“I’ll stay! Lhyn, I’m staying, I won’t leave you, I’m right here. I’m right here.” Ekatya was holding out her hands, as if she had tried to grip Lhyn’s shoulders and failed. Her expression was frantic. “I’m not going anywhere. Please, please slow down.”
Gradually, her breathing stabilized, but the tears still flowed. She hurt so much and she was so ashamed. “I’m sorry,” she gasped. “I want to be brave, but I can’t do this without you.”
“You don’t have to. I’ll find a way. Just…let me talk to Dr. Wells for a moment.”
Lhyn nodded, then rested her head against the headboard and closed her eyes. Ekatya carried on a one-way conversation in Common for several minutes, and she could imagine that she was back on the Phoenix, sitting on the sofa in their quarters with one of her Alsea programs on that wonderful display. In her mind’s eye, she saw Ekatya at her desk, speaking on the intraship com in those same tones, strategizing and finding ways to make things happen.
What she wouldn’t give to be there now.
The rise and fall of Ekatya’s voice nearly put her to sleep until she changed back into High Alsean and said, “I’m calling Sholokhov from here. I’ve managed to talk Dr. Wells into taking the hardware off me so I can put my uniform shirt back on and appear mostly normal. We’ve had to move a few machines around. But I can make this work.”
She looked so worried. Lhyn wanted to take that look away, but she was not strong enough to tell her to go. “I’m sorry. You shouldn’t have to do that.”
“Oh, Lhyn, this isn’t your fault. I’m the one who’s sorry. I should have planned better. All that time waiting—” She dropped her head and shook it once, then lifted it again. “Wish me luck.”
“Good luck. Don’t let him talk you into lifetime slavery.”
Ekatya’s surprised smile brightened her whole face. “You’re feeling better.”
“You’re not leaving,” Lhyn said simply.
“No. I’m not. Never again, if I can help it. But Dr. Wells does have to reduce my dosage a little, so I won’t look like a janked-up addict when I call Sholokhov. I’ll still be here, but…maybe not as solid. Are you all right with that?”
Lhyn passed her hand through Ekatya’s arm, meeting nothing but air. “You’re not solid now.” She closed her eyes again. “I’ll be fine as long as I can hear you.”
“Good. Then you can listen to me tell more lies per minute than the day Grams caught me skipping school.”
Only Ekatya could make her smile at a moment like this. “I haven’t heard that story.”
“The next time we call them, you should ask her. Dr. Wells is changing the dosage now. But I’m still here. Did I tell you about the time I had to take care of our third-grade class pet over the weekend? It was a horsehair snake, and it got out when I forgot to close the terrarium lid. I didn’t tell Grams or Gramps, because I didn’t want to get in trouble, but it backfired when Gramps put a shirt in the laundry chute. I never knew his voice could go that high.”
Ekatya spun her tale, and Lhyn kept her eyes closed as she listened. She refused to look, afraid of seeing an empty room. When Ekatya’s voice began to sound a little farther away, she told herself that she was simply in the bathroom, out of sight but still speaking. Still here.
“Dr. Wells says I’m ready,” Ekatya said, interrupting the story she had just begun. “I’m going to call Sholokhov now. Start the lie counter.”
Ekatya switched to Common and greeted Sholokhov. He must have immediately asked about her location, because she explained that she had been involved in a stun bead accident during a training drill and her chief surgeon wasn’t letting her out of bed yet. It was an excellent cover, justifying not only her presence in the medbay but also any lack of mental acuity he might notice.
Sholokhov seemed to accept that, and Ekatya began telling him about Lhyn’s location and Kane’s false trail. The lie counter spiked when she explained how she had gotten the information.
“I don’t know. Somehow, she got hold of a quantum com and called me. She had very little time; I wasn’t able to ask any questions.” Pause. “Well, I’ve learned never to be surprised by what Lhyn can do.”
Lhyn found herself smiling.
“She sounded close to delirious. It may have been her one moment of lucidity between the drug doses and the torture sessions. I wouldn’t be surprised if she doesn’t remember what she did.”
Her smile grew.
“Yes. No, I don’t… How long? All right. Thank you. Yes, I will.” Ekatya let out a long exhale, then switched back to High Alsean. “Help is on the way. And Dr. Wells is pouring the drugs back in.”
Her tone carried vast relief, but Lhyn couldn’t share the feeling. It seemed too good to be true. She had been through too much to believe that it could really be over.
“It’s only a matter of six or seven hours now. Unfortunately, Sholokhov has to get some of his operatives back here before he can move on this place. The local law enforcement can’t handle Kane and especially can’t be trusted to keep you safe. So we have to wait.”
“Then we wait. As long as you’re here, I’m all right. Tell me about the second time the horsehair snake escaped.” Ekatya had left her dangling, and she needed some way to pass the time before she would dare to open her eyes again.
“Oh, the second time was much worse. That was when I found out that our snake was female. And pregnant. Also, horsehair snakes are live-bearers, and they like to give birth in underwear drawers.”
Lhyn chuckled. It hurt like holy Hades, but this was a pain she could welcome. “I’m guessing it was not your underwear drawer.”
“No. Poor Grams. Gramps told me years later that she had to buy a whole new collection of underwear, because those little hairs get everywhere and no amount of laundering gets them back out. And they itch.”
She knew better than to laugh, but she could easily envision the reaction. Ekatya’s grandmother did not keep her feelings to herself, especially when she was irritated.
“But he also told me that Grams secretly thought the babies were the cutest things she’d ever seen. That’s how I ended up with three of them as pets for the next five years. I thought I’d talked Grams into letting me keep them, but the truth was that Grams wanted them and manipulated me into being the one to take care of them.”
“Your grandmother is smart. I’m not surprised you turned out the way you did.”
“Grams is sharp as a sidian blade and my role model for how I want to be when I’m her age. And Gramps is my role model for how I want to be now.”
Her voice was louder, and Lhyn risked opening her eyes. Ekatya was on the bed next to her, leaning against the headboard with their shoulders almost touching.
“You’re here,” Lhyn whispered. She didn’t care so much about a rescue that might never happen. She cared that Ekatya had not left her alone. This was real and immediate, and the only thing that mattered.
“I’m here, tyrina. And you’re going to be all right.”
They sat in silence then. Lhyn suspected that while Ekatya was not saying it, she was recovering from her quick change in dosages—and probably from her dual performances, for both Sholokhov and her. She wished that she could return the favor, letting Ekatya relax while she spun tales, but she did not have that in her.
After several minutes of quiet comfort, Ekatya asked, “What did Kane mean about you making a mistake?”
She had forgotten that. She didn’t enjoy remembering. “I thought today would be four. Four impacts in that chair, I mean. The first day it was one, the second day it was two, the third day it was three. Kane is obsessed with order. Irrationally obsessed. In his appearance, in everything he touches—I really upset him just by moving a pad slightly out of alignment. So I knew today would be four. That’s all I thought I could survive, and then he hit me with a fifth, and I was so shocked…I wasn’
t ready…”
“It’s all right. I know. Don’t think about it anymore. But it hasn’t been four days. You were taken the night before last. It’s been less than forty-eight stellar hours.”
“Forty-eight hours!” Lhyn could barely grasp it. “I knew he was mindshekking me, but I didn’t know it was that bad. He told me it was five days.”
“I thought you said four.”
“No, the first day he didn’t—” She stopped, the horror of it flooding her body.
“What is it?”
Her breathing began to run out of her control, jerking at her chest wall and filling her torso with flame.
“Lhyn, stop, stop, I’m still here! Please!”
“He…fucking game…I was…so stupid…”
“Lhyn!”
“I won’t survive it…I can’t…Ekatya…”
She lost herself in a haze of pain, the edges of her vision blurring into darkness as Ekatya hovered in front of her, trying desperately to talk her down. None of the words penetrated, but the voice did, and she held on to it with everything she had. When her breathing finally slowed and she could see clearly again, Ekatya looked as if she had sprinted the length of her ship.
“You look worse than I feel,” Lhyn rasped.
“I don’t think that’s possible. And I hate not being able to touch you.”
She knew Ekatya would not ask. She had to say it.
“Ekatya.”
“I’m here.”
“It’s not a linear progression. It’s the spiral sequence. I didn’t think of it because he didn’t use the interface the first time; he used Osambi. But he made a point of telling me that was my first lesson. One blow to the stomach. And for my second lesson, one broken bone.”
“Oh, shek.” It was Ekatya’s turn for the horrified realization. “And every number in the sequence is the sum of the preceding two.”
“The third lesson was two bones. The fourth was three shuttles hitting my stomach. And this last one was a lovely assortment of five.” Lhyn looked at the opaque window, mocking her with its emptiness. “The next one will be eight. I barely survived five. I won’t live through eight. Not with my mind intact.”
“You won’t have to.” Ekatya straddled her body, bringing her face between Lhyn and the window. “He’s not going to put you in the chair again.”
“You said it would take six or seven hours for them to get here. He’ll have time.”
“Second rule of capture, tyrina. Delay.”
“How can I delay that long?”
“You agree.”
Lhyn stared at her. “And then he’ll kill me.”
“No. You agree, but you don’t do it right away. Because you need time to recover before you can do what he asks.”
Her mind whirred away at the possibilities. “He wants me to appear in a video,” she said. “I can’t do that in the condition I’m in. I need sleep. And time to heal.”
Ekatya smiled. “Exactly. He’ll believe it, because he’s an arrogant asshead and he thinks he’s demoralized you by catching you in his little mathematical trap. Play it up. Play to his ego. Give him what he expects and buy yourself time. All you need is a little bit of time.”
Time. She had thought she had so much of it, a lifetime ahead of her with Ekatya and the joys of learning more about the culture she had come to love. But Kane had taught her a new view of time, measured in minutes of agony and hours of pain.
“Ekatya, if something goes wrong—”
“Then we’ll deal with it together.”
“No, that’s not what I meant. I don’t know how much time I have to tell you this.” She reached up as far as she could, her fingertips hovering over Ekatya’s uniform jacket. “If something goes wrong, I want you to know that…that I don’t have any regrets. I would rather have had a short life with you in it than a longer one without you.”
Tears pooled in Ekatya’s eyes. “I feel the same way. You know I do. But I don’t want a short life with you. I want to see those silver streaks in your hair take over your whole head. You’re going to be stunning.”
“If we…” Lhyn licked her lips and tried again. “If I make it through this, then I want us to be official.”
“Official what?” Ekatya drew back. “Is this…are you making a proposal?”
Lhyn nodded.
“You told me you didn’t believe in that. You’ve studied too many cultures and seen too many variations on the same thing, and none of them change what’s inside.”
“I’m not the same person who told you that. And you’re not the same person I said it to.”
“That is the truth and a half.” Ekatya’s lips curved into the soft smile she never showed anyone else. “You certainly know how to make a proposal memorable. Where do you want to do it? I’ll take you anywhere.”
“Take me home. To Alsea.”
She had lived and breathed Alsea for two and a half years now, first studying it from her research ship, then a glorious two months living there, then writing her articles and her book and doing the best she could to share the beauty of that culture with anyone who would listen. For the past year and a half, all she had wanted was to go back.
Now she needed to go back.
“I’ve never heard you call anyplace home before,” Ekatya said.
Lhyn almost shrugged before thinking better of it. “I liked being a nomad. I always felt tied down in Allendohan, like I was stuck in the tiny back end of the universe. Once I got out, I stayed out. But…Alsea is different. I think I’ve been looking for it all my life.”
“I think Alsea is fortunate you found it.” Ekatya sat back on her heels, her thighs pressed weightlessly against Lhyn’s legs. “I’ll gladly take you home. Besides, if a pair of tyrees need to get bonded, there’s really no other place to go, is there?”
They watched each other with silly smiles, and Lhyn had never breathed more easily. Then Ekatya cocked her head to listen. When she looked back, her eyes were sparkling.
“Dr. Wells says congratulations. And that she’s delighted to be the first to know.”
CHAPTER 48:
Control
They had another two and a half hours together before Kane returned. Ekatya kept her apprised of the time, a power of knowledge that changed everything. She had control. She knew when she had been taken; she could extrapolate the average time between torture sessions; she could establish a mental chronology of everything that had happened and everything that would happen. Kane had broken her body only as a means of breaking her mind, but her mind was far out of his reach now.
When the door opened, she closed her eyes and waited.
“I’m right here next to you,” Ekatya whispered.
“Dr. Rivers.”
She did not respond.
“I know you’re not asleep. Open your eyes.”
He stood beside the bed, medkit in hand. She met his gaze, then closed her eyes again and let her head roll to the side.
“You seem to be missing some of that…spirit I’ve become accustomed to over the past five days. Could it be that you’ve realized your mistake?” He waited, and when he next spoke, it was with quiet authority. “Dr. Rivers, look at me and answer my question.”
Slowly, she looked up at him. “Yes. You’re using the spiral sequence.”
“Ah, very good. Do you have any idea how few people even know what that is? I’m sorry that we’re nearing the end of our time together. It will be a long time before I meet another mind like yours.” He set the medkit on the floor and straightened. “Tomorrow will be your sixth lesson. How many times am I going to use the interface?”
“Eight,” she said tonelessly.
“Very good. Three more than today. And the day after?”
“Thirteen.”
“And the day after that?”
“Twenty-one.”
“And…just as a hypothetical scenario, the day after that.”
“Thirty-four.”
“Tell me, Dr. Rivers, do you think you can withstand thirty-four commands from my interface?”
She shook her head.
“Can you withstand twenty-one? Use your voice.”
“No.”
“What about thirteen?”
“Maybe.”
He paused. “Maybe? You were barely conscious when we took you out of the chair today, and that was only five. Just five, and you think you can withstand two and a half times that number?”
It was on the tip of her tongue to point out that thirteen was not two and a half times more than five, but she didn’t need him to know how much spirit she really had.
“I won’t do what you want me to do.”
Beside her, Ekatya made a quiet sound of surprise.
Trust me, she thought. Kane didn’t want her to give up. He wanted her to break.
“Oh, I see,” Kane said. “You do love to organize your data, don’t you? You think that because I’ve spent five days on your torso, I’ll stay there. Eight more tomorrow, thirteen the day after that, and you’d be dead. Your torso would be a pulp, and it would be impossible to avoid a punctured lung or liver.” He shook his head. “Another mistake; that’s two in one day. You’re slipping, Dr. Rivers.”
She closed her eyes again.
“You will look at me when I’m speaking to you.”
“I am…” She took a breath as she opened her eyes. “…having difficulty breathing. I don’t know how long I can keep my eyes open.”
He hummed thoughtfully. “It’s true that I did work you particularly hard today. It was necessary to bring you to the place I needed you to be. Very well.” He crouched down, rustled in the medkit, and stood up with an injector in hand. “This will not be as pleasant as the last one I gave you, because you haven’t earned it. But I need you a little more lucid.”
“If that’s a stimulant, I might not be able to stay,” Ekatya said. “Don’t give him a reason to hurt you!”
The injector’s bite had become welcome by now, and she sighed in relief as her pain washed back, a tide retreating from the shore. Though it remained in view, it was distant enough to make her feel almost giddy by comparison.