CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CAINA LET THE SAND fall through her fingers, listening to the sound of the waves, the sun warm on her back. She’d borrowed a swimsuit from the clinic’s pool locker room. Her swim in the ocean had felt good, plus it gave her something to do besides think about where her dad might be and what Cristian had said about her mom. She kept thinking about things she and her mother used to do together, silly things like shopping or playing games as a family. She didn’t quite believe her mother was gone because she couldn’t. There had been no goodbye’s and no closure. Her grief was simply a wound waiting for a surgeon, open and untended by anything but time.
The last message from Joshua said he’d found someone else like Cristian with nanocams, except the guy didn’t remember anything. She lay in the sand with her chin on her hands, letting the sun warm her skin. She swirled her finger in the sand, making a spiral. A hundred or so colonies, twenty-five planets, two galaxies, and one insidious group that called themselves the Nostekoi. Who were they? What did they want? An ocean wave broke and tumbled over her feet, then receded a safe distance away.
“Hey.”
She looked up to find Cristian hobbling over to her. He wore long shorts, exposing the white medic webbing on his knee. His loose shirt was open, and for the first time she saw the extent of the bruises on his body. His ribs were a fading purple, the bruises turning green on the edges. He carried a holomap in his hand, the thin scroll hanging from his fingers.
She sat up, suddenly conscious of her suit clinging to her. If he noticed, she couldn’t tell. He stopped next to her and hesitated for a moment, looking at the sand, but not sitting down. She realized he was trying to figure out how to sit down without bending his damaged knee.
“Do you need help?” she asked, jumping up.
“Nope. Just give me a s-second.” He bent his good leg and lowered himself to the sand with a grunt. He rolled the map out on the sand, flicking it at the corners to make it rigid. She sank down next to him, watching his face.
“I didn’t know about all those,” she said, ignoring the map and pointing to the dark bruises on his ribs.
He didn’t look at her. “They don’t hurt anymore. I w-wanted to show you something.”
The flat, black holomap lit up as his fingers moved over it. A view of the ten galaxies rose from the holomap, and hovered between them. Twenty-five red dots were scattered throughout the map. A single white dot on the outer edges of the galaxies winked.
“Are these all the colonies owned by the Nostekoi?” she asked.
“Well, the owners have various names, but they are all new within the last two years, so yes, I think it’s them.” He pointed to the single white dot. His finger shook a little, but they both pretended not to notice. Some of his terror could not be completely contained by the anti-anxiety drugs, especially when he talked about his captivity. “This is the only c-colony the Nostekoi haven’t taken, though I d-don’t know why. It might be worthless.”
Caina reached out and touched the white dot. The image zoomed in closer, the white dot now a pale planet orbiting around a star on the edges of a dark swath. “Black hole.”
She flicked the pale planet’s galaxy, and it obligingly spun. The planets flew out in elliptical orbits around the red sun, their paths crossing and leaving a visual trail of various colors to make it easier to follow them. The pale planet’s rotations were the widest, swinging on the farthest edges of the galactic halo, its orbit stretched out by the tremendous pull of the black hole’s gravity.
“Maybe my father is there,” she said, her eyes following the revolutions of the planets and suns. She didn’t mention her mother. She kept that hope to herself.
“If the Nostekoi aren’t interested in it then my guess is that it’s because they already have it, that it was the beginning of their takeover. It’s just a theory, of course.”
She sighed. “I’m so sick of not knowing. I hate it. I want to do something.”
He rolled up the holomap, the universe collapsing in his hands. “I know. But we’ll f-figure it out. We’re going to find him.”
He bent his good leg under him and grunted as he struggled to stand, keeping his bad knee straight. She put out a hand to steady him, holding his arm. He leaned on her hand for a moment.
“Sorry,” he said, his head down.
“Don’t be. I think you’re amazing.”
His mouth quirked up in a small, bitter smile. “Really.”
She felt the blood rush to her cheeks. “I don’t know what they did to you…” she stopped. He hadn’t told anyone what they did to him because he probably didn’t want to think about it, she knew. “It must have been terrible,” she finished, wishing she hadn’t brought it up.
“It was, but it’s over now.”
Caina wanted to say more, but everything seemed too painful.
He gave her a quick nod and a tight smile before he walked away.
Angry at herself for not having the right words, she impulsively reached out and grabbed his shirt. He stopped, turning to look at her over his shoulder. She put her arms around him, pressing against his back. His body went still, then she felt a hand on her arm.
“I’m all right,” he said.
She shook her head, tears falling down her cheeks. He wasn’t okay, she knew.
Cristian turned in her arms and held her, his hand going to her hair. Neither of them spoke, quiet in the embrace as they stood in the sun, listening to the waves. She’d had a crush on him for the past year, but nothing that felt like this aching, this yearning to heal him, to erase the pain. And even worse, she didn’t know how to tell him. The hand on her head trembled, and he abruptly pushed her away.
She grabbed his hand, but he wouldn’t look at her.
“I’m going to try something that might help us find your dad,” he said.
She guessed that he was going to attempt to remember things from his captivity. “You don’t have to.”
“Yes, I do.”
“But what if—“ she stopped. She couldn’t tell him that she was afraid he might break even more.
“Whatever has been damaged has already happened, and if I get worse, I’ll get better. I need to know that I tried.”
She put her arms around him again, though he didn’t return the embrace, simply standing there as if he were afraid to touch her. “Thank you,” she said.
He pulled her arms from him. “D-don’t thank me, Caina.”
Caina watched him leave, feeling numb. There wasn’t anything she could do to help him.
***
The small blue patch on his tongue did not hurt. Cristian trembled anyway, and rolled the dissolving gel around in his mouth. He’d needed some kind of sedative to make it through this.
A shaft of sunlight shone down from the skylight in the breezy room as he lay back on the bamboo-woven chair, his legs propped up. The relaxed pose was all fake. A thin film of sweat already beaded his forehead.
Sitting across from him, Dylan waited, his elbows on his knees. He wore his customary black clothes, his fingers loosely locked in front of him.
Cristian didn’t feel any different. The chemicals going into his brain were meant to trigger his ability to remember, and to remember with an intensity that would allow him to see details he wouldn’t have noticed before.
“Do you remember the first day you came to the clinic?” Dylan asked.
“Yeah.” The sound of voices and the bed, Caina’s warm hand clasping his. The clean absence of fear that washed over him when they first gave him the anti-anxiety meds. He could almost feel the wind blowing through the windows that first night. “I remember.”
“Do you remember the night you were at the Wests’ house when they were captured?”
He remembered Joshua shaking him awake in the game room. The hologame they’d finished gave off a dull glow. “Someone’s in the house.” Joshua had heard the intruders first.
Cristian knew Joshua heard things before anyone else, and frequencies no one else could hear. He didn’t even question him. They woke Caina, who had blinked at them in confusion, her long hair tangled over her shoulders, and the silk gown she’d slept in rumpled up to her knees. She’d been silent, listening with them.
When they heard the loud thud in the hallway, he and Joshua looked at each other. He remembered the adrenaline running through him at a fever pitch. Joshua shut out the lights in the room, and they’d crept out into the hallway. He’d motioned towards his parents’ bedroom, so Cristian followed him. Both of them slipped into a familiar pattern ingrained in their minds from drills at school. Joshua was the leader; Cristian followed. Though most of the house was dark, there was still some light from the windows, casting shadows as they moved through the hallway. At Joshua’s parents’ suite, the doors were open. They both stopped and moved against the wall, listening. Joshua motioned to him with two fingers, meaning that there were two inside. On his signal, they moved into the room.
Cristian got a brief glimpse of two figures standing over Joshua’s parents, who lay on the floor. Then a shock ran through his body, coursing through every nerve ending and down into his bones. Paralyzed by the pain, he blacked out.
“Okay, stop.” The voice belonged to Dylan.
Cristian blinked and realized his whole body was shaking. “I w-woke up on their ship.”
Dylan’s gaze bore into him, dark and impassive. “Don’t continue until you are ready.”
Cristian laughed, his voice shaky. “I’m never going to be ready for this p-part. I woke up on their ship.” His stuttering became more pronounced as his anxiety rose.
He remembered noise first—the sound of a ship’s engine. Then he remembered pain. His head hurt and his muscles ached all over his body. He’d opened his eyes to find himself on the cold, dirty floor of a cargo hold. The dim lights illuminated rows of containers secured to the walls. It wasn’t a big space, so he guessed the ship wasn’t meant to carry a lot of cargo.
Restraints pulled his arms behind his back so tight his elbows were almost touching. Joshua’s parents were lying next to him, unconscious. Mrs. West’s skin was oddly pale, and her lips were blue. Her long nightshirt was twisted around her limp body, her small stockinged feet tucked under each other. Horrified, he moved closer.
“Mrs. West, wake up,” he whispered to her, searching her still face. She had no expression, her mouth soft, her eyes closed and at peace. He whispered to her a few more times, but it was her husband who woke.
Mr. West groaned, his face contorted in pain. “Jenna?” he said, looking over at his wife. His eyes met Cristian’s.
Cristian remembered whispering, “I can’t wake her.”
Mr. West had struggled to sit up, moving closer to his wife. He bent down over her, his hands also tied behind his back. “Jenna, wake up, honey.”
When she didn’t answer, he lay his ear down on her chest. Cristian didn’t say anything, but he had not seen the rise and fall of a breath since he found her. After a long while, Mr. West’s face crumpled though he did not move away from her, as if he thought she might breathe again. At last tears ran down his face, and he knelt face down next to her body, his shoulders shaking.
The cargo door opened and two men walked in, their boots echoing in the large, empty space. Joshua’s father didn’t move, even though he’d probably heard them coming. One of the soldiers approached and kicked Joshua’s father away from his wife’s body.
The older man didn’t even look at the booted soldier, but anger rushed through Cristian. “You killed her.”
The two men looked at each other. One of the soldiers took off a glove to check her pulse. He was young, his face wide and curiously good-natured, though his eyes were hard. He looked up at his partner and shook his head. His partner cursed.
The wide-faced soldier stood up. “They aren’t going to like this.”
“Especially since all we’ve got is his son’s best buddy here,” the other one said.
“What are we going to do with her body?”
“Don’t you touch her!” Joshua’s father ground out in a low voice, his light blue eyes opened wide.
The wide-faced soldier kicked Stewart in the chest. The older man fell back, hitting the floor.
“Leave him alone!” Cristian shouted at them.
The plasma gun whined as the pleasant-faced solder said, “Oh, how I wish I could go red.”
He remembered the second plasma jolt being worse than the first, and convulsing on the ground beside Joshua’s grieving father.