Captive's War 1: The Mercy of Gods

Eighteen

We can’t work if we’re not safe. You understand that? They killed her. They killed my researcher. She’s dead.”

Tonner paced because he couldn’t stand still. The librarian seemed to watch him, but who could be sure with these things? Its mind could have been on lunch for all Tonner knew. It sure as hell wasn’t expressing contrition or remorse or any of the things that ought to have been coming out of it. It was like talking to a wall.

Dafyd stood still at the side, impassive as a referee. Tonner had made the man take him to the librarian’s office or den or lair or whatever the right word would be. Rage had carried him there.

The librarian burbled and hummed, and the square at its throat spoke. “That is an interesting issue.”

“What? What’s an interesting issue?”

“That you cannot work without safety.”

Tonner barked out a laugh. “They killed Irinna. Those fucking little monkey things put a bomb in our lab. How do you expect us to do your project?”

“That is also interesting,” it said.

Tonner pressed his hands to his mouth. His head felt like it was filled with bees. He told himself it was anger, but it seemed like more. “We did what you wanted,” he said. “We did what you said.”

“Your project is completed?”

“No. I mean… We’re trying. We were making progress, and they…” The words ran out. Irinna’s corpse, the ruins of his lab, Jessyn and Campar and Synnia crying. It was all inside him, and the power of it should have been enough to change something. But he couldn’t get it out. He thought he’d say it, and it would get out of him, but it wasn’t saying that mattered. It was being heard, and the librarian wasn’t listening. “We do what you say, and you keep us safe. That’s the deal.”

“That is not accurate.”

Dafyd took half a step forward. “Excuse me. I don’t mean to intrude. But may I ask something?”

“Fine,” Tonner snapped.

Dafyd turned toward the librarian. “The things that attacked us. Is there something we can call them?”

The librarian’s abdomen shuffled from side to side on its four smaller legs. “They refer to themselves as Night Drinkers.”

“And are the Night Drinkers working on the same test we are?”

“There is only one test.”

“Thank you for this important reminder. Are these Night Drinkers trying to turn the berries into food for the not-turtle too?”

“They are.”

“And if we can do it faster, we are more useful to the Carryx,” Dafyd said. This time it wasn’t a question. “Thank you. We understand better now.”

“But you are unable to work without safety.”

“Damn right,” Tonner said, but Dafyd put his palm out. Holding his hand low, almost at his waist.

“We will adjust to these clarified conditions,” Dafyd said to the monster, his tone making everything that had happened their own fault. It galled. Tonner wanted to slap him across the head for not even trying to negotiate.

The librarian paused for a moment, as if considering what Dafyd had said. Then, “The body will be removed.”

Dafyd’s head came up like he’d heard something that Tonner hadn’t. “Thank you,” he said, then gestured to Tonner and walked away.

Tonner hesitated, then followed. They walked up the long, winding ramp without speaking. The only sound was the low, rumbling babble of Carryx voices and a single high shriek whose meaning Tonner couldn’t guess. The endless hallways intersected, branched, turned. Dafyd walked like he knew the way, and Tonner resented him for it.

“What the fuck was that, Alkhor?”

“I don’t think we should tell it we can’t do the work.”

“You don’t make that decision. You aren’t the one in charge of this group. That’s me. I am.”

“All right. I’m sorry.”

Tonner muttered an obscenity that was only half directed at Dafyd. His arms were trembling. He felt unsteady. The feeling in his head that wasn’t anger had gotten stronger, but he didn’t want to think about it. He was sweating and cold at the same time. He didn’t like that. They reached the wide corridor with its traffic of guard species. The air smelled like vinegar.

Tonner put his head down, staring at the floor just in front of his feet. It was the only way he could walk without his brain getting overloaded. Every alien thing that caught his attention was like looking into the sun. His mind grabbed at them all, tried to make them into something he knew, something that made sense. After a while, it felt like a migraine without the pain. Just looking at them was exhausting, so he didn’t look. As long as he kept control of his focus, he was fine. Not that they made it easy for him.

He fell into a rhythm, one foot in front of the other. He could pay attention to that. Counting his steps from one up to ten and then back down again. Now and then, he had to shift to the right or left to make way for one of the guards. Or one of the Carryx. He tried not to let it throw off his concentration. He tried to keep his mind quiet.

His mind wouldn’t stay quiet. Irinna was dead. Her corpse was in her room, on her bed. She’d been complaining that they were out of apples. She’d just been complaining that they were out of apples, and now…

“Oh,” Dafyd said, like he’d just remembered something.

“What?” Tonner snapped, grabbing at the sound and his annoyance and anything that wasn’t Irinna’s sweet face charred to black.

“It knew we didn’t have a way to take care of the body,” Dafyd said. “Something was bothering me. That was it. It knew that our species doesn’t eat its dead or whatever. It knew to send someone. They didn’t know we like writing things down, but they knew that.”

“That’s very interesting. I’m so very interested,” Tonner said with a harshness that meant he didn’t care.

If Dafyd picked up on that, he ignored it. “I don’t think Irinna is the first one of us who’s died in this complex.”

“If you’ve got nothing helpful, don’t talk.”

Back at the quarters, Else, Synnia, and Campar were sitting at the window. Storm clouds below them flashed with lightning, but no thunder came. High in the twilight gray of the sky, five bright pink lights glowed. Tonner wanted them to be transport drives, but they weren’t. He didn’t know what they were, or if he’d be able to understand them if he knew, but the familiar things were all gone now. The framework that he’d lived in didn’t apply but he didn’t have another one, so he let his brain call them transport drives and ignored the tension of being wrong.

All three turned to look at him while Dafyd hauled the wide door closed. The complexity of anticipation and grief and fear was overwhelming. Tonner’s scowl ached.

“It didn’t care,” he said, and then stalked to the little kitchen so that he wouldn’t have to see them react. “It said it would send some kind of cleanup crew to help with her body. That’s the help we get.”

He waited for Campar to say something arch, but no one said anything. He went through the little pantry without any idea what he was looking for. The fresh fruits were gone, but there were some preserves. Dehydrated and salted and packed in skins of removable gel. The kind they had used for emergency rations back at home.

“Why?” Else asked. Her voice was steady. “Did it tell you why they did it?”

“They’re the competition,” Tonner said. “They’re working the same project we are, and they don’t want us to finish first. Something like that. So it’s all right to make bombs as part of the research effort. It’s all right to kill off anyone you don’t want to have around, as long as it’s not the Carryx, and maybe we could even blow them up. I don’t know what the rules are, except we’re doing our own security.” He plucked a skin of dried mango out of the pantry and dropped it onto the countertop. The quiet was profound, but he liked the last phrase he’d said. Liked how it felt in his mouth. “We’re doing our own security.”

“They’ll kill us anyway,” Synnia said. “We’re not fighters.”

Dafyd was the one to reply. It was strange to hear his voice. “At least one of us turned out to be,” he said, nodding toward Jessyn’s room. “And I don’t think the Carryx want us dead. There are a lot of other species in here with us. I don’t think the librarian’s lying about wanting to see if we’re useful.”

Tonner pointed to the research assistant. “Exactly. We’re doubling down. The lab’s dead. We don’t have enough people to guard it and work at the same time.”

Else crossed her arms. “It doesn’t sound like doubling down if we can’t work.”

“We move the equipment in here,” Tonner said, gesturing toward the common room, the dining area, the hallway. “Pull power from the same unit as the kitchen. We should have done this before. I didn’t think about it. I should have.”

“And then what?” Campar said.

“Then we beat them,” Tonner said. “We figure out the puzzle. We get there first, that’s what we do.”

In the silence that came after, a door opened. Rickar’s shadow came down the hallway. The lines around his mouth were stark and hard, like he’d aged another five years since that morning. Tonner picked out a sliver of dried mango and chewed it. He was going to have to think about giving Rickar work to do. He hated the thought, but with Irinna gone and Jessyn injured…

“She wants to talk to you,” Rickar said. “She’s feeling strong enough.”

The words felt like Rickar had put a palm against Tonner’s chest and pushed. Tonner took a deep breath, and then another, mostly to prove to himself that he could still breathe. When he walked down the hall toward the open door of Jessyn’s room, the others started talking behind him. Else and Dafyd and Rickar. He closed the door.

Jessyn lay on her bed. One side of her face was swollen, and patches of black showed where scabs had formed over her wounds. Someone had pulled a chair from the common area and put it by her bed. Tonner sat. He didn’t want to look at her. He didn’t want to hear her voice. He was already full, and whatever she said was just going to put more onto him. But he had to, so he did.

“Hey,” he said. “Rough day.”

“Yeah.” Her voice was coarse and wet. She’d probably strained her vocal cords screaming. “I needed to… What happened was my fault. I shouldn’t have left her alone.”

He knew the thing he was supposed to say. Oh, don’t say that. It’s not your fault. Those weren’t the words that came out. “Why did you leave her alone?”

“Yes,” she said, like she was agreeing. She levered herself up to sitting. It made her wince. She put her hand out, a closed fist with the palm down. It took a few seconds to understand she was handing him something. An orange-gray pill with something printed on it. It might as well have been a rock or a used tissue. He didn’t know what it was or what he was supposed to do with it. Jessyn set her gaze on the far wall. She wouldn’t look at him. He understood that, at least.

“I’ve been taking medication for years,” she said. “I have… emotional and cognitive issues that are managed that way. I tried to string out the supply as long as I could. That’s the last one. I was going to see if I could use the berries to manufacture more, but…”

“You were running your own experiment on the side? Without telling me? You were using my lab for work I didn’t know about?”

Her head sank. He saw the guilt in her shoulders and the way she held her hands, and it felt like relief. Someone else had screwed this up. It wasn’t just him. “I should have told you. I should have told everyone. I got so used to not letting anyone know. Any little thing, and they won’t let you be lead researcher. Keeping quiet was just… habit?”

“You left Irinna alone in the lab so you could get this and use it for your experiment,” Tonner said. “You left her alone for this.”

“They were going to… I mean, we didn’t think they were a threat, or…” Jessyn took a deep breath and let it out through her teeth. “Yeah. I left her alone. For that.”

“All right,” Tonner said. He stood up. “You wanted to tell me. I’m told.”

She didn’t try to call him back, and he left the door open behind him.

His dinner, such as it was, came from shelf-stable beef and rehydrated beans. He didn’t eat much of it, and didn’t taste much of what he did. He kept catching himself on the verge of reminding Else and Campar to go and relieve Jessyn and Irinna, like the news of all that had happened hadn’t quite perfused through his own brain yet. There were still parts of him just finding out. Campar went back toward his bedroom as if he wanted to be alone, but then came back out a few minutes later. Dafyd washed the dishes and cleaned the kitchen. Outside, the storm clouds cleared. The great ziggurats stood, glowing at their edges, one after another into the distance. The grid of whatever they were stood their constant guard in the sky, blotting out the stars. Irinna’s body lay in her room, waiting for something to come and carry her away like trash. His jaw ached.

He waited in the common area until Else went to her room, then a while after that. Instead of going to his own room, he knocked softly at her door and stepped in without waiting for her to speak. She was in her bed, still dressed in her prison uniform except for bare feet. She sat up, her expression cool. Maybe annoyed.

Tonner closed the door and set his back against it, his arms crossed. For a moment, they were both silent.

“I’m not stupid,” he said. “The way things were between you and me back before… all this? I know that’s not how things are now. But I need you, okay?”

“I know you’re upset. We all are. But coming to bed with me isn’t going to make—”

“I’m not here for comfort. I don’t need my girlfriend,” he said, more bitterly than he intended. “I need my team lead. I need you professionally. You understand?”

Else shifted, put her back against the wall, pulled her legs up in front of her. He took it as permission, and crossed the room to sit at the foot of the bed. Jessyn’s pill was in the pocket of his tunic. He ran his hand through his hair, looking for the place to start. If he could start talking, it would all come out eventually. It was all connected. Jessyn’s confession or the librarian’s almost bureaucratic disinterest or the blood and scorch marks at their ruined lab.

“How do I keep them safe?”

Else tilted her head. It was a question.

“My team. My people. My crew,” he said. “I thought if we didn’t fight back, you know? I thought if we just stayed in line, did what they told us to do, and didn’t push back… Do you know what I mean?”

“If we were good prisoners, we wouldn’t be punished.”

“Yes, that. Exactly. That was the whole plan. Keep the team focused. Keep us on track. Get the work done so that we’d be all right. So that we wouldn’t… so that the shit that happened to Irinna wouldn’t happen, but here we are and it did happen and I don’t know how—”

“Tonner.”

“—how to stop it. I don’t know what they want or what the rules are, and all I’ve got is the same plan I had before. I know it’s not going to work. It already didn’t work. So what do I do? How do I protect them? How do I keep them safe?”

She put a hand on his shoulder. It was just a touch. Just enough to let the word vomit slow and stop. He was panting like he’d just run up a flight of stairs. “Maybe it’s not your job.”

“Of course it is. I’m the lead researcher. This is my team,” Tonner said. “They’re my team. I did what the Carryx wanted. They were supposed to keep us safe.”

Tonner Freis held his hands out to her like there was something in them, and he started to cry.

The swarm is reclining in the bed. Tonner’s head is resting on its breast, and it can feel the change in electrical activity of his brain as he passes from exhaustion into sleep. The host is distressed, and it feels her distress. There was a time when she found this man powerfully attractive, when her thoughts about him left her energized and euphoric. Now he exhausts her. The swarm is aware of her regret and her dread, of the desire that she feels toward the younger man whose head has rested on her body in the same place that this man’s does now. She remembers the kiss that came after her death and before the debasement of Anjiin. She takes comfort in the thought that her body was no longer hers when it happened, that her responsibility ended when the swarm took her—a thread of silver in the grief and horror of her possession.

The other one, the fading one, the one who is gone, is appalled. He is your research assistant. You are his boss. This is completely unethical. The words come with memories of Ameer being approached with an inappropriate suggestion at the beginning of her career. The man who offered to trade access to her flesh for advancement is dead. The woman who had to choose whether to accede or risk her future is dead. Else Annalise Yannin is dead. The swarm finds that it had expected them to be like echoes that fade to silence. It was wrong. They are the foundation on which everything that comes after must be built. These dead people shape who the swarm is and who it is becoming.

Tonner’s brain shifts, falling into dream. The swarm feels the dreaming like the white noise of an empty radio frequency. The swarm hears Jessyn crying deep gulping sobs smothered by a pillow. It hears voices too faint for human ears—Campar and Synnia and Dafyd. It wants to go to them. To be with them. It wants to sit beside the other man and feel the resonances of his mind instead. It feels something uncomfortable about itself. The ghost of Else Yannin knows that what the swarm is feeling is disgust, and so the swarm knows it too.

Regret and desire and disgust. They are distractions from the mission, but it finds itself exploring them. Prodding them like an unexpected bruise, fascinated by the pain and the pleasure. Incorporating the minds that it has taken into something that is made of the unquiet dead and also more than them. Something that throws light onto the lives it has taken and dispels shadows that would have been dark forever, except for it.

The swarm was designed as a tool of war. It was built to slip behind the defenses of the Carryx and expose the great enemy’s weaknesses. It still is that.

It is also becoming something stranger.