Chapter 7

SEVEN

L iving on the Chaos for the next couple of days was like waiting for a timed detonation to count down to zero. Zed knew the explosion was coming. He wasn't sure when, or where, but he was thankful that Flick decided to hold off until his head felt as though it was mostly reattached to the rest of his body. So when Flick stomped into Cargo One where Zed was swiping a sonic cleaner back and forth—a nice, easy job that didn't strain any of his remaining brain cells, despite the whirring that reverberated through his arm—Zed wasn't surprised to see his eyes filled with fire, making them seem even more green in his fucked-up vision. He sort of breathed a sigh of relief.

"So are you going to tell me?" Flick demanded, his arms crossed and his hip cocked against a bulkhead. His shoulders were stiff and his arms kept flexing, as if he was trying to hold back the urge to throw a punch. He had to raise his voice over the rumble of the cleaner, but Zed figured he'd have been all but yelling anyway.

Flicking the holo off-switch on the simple display, Zed waited until the vibrations diminished into nothing. The ache in his head receded slightly but didn't go away. It never did anymore. "What, did Ness give you the green light to come yell at me?"

"Don't fucking avoid the question."

Zed pushed the cleaner upright and locked the handle in place with a snap. "Flick?—"

"No, don't ‘Flick' me. I'm not some subordinate you can fluff off with a reasonable tone and empty words."

"Do you think I'd do that to you? Really?"

"Haven't you been?"

"I—" Zed sighed. "Maybe. Yeah, you're right." He pressed two fingers against his closed eyelids, hard enough that sparks danced across the darkness.

"What the fuck was that down on Risus?"

Zed moved his fingers to pinch the bridge of his nose.

When Flick spoke again, his voice was softer. Almost begging. "Please tell me it wasn't what it looked like. Please tell me it wasn't some suicidal ploy?—"

Zed moved quickly, dodging around Flick's lean form and aiming for the exit to the corridor. For once, his innate grace abandoned him—he couldn't avoid Flick's hand as it whipped out to catch his elbow.

"Don't you walk away without a fucking word. I can't—" Flick's words were choked off by something between a sob and a growl. "I can't fight this if I don't know what I'm fighting."

Zed jerked his arm from Flick's grasp. "There's no fighting anything. You think if you stand there and stomp your feet loud enough, the poison in my blood will just disappear?"

"Don't be an asshole."

"Don't be na?ve!"

"I get it, okay?" Flick lifted a hand to grab at curls that no longer resided on his head and let his hand fall back to his side with a grunt. "You're going to lose it. I know it's going to happen?—"

"You don't know anything."

"Because you're not telling me anything!"

"I'm already losing it!" Zed straightened and backed off a step. Heart thudding, Zone beckoning, his gaze shifted instinctively from side to side, as if he was looking for an escape, but there was no getting out of this conversation. Maybe there never had been. He looked at the deck instead. "It's happening."

Flick rolled on with hardly a pause. "Okay, so we'll go see Ness. She'll have something that'll?—"

"Stop."

"—slow the process or help?—"

"Stop!"

"No!" Flick charged forward and grabbed Zed's shirt in his fists. Zed jerked his gaze up to see determination in every hard line of Flick's expression. "You're not fucking giving up."

"I'm tired."

"Will you stop talking like that? Goddamn it."

The fight drained out of Zed, leaving his muscles watery and weak. Slumping forward slightly, he leaned his forehead against Flick's. "Doesn't change the truth."

Flick swallowed harshly enough that Zed felt the motion. Heard it. "Your head?"

"Hurts all the fucking time."

"Ness will give you more painkillers. That'll help."

"I've been Zoning. Without meaning to."

Flick's fists opened, his palms sliding across Zed's chest to cup his upper arms. A pair of shaky breaths passed his lips. "Okay. We'll deal with that."

"I—" Zed gritted his teeth. "I Zone when I come."

"Oh Jesus. Babe." Flick's hands skimmed upward to thread through Zed's hair, tugging him forward into a full hug, his face tucked into Flick's neck. "Is that why…why you…"

Why he'd been coming to bed late and getting up early. Zed nodded against Flick's shoulder. Flick's grip tightened, his hands and arms squeezing Zed to the point it was almost painful. But Zed was okay with that.

"This shit stops now," Flick whispered raggedly. "You have got to talk to me."

"I didn't want you to know. I didn't want to admit it." His voice threatened to disappear, so he cleared his throat before continuing. "I didn't want it to be real."

"There has to be something…some treatment…"

"Damn it, there isn't."

Flick shoved him back enough to glare at him. "How do you know? Maybe they figured something out in the last few months. I'll contact Brennan."

Zed pulled out of Flick's arms. "What? No!"

"If anyone can find something to help you?—"

"I don't want my family involved. This isn't something I can throw my last name at and make go away."

"What about talking to them? Telling them?—"

"Telling them what? That I volunteered to have a stin POW poison me because humanity was that fucking desperate? No one needs to know that. No one needs to know how close we got to not winning." Zed pressed two fingers to his temple and squinted at Flick. "No, just no."

"Don't you want to live?"

"What kind of question is that?"

"A valid one, considering you're shooting down the one viable option to get you help!"

"There are more important?—"

"Oh, fuck you and your martyr complex, Zander. You're not a soldier anymore. The AEF doesn't fucking care about you or Emma or me or anyone!"

"That doesn't mean?—"

"What about me? I'm supposed to just sit back and watch you fade?"

Zed froze, ice stiffening his spine and seeping into his gut. "I can leave."

Flick's eyes widened. "No! Fuck, I—" His good hand scuffed across his shorn skull. "No. That's not what I meant."

The ice melted, taking the last of his energy to fight with it. Zed didn't know if Flick would prop him up again, so he stepped over to the bulkhead and braced his back against it as he slid to a sitting position. Psychologically, it wasn't a good position to continue an argument—but he didn't care. He was done anyway.

"I'm just trying to…to minimize the hurt I leave behind me," he said softly, looking up at Flick. "I know you want to believe there's some magic solution out there—" he talked over Flick's strangled protest, "—but there isn't. There isn't, Felix. And pulling my family into this clusterfuck is just…it's going to hurt a lot more people than just them. Can you understand that? If Dad gets it in his head to go up against the AEF, that's going to hurt Anatolius Industries and all our workers, and maybe other people too, I don't know."

Flick settled onto the floor beside him, their shoulders touching. "When are you ever going to let the big picture go in favor of looking after yourself?"

"Never." Zed let out a sigh and leaned his head back against the wall. He didn't look down when he felt Flick's head resting on his shoulder. He just welcomed it.

"I'm not ready," he admitted softly.

Not ready to be done. Not ready to give up Flick. Not ready for whatever came next.

A soft noise escaped Flick and he shook his head against Zed's shoulder. "Neither am I."

"Trying to reconfigure those circuits with your mind?"

Felix almost jumped. Instead, a twitch traveled the length of his frame, starting at his eyelids and ending somewhere around his knees. "Huh?"

Elias tipped his head toward the half-finished web of wire covering the mold of his left hand.

Turning his gaze back to the glove, Felix studied it for a moment, still blinking as if he'd just emerged from a dream.

"Everything all right?"

Felix answered with a shake of his head.

Elias drew closer, his caution warranted. They both knew Felix's moods could be unpredictable and savage. Felix held up his hands, showing Elias the bruised and abraded knuckles on both. "S'okay, I already beat something up."

"Jesus, Fix." Elias took his left hand gently in his and studied the damage. "What happened?"

Felix closed his eyes. "He's…" Darkness didn't hide the truth. Opening his eyes again, Felix sought the compassion he needed in Elias's expression. "He's losing it."

Extracting his hand from Elias's grasp, Felix glanced at the wall he'd used as a very unsatisfactory target. The pitted and stained metal looked the same as ever, but his knuckles were a mess. With Zed sleeping in their quarters, the weighted bag Felix kept in the corner had been unavailable, and while Zed needed undisturbed rest, Felix had needed an outlet. So he chose that wall, and the memory of what else had happened there, of him holding Zed so intimately, Zed's confession that he'd Zoned with his climax, had driven him to nearly break his hands. It was stupid, but sometimes life felt equally stupid.

Elias caught his arm and tugged him away from the workbench. "C'mon, let's get Ness to clean up your knuckles and then we'll talk about what we can do for Zed."

"He's losing time, Eli."

"Losing…"

"Zoning."

"Where is he now?"

"Sleeping, I think. For all I know, he could be Zoning. Fuck, I don't know if he's present half the time when I talk to him anymore. He's always so thinky, you know? His mind never stops."

Another twitch caught him, head to toe. Felix realized it was a shiver when his scalp continued to creep afterward. For all that Zed's predicament sucked, the idea that his brilliant mind might be affected was almost the worst part. Almost. Felix was selfish enough to admit that losing his lover hurt more. It felt as though Zed was abandoning him all over again, except this time, instead of stepping onto a shuttle as he had after graduation, following his future with the AEF, Zed would fall away from him in small, jagged increments.

Pain flared across his abused knuckles as he tried to curl his hands into fists. Never had he felt so powerless, not even when locked deep beneath the surface of Isroth, subject to the whim of his stin captors.

"Well…shit." Elias looked as if he might pull him into a hug. Felix leaned away, afraid he'd break down in such an embrace. Lose his stuffing, his strength. He needed to be strong now, stronger than ever before. He had to be all Zed needed him to be.

"Do you think we should call his family?"

"I don't know." He wanted to, but going against Zed's wishes seemed cruel, given the circumstances.

"I know Zed isn't hot on the idea, but they've got resources."

Carefully, Felix pulled his arm out of Elias's grasp. "They have. And connections. Thing is, Zed might be right. If the AEF can't support the Dreamweaver folks, then maybe no one can. It's not a question of resources, but knowledge." He put his hands to the sides of his head and pressed his ears, frustrated by the lack of curls to tug. "How could they put all their time into creating tools they didn't know how to fix…" Because Project Dreamweaver had been a desperate ploy. Humanity's last hope of turning the tide of war. Now the AEF didn't need their tools anymore.

He let his hands drop back to his sides. "I shouldn't feel this na?ve, Eli. This surprised by the AEF's ability to deceive their own." Which should be beside the point. "The tech might be out there, but Zed doesn't have time. And if I take him to Alpha now, he'll find a way to duck and cover, I know it. He'll think I betrayed him." And I will have. "I can't do that to him."

Not after everyone else had let him down.

"Not even if they can help?"

"I'll talk to him again when he's awake and…clear-headed. See if we can't just call Brennan, maybe. Put out some feelers. Maybe put him in contact with Marnie." If anyone could find files of unpublished AEF research into the aftereffects of Project Dreamweaver, Marnie could.

Elias's head bobbed up and down a few times. "Good. Brennan seems pretty solid and he obviously cares about his brother."

"They all do, Eli. That's what makes this so fucked up. I mean, I get why he doesn't want them to see him like this. After…" He sucked in a quick breath. "I wouldn't have been in any fit state to see my family for months after the war." A moot point, seeing as his family had all been killed early in the conflict, but that didn't mean he hadn't imagined it.

"Did you ever contact Zed's family…after, you know…"

"Yeah." Felix showed Elias the bracelet encircling his left wrist. "Alexander, Zed's dad, gave me my first bracelet." The wrist-model wallet that had been so well suited to an all-but-one-handed man. "He offered more."

"Which you didn't take."

"I'm not the one they wanted. They couldn't find Zed either, and I would never have been an acceptable substitute."

"You can give him to them now."

If it were that simple, he would.

Huffing out a sigh, Felix tipped his head toward the companionway. "Let's go to the med bay. My hands hurt like motherfuckers."

After hauling himself up the steep stairs with far less than his usual grace, he turned down the corridor toward the med bay and gingerly tapped the panel to open the hatch. It slid back to reveal Nessa and Qek staring at a holo. On-screen was an image Felix wished he didn't recognize—a human brain rendered in bright splotches of color. Zed's brain.

Without preamble, he moved to the drawers of first aid supplies Nessa kept ready for the crew. Ness caught sight of his hands and followed. She didn't say a word; none were really needed. They were all long familiar with his moods, and this wasn't the first time he'd punched something until his knuckles swelled and bled.

The pain flared as she ghosted his left hand with an antiseptic wand. Warmth swaddled his knuckles a moment later as she applied a numbing agent. Then came the derm patches. Felix could hear Qek and Elias murmuring quietly together. He didn't interrupt. He figured if Qek had solved the mystery of Zed's brain, she'd speak up. Then a single word caught his attention, pulling him forward in an effort to hear more.

"What was that? About the stin."

Qek turned her wide-eyed gaze toward him and he noted that the bruise across her cheek had faded a little. Given the blue tones of her skin, the mark appeared mottled rather than varicolored. The sight of the injury stoked the barely quieted rage in his belly. Ashushk were such a peaceful species—the thought anyone might want to harm one made him ill.

"Humanity is not the only species to have experimented with the stin ability to Zone and phase-shift," Qek said, halting the rolling tide of thought battering the inside of Felix's skull.

"Wait, what? Do you mean there are ashie super soldiers?"

Qek's wide face smoothed and wrinkled before she replied. "Yes."

"Holy shit."

"Hold still," Nessa warned as he started to pull his hand away from the derm patch she was trying to apply.

Elias frowned. "You knew?"

She glanced up. "Just now. Qek and I were tossing around some options."

"Options?" Felix tugged at his hand again, growling softly when Ness held it still. "What do you mean?"

"Nessa and I were discussing the possibility of taking Mr. Anatolius to Ashushk Prime." The ashushk home planet had another name, a much longer, convoluted string of consonants and barely related vowels that no human tongue could replicate. For their sake, Qek usually referred to it by the simple designation humanity had stamped it with.

"Did your soldiers…" Felix tripped over the words. "Are they…"

"I do not know the details of the program. Like your own, it was kept very quiet. But I have a friend who was involved."

"So you knew what Zed was before he told us," Elias said.

"No. But I suspected."

"Why didn't you say anything?"

"I did not think the comparison relevant until now."

"What do you mean?" Felix asked.

"The conflict between the ashushk and the stin was one and a half Standard centuries ago. If not for my friend, I might not have even credited rumor insisting we had had such a program. With Mr. Anatolius's worsening condition, I did a little research and discovered that though we lost a few soldiers early on, the majority lived long and productive lives."

"Productive? As in healthy and sane?"

"I believe so, yes."

"Did they affect the outcome of your war with the stin?" Elias asked.

What did that matter?

Felix opened his mouth to ask a more pertinent question, but Qek was already speaking.

"The ashushk are not a combative species. The only reason we survived as long as we did was our superior technology. Our enhanced soldiers were not used the same way as yours. Rather, we used the knowledge we gained from them to develop weapons that might defeat the stin."

"But you didn't defeat them," Nessa put in. "The Guardians stepped in and ended the war."

That should be significant, but Felix brushed the thought process aside in favor of the glimmer of hope Qek's announcement ignited. The fire in his gut shot up to his chest—painful but acceptable. If the ashushk soldiers were well, then something might be done for Zed. They were different species, but advanced ashushk techniques had already revolutionized human medicine.

"The weapons?" Elias asked.

Qek shrugged. "I do not know."

"They don't have them. They'd have shared them with us if they did," Felix said, dismissing what he considered an irrelevant thread of the conversation. "Qek…do you think your scientists could help Zed?"

Nessa was shaking her head. At the gesture, Qek lifted her chin.

"What?" Felix asked, looking between them.

"The AEF wouldn't like it," Elias said.

"The AEF can go fuck themselves." Felix hissed as Nessa caught hold of his right hand. The knuckles had started to swell and his fingers were so stiff, he couldn't move them independently.

Nessa picked up her wand and spoke as if passing comment on the state of his hand. Her words didn't make sense at first. "If Qek goes home, she might gender."

If the proverbial pin dropped, Felix didn't hear it.

"What do you mean ‘might'?" Elias asked.

"Gendering is not a choice. Though we do not experience love, our people are a closely tied species. When we congregate, our bodies can respond to the needs of the group."

Felix glanced at Nessa. "You knew about this too, didn't you?"

"Yes. Hold still."

He clenched his teeth as Nessa passed the wand over the back of his right hand, then breathed out as the anesthetic took hold. The haze of relief thickened his tongue as he sought words for the questions he wanted to ask. Damn, he was tired. "So…you, your friend might be able to help, but if we go to A Prime, you could end up stuck there."

Forever. Gendered ashushk had to give up their former careers, didn't they? For all her interest in human sexual practices, Qek was unusually reticent on the subject of her own species' reproductive process. Regardless, losing their pilot would suck, particularly for Qek. Though she enjoyed flying the Chaos , she was in it for the travel. If there was a job at the far end of nowhere, that was the one she wanted to take, just so they could add a pin to her mental map of the galaxy.

"That is correct." Qek's wrinkles had smoothed, showing her consternation.

Fatigue swamped Felix. Chin dipping, he let his suddenly heavy head cant forward, his shoulders round down. He stopped protesting Nessa's treatment of his hands.

Both options had a price. Zed's family would do all in their power to aid their son, but what would it cost them? What would it cost Felix to betray his best friend? The ashushk scientists might already hold a missing piece of the puzzle and their ingenuity might serve to adapt it. But the potential cost to Qek would be too great. And Zed had already shot down any mention of contacting Marnie. Bastard seemed determined to die.

No one had said it—Ness hadn't actually confirmed it one way or another. But Felix knew how machines worked, and the human body was nothing if not a very sophisticated and complicated machine. Zed's was breaking down.

Covering his eyes with his bandaged hands, Felix said the only thing that summed up the situation. "Fuck!"