He hadn’t touched any of it, wary of what it might contain, still half-believing that it was figment and would leave his body hungry no matter how much of it he ate. He’d had no real appetite for so long that the ache in his stomach had first seemed like just another torment, but now he fell upon the food ravenously and devoured every bite to the point of sickness.

When his vision had cleared, so had a brightness in the edges of it. A long stream of numbers, images, and words, constantly scrolling so fast that none of them were clear. When he blinked or closed his eyes, the brightness was still there. If he concentrated on it hard enough, he might be able to bring it into focus, but doing so flared agony inside his skull sharp enough to keep him from trying it more than a few times.

That was not part of the dream; he knew that much. But the rest of it . . . He paced the length and width of this space, measuring and mapping it with every stride. If this was a dream, the room could change at any time. If this was real . . . if all of this was real . . .

Something inside him wouldn’t allow himself to believe that. Hope could kill him faster than his captors. So he paced the room and stored the calculations, and he fed his body with what he was convinced was nothing but imagination.

Yet when he woke in the morning, the tray was still there, littered with crumbs. And his hand still stung, the blood crusted in the myriad of cuts. Glass scattered the tiles, along with the spatters of blood. The room had not changed size or shape.

And there was the woman again. Teila. She looked at the mess on the floor, the breakage and the blood, and when she spoke to him her voice was cold and stern.

“If you’re strong enough to break that mirror, you’re well enough to clean it up,” she said. “I’ll bring you a mop and broom.”

She did, too, and left him to the task. She brought him fresh clothes when she came back. A bar of soap, another towel.

“Clean yourself up too,” she told him. “You stink.”

Some dream, Jodah thought as he went into the bathroom and ran the water as hot as he could stand it. The world swam as he stood beneath the spray, head bent to let it pound over him. The wounds in his hand stung afresh when the water hit them, washing away the dried blood. He put them both against the shower’s stone walls.

When they came for him, it was always without warning. How many times had he woken in a place he didn’t know? At first believing he’d been rescued or had escaped, later knowing none of it was real—later still, knowing and pretending he didn’t so that he could cling to whatever relief the dreams brought.

What was this, now?

She said she was real, but they always did. And though his hand burned and ached from the cuts, he believed they would make anything happen in the dreams to convince him it was truly happening and not just in his head. Even giving him pain.

Shaking, he clutched at the shower, trying to find the part of his brain that stored the memories he’d marked as real. He couldn’t find it. He could access faded recollection, bits and pieces of events—a birthday as a child. The sound of a song playing while he danced with a woman in his arms, though she had no face. The smell of baking bread. The sound of laughter.

“Jodah?”

Turning, he found her looking at him with concern. He could see all of her now. What had been a blur of curves and shadows had become her face. Dark eyes beneath arched, dark brows. A lush mouth, red as . . . red as a whale’s backbone, he thought. Remembering.

He reached for her, pulling her beneath the water. Her startled laugh cut off beneath his kiss. She gasped when he tugged at the laces of her sodden robe, and when she was naked in his arms, pinned against the wall, she said his name. Once, softly, then again, louder.

“That’s not my name,” he told her.

Naked, he pushed against her. His cock rose against her slick flesh. She smelled so good. She tasted good too, her mouth like sweet berries. Her lips soft and warm. When he put a hand between her legs, the heat there sent a shudder of pleasure through him.

He went to his knees in front of her, water sluicing over them both as he feasted on her. He lapped at her clit until she moaned and thrust herself against him. Then he slid a finger inside her, stroking at the spot just behind her pubic bone. Her fingers tightened in his hair, pulling him hard against her. He licked and fucked inside her until she cried out, the walls of her cunt clenching tight on his finger. Her clit leaped under his tongue, and he drank her sweetness until she went still.

He looked up at her, the water spattering on his face, blurring and blinding his vision. Yet her face was still clear. She cupped his cheek softly.

“What
is
your name?” she asked him.

Pain like a knife in his skull split his head, doubling him onto his hands and knees. It pried at his brains. He shook with it.

She knelt beside him, her hand stroking down his back. Over and over. She said nothing, just offered comfort, until he could stand no more. Pushing her back onto the hard tiles, he fitted himself inside her. He hated himself for it, this hunger that drove away all rational thought. This need, this greed. But the pleasure forced the pain away, and when he thrust harder, she cried out and wrapped her arms and legs around him to draw him deeper into her.

Desire crested. It took away everything else, and he got lost in it. In her. And when at last shuddering, he spent himself, she murmured soft words in his ear and cupped the back of his neck until he pushed himself off her.

His knees and elbows felt bruised, and he didn’t miss the way she winced when he helped her to her feet. Dreams didn’t feel pain. No matter what had ever happened in them, what force he’d ever used—and sometimes there’d been a great deal—none of the dream women had ever shown so much as a glimmer of discomfort.

The shower water had tangled her hair over her shoulders, and she raked through it with her fingers before wrapping it in a towel. She was free and easy in her nakedness in a way that suddenly shamed him. How many times had he taken her like this? No words of love or even kindness, just simple, hardened lust. Selfish.

“Here.” She handed him a towel and turned off the water. “Come on, you should get back into bed. I’ve put fresh sheets on it for you.”

She startled when he grabbed her wrist, and he eased his grip, mindful for the first time of how much bigger he was. How easy it was to hurt her. When he let her go, she stepped back with a small but wary smile.

“Thank you,” he said. “For . . . everything.”

For a moment, she said nothing, but her eyes glimmered. She cleared her throat, her voice rough when she answered, “I’m paid very well to keep you here.”

No dream would ever have said such a thing. Those women cooed and fluttered. They seduced.

“I’m sorry,” he told her, “that I’m such a terrible patient.”

“You always—” Her teeth clamped down on the words. She backed away from him. “You should get some more rest. You’re not well.”

He couldn’t argue with that. He didn’t feel well. He felt uneasy, unsettled. On edge. And that, too, told him this was no dream. So, if he was not in his cell at the mercy of the Wirthera, and he was not on board the ship he could just barely remember, doing what he could only vaguely recall, and he wasn’t in one of the hallucination dreams . . .

That meant all of this
was
real.