34. THALIA

Ahane hammered a panel into place. The large muscles under his scales flexed and pulsed to the motion, the movements traveling down his shoulders into the taunt muscles wrapped around his iron spine at the (relative) small of his back.

The shuttle was fixed. A cobbled-together mess of parts he’d won, parts he’d purchased, parts he’d fabricated, and all held together with stubbornness.

Still looked like a bucket of bolts that would toddle ten feet off the pier and drift into the nothing.

He shoved handfuls of his hair fronds back—he hadn’t been good about hacking it off, and now he had a roguish profusion of red and gold clumps that looked sort of like feathers and sort of like scales and sort of like a blazing campfire had been on his head and frozen in time. He kept it secured with a metal clamp he’d stolen from some pipe fittings.

He straightened. “You shouldn’t be out here.”

I almost never came out of the main area of the facility because it was cold, and even with the bits and pieces we’d acquired to keep the cold off my skin, and the heat that leaked from the buildings that flanked the little crummy courtyard on three sides, it was still cold no matter how bundled up I was.

But I enjoyed the muffled quiet and space for the brief walk from the kitchen-side airlock to the hangar where the smuggle-shuttle was. Even if I had to share it with a junkyard of shattered dreams and insurmountable debts.

I paced up to him and took off my breather. The air supply in the hangar was sufficient to allow the physical labor of repair work, or, in the case of Site Master”s staff… chop shop duties. But they weren’t around.

Ahane hooked his hammer to his belt and caught my hip in one of his big hands. He tugged me close.

There’d never be another Ahane.

“Are you leaving soon?” I asked.

“I have not made plans.” He frowned slightly.

I sighed. “You can’t seriously be planning on staying here your entire life. And it’s obvious the shuttle is repaired and you’re just making it pretty.”

He shifted in the why can’t I plan exactly that way.

“Ahane, your brother is alive and your House is safe. Your family thinks you’re dead. Go home.”

“The rumor mill is saying all that. I don’t know if it’s true or not. It could be bait. It could be inaccurate.”

I sighed. “Or it could be true.”

“I can’t risk you.”

“I knew you’d say that. That’s why,” I took a breath, “I want you to leave.”

He frowned. “What?”

“I want you to leave,” I told him again. “Go.”

“No.”

“Ahane. You need to leave.”

“I am not abandoning you.”

“You need to.”

“Why?” He frowned and bent down.

“Patron will be leaving soon, but he’ll be back in ten to twelve sleeps. That’s his pattern. Now is your window to leave and get some distance. I’ll be fine on my own until he gets back. Then I’m going to reveal to him I’m Human and try to get back to Earth.”

Ahane yanked me against him so hard it squished the breath out of me. “You are going to what?”

His hiss seared into my veins. I wheezed and pushed on his scales, he released me and backed up a step, his scales vibrating and washing white-gold at the edges and his irises hourglasses.

“You need to get out of here and be gone,” I told him. “You need to get fucking gone before I push the button.”

“He won’t take you back to Earth!” Ahane snapped. “You’ll end up dead, or in the grip of the Greys, or the Gestalt!”

“I’m sure he’s got connections and someone’s willing.”

“No, no one is willing. No one goes to Earth except the Greys. No one is taking you back to Earth and anyone who claims they will is lying.”

I shrugged. “Probably. I’m at peace with any outcome. I just need you to be clear of the blast.”

“How would you even begin to pay him or anyone else!”

“I’ve got some tips,” I tapped my translator, “and the rest I’ll lot-lizard, probably. I imagine that’s what the price will be. Wouldn’t be the worst thing I’ve done.” Patron hadn’t said the price for his “help” would be my ass. But the price was going to be satisfying curiosity. The old gas, ass, or grass rules of hitchhiking.

His scales seared gold and white. “He will sell you to the Greys, and there is a high chance GSE will find you.”

“I know what’s probably going to happen if Patron doesn’t immediately off me. Sold to the Greys, then picked up by the Gestalt. I just don’t want them to come after you or your family. That’s my one regret in all this is that I know I might be implicating you in Zero Crimes.”

Ahane stood up all the way. “But why? Why would you give them your mind?”

“You know why. The Greys took a chunk of it. I was a collaborator and my brain is full of information. Probably half of it I’ve forgotten.”

“You were a prisoner! Not a collaborator!”

“Bullshit I wasn’t. Bullshit.”

Ahane picked up my hand, flipped it over, and ran his talon down my probe scar. “It was all an experiment. You told me the Greys don’t want to cause more harm and pain than necessary.”

“And is making their violation and manipulation more efficient and effective any better than making it less painful?”

“The other Human woman I’ve met didn’t have these.” He touched my neck scars with his other hand.

“We should all have stayed together, but I fucked off to the promised land of a nice bed, pillows, and a single handler who would have a conversation with me.”

“And what about the women who went to Homeworld?” Ahane asked. “Do you hate them?”

I bit the inside of my lip.

He waited for his answer.

My fingers twisted in my sack dress. “No. No, I don’t.”

“Did the other Human women?”

“Some did. Some didn’t. I don’t know. We didn’t talk about them.” The dress fabric twisted in a noose around my fingers. “I’ve made up my mind. I have a way off this rock, and since the shuttle is fixed, so do you. The Site Master is going to get rid of you eventually because you’re fucking with the bottom line. One day, another Cook is going to show up and you’re out of a job. Patron is in on the operation, I’m sure of it. He showed me a map of where we are, where the beacon field is, all of it. He hauls off this place for the Site Master. Follow him when he leaves later today. You’ll end up back in the beacon field and you can find your way home or send word to your brother to pick you up. You’re going to salvage that shuttle. It’s worth a fortune.”

He ran his hands over my face, trailing the talon along my jaw and temple. “I have another brother. One I haven’t told you about.” His scales and voice and everything became anguish, gushing towards me. “His name is Ohade. And he contracted the plague.”

The plague. Even mention of it sent people gasping and running for the door. Someone had reported a plague outbreak on another planet far from the diner, and people were jittery.

Ahane studied me as he spoke. “Ohade is in a ward right now. We can’t afford a cure. We can barely afford basic care that gets his bandages changed and his pain sometimes eased. He’s not the reason our House is impoverished, but I would be lying if I did not tell you that he is the biggest reason we struggle. He is our brother. We won’t give up on him.”

I wouldn’t give up on my sisters either.

“But I wonder if he hates himself like you hate yourself,” Ahane said softly. “The last thing he ever said to me, before the plague took what was left of his voice and replaced it with screams, was he told me he was sorry. He told me he was sorry he didn’t have the will to kill himself so we wouldn’t be crushed under him.”

I put my hand over one of his wrists. Anguish poured with every beat of his hearts.

“I never told the others,” he whispered. “I’ve never told anyone. It haunts me to this day. Does he think we hate him and resent him? Does he even remember saying it? If he doesn’t, I’m not going to mention it and remind him. He can’t speak. He can’t write. He can’t walk without his bones trying to sink through his feet and the skin between his legs tearing off. He can’t chew. He’s lost his scales. Blood oozes from everywhere, every pore, his gums—everywhere. Ulcers crater his body inside and out. His entire existence is agony. I don’t know why he’s chosen to fight this long, but I pray it is defiance and not penance.”

I squeezed his wrist, and he held my face, grip trembling.

“You chose to live. You chose to survive. You chose defiance. And He was in your brain the entire time. They lie without lying. They manipulate your ignorance. You have no idea what they told the other Humans. You have even less idea of how those other Humans understood what they were told. You were all a goddamn experiment. You do not need to get mind-mapped, trafficked, or end up back with the Greys to make amends just like my brother doesn’t have to lie there in that Ward bed and suffer because he thinks it’s too late now.”

His hands trembled against me, tension in every little fiber, but his grip remained gentle. Restrained. He whispered, “The difference, Thalia, is I can have this conversation with you. I can’t have it with him.”

“Ahane, one of us has to do something! We can’t stay here. There’s a way out for me, there’s a way out for you, there’s no way out for us!”

He stroked my jaw with his talon.

“I don’t want to lose you. I don’t. But I know you’ll never be mine either. It didn’t stop me from falling in love with you.”

Ahane’s talon froze.

I smiled through my anguish. “You don’t have to say anything. Humans can fall in love and the other person doesn’t love you back. I’m glad I fell in love with you. I’ll have that wherever I end up, and I know I’ll need it. It’s a good thing.”

“You love me?”

“Yes. And that’s why I’m telling you to leave. You’ve saved me and protected me when you didn’t have to. Now it’s my turn to do what I can. I’m ending our arrangement, Ahane. It’s over. All of it is over. Go home.”

He didn’t move or release me. “I’ve been wondering what love feels like. It’s supposed to burst upon you. A new thing you’ve never felt before and that’s how you know what it is.”

“Ahane—”

“I didn’t have that. But neither did my brother. I think about how I feel when I hold you, look at you, think of losing you, think of anyone harming you. Are we mates. Or are we friends.”

I tried not to groan. “Ahane, hate to tell you this, but this right here is the kind of awkward conversation Humans hate having. The whole I tell you I love you, you tell me I love you like a friend. It is peak Human, and if we couldn’t, that’d be great.”

Ahane’s pupils turned to narrow, cat-like slits. “I know what friendship is. I also know what it is to love my brothers or my parents. I can think of a life without them. But when I try to think of a life without you, my hearts try to stop beating. I feel parts of myself I’ve never felt before. I’ve been hoping when we’re in bed I’d bind within you and that would tell me conclusively.”

“Binding?”

“It happens between true mates, but only very rarely. So tell me, Human, is that love? The feeling I cannot live without you, and I am not sure how I lived so long without you?”

“... that sounds pretty dramatic.” I floundered.

He moved one of his hands to the small of my back and drew me against him. “I believe the cosmos put you in that hallway under that rubble. We should not have escaped or survived, and we could not have without each other. Your abilities have done the rest.”

“Or I beguiled you and the sex is just that good.” Because the sex was pretty magical.

“It should be good. My cock is fashioned specifically for you.”

“Ahane. You didn’t hear the first part of that. What if I’ve projected my love for you?”

“Now you sound like Taidc. But you are asking how do we prove it to ourselves and the rest of the cosmos.”

“I’m guessing you can’t really lie and claim you’ve bound up in me when you haven’t. Whatever that means. But it’s a sex thing, isn’t it.” Ahane was a shitty liar. Pretty much everyone in the Gestalt was.

“It’s a sex thing.”

We stared at each other.

“I guess we can’t just fuck endlessly until it happens,” I said.

“We could.”

“I mean, in front of some Gestalt officials.”

“I’d rather not. But there’s one other option.”

“Which is?”

“We go to the Temple on 25XA and see if my tail unfurls in the well of the cosmos.”

“That was a whole lot of words that made no sense.”

“I’ve never seen it, but I’ve heard it described the tail becomes ephemeral. It means the cosmos has summoned me. But...”

“How do you know this? That sounds like it could mean anything, though.”

“Because my brother’s mate is Human.”

“Excuse me, what?” I blurted out.

“The rumors of the Gestalt Human citizen with the cat,” Ahane said.

“Yeah, the ones everyone laughs at.”

“They’re not rumors. It’s true. There’s a Gestalt Human citizen, and she has a pet cat, and she’s my brother’s mate.”

My jaw loosened. “What?”

“She escaped the Greys by crawling into some trash. She ended up on one of Keiron’s hauls and in his cargo bay. She was accepted on 25XA because she is his true mate. She’s also the reason we were at that darksite at all. The Greys abducted her off 25XA, and we went to find her.”

“So... you guys weren’t just a bunch of space commandos out for justice?”

“My brother and I went to get Chess back, Septus went for the news coverage, and everyone else went for the good times.”

“Her name is Chess? That’s a choice.”

“Her full name is something else I can barely pronounce. She prefers Chess. My brother had to prove she was his mate. He couldn’t, but the Temple interceded and claimed that because his tail had unfurled in the presence of the trinkets, that she was his mate.”

I pulled back. “So all these rumors… they’re your family?”

“That’s why the Greys wanted Keiron,” Ahane said slowly. “To use him and Chess. A cosmic-breath pair for their deranged program.”

“Oh fuck,” I whispered. “They took her as bait.”

“... it’s the only thing that makes sense, given what you’ve told me. It’s the only reason that makes sense why they’d try to get her back.”

“Well, they fucked around and found out, didn’t they. So if we can get the temple to say we’re mates...”

“If we’re mates, and if the tail unfurling means anything. Keiron is the Twilight Scion. I am not. His tail may have meant some greater destiny that we aren’t part of.”

“Yeah, but it’s the best chance we have. If you want to take it, that is.”

“It could end badly.”

If I got back to Earth, my life would be dedicated to being a giant fuck you to the Greys. If I didn’t get back, I deserved whatever shitty end I met along the way. I didn’t deserve a happy life with Ahane. “If I end up mind mapped, they’ll see we honestly believed we were mates. And that I just beguiled you with my evil and uncontrollable Human psy powers. Maybe that will give them the kick in the ass to deal with the Greys.”

“Can Humans trick other Humans into loving them?”

“Not in the way you’re talking about, but we do have all kinds of weird survival adaptations that allow us to survive whatever shit we’re going through. That means if someone hits you enough times and tells you you deserve it, you start to believe them. Even if you know it’s not true, you kind of start to wonder if maybe it is so that you can try to accept what’s happening to you.”

“I see. And you have used this ability to convince yourself you deserve to be mindmapped.”

“Hey, I don’t tell you all these Human secrets so you can use them against me.”

He gathered me close with gentle hands, his claws raking lightly at my sack dress. “I love you, Human. You might be able to hear the cosmos, but I doubt you can make me be your true mate.”

I curled my arms around his thick neck. “Would be an interesting trick if I could.”

“If you could, you were foolish to pick the plain brother of a broken House.”

“I fell for those gorgeous scales.” He didn’t believe his scales were beautiful, and maybe they weren’t, but I adored how he looked like metallic roses, tasted like wine, and smelled like cranberries and spices. Red had never been my favorite color, but it was now.

“I take it,” he said softly, “our arrangement has been renewed?”

“As long as you agree we can’t stay here. I’m not waiting around for Site Master to do us dirty.”