2. Ryklin

I reachedout to steady Noelle, my hands going to each of her biceps and holding her in place for three seconds before she tore out of my grip. Her eyes were wide, her black hair matted with sweat, and her normally light brown skin had gone pale with a sickly undertone.

"Is something wrong?" I asked. We were in Sector J, an older part of the station that was undergoing serious repairs. Everyone housed in this section had been moved to other locations, and there were warnings posted everywhere to keep out until further notice. "What are you doing here?"

She glared at me, though I didn't know why. It was a reasonable question.

I only asked reasonable questions. As a soulless Detyen, I had no motive to ask any other kind.

"I could ask you the same thing." Noelle took a few steps back and scooped her comm up from the ground. "Did you shut the door?"

"I believe there are timers on these closets." As a maintenance person, she should have known that.

Her shoulders sagged. "Right. I forgot." She nodded towards the back of the closet. "Someone's cooking Solar Flare."

It was too shrouded in shadow for me to see, but I could smell the faint hint of the drug scorching the air. "That needs to be reported."

"Yes. Obviously." She shoved her comm in her pocket. "What are you doing here?" she asked. "No one comes down here." She leaned back but hesitated before taking a step deeper into the closet.

"I was working on the greenery in the atrium of Sector J. It is my break. I decided to take a walk." The confession was my own little rebellion, though the human woman had no way of knowing that. They were words that might have once condemned me.

They had condemned me.

The soulless didn't need breaks. We didn't need vacation. What use were emotionless warriors if we still needed to be treated like people?

I couldn't take enjoyment from any of the sights on the ship, whether it was the lush greenery I helped to plant or the never-ending views of the stars around us from the viewing stations in every sector. But it was good to stretch my legs. It kept me limber, and activity kept my mind sharp.

I would give up a lot before I gave up my breaks.

"So, you just happened to stop in front of this closet?" Her eyes narrowed, and she crossed her arms. A combative pose.

I had studied Noelle's poses more than I should in the past two months. Longer than that, if I was being completely honest. She only crossed her arms like that when she was feeling threatened.

As if I was any sort of threat to her.

"I saw the door slide shut. I thought someone might be up to no good." And there had been something nagging at my mind, an itch deep in my brain I couldn't quite satisfy. It had me moving my feet before I could quite decide whether or not I should, and that itch had resolved the moment Noelle stumbled into me.

"Oh." Her arms uncrossed and she looked … I wasn't sure how to describe it. Her eyes were downcast and her mouth slightly open. For a moment, her whole being had been poised for a fight, but now she looked defeated. "Screw it, I'm done for the day. I need to report this before I get any more work done." She bent down and scooped up her tools, shoving them into a canvas sack before slinging that over her shoulder.

I stepped to the side to let her exit the closet and fell into step beside her as she walked down the corridor to the lifts.

"Are you following me?" she asked, throwing me a sideways glance, lips pursed.

"I'm escorting you." It was a long walk back to maintenance headquarters. Noelle had already been put in danger once on this station. If I could prevent it from happening a second time, I would.

She picked up her pace. "I don't need an escort."

My legs were longer than hers, and I'd spent years as a trained warrior in the Detyen Legion. It took little effort to keep up. I didn't respond. She hadn't told me to leave, not technically.

Soulless Detyens were literal; we had to be. With no emotions to guide us, all we had was what we could observe, what we saw as the objective truth. There were philosophers and psychologists who might have something else to say about that, but I didn't think about them any longer.

That was the life I'd given up six years ago.

We made it to the lifts, and Noelle jabbed her finger at the call button. "You've escorted me far enough," she said. "I can take it from here." The door to the lift slid open, and she stepped in.

I joined her. "I'm taking a walk," I said. I had a full half hour for my break and escorting her would take up most of it. It was a logical use of my time.

She made a sound in the back of her throat. Frustration, perhaps. I remembered emotion, even if I couldn't feel it, and from time to time I tried to identify the unspoken evidence of it.

The rest of the walk was silent, though Noelle shot glances at me every few minutes. Finally, we arrived back at the maintenance headquarters, and she gave me a challenging look. "See, I'm fine. No stalkers but you. Now go back to work."

"Oh." I recognized the quiet, feminine voice that came from behind us and knew the sight of me caused her distress.

Pippa Vale. Drex's denya.

I turned and nodded to her in greeting as she approached the entrance to the maintenance quarters.

What she was should have been impossible. When Detyens surrendered our souls, our emotions, we gave up the hope of life, of love, of anything to purchase a few more years in service to the Detyen Legion. It was the darkest secret of our race, that we would give up so much, become so little, just to escape the denya price for a time.

Unmated Detyens died at the age of thirty. It was a fact of life. Before our planet was destroyed a century ago, the stories had it that there had been a robust system for identifying and connecting mates. But most of the population had been wiped out in a single, crushing blow, and the survivors were scattered across the galaxy. There were few mates to be had.

There had been no need for soulless Detyens before the destruction of Detya.

I banished the thoughts; they did me no good.

"Ryklin," Pippa said, voice steady. "What are you doing here?"

"He walked me back," Noelle replied before I could say a word, and any hostility she'd been aiming towards me seemed to have evaporated. "I found some drug evidence over in Sector J, and he happened to be passing by."

"In Sector J?" I didn't need emotions to hear the skepticism dripping from her voice.

After what I'd nearly done to her mate, I did not blame her. I held no ill will towards Drex, but I hadn't believed him when he told me he found his denya. I couldn't. I still didn't understand it, but the evidence was clear enough. The man had his emotions back. It was real.

"I'm working in the atrium, and I must return. Goodbye." As I left the two women there, I wondered if I should have said anything about Drex. I'd lived with the man for nearly five years. He may have been the closest to a friend I was able to have.

And I'd tried to kill him.

I'd been convinced that he had fixated on Pippa, that he would descend into madness and violence and endanger myself and the four other soulless Detyens on the station. Protocol dictated that the fixated needed to be terminated for the protection of all.

But I had been wrong, and Drex hadn't fixated.

I took the path back to Sector J without paying much attention to my surroundings. I must have taken a wrong turn since I ended up in front of the air lock outside of the groundskeepers' storage area on level five.

The same air lock I'd demanded that Drex jump out of and end it all.

Perhaps the soulless were a mistake.

I'd never been much for religion when I'd had my emotions. The priests of the old gods still performed their rituals, and I'd known plenty of soldiers who found comfort in it. Those priests and priestesses had reasons for the denya price, something about ancient betrayals and forgiveness, something about learning to value that which was most precious.

It made no sense. If it was anything, it was an evolutionary byproduct, something to ensure we procreated quickly but didn't have a drain on our resources.

The priests didn't want to hear such things.

I stared at the button that would open the inner door to the airlock. If the soulless were a mistake, I was one too. It would be better to remove myself from the equation before I brought more trouble down on everyone.

Or perhaps I should go and collect Zyrus, Kryin, Thalor, and Jorin to end it together.

"Ryklin?" Drex's voice cut through my thoughts, and I turned to him as if I hadn't been contemplating my own suicide.

"Drex." I studied the man. He looked the same as ever, his teal skin covered in clan markings that only peeked out from under the sleeves of his coveralls. His dark hair was shorn short, and we were the same height, though I was broader. But there was a softness to his expression now, something I hadn't seen in the years we shared quarters.

Emotion.

"Is everything alright?" he asked. His gaze flicked to the buttons that opened the airlock and then back to me. Perhaps he'd guessed the direction of my thoughts.

Or he was remembering the last time we'd stood here.

"Yes," I said. I wasn't going to jump out the airlock. Things were not so serious yet. I needed to consider it more carefully.

But I'd walked Noelle across the ship when I had no reason to do so. And I'd become distracted on my journey back. I'd be late returning to my shift.

They were signs I'd been ignoring, things I needed to consider.

There wasn't anything more to say to Drex, so I left him there with a simple nod and headed back to Sector J to finish my shift, thinking all the way.

Noelle had been on my mind for months now, and the awareness of her could turn to fixation at any moment. It was no good.

Drex may have not been fixated, but it didn't mean that I couldn't.

I had to leave the station before it was too late.