Captive's War 1: The Mercy of Gods

Ten

Jessyn sat on the floor in the corner of the crowded chamber farthest from the doors and shivered. Maybe it was because of the cold, or maybe it was the fatigue poison flooding through her system. Or both. Probably both. Else Yannin sat at her side, also shivering.

The light was a uniform dull orange that spilled from crystals inset into the walls, rendering everything in monochrome. The ceiling was low enough that Jessyn felt her hair brushing against it when she walked, and anyone taller couldn’t stand up straight. The surfaces were bare, seamless metal with an unpleasant rough texture, and the walls all angled in like they were at the base of a pyramid.

“How many people do you think are in here?” Else asked.

Jessyn squinted at the packed bodies, shadows standing among shadows like the unfortunate dead waiting for their place in hell. They wore whatever they’d had on when they’d been rounded up—everything from work jumpsuits to formal vests to shifts and house slippers. One elderly man in the corner wore only tight undershorts and the unruly hair of someone who’d just woken up.

She did a little calculation. The room was about the length of their lab, a little less than that wide. Assuming the density around them—more than cocktail party, less than dance floor—was uniform…

“Two hundred? Give or take.”

“You’d think just the body heat would make it warmer.”

On the far side of the chamber, a spill of white light spread across the low ceiling. Their captors bringing in a new batch of prisoners.

“I’ll check this one,” Else said, levering herself up.

“I’ll be here,” Jessyn said, and hugged her knees to her chest as the other woman slipped into the crowd. She hoped that Jellit would be one of this group. She also hoped that he wouldn’t.

The news they’d gotten from the prisoners since they’d been put in the chamber was fragmentary and uncertain at best. There were rumors of mass slaughters in Abbasat and Maurintain, but no one who had seen them firsthand. Someone in the crowd had been wailing something about a fire at a hospital complex, but Jessyn didn’t know where that was supposed to be. She told herself that some people had to have escaped. There were just too many people for all of them to be in prisons and holding tanks. Jellit could be free. He couldn’t be safe, but he could be safer than she was.

She also wished that he was here, with her. She wished that she knew where he was. She wished that she understood any of what was happening. Jessyn knew that she’d been drawn to biology at least partly out of a desire to understand the chemical processes that made her own brain go rotten from time to time. She still clung to the idea that she could deal with anything if she could just understand it. Not knowing was worse than whatever torture they were receiving now.

“Are you all right? Do you need medical attention?”

The man kneeling beside her was broad-shouldered. The thick body that came with functional strength instead of cosmetic training.

“What? No, I’m fine,” she said. “Thank you.”

“All right. I’m Urrys. Urrys Ostencour.”

Jessyn frowned. “From the security force?”

He nodded. “You?”

“Jessyn Kaul. I’m a research assistant at Irvian.”

“For who?” Ostencour asked. Demanded.

“Um. Tonner Freis?”

He seemed pleased by the answer. “That fits.”

“Can I ask?”

“They’re taking the top. Head of security forces. Top research group.” He shifted, gesturing to three women and two men standing in a tight knot. “That’s half of Irvian’s intergovernmental colloquy. The man just past them runs the Hauris Institute. I met Soleda Wash on the other side of the room.”

“The composer?”

“No patterns I can see. Just whoever was top of their game. Whatever their game was.” His smile was friendly in a practiced way. “I don’t know what comes next, but I’m trying to be ready when it does. There’s a couple of dispensers along the wall there. One had water, the other some kind of slop that I think is supposed to be food, so I’m guessing they’re going to keep us here for a while, and they don’t plan to starve us to death.”

“Is there a washroom?”

“We asked that. Two of those furry bastards rolled an absorbent mat out next to the front door. Look… Jessyn? This is going to be hard, whatever it is. But we’ll get through it. It’s going to be all right. We just have to stick together. You’re a biologist, right? Does that include any medical training?”

“Basic emergency response. Same as anyone.”

“Fair enough. Any weapons or something that could be used as a weapon?”

“No.”

“Bandages or medications?”

“No,” Jessyn lied.

She was lucky. She’d been about to go out her door to find shelter when the aliens took her. She had a comfortable sweater, good shoes, and trousers with half a dozen pockets. One of the pockets had almost two months of her medications. She didn’t know where she’d get more. If she would. And if her sanity was measured out by the capsules in her pocket, she wasn’t about to share them.

Else reappeared from the press of bodies. To Jessyn’s surprise, she had Synnia with her. The older woman looked terrible. The bags under her eyes were as dark as bruises, and her face had a slackness that reminded Jessyn of people recovering from strokes. When she stood and embraced her, Synnia was still for a moment before returning the hug and she broke it off quickly. The three sat back down, their backs against the tilted roughness of the wall. Synnia rubbed the heel of her palm against her neck.

“I’m glad you’re all right,” Jessyn said, realizing how strange that sounded. “Are you all right?”

Synnia shrugged. Her lips quivered.

“Nöl’s gone,” Else said.

Jessyn felt the news like a stone in her stomach. “Dead?”

Synnia sighed. “He went with the first ones. The one of every eight? He was the one. I just watched. There was nothing I could do.”

“I’m so sorry,” Jessyn said.

“I’ve been trying not to imagine the seven people Nöl died for,” Synnia said. “I’m angry at people I don’t even know for being alive when he’s not. Campar came for me, but he started running. I couldn’t keep up. They took me to a warehouse,” Synnia said. Her calmness was unsettling. “I thought they were going to kill us all.”

At the far end of the room, a deep clanging sounded. The flood of light shone along the ceiling and glimmered between the bodies.

“More?” Jessyn said. “Already?”

Else levered herself up. “Stay here. I’ll go see if we know any of them.”

“Tell the booking service we’re full up,” Jessyn said, trying at lightness. “They can’t pack us in any tighter.”

“They can, though,” Synnia said. “Who’d stop them?”

Else slipped away again. Jessyn leaned back, feeling the wall sucking away her heat.

“I was going to put a new fence up in the front,” Synnia said. “Ironwork, just by the road. And then myrtle behind it. It would take a couple years to get the roots established, but then it would be so pretty from that front window. It would have been so pretty.”

Jessyn’s throat felt thick. She didn’t want to think about the plans she’d had. She didn’t want to think about the life she’d lived and face the thought that it was gone. The man who handed out coffee in the courtyard might be alive or dead, but either way, she wouldn’t be there at the start of term. The little market that had the berry jam that Jellit liked and the dark-eyed girl in the headscarf who traded jokes with her. She wouldn’t be back there, probably ever. There was a jade necklace she’d thought about getting, but hadn’t made up her mind. Too late now. All her imagined futures snatched away in an instant. And the haunting question: Why?

She put her head on her knees and watched her breath, counting every inhalation up to four and then back down again, going slowly. She couldn’t have a panic attack. Not here in the press of bodies and no way to escape them. If she lost her mind here, she didn’t know if she’d get it back.

“Synnia,” Campar’s voice said.

Campar was kneeling beside Synnia. She hadn’t seen him arrive, and Dafyd Alkhor was looming up beside him. Campar had a cut on his cheek, the scab turned perfectly black by the light. Dafyd had the wide-eyed look of someone who’d just seen a particularly gory accident. He was leaning against Else, who seemed not to notice him. Synnia took Campar’s hand and pulled him closer, her face suddenly twisted into a mask of anguish. Campar leaned in, touching his forehead to hers. Jessyn thought it might have been the first genuine emotion she’d ever seen shine through Campar’s sense of humor, and she liked him better for it.

Else broke the moment. “Have you seen the others?”

“Yes,” Campar said. “Tonner and Irinna and I were in the same cage for a while. They were escorted away before I was. Are they not here?”

“What about Jellit?” Jessyn asked, and wished she hadn’t as soon as Campar’s mouth tightened.

“I didn’t see him. But I take it there was more than one holding site. He could have been in one of the others.”

“They’re not here,” Else said.

When Dafyd spoke, his voice had a distant calm to it. Shock, probably. “There were seventeen ships. They might be on a different one.”

“Alkhor’s right,” Campar said. “There isn’t any reason to take us and not them. There may be dozens of suites like this one. And if they wanted us dead, we would be dead.”

“A man told me there’s food and water,” Jessyn said.

“A good sign they don’t want us dead,” Campar agreed.

“That’s what Nöl said too,” Synnia replied. “Just before they killed him.”

“They never seem angry, you know?” Dafyd said. He sounded exhausted. “Even when they’re violent. Even when they’re killing people, it all seems so… matter-of-fact. Did anyone get a close look at the big ones?”

“The ones that look like big lobsters?” Campar said. “Four legs in the back, two in the front, and a pair of feeding arms? Yes I saw them.”

“I think they’re the ones in charge.”

Jessyn’s acid reply was still finding words when Else stepped in. “Does it matter?”

“The part where they chose one out of eight of us at the start? It’s just they’re the only one with eight limbs. I wonder if they have eight fingers on those small feeding arms. The others seem like… client races?”

“Pets,” Else said, and it was almost agreement. “Slaves.”

Campar looked around the press of bodies, the shifting shadows and light. “I take it the room service is disappointing.”

Else folded herself to the ground. Her smile was weary, but it was a smile.

“It’s all very communal and humiliating,” Jessyn said.

“I should have died,” Synnia said.

The simplicity of her words made Campar’s mordant humor feel cheap. Jessyn felt a tug of shame, but she didn’t know what she was ashamed of.

A voice—the voice—came from everywhere and nowhere. Just the first syllable of the calm, characterless words made her belly go tight. “We are going to shift into asymmetric space. This transition will be unpleasant, but it will not cause permanent injury.”

Jessyn let herself slip down to the floor. The metal was like sandpaper, and cold as the inside of a refrigerator.

“I don’t see how it can be much worse than—” Campar began, and time did something strange. Jessyn felt the flow of causality stutter. She remembered putting her head to the floor and sitting back up with equal clarity. She sat back up, and the future flickered into being ahead of her. She remembered feeling nauseated a few seconds before the wave of nausea came. Around her, the others wore different expressions of horror and distress. Synnia was going to say Make it stop.

“Make it stop,” Synnia said.

And then, weirdly, it did.

They looked at each other. Dafyd spoke first. “Did your memory just…?”

“Invert?” Campar finished for him. “Prolapse? Assault my understanding of both time and consciousness? A bit, yes. Yours?”

“I hate this,” Jessyn said.

The duration of their transit marks the first time since the beginning of consciousness that the swarm relaxes.

All that it had needed to navigate on the lost world has been navigated. The great enemy has come, and the swarm has been scooped up along with all the other captives. The anxiety that it would fail and be left behind no longer haunts it. For a moment, there is no effort, and it lets itself broaden and diffuse. The prison cell has no particular information of use. For the moment, floating in the calm between a dangerous past and a far more dangerous future, it can rest. And the resting is a pleasure. And since this is the first time, it discovers that it can both rest and experience pleasure from it.

It still feels the fear and horror of its host, and goes through the motions of that distress. All that is needed now is to seem like one among many and do as those around it do. While its performance of trauma is sometimes imperfect, its naïve companions are all too focused on their own fear to notice. The host’s pain and rage and awe and amazement have become familiar, easier to navigate. And the swarm suspects, though it cannot know for certain, that the remnants of the host have begun to understand the need for its sacrifice. The flavor and power of its sorrow have changed.

And the other one, the dead one, Ameer Kindred who never saw the invasion coming and didn’t live to be sorted into the great enemy’s pens, she also feels, reacts, fears, and wonders. The echo or ghost confuses the swarm, but doesn’t distress it. It is too pleased by how its plans have all fallen into place for concern to touch it deeply.

It passes its hours of repose cataloging all the secrets it has already learned. It has seen a living Carryx and heard its untranslated voice. It has cataloged some of the enemy’s servant species. It is traveling within one of the ships that have only been the subject of after-battle autopsies.

It does not know what of any of this will be precious to the generals and analysts and professionals of war. It doesn’t need to know. It has done what no other has accomplished. Later, it will try to find a way to transmit the data back along with whatever more it can learn. If it does that and nothing more, it will be able to die sated by the imitation life it has led.

The swarm sleeps and gathers its strength and burns its host’s metabolism a little more brightly than usual for the simple animal pleasure of being warm in a cold place.

Time passed, and that was all Jessyn could be certain of. The light never changed. Duration lost meaning. The crowded room fell into camps and cliques without anyone saying anything about it. People who knew each other found each other. Took comfort in knowing each other. Slept beside each other. Of course they did. The workgroup had its corner.

Jessyn ate and drank when she felt the need. Her body was the closest thing she had to a clock. When she couldn’t stand it anymore, she made her way to the mat at the front of the room, let down her trousers, and emptied her bladder and bowel, the same as everyone else. Mostly people looked away. The humiliation was a kind of intimacy. People had started ripping bits of the absorbent foam off the edges to pass around to whoever needed them. The Soft Lothark and their Carryx masters didn’t seem to understand the idea of menstruation. That would be a clock too.

When she was done, she dressed herself again, hating that there was no cloth or soap to clean herself with. She felt filthy. She also felt a vague but growing worry about the diseases that came with filth and overcrowding. She wanted to go back to her place with the workgroup, curl into the corner, and sleep. She forced herself to the little troughs. One was filled with a black muck that passed for food. The other had the water supply.

Jessyn washed as best she could. Then snuck her hand into her pocket, popping open the medicine bottle. She plucked a capsule out between her fingers and folded it into her palm. When she cupped her hands into the water, it was a dot of orange that she swilled down before anyone could notice it.

Almost before anyone could notice.

“What was that?” The man beside her was old. His face was vaguely familiar in the way people had when she’d seen them on news reports or entertainments. She didn’t know who he was.

“Water,” she said.

Her heart beat fast against her ribs, and she turned away before he could press her. She was afraid he’d follow, but he didn’t. She made it back to her corner and sat. The cold of the water had sunk into her fingers. Her knuckles ached. Everything was so cold.

“Are you all right?” Dafyd asked.

“Fine,” she said. “I’m fine.”

A man screamed. There were words in it, but apart from a couple well-enunciated obscenities, she didn’t know what they were. Jessyn sat up and wiped the sleep from her eyes. Synnia, curled against her, murmured, but didn’t wake up. She didn’t remember when they’d decided to huddle together for warmth or even who’d started doing it, but it was a habit for both of them now.

The man screamed again, but there was another voice now. Gentle, placating. The next scream was more shrill, but less violent. Motion stirred the constant press of bodies like the wake of a huge fish might disturb the surface of a lake. The crowd was pressing together, surrounding the disturbance, whatever it was. The screaming man was weeping now. The cries he made were just grief. Nothing she needed to worry about.

Jessyn lay back down and closed her eyes again.

“String,” Ostencour said. “Any kind will help.”

“I have a belt?” Dafyd said.

The security man paused to think. He had sprouted a little beard that made his jaw wider. All the men had. More clocks. “I think that’s going to be too wide.”

“What about shoelaces?” Synnia said.

“If you can spare them.”

The old woman sat and started plucking the thick strands out of her gardening boots. Else and Campar shot a glance at each other and then started doing the same. It took a couple of minutes for them all to unlace their contributions. Ostencour nodded his thanks, but he didn’t leave.

“I’m sorry,” he said to Synnia. “I couldn’t help noticing your hair. I may need to make something longer than any of these by themselves, and I noticed your braid?”

“Yes, I could help you make these into rope. If you’d like.”

“It would be a real help.”

The big man moved away, and Synnia followed. The crowd made room for them and closed again when they were gone. It looked like respect.

“What do you think he needs rope for?” Dafyd asked.

“Security,” Jessyn said. “It’s only a matter of time before someone needs to be restrained.”

“Ah, if only for a different context,” Campar said. Then, seeing Dafyd’s confusion, “What can I say? This Ostencour is an attractive man.”

“You’re joking.”

“Of course I am,” Campar said. “It’s how I keep from spending all day screaming. What do you do?”

A spill of white light came from the front of the room. She couldn’t see from back here in their corner, but she knew that it was one of the squat-bodied, long-limbed Soft Lothark come to take away the old shit mat and put down a fresh one. Another mark in the endless stretch of time, a concession to cleanliness in the swamp of human filth that the elite of Anjiin had become.

A play of shadows complicated the light, and then it faded and vanished again.

Synnia was gone, out wandering the chamber. Campar sat, legs folded and eyes closed. He could almost have passed for meditating except for the soft snoring. They’d been in this cramped orange cell long enough that the gash on his cheek had healed. Dafyd and Else were folded together against the wall, spooning for warmth. There was nothing to do, so she did nothing. Her mind wandered.

Somewhere, her brother was alive. Or he was dead. The streets she’d lived on were warm with sunlight or cooled by a night breeze or reduced to rubble and slag. She wept, but she didn’t feel particularly moved by her weeping. It was just a thing her eyes did sometimes.

Not long ago, she had only suspected that life likely existed out among the billions of stars. That her own species or one like hers had probably come to Anjiin from elsewhere. She could remember sitting in her apartment with Jellit and his friends from deep-field visualization, drinking beer and speculating about whether they would ever find humanity’s origins, whether other species were still out there. The eternal questions that accompanied intellectuals and mild inebriation. The memory was bitter.

Dafyd curled one arm up under his head like a pillow. His other arm moved up from where it had rested across Else’s belly. Else shifted, completing the movement for him until his palm rested on her breast. Jessyn felt a moment’s shock, realizing that the pair weren’t asleep at all, and then nearly laughed. They were primates trapped in a box. They were doing what primates did when they were stressed and frightened. It was a miracle there hadn’t been more violence, and almost certainly there had been more sex than these two pretending that they weren’t indulging in foreplay. Some small, reflexive part of Jessyn’s mind felt a flicker of outrage on Tonner’s behalf, but it didn’t last more than a few seconds. Take the comfort you can get, you poor bastards. Dafyd pulled Else a little closer. Else, her eyes still closed, smiled.

Jessyn stood by the water trough, her hand in her pocket. She’d started counting out her thinning supply of medicine again, moving the capsules out of the bottle and into the free space of her pocket one at a time, and then back in again like a Gallantist priest at their prayer beads. What her physicians had called “ritualized behavior” when she was young. It wasn’t a good thing. It was surprising it hadn’t reared its nasty little head before now. Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen…

They had to have been in the box for a month. At least a month. Half her medicine was gone. She squeezed the hard little knots of bitter sanity between her fingertips. Twenty-one, twenty-two…

She had to cut back. She’d been taking them too often. Or she hadn’t been taking them often enough. She didn’t know, except that she wasn’t going to get any more anytime soon, and she didn’t—did not—want to lose her mind in here. If she was going to have to go without, it made sense to start lowering the dose anyway. Stopping all at once was the worst plan.

A man shuffled by her, cupped his hands into the chill water, drank. His hair was greasy. He wore the rags of what had been a suit. The remains of his embroidered shirt were rendered in orange and black, the same as everything else. He took another double handful of water, then drew a length of cloth out of his pocket. The sleeve of someone’s shirt. He soaked it in the drinking water, wrung it back to damp, and started pulling off his clothes. Jessyn stood, still counting, as the man wiped his skin with the icy cloth. His gooseflesh caught the light, stippling his arms and chest with tiny shadows. Jessyn reached the end of her count and started again, moving the capsules back into their bottle. When the bathing man was done, he pulled his filthy clothes back on and shuffled out through the press of bodies, his gaze fixed on nothing. Eight, nine, ten, eleven…

If her brain did go rotten here, who would know, anyway? There were times that living inside the error bars of sanity was too much to expect of anyone. This was one. When she thought about it, she was astounded that they’d all held themselves together as well as they had. Only a few fights. A countable number of screaming fits. Nobody had set a guard around the gruel and water and exchanged access to the raw necessities for sexual favors. Really, looking back at human history as she understood it, the captives of Anjiin had comported themselves well. Or at least not as badly as they might have.

As soon as Synnia appeared from among the shadowed bodies, Jessyn could see something had changed. Synnia’s eyes were bright, her head a little taller than it had been since she’d come to the prison. Since she’d seen Nöl die. If Jessyn squinted, Synnia almost looked happy.

“Here you are,” Synnia said. “I was looking everywhere.”

“I was just—” Jessyn began, and realized she’d lost count. The little stab of panic and annoyance wasn’t a sign she was doing well. “I was just moving around a little.”

Synnia took her elbow, squeezing in close. Her smile was soft and beatific. “I wanted you to know. We’re getting out. No, no, no. Don’t say anything, just listen. Urrys Ostencour is getting a group together. Next time the guard comes to switch out the mat, we’re going to overpower it and force our way out. There’s so many of us, they won’t be able to stop us all. You don’t have to do anything. Just be ready. When the time comes, be ready.”