Chapter 24

CHAPTER 24

ALINA

" H ow are you, Alina?"

Dr. Pertin leaned forward, fingers interlaced beneath his chin, elbows propped atop his table.

"I'm better," she said truthfully.

Objectively everything was much worse, and much too complicated. But in her body? She'd breathed in Threxin's hak stuff again that morning and it worked .

"I'm glad to hear our strategies have helped tide you over in this difficult time."

Right… Dr. Pertin had always given her these little tricks to try to do after their NS adjustment sessions. They could help sometimes. But the meat of the treatment was always in the neuroadjustment he'd performed through their NS links. Which she'd been severely lacking. But at least there was the hak.

"Yeah. Me too." Alina offered a small smile.

"How are you handling what happened at the dock?"

Alina shifted in her seat. "It's fine. How are you handling it?"

He was there too, wasn't he? The entire command deck was .

"It is, of course, a terrible thing to witness for anybody, myself included." Dr. Pertin looked at her, as if waiting.

"Well, it was fucking horrendous, obviously." Alina smoothed her fingers over her trousers. "I just… Those people were addicted. Killing them like that was not the answer, of course," she rushed. "I wish he'd just… isolate them somehow."

Dr. Pertin reclined in his seat, twining his fingers atop the table. "Do you think exorin addiction is contagious between humans, Alina?"

"Well, no, but… It just shouldn't be normalized."

"I see."

"Threxin should not have killed those people," she reiterated. She didn't want to give him the wrong idea. "That was a monstrous thing to do."

Dr. Pertin scribbled something on his tablet, and Alina was about to say something more convincing when he looked up and pressed his auth to the drawer beneath his desk.

"Well, I have good news," he said. The drawer slid open with a rustle of the runners. She stared at the small white box he extracted.

"Oh, I don't need…"

"I know you don't need it. But you're in an especially high-stress situation, your duties to Kaia Halena putting you in closer proximity to the situation than many others. Keep it as a backup. If you never have to use it, so be it."

"Are you sure others don't need it more?"

"You have a tendency to put others before yourself, Alina."

"Well, like I said, I am fine, and if someone else needs it more…" She trailed off as he blinked at her.

"Are you afraid I may not be objective, Alina?"

"Maybe a little…" It all sounded so silly.

Dr. Pertin slid the container toward her. "It is already keyed to your print. But there is only a four-day dose here. Use it strategically perhaps, if you use it at all."

Alina stared at it for a few seconds, then tucked the box into her jacket pocket. "Thanks."

She wasn't going to use it, Alina told herself back in her cabin. She'd tried it once years ago and hated it. Her mother had been on it, and it did jack shit for her. Mom had refused neuroadjustments and tried to make do with more primitive methods like talking and medicine. Alina had been determined to avoid Harmonapam, and it worked, until their Neurosyncs got cut off…

Granted, things were now more complicated than anything she'd had to deal with since her mother's Upload. Alina didn't know what to do with all the mixed messages she was getting from Threxin. One minute he was calling her a useless pest to "study" and the next he was calming her down, giving her weird mineral stuff from his world. He'd even arranged the appointment with Dr. Pertin. Alina wondered how many others got a chance to process what they'd witnessed Threxin do to those people in the dock with a medical professional. Was she receiving special treatment for what she did?

Maybe he's doing all the same things for other people.

Alina didn't like how much she didn't like that thought.

She wished he'd just be horrible all the time. At least then it'd be easy to hate him. And he came to her for help after the… dock incident. Even though he'd said she was bad for healing, it was her doorstep he'd come to for care. She couldn't remember a single time Kaia had called on her like that.

Maybe with the uhyre, changed as they were— forcibly evolved—didn't have to be the enemy. They were all going to their New Earth, after all. Was sharing such a bad thing, especially knowing the uhyre had matured out of their aggression and Threxin had no intention of forcing their species to mingle? He'd wanted to build a wall, in fact!

A wall that will rid me of Threxin forever.

A thought about which Alina was happy and not conflicted at all. This wasn't about her and Threxin anyway. It was bigger than… whatever was happening between them.

Which is nothing .

Alina had seen Threxin that morning at the command center when delivering breakfast to Kaia. It was hard to act normal while seeing him overexert himself yet again. He seemed perfectly capable of pretending she did not exist. Alina, on the other hand, had to keep herself from glancing his way to assess his condition.

Alina had focused on Kaia, evaluating her overall state as best she could. It had taken effort not to stare at her stomach for a hint of her showing. How long had it been anyway?

But a pregnancy, the rarity that it was, required frequent checkups, tests, genetic optimizations. A whole foray of care was needed to ensure a smooth, viable child—especially one as important as this. Surely there was some doctor on Colossal who had gained their confidence and was monitoring things.

Alina took another inhale of hak, the vapor cupped to her face with one hand as she held the mineral with the other. It was different from her single memory of Harmonapam. Though both served to alleviate her restlessness, Harmonapam had done it by making it feel like her brain had been plucked from her skull and dipped in a freezebox. It was a more potent but disconnected sensation that slowed everything down to effectively stop her overthinking. Or thinking at all for a while. But it was too cold and impersonal. It made her not herself. Like she was just watching herself operate outside of her body.

In comparison, Threxin's strange mineral coated her insides with syrupy warmth. Like her mom used to tuck her in as a child, the hak quashed her worries with a mild sense of fuzzy relaxation.

The scratching it induced in her throat, though satisfying, made Alina wary. Back on Old Earth they had these things called cigarettes that poisoned whoever consumed them, blackening their lungs and increasing cancer risk. They were banned on colonies now, of course. This stuff didn't look the same… but you were still breathing the stuff into your lungs. Alina sighed and put the hak away, resisting a final comforting breath.

She stood in the rear dock later that day, staring at the pristinely scrubbed spot where all the exorin and blood had been spilled. She fought a pang of nausea. Alina rubbed her clammy palms against her thighs and walked to the dockmaster's office for her job sheet.

"Three through fifteen today," the man said gruffly as he checked his sheet. "Try to get through at least five."

The hours flew by, the quiet isolation of the dock helping her focus. After getting through the five Ariels as instructed, Alina scrubbed her hands with the degreasing powder from her cart. She worked at all the oil that had gotten on her skin. She massaged her elbows to work out the knots there.

The dockmaster was signing off on her work when he nodded at someone behind her. Kaia and Isabelle approached them, side by side. They looked casual. Like friends. That was weird, since the two had a pretty contentious relationship in Kaia's pilot academy days. Alina sniffed, busying herself by grabbing a rag from the cart to wipe the nonexistent remnants of degreaser from her hands.

"Good, you're here," Kaia said .

She's here for me?

Alina glanced up, wondering if she misunderstood. Kaia never came looking for her. "Did you need something?"

The look that passed between the dockmaster, Isabelle, and Kaia was strange. Like they all knew something she didn't.

"Not now, but I'd like you to be in the command center for the jump tomorrow. In case I need you."

Right. Tomorrow .

Colossal would be jumping to the edge of known human space, and from there, their traversal to the other side would begin.

The uhyre Alina had seen in the halls had been agitated all day, extra vigilant. It made sense— Colossal would be surrounded by human ships, planets, scouts… If anyone stumbled upon them and figured out Colossal was infested with uhyre, there'd be hell to pay. How many humans would it take to overpower two hundred uhyre on a colony ship?

And what would happen to Threxin and Renza if they succeeded?

"Of course," Alina said. "I'll be there first thing in the morning."

"Good."

They stood in silence for a few awkward seconds before Alina got the hint—they were waiting for her to leave. Kaia was a pilot. They probably just hung out together. Maybe Kaia had friends . Why wouldn't she?

"Well, have a good night," Alina smiled thinly and rolled her cart back into storage.