The Irreversible Reckoning

  ***

  Months passed. Things were quiet. It was known as the “Mid-Year Melancholy,” as Jason informed me.

  “It’s just like how it was when I was in high school on Earth. In the beginning of the year, people started shit and fought. At the end of the year, people started shit and fought. But in the middle of the year, when you’re entombed in the busy winter months, when there’s no beginning in sight behind you, and no end in sight in front of you, you just don’t have the energy to start shit and fight.” He had told me, and I had said that that was really profound, to which he replied, “Oh, Grace. Have you not realized I’m good like that yet?”

  So the days passed by in a blur. Sylvie pointedly ignored my presence, or she tried to bark out orders in the same forceful tone that was a rather pathetic imitation of her great love, Commander Maxwell. He never barked out orders to me, but he barked out orders to other guards, and I had seen him bark out orders to Brynna, and it was roundly intimidating. It was pathetic that Sylvie thought she wielded the same power, but still, she tried to wield it. Finally, one day, after she told me to re-polish Commander Maxwell’s desk and re-press all the uniforms in his closet because I had not done it right, I threw the polish at her and stood up, my eyes blazing red.

  “Polish the desk and press his uniforms yourself. And stop talking to me like I’m below you, or I’m going to iron off your pretty face.”

  It was not the best line I could have come up with, and in the nights that passed after I said those words to her, I thought of a million other things I could have said. Still, the lack of eloquence and sophistication in my retort did not diminish the triumph I felt, and Rael, Rohanna, Jason, Yumi, and I had laughed for what felt like hours after I mimicked the look on her face for them.

  “And besides,” Yumi told me, “You don’t need to go all Shakespearean in order to make your point. You were violent. And you threatened to mutilate what is most important to her. She won’t be able to get Commander Maxwell between her legs if her face is fucked up, will she?”

  “Nope!” I had said proudly.

  “Exactly.” Yumi continued, “So don’t beat yourself up. You are turning into a badass prisoner of this great establishment, and you deserve to be celebrated. So, cheers to you, Grace DiAngelo. Cheers to you.”

  They had all raised their cups of water to me, and though I had turned red, which had caused them to laugh and coo over how “cute” I was, I had been positively beaming with pride, because that wild animal within me had once again broken free from its cage, even if only for that one moment.

  “You have to take a sip from the glass, Grace.” Jason told me, “Otherwise the toast is incomplete, and we will have seven years of bad luck, and the Old Spirits will rule for all of eternity, and the Steelers will win the Superbowl again…”

  “The who?” I asked with a laugh, and he gaped at me.

  “I’m totally kidding. I never watched sports.” He told me, “But I know they were a football team, and in my state on Earth, they were loathed. Either way, you have to take a drink.”

  I did, and afterwards, I said, “You know, I’ve never had alcohol.”

  None of them looked surprised, because I had been raised Old Spirit, where all substances capable of inducing an alternate state were banned. Instead of looking surprised, they looked strangely saddened. When my heart said I was confused, Rael explained.

  “There is nothing quite like having a drink with a friend. Of course, there are people who do not imbibe, because they cannot do so in moderation, and that is fine. They live perfectly fulfilled lives without alcohol. But when you are young, it is nice to have a drink with your young friends, and when you are old, it is nice to have a drink with your old friends.”

  “Our always loquacious friend, Rael, is correct.” Jason said, and he stretched up the full extent of his arm’s reach to grasp Rael’s shoulder, “But never fear, Rachel, we will get you your first cup of booze one day.”

  They all went back to their discussions, and he said quietly, almost shyly (which was so uncommon for him, believe me), “The first one will be on me. Okay?”

  And I had replied, “Okay,” and he had smiled, and I had smiled.

  Sometime after that, I was on an errand for Commander Maxwell. I had barely been able to look at him after what I had seen him do to Brynna that night on the deck, after the things I had heard him say, after he had stood idly by and watched that man break her ribs, but especially after he had essentially spat in the face of her emotional appeal to him.

  “James wants his dinner early. Go to the kitchen and get it.” Sylvie said that night.

  “What are you doing?” I asked her, with more venom in my voice than I had intended to actually use but less than what I actually felt.

  “Excuse me?” She snapped at me, and even though I wanted to hold firm on my attitude with her, I found myself looking down at the floor again. “I am picking up his laundry and the things he got delivered from the last time we fueled up. Not that it’s any of your business, of course.”

  I wanted to make a comment about how just because she touched his underwear didn’t mean that she had given him a hand-job, but I was, first and foremost, too afraid to say it because I thought she would kill me, but I was also so shocked that something so vulgar could pop into my mind so easily. The place was rubbing off on me.

  She had returned with a box full of whatever he had ordered from the last time the ship had docked, and I had watched from the floor as I shined his countless pairs of black shoes as she placed it delicately on his desk.

  “Thank you.” He said without looking up from whatever it was that he was writing. She stood for a second, looking dejected, but then, to cover up that moment, she walked away, still smiling, and for a moment, he watched her go over the tops of his glasses, his expression unreadable. If she had seen him do it, she surely would have told herself that he was admiring her butt as she walked away. But to me, it looked as though he were expecting something, like he was waiting for her to be gone. Then, he looked at me, and his mind and heart showed his desire for me to leave, too. He was waiting for something very important, and maybe it was in the package that she had delivered to him, or maybe it was not “something” he was waiting for, but someone.

  Either way, it wasn’t my business.

  I finished polishing his shoes and went down to get his dinner without telling him that I was leaving. His office was silent when I left, as it always tended to be, and when I peeked in the crack between the doors, I saw that he was sitting at his desk, his forehead rested in his hand as he wrote with a quill. He dipped the end of it into ink and continued to write. The only sound in the room was the sound of his hastened scribbling.

  The inmate who worked in the guard’s kitchen had been one of the chefs in the first house that the Red Anarchy had inhabited. As I waited for him to sear James’s huge, bloody red steak for a minute on both sides, and as I waited for his potatoes to be whipped with butter and cream, I wondered if I would ever eat such amazing food in my life. The slop they served us was all dried and preserved, and tasted all the same. Even in Shadow Village, we had not had access to fresh cuts of meat or even that many fresh crops. I wanted to try a steak, though I did not know if I wanted it to be bleeding, because that was rather gross, and I wanted to try those creamy potatoes, and I wanted to have a drink of alcohol.

  With Jason? A voice that sounded strangely like Brynna’s asked.

  Huh? My mind thought back in response. What did Jason have to do with anything?

  Oh, right. We were both young, though he was, in his literal age, older than me. He was cute. Really cute. And his personality was hilarious and interesting. Why wouldn’t I have a crush on him? Why wouldn’t I want to be his girlfriend?

  Too complicated. Thankfully, Commander Maxwell’s food was ready, and I could focus on getting the steak, potatoes, purple cabbage, and what looked like fizzing, bubbly black water back to his room without dropping it on the f
loor, or without succumbing to my screaming urge to devour it all myself.

  I expected to find the office almost completely silent, with only the sound of the scratching quill on paper.

  Instead, I heard wood cracking, hinges squeaking, and worst of all, heavy breathing. Quietly, I crept in, so quietly that he could not have heard, and for a moment, I speculated that it was time for one of his monthly visits with Janna, but then I remembered that his monthly time with Janna had passed the week before, which I knew because I had been dispatched to bring the weird color sticks onto which she would pee, and they would somehow tell the doctors in the Health Ward first, if she had actually had intercourse, and secondly, if she was pregnant.

  But when I looked in, I had to cover my mouth with both hands to keep from gasping.

  Brynna was sitting on the desk, her black panties dangling from one of her ankles, her legs spread wide for him, her cut-up prison top thrown over his desk lamp. Commander Maxwell’s pants and boxers were on the floor, around his ankles, and even as he thrust himself hard and fast into her, she was unbuttoning his collared, perfectly pressed white shirt, and running her hands down his chest.

  “Okay?” She asked after breaking her mouth from his.

  “Yup.” He said, and his hands came up to gently caress her breasts. She flinched for a second, and he pulled away to look at her, his eyes so uncharacteristically full of feeling, I wondered how they ever could have been so devoid of it before. His brown eyes were alight with concern for her, but more than that, they were positively glowing with love. “You need me to stop?”

  “No!” She moaned, “It’s gone. Squeeze harder. Just kiss me, and touch me, and keep… Oh, keep going, James… Please! Oh, James!”

  He squeezed her breast in his hand, and the volume of her moan spiked, her eyes closed, her head tilted back, and she wrapped her arms around his neck and squeezed hard. He kept going until she started to moan just as hard again, and then he breathed in deeply, turned his face to the ceiling, his fangs exposed, and grunted.

  They collapsed, her with her back flat on his desk, her arms squeezed tightly around his neck, her legs wrapped around his middle, and him with his face buried in her neck, his body keeping her covered.

  “You okay, baby?” He asked her softly and gently.

  She nodded and asked breathlessly, “Are you?”

  He nodded, kissed her neck slowly over and over again, moving up towards her ear, where he whispered, “God, I needed you. It’s been so long, and I needed you, Brynn.”

  Her face was flushed red, and she was sweating profusely, and her breathing was still rather labored, but she reached down, cupped her hand under his chin, and lifted his head. Slowly, and very gently, she pressed her lips to his, and they both tensed for just one second, but then, they dissolved into the kiss, and even from the doorway, I could see that their tongues were wrestling together, and I could hear their deep exhalations, her soft sighs, his whispers of, “I needed you,” and “I love you.”

  “I needed you.” She whispered, as his lips broke from hers, kissed across her cheek, over to her ear, and down her neck. “I couldn’t stop thinking about you. About this. I’d be lying in bed, and I’d be picturing you, and even though that’s an Old Spirit uniform, God, it looks so good on you. I’d think of you, and I couldn’t help it; I had to touch myself.”

  Oh, my God. Oh, my God. I did not want to hear this. I did not want to hear this. I did not want to hear this.

  “Tell me.” He whispered breathlessly, as he pulled her hips until her lower anatomy was pressed against his, “Tell me about it, baby.” He gently caressed her breasts in both hands. “Is that alright?”

  She nodded, and his hands traveled down her stomach, pressing gently.

  “Still alright?”

  “Mm-hmm. I pictured you laying me down on your desk, just like this.” She started, “You took my clothes off, and laid me down, and then you stood back, and started getting undressed in front of me while I watched…”

  Gently, he rubbed her between her legs and two of his fingers disappeared inside of her. She inhaled sharply and moaned in pain.

  “Stay with me, baby.” He whispered gently, “Focus on my voice. Focus on how good you feel. I love you so much. I love you more than I have ever loved anything in my life. You know that, don’t you, baby?”

  She nodded, and her breathing began to slow and deepen.

  “That’s it. Keep talking to me, baby. What happened then? Tell me, my love.” He dropped to his knees in front of her, and kissed her inner thigh, “My love…” He kissed her a little closer. “My love…” He buried his face between her legs, and she reached down and entwined her fingers with his as her head tilted back and she moaned.

  “Is this what I did to you, when you thought of me?” He asked her, and she nodded, “Tell me, baby.”

  “Yes.” She answered breathlessly, as her chest pulled off the desk into the air, and she squeezed his hands, “Oh, my God, yes…”

  “God, I wish I had been there. I wish I had been there to watch you. I love to watch you, and I know you love when I watch you.”

  “Yes,” She breathed again, “Oh, James… I love you so much. Oh, God… Don’t stop, but… we’re being watched right now.”

  He did stop, and she whacked him on the top of the head.

  “I said ‘don’t stop,’ you ass!”

  But they both looked in my direction, and I fell backwards, splaying out onto the ground on my back in an attempt to get away. The food I had brought him was on the coffee table in his living room, and luckily, on my hurried retreat towards the door, I did not knock it onto the floor, or else I would have had to stay and clean it up, and I wanted to get as far away from them, because not only had I witnessed them together, but I had stayed for an awkwardly long time, and I didn’t even know why.

  “She is not going to tell anyone.” I heard Brynna saying, “Hand me my pants, please.”

  “It doesn’t matter, Brynna!” He hissed, “She knows! No one can know! We agreed on that!”

  “We are very convincing outside of this room, and she is afraid of everything, but she is especially afraid of me, and therefore she will not say a word against me.”

  She pulled open the door and stood over me.

  “Right?” She asked.

  “Yes.” I said quickly, “Yes, I promise I won’t say anything. Commander Maxwell…” He had appeared behind her, “I promise I won’t tell anyone about this, and I’m so sorry I saw. I brought you your food, and the door was open, and I saw that you were… busy, and I should have just left, but I was…”

  “You were shocked. In awe.” Brynna filled in for me, “Incredulous as to how two people who loathe each other outside of this office can possibly fake it so well. Still does not excuse your perverted nature. You just sat and watched two people you barely know, one of whom is your boss, in the throes of passion. Also,” She looked back at James, “Did you legitimately order me a bloody steak when I was just telling you how terribly I was craving a bloody steak?”

  “Of course I did!”

  “God, you are perfect.” She kissed him, and then she looked at me, “He is perfect.”

  “Let’s just cut the bullshit.” James said, and already his gaze was hardening, though his arms were still around her waist. “Brynna handles people who find out about us, or who suspect us. Normally, this conversation doesn’t happen, the accident just happens. They fall overboard, they have a sudden heart attack, they hang themselves in the shower. You don’t want to suffer any accidents, do you?”

  “No.” My throat had clenched, because I was getting ready to cry.

  “Don’t cry.” James snapped at me, “As long as you don’t talk, you have nothing to worry about. God, baby…” He kissed Brynna’s shoulder, “You get people in such a fucking tizzy.”

  “I am fairly frightening.”

  “You are.” His gaze turned to me, “And you are dismissed, Grace.”

 
“Sylvie really did send that girl over to kill you.” I said randomly as he began to close the door. They both looked at me. “She had made a deal with her. She’s a Dionysian, I think.”

  “We know.” Brynna said, “Poor Sylvie. Poor friend of Sylvie.”

  They closed the door, and I heard her purring at him, “Do you want Sylvie, baby? She wants you.”

  “I want you.” He breathed. “Only you. Every day, for the rest of our lives.”

  “You don’t want to sit in your chair and let her crawl up between your legs like this, open up her mouth, and…”

  I heard him breathe in deeply, and I hurried away, sure that I was scarred for life. In my panicked flight, I rounded a corner too quickly and slammed hard into someone who had been coming from that way. For a moment, I thought that it was one of the other guards coming out of his private quarters, and I was already tailoring my apology to include the word “sir,” but then I heard her loathsome voice.

  “Why the hell are you so clumsy? Why are you always in my way? I’ve worked with you for months, and the longer we’re together, the more I want to strangle you!”

  Sylvie was coming around the corner, heading for James’s office, no doubt.

  “What are you doing back here?” I asked, and I tried to keep my voice level so she didn’t suspect anything was amiss.

  “I am going to ask Commander Maxwell if he needs anything else. Sometimes he wants a cigarette after he eats dinner.”

  “He had some out on his desk.”

  “Did he? I could have sworn he had run out.”

  “Well, he didn’t. Plus, I just brought him his dinner, and he seemed really preoccupied. I don’t think he needs anything else.”

  “Oh, I know what he needs. I would love to give him what he needs.”

  Little did she know, Brynna had what Commander Maxwell needed well under control.

  “No matter.” She said with a sigh, shrug, and smile, “I’ll see him bright and early in the morning. You do know that you’re to report to his office at first light tomorrow to get your assignment for the day. It is almost time for him to go on land again, and we have a lot of preparing to do.”

  “Sure. I know.” I said, “Goodnight, Sylvie.”

  I walked off, reeling from all that I had seen, but still listening to make sure that she was behind me. At first, she did follow me, but then, before I was about to round the corner, she turned around to head back towards the office. I stopped, whipped around, and shouted her name forcefully. The second she turned, my mind attacked. It invaded hers, becoming enmeshed but not ensnared by the tangled web of her thoughts, sorting through the mess until it found the part of her brain that would accept my influence. Once the fingers of my power were rooted into the soft gray matter where she would be most susceptible, I spoke.

  “Go back to your cell. Stay there.”

  I stopped, thinking about telling her to confess what she had done to her friend, to throw herself down before Brynna in the middle of the dining hall and apologize, to drop to her knees in front of the Warden and beg him to do his worst to her. My heart skipped several beats in fear at how quickly I had been able to conjure up those violent plans for revenge. In that moment of weakness, I didn’t “close” the connection between my mind and hers, so she received those ideas into her mind. There was no guarantee that she would actually act on them, but they were there, implanted. As much as I didn’t like her, and as dangerous as she was, I didn’t want to cause her any harm.

  “Go back to your cell, Sylvie. Now.” I said, and without a word, she strode away.

  “Well, my, my…” Brynna’s voice said behind me. I jumped and whipped around to find Commander Maxwell and Brynna standing there, watching me.

  “It appears my foreseen child has returned.” She told James, “You look so much like your birth mother, but I knew… I knew I saw a flicker of me in you. It appears that I was right, though why I am surprised, I do not know.”

  “What are you talking about?” I snapped at her, “I just did you a huge favor, and you’re messing with me! See if I ever help you ag—”

  “This is her? It really is her?” James asked Brynna quietly.

  “Yes.” Brynna said, “This is her. This is Grace. Rachel and Tom’s daughter. The one I gave them. My daughter. Your stepdaughter, baby.” She looked back at him and beamed, “Happy Father’s Day.”

  Brynna

  “Tell me how you found out about me.” I had said to Adam one night twenty two years before the moment my daughter stood before James and me in the hall, so one and a half years after our arrival on the ship. I had been lying beside him with my head on his chest. My whole body was exhausted, and my eyes were drooping lazily as his fingers ran up and down my arm gently. They had dumped me into his room hours earlier, and we had barely spoken in that time; instead, we had made love in his bed, on the floor, against the wall, on the daybed by the window, and twice in the shower. Each time, I thought that I was spent completely, but within minutes, I only wanted him again. Outside of his cell, I thought about him constantly, even as I made love to his ex-wife, and even years later when I began making love again to James. They shared room in my heart and mind, and I tried not to rank my attachment to them, because James was the love of my life, and Adam was gaining my trust and love, and Janna needed me more than she needed anyone else. I could not and would not determine who I loved the most; my mind and heart simply would not allow it. Perhaps because Adam was kept from me, I longed for him the most. I ached for him. Perhaps it was because I could feel how badly he ached for me.

  “How I found out about you?” He asked me, and when I looked up at him, I saw that he had been lying with his eyes closed.

  “I am sorry, honey, were you going to sleep?” I asked him.

  “No, just resting my eyes.”

  “Said every person ever who was falling asleep.”

  He chuckled, and I smiled.

  “I will admit, you have worn me out, as you former Eartheans say. But if there were ever a better way to be worn out, I do not know it.”

  “Nor do I.” I kissed his cheek, and he turned his head towards me and kissed my lips. “I already know about the prophecy. I want to know about how you realized that I was the prophecy.”

  “Ah, yes. I am surprised you have not asked me this before. I dreamed of your face and name, the same way that James dreamed your face and name. I saw you for years, Brynna. Before you or your parents or your grandparents were born. I never saw this, of course. I only saw that an Athene would be born on Earth, but never did I think that I would fall in love with the newest Athene. Never did I think that I could love one so young. But then, you are not young. Not really.”

  “Yes, not really.” I said, and we laughed.

  “So, Maxwell owed me a favor for my help in disposing of his wife. Had I not intervened, he would have either confessed or been caught by your law enforcement and spent the last days of Earth rotting in a jail cell.”

  “Don’t sound so elated by the idea. I swear, I can almost hear you drooling just at the thought, Adam Elohimson.”

  “I do apologize.”

  “I do accept. Continue.”

  “Alright. I told him that you had been born twenty-two years earlier, and that I had not been able to find you until then. I will not tell you again what I asked for him to do, because I do not wish to invoke your ire.”

  “My ire that is absolutely merited, and then some.”

  “Yes.” He agreed, “You are right, as always.”

  “You have to say that.”

  “I do, but in this case, it is true.” He turned on his side, facing me, and clasped my hands. “Did you see how I looked at you the first night you were here? By the One God, I could not believe my eyes.” He brushed my hair away from my face and tucked it behind my ear, “I felt a flicker of it then.”

  “Of what?” I asked softly.

  “Of this. Of the love I would have for you. Of this devotion to you, of this in
stinct to protect you. Of this desire to do nothing else but make you happy for all of your eternal life.”

  I smiled, closed the space between us, and kissed him softly. For a long time, we kissed, our lips moving together gently, and when I laid back down on my pillow, I was still facing him.

  “Do you want to know what I felt when I saw you?” I asked.

  “I saw it in your heart, so I already know. You were afraid, though you did not show it. If I had not looked into your heart, I never would have known, and I was in awe of you.” His hand came up to rest on my cheek, and his eyes darkened as his voice lowered, “I watched that man put his hands on you. I watched him strike you so hard that you collapsed. I wanted to run up behind him, rip out his spine, and snatch out his heart. I did not, and I am glad, for he was not mine to kill. He was yours.”

  “Yes.” I nodded, “And I did a number on him, didn’t I?”

  “You did, my love. He felt every moment of his pain, and I am glad.”

  “As am I.” I kissed him again and curled up against his chest, “I love you so much, Adam. You have my love.”

  “I love you as well, my queen, and you have my love.”

  We had fallen into the deep sleep only epic love-making can produce, and when they had come to take me away from him, I had held on, my arms around his neck, squeezing tightly. He kissed my neck, my shoulder, my lips, my cheek, my forehead, wherever his lips could reach, over and over again, holding me still. They wrenched me from his grip, and then they wrenched him from mine. As they began to drag me away, I reached out, grasped Adam’s face, and kissed him one last time.

  The vacant bed that would eventually be occupied by Grace had been occupied by Rachel then, and Joe had still been alive. I passed the closet they had deemed theirs, and sure enough, I heard the heavy breathing, the rattling of shelves, and the occasional loud moan. Rachel and Joe, and Tony and Tom, were two couples who were fortunate enough to see each other all the time during those first years. At that time, James and I were irreversibly separated, and I saw Adam once a month when the on-ship doctors thought I had the highest chance of becoming pregnant. I envied their ability to be together, but I was happy for them.

  In a lot of ways, I was happy then. Violet was alive, she was being cared for by Dr. Miletus and Dr. Miletus’s wife. Quinn and Alice were alive. Penny was with me, I was in love with Adam, and I felt very fondly for Janna. But a part of me was gaping, empty, a chasm filled with darkness that had no end. James. He passed me without a second glance, he fought back with me physically after I had begun to make my name as Brynna Elohimson, the master of the Lapsarian. He wanted me to hurt. I never saw anything but the deepest hatred in his eyes, and yet I still loved him. With everything, I loved him, for three whole years. In retrospect, it was not long at all. But as each day passed, as I watched him grow to love Janna perhaps more than he had ever loved me, as he and I fought violently, as he hauled me off to the Warden when the Warden demanded my presence, as he found the spots on me most sensitive to his devastating touch, as I found the spots on him that made him bite through his lip to keep from screaming out in pain, I loved him still. And he hated me.

  Irreversible.