22. Obila Part III Shadows

Auren woke.

It took his memory a moment to catch up, and his last thought—terror as he'd felt the whir of air right before the blade ended him—caused him to crash straight into Lupo, grasping frantically at his neck as the men tumbled to the ground.

"Facile, amore mio," a familiar voice whispered into his ear. "Easy."

Auren fought against the voice instinctively, wrestling against the vicelike grip for a moment before realizing he was back. He was still surviving.

"But Bartie," he gasped, feeling the thin scar where his head had been stitched back onto… "Is this… is this a new body? Was I dead?!"

A shadow flickered in the corner of his mind. Just for a moment, right out along the fringes of his sanity. A whisper of something dark. Something ancient. Something that had followed him back from the endless void he'd just been floating in?—

But then he was jolted back to reality. Lupo hugged him tightly from behind, his hot tears splashing against his neck.

Auren felt… cold. Numb. And a part of him desired to reach out and comfort the man, while another part was still distracted by his neck, by memories of Bartie and the Keth and now… the shadow thing.

"Bartie… got away," Lupo admitted darkly. "I'm so sorry I failed you. I promised I'd keep you safe," he muttered into Auren's neck. The warmth of his breath begged to thaw the chill that seemed to have settled across this iteration of himself, though not entirely.

"It's alright," Auren said, his heart rate finally returning to normal. He patted Lupo's hand on his shoulder.

He looked around, expecting to be aboard the Fortunato, but was instead greeted with a den or shop of sorts. The gravity of the world felt familiar. But it couldn't be…

"Are we on Obila?" he asked cautiously.

Lupo began to laugh despite his tears. "How did you know?" he asked, sniffling.

"The gravity." Auren laughed. "Feels like home, I guess." He shrugged. He'd only been on three planets. On Vesperion he had felt heavy and sluggish. On Thestle, and now Obila, light and nimble. And since they weren't dead, and the last he'd seen of Thestle felt like the end of the world, the guess had been easy to make. He looked down at his foot, lifting it and turning his ankle this way and that.

"How do you feel?" Lupo asked cautiously.

"I feel… like I did. Mostly," Auren said hesitantly.

His thoughts floated to the horror of the void, but he was unable to focus on what it contained. For now, he decided to keep the thoughts—and fear—to himself.

"And your… neck?" Lupo asked cautiously. Auren heard the guilt in his voice. He knew full well that the situation had been out of Lupo's hands.

"It's fine, Lupo. I don't blame you for what happened," he assured him. "Thank you for rescuing me."

He gently kissed the hand still clasped on his shoulder. The older man began to cry again, burying his head in Auren's bare neck. The ceramic floor burned cold against Auren's naked ass, and it was as he noticed that discomfort that the roboticist came into view, looking at him through a holo-lens and performing some type of inspection.

"Do you feel… like yourself?" the stranger asked in a high-pitched whir. "Nothing… odd? A packet—a rather large packet—of data transmitted itself into your backup as you were brought online. Any sense of what it was? It came from out-system; the signal was so faint I can't even trace the origin." The man sounded truly mystified.

"I feel fine," Auren repeated, lying both to himself and the other two. He shivered, convincing himself it was just from the cold of the floor.

"Hey, can I get some clothes? I'm freezing," he said, choosing to change the subject rather than dwell on the shadows.

"Oh, right. I brought you some," Lupo said, hurrying to a bag and pulling out one of the Fortunato's flight suits.

Auren slipped into it gratefully, zipping it up to his chin and covering up the faint scar, glad to have it hidden away. The odd man was still staring at him, as though the sight of him made him uneasy somehow.

"Your eyes…" the man muttered, leaning in toward him.

"What about them?" Auren asked, reaching up and feeling gently around his eye sockets for a deformity.

"They're blue," Lupo admitted quietly.

"They're otherworldly, is what they are. They shouldn't look like that," the man said, pulling away from Auren as though he'd seen something he shouldn't have.

Auren blinked. They didn't feel any different.

"Is there a mirror?" he asked, afraid suddenly of what he might see staring back at him.

"Over there," the small man said, pointing off to a corner.

Auren hurried toward it, bracing before seeing himself for the first time in this form. His eyes were blue. He knelt in front of the mirror, mystified. He leaned in so close that his nose almost pressed into the glass. His irises whirled and crackled with a pale storm, the color shimmering and flickering. And to his abject horror, lurking in the center of it all, was the shadow. He could feel it glinting back at him from deep within the black of his pupils. He could feel the chill of it as it swept through him, whispering and pulling at his subconscious but never fully making itself known. And it was then, with sudden and absolute certainty, that he realized the time he'd spent in the liminal space of the void had been real after all.

Auren heaved, feeling like he wanted to vomit, only to realize his brand-new synthetic stomach contained nothing for him to eject.

"Are you all right?" Lupo asked, joining him at the mirror. "It's probably just a defect from the connection to the new frame. We'll sort it out. Come on, there's someone outside you'll want to greet. And I'm sure Ophion will be relieved to see you again. Oh, and wait until I tell you about the war…" he babbled on.

But Auren's thoughts remained with the shadow, even as Lupo waved goodbye to the roboticist and guided him out into the pale glow of Obila.

"All sales are final!" the man called after them, his voice cracking at the effort as the door slid closed behind them.

Auren looked around, trying to orient himself, but wasn't surprised to find this district totally unfamiliar. He'd lived on Obila his entire life and had barely scratched the surface of familiarizing himself with its enormity. It was built on a scale that made even Thestle feel small.

"By the stars! Ren!" Fengári called out from his left.

The familial relief he felt at hearing his brother's voice caused his heart to slow, his throat to tighten, and the shadows to disappear—at least for now. He hugged his brother tightly. Fiercely. Auren was relieved to find that the warmth of love still seemed to bind them, and even in his altered form, with his unwanted stowaway, he couldn't help but feel suddenly and distinctly at ease. Lupo was beaming at him.

"I thought I'd never see you again after news got here about Vesperion." Fengári held him at arm's length now, looking him up and down, grinning stupidly as he always had done when he was nervous.

"It's good to see you, too. Have you gotten uglier or just older?" Auren teased, tousling his older brother's hair."

"Both," Fengári laughed. "It's good to see you, bruv."

He punched his brother playfully before hugging him again and squeezing him so tight Auren worried his frame might not be up to the force of the gesture.

"Fancy a trip to Aenaon? For old times' sake?" Auren asked. "We should show Lupo here what true Obilan cuisine looks like."

"I thought you'd never ask," Fengári replied. He pulled up his holo and ordered them a taxi. "Your room is just how you left it, by the way. You owe me about a year in back rent."

Auren glared at him, but cracked into a fit of giggles at the absurdity of all of this. He was home. And the thought of getting the chance to eat at his favorite restaurant once more was enough to distract him from the haunting whispers he was finding increasingly difficult to ignore. He hoped blindly that alcohol would do its part to drown them out. His neck itched uncomfortably at the seam.

Auren looked to Lupo, who had been watching the brothers reunite with an expression of contentment on his face. Auren wanted to reach out to him and tug them both back to the memory of Midnight's thudding music. He wanted to sever everything that had happened since then just as he had been severed.

He winced at the memory of the blade cutting him, wounding him over and over as it lanced and stoppedacross and into his torso. It had been much like the whip, except this time, it had been Lupo—or almost Lupo—gleefully delivering the pain. And the pain had been more than his mind could bear. In the void, it had been all there was…

"Did we lose you?" Fengári asked. He was waving a hand in front of Auren's face. Auren had barely noticed. He'd been so lost in the shadows…

"No, sorry," he deflected.

"Man, your eyes are spooky. No offense," Fengári chuckled, looking impatiently around at the sky for their taxi.

"Thanks, so are yours," Auren teased back.

However, he was uneasy about the inexplicable change and desperately wanted to figure out how to excise the being he knew was hiding somewhere within him. He felt it waiting, tensing, readying itself to… to… but it was like a block in his mind—as though the thought of considering its demonic agenda was verboten. And maybe it was. His thoughts bounced off of the concept any time he tried to will it to form within his digital mind. He gulped nervously, joining Fengári in the hunt for the taxi as a distraction.

With his augmented hearing, he was certain he heard its rotary blades long before his flesh-and-bone brother. He watched as the sleek, self-piloted craft slid into view from around a tall set of buildings. It lowered itself to the ground with a gentle clunk as its landing gear splayed itself out on the tiled plaza. Its door slid open, beckoning them inside to dinner.

Auren hurried in after the other two, happy to escape the memory of being decanted back into existence yet again. The taxi lifted off swiftly and without fanfare, whisking the trio toward the mega-city region where Auren had grown up. He leaned back into his seat and closed his eyes, imagining himself locking away whatever it was that had made him its home.