Beatriz worked like a demon all day. I couldn't help her and I'd be damned if I got in her way, so I called up every difficult, dirty maintenance task I could find, up to and including flushing out our biomechanical sewer system, which involved cramming myself into tight, claustrophobic tunnels and wading knee-deep in muck. Back when I was around fourteen or so, Derry and I had slept in a squat down a drainpipe. Took some crawling through awful to reach our hideaway, but that same filth kept us safe. People didn't want to brave it to get at what little we had stashed, and on the street, the grime made me invisible.
It gave me time to wonder why someone--Chao-Xing, especially--hadn't discovered I'd lied about assembling that weapons array. I'd checked it off my list, but surely they had some kind of audit, right? Otherwise, what was keeping any of us from cheating our way right on through this bullshit test period?
Oh, I realized. Nobody's ever tried. And why would they? They're stuck on an alien spaceship, isolated and unnerved, and until I showed up, they were all super achievers who'd never cheated a day in their life. It would never have occurred to them.
And since the Leviathan's experience of humanity got filtered through the Honors they interacted with, it probably never occurred to them, either.
I wrote a note on a piece of scrap paper and passed it to Beatriz during her brief lunch break. She looked hunted and haunted, but when she read it, her eyes widened, and she looked up at me in shock. "You don't mean this," she whispered. Like Nadim couldn't hear everything.
"I do," I said. "It works. Try it."
My advice was, simply, cheat.
For an answer, Beatriz--a super achiever if ever there was one--crumpled up my note, dropped it in a flash bin that incinerated it, and said, "Thanks, but I'll do it my way."
But she wanted to ask, I thought. She wanted to ask if I'd cheated my way through to get to this point. I hadn't--well, except for that last thing, and that was a purely moral objection--but I could see it was easy for her to make that assumption. I'd just cracked her trust. Maybe even broken it.
At least I knew Beatriz well enough to know that she didn't tell tales. Even if she failed out, she wouldn't rat on me.
I'd done what I could. I went to the console and tried to pull up information on all the bins that were stored in the assembly room--where they'd come from (which turned out to be Earth, not a shock) and full instructions so I could see the final products. Most were things I'd already glimpsed on Elder Typhon, like flexible scaling that would protect Nadim's skin.
But there were also weapons. Definitely weapons. Like the one I'd refused to build.
So I went back to my quarters and, with the door opened, said, "Nadim? I want to have a private talk. Inside."
I shut the door and locked it, and sat down on the bed.
"Yes, Zara?" he said, in a tone so neutral I knew he expected the worst.
"You have to know I didn't do that last thing I marked off on the list."
"I expected you would ask me about it."
I stayed quiet for a moment, idly drawing patterns on the silky bedcover, before I said, "You should have told Marko and Chao-Xing I cheated."
"You had no intention of cheating," he said, and he sounded sure about it. "This is part of the same objection to creating my alarm. You want to know how something is to be used before you build it. You don't like being kept in the dark."
"Yeah," I said. "It's what I hated about the whole world, back on Earth. All the rules you had to follow without knowing why, and if you asked, you got branded difficult and damaged. Well, I am difficult. I am damaged. And I'm going to ask why."
"Why didn't you ask me?"
I debated that. I looked down at the patterns I was drawing. They looked like stars. "I wasn't sure you would tell me the truth, and I don't want you to lie to me."
"I would not, Zara," he said, and there was something in that voice that vibrated warm inside me. How had he put it? Strings tuned to the same frequency. I knew he meant it. "Please don't lie to me. I know it's something humans do naturally, but--"
"I won't," I told him. I wasn't sure it was a promise I could keep, but I wanted it to be true. "Why am I building you a weapon?"
The silence felt like forever, stretching and pulling and, finally, ripping when he said, "Because not everything in the universe is kind."
"Meaning what, exactly?" I raised my head and looked at a space on the wall like I was staring at him, even though there was no focus point. "Meaning you have enemies?"
"I--" He started, faltered, and started again. "I don't know everything about the universe, Zara. I'm still learning, just as you are. But I know one thing, from all these years of interacting with humans."
"Which is what?"
"Even the kindest of creatures has predators."
That rang so true that I felt it inside me. "So you don't know why I'm building it, either. They haven't told you, have they?"
"Elder Typhon required us all to be provisioned with protective armor and at least one weapon," Nadim said immediately. "I did ask why. He didn't answer me."
"They never do."
"Are you going to build it?"
I leaned back against the bulkhead wall. Put my hand flat against the warm surface of his skin. "What do you want me to do?"
"I don't want weapons," Nadim said. "But I want to protect you and Beatriz. So would you please assemble it? As a favor to me?"
"I'm all for a good defense. And since you asked, yes. But if I find out you're hiding something from me, Nadim--"
"I'm not," he said. "If--if you want to look inside my mind and make certain of that, you can."
I thought about it for a moment. That felt like a cliff I wasn't ready to plunge off, not yet at least. I said, "Just don't let me down."
I went to assembly and worked for a few hours--good, detailed, sweaty work that took my mind off what Beatriz might be doing, or failing to do. I had a hundred asks for Marko, which was probably why he'd retreated to Typhon. He must know I'd never shuttle over to grill him, even if the giant Leviathan Elder would allow me to come aboard. Marko's parting rhetorical question burned a circle in the center of my brain. It made me think he was going through something, not entirely of his volition, and that heralded bad shit down the line. For me and maybe for everybody.
In frustration, I finally slammed into the combat simulation room. Each punch, each kick carried weight, and I experienced the visceral satisfaction of smashing somebody's nose. Even the crunch of cartilage and blood spray seemed right. I went straight up to expert-level street fighting, no rules. There were ranks. I started at one. Too easy, so I scaled up. Six opponents this time, a mix of bare-knuckle and melee weapons. If you could get a degree in street fighting, I'd have a PhD. I'm with you, Bea. I'm fighting too. The VR learned my style, adapted, and eventually, I got my ass handed to me at rank five. Not bad, considering I was up against fifteen foes.
When I emerged at last, drenched and exhausted, the view on Nadim's transparent wall revealed that we'd arrived back home. The sight of the giant blue-green ball of Earth came as a shock. I'd gotten used to seeing Mars, and Saturn, and Jupiter, and Venus as Nadim cruised by them, but now we were home. Ready, I realized, to kick any unsuitable crew back down to the surface and take on an alternate. There were a few silvery, sleek Leviathan orbiting too . . . young ones, like Nadim, each escorted by what must have been Elders twice their size. Adults. All of those bigger ships looked scarred, their skin dull and rough where it wasn't plated in metal.
I'd rather give myself a lobotomy with a rehab shiv than travel on a ship like Typhon. I tried to imagine touching the Elder's emotions up close, and a cold shudder rolled over me so that my skin prickled with goose bumps.
I leaned closer to the clear skin of the viewscreen and put my palms flat on his skin on either side to brace myself. Ahhh. That felt better. We snapped together like magnets, and I breathed a long sigh of relief. I preferred it when we weren't at odds.
"How's Beatriz d
oing?"
"I can't tell you, Zara."
"Oh, come on. I'm not interfering!"
"I can't."
"Fine, let's talk about where we go from here. The Tour. Will we get to meet any little green men?" Maybe that ancient SF turnip hadn't made it up here, so I tried, "I mean, alien life forms? Besides you."
"You're alien to me too, you know."
"True."
"No," he said. "You will not meet any little green men. Not on the Tour."
"Is that why I'm really building the weapon for you?"
"No," he said, quickly and decisively.
"What about after the Tour?" I hadn't missed his qualifier. "Any little green men then?"
He was silent. Very silent. Wary. I could feel it through our link in waves of gunmetal gray. Funny. This one was like a shield, flickering to life between us like a force field.
"Wait . . . you're not allowed to answer? Is that what I'm getting here?" I asked.
"Zara--"
"If you tell me about it, will they still let you go on the Journey?" I felt the shield grow spikes of white ice. Fear. Real fear.
"I can't talk to you about this," he said.
"Because of Typhon?" No answer. Paranoid curiosity burned a hole in my head, but I had to give in. I couldn't push him. He'd shut down completely on me. "All right," I said. "I won't ask."
Warm, orange gratitude burst within me like fireworks, sending tingles down every nerve. I found my fingers moving slowly over the wall, and I could see the whispering warmth of it lingering on his skin. I wanted to ask him if it felt good to him, but it was obvious it did. Maybe too much for comfort. Closing my eyes, I let the strange sensation wash over me, while at the same time fighting the irrational conviction that I'd been lost and angry my whole damn life because I hadn't had this. A real, cell-deep connection to someone else.
Maybe the Leviathan DNA in me that had fixed my brain had, at the same time, given me an aching kind of loneliness I'd never recognized before.
With a faint shiver, I stepped away and struggled to separate myself, put myself back into my own skin. I still tingled all over, and there was a flushing warmth to my body that mirrored what I'd felt from him.
We weren't in each other's heads, exactly, but it seemed we couldn't avoid being in each other's nervous systems. I wanted to ask if that was all due to my Leviathan DNA patch, but I didn't. Some things were too fragile to say out loud.
Nadim said, "I have to go. Typhon is calling," and I felt him--or his attention--leave me.
It felt cold. Very cold. That was both his withdrawal and a ghostly image of the icy calm he had to put on when facing his Elder. I went in search of Beatriz. By that time, almost seventeen hours had passed since she'd gotten her lists, and she was just finishing up in the equipment assembly room--finally, she had her turn in the box. She looked dirty, exhausted, and triumphant under all that as she pressed her thumb to the last item to mark it complete. I watched one of the massive bins roll back to its assigned spot and wondered what she'd been asked to assemble.
I wondered if it was another weapon. And if she'd even asked.
"Done?" I asked her.
Most of her hair had been tied up in a thick mane behind her, but she used the back of one dirty hand to swipe some loose curls away from her face. "I think so. I could use a long shower--"
We both staggered, because Nadim rocked hard on his side. We hit the wall, and I braced myself against it as he rolled back to the normal axis. Physical contact clicked us together, and--
His pain was so overwhelming that I cried out, and then I went down, smothering in the anguish, in the rage.
CHAPTER TEN
Breaking Faith
"Z? Z, WAKE up! Please!"
For a fuzzy second, I thought it was my mother's voice, but then a sharp, pungent smell jabbed into my nostrils, and I jerked back to reality.
Reality was me lying flat on the floor with Beatriz kneeling next to me, a snapped capsule in her shaking hands held close to my nose. I ached all over. It felt like I'd been burned in a flash fire . . . and then it faded, slowly, to nothing. I mumbled something incoherent, and Bea dropped the capsule and helped me sit up. It took me a second to remember why I was on the floor, and another to remember the pain, panic, and rage. I shook her off and stumbled to my feet to lay hands against Nadim's skin.
Nothing. Nothing.
"Nadim!" I said. No response. "Nadim!"
And then he was there. Faint and far away, but there. He didn't speak, but I felt him.
"Is he all right?" Bea asked anxiously. "Are you?"
I was. Just barely. If he was blocking us deliberately, I knew why.
The sledgehammer of pain had knocked me unconscious. He didn't want to risk that again. He was suffering in silence, alone, to protect us.
"Typhon," I said. "Typhon hurt him." The surety came as a wave, not my memory but Nadim's, and I didn't question it. I was angry enough to chew nails and spit bullets, not that it would make any difference to a Leviathan. "Bastard hurt him."
"But--how?"
I didn't know. The red aura of the impact stayed with me, and it woke instincts that I thought I'd left behind on Earth. Instincts to hit back.
"We're here," I told Nadim. "Please. Come to us."
Beatriz sucked in a sudden breath, and I knew she felt him, just as I did: a sudden, echoing stab of shame and pain, darkly mixed with anger. I knew that feeling so well.
Abused kids were all the same, deep down. We blamed ourselves. We hurt. We swore it wouldn't happen again. We swore we wouldn't deserve it again because that was how screwed up we felt. How screwed up our abusers made us.
"It's not your fault," I said to Nadim. He didn't believe me. I knew because I could never believe it myself.
It still helped saying it, and hearing it: some of the edge bled away from him, like Nadim might return to us. Tentative and wounded, but him.
"Honors," said Chao-Xing from behind us. Startled, Bea and I both turned and found her and Marko standing there in their dried-blood uniforms and their blackened eyes, watching us. "Step back. It is not wise to attempt to bond with your host at this time."
"Because your Elder slapped the shit out of him?" I asked. I was ready to try it with Chao-Xing, for sure. "What the hell?"
"Don't," Marko warned. I didn't know if he was talking about my attitude or my intentions, but I could hear some hint of humanity in him. "Honor Teixeira, the Elder has approved your work. You may remain for the Tour."
"How gracious," Beatriz snapped, which from her was like shouting in his face. Sarcasm. I liked it on her. "Thank him for me."
They let that pass without comment, and Chao-Xing suddenly broke from her spot beside Marko and walked directly up to me. In my face. Up close, her eyes were inhumanly different, unreadable. "You are here to learn about the galaxy in partnership with Nadim," she told me. "Not to question. Be careful not to dig so deep that you dig your own grave."
She left, and in the chilly silence, I said to Marko, "She's a charmer."
"She always has been," he said. He seemed more himself. Maybe Typhon had cut the connection with them. As I watched, Marko's pupils slowly shrank down to normal size, and he blinked hard, trying to adjust his vision.
"Hello, Marko," Nadim said. His voice sounded bland. "I'm sorry I didn't greet you earlier, but you were not free. You'll begin your Journey soon."
"Tomorrow," Marko agreed. "We came back to say our good-byes to our family. And to sign off on your new Honors, of course."
"Of course. I wish you well, Marko. You were a pleasant companion."
"And you--" For a moment, Marko's calm broke. He looked down. "I'm sorry. I can't do this right now."
"I understand," Nadim said as if he really did. "I will think of you with fondness."
Marko didn't say good-bye. He just . . . left. Walked away, and in a moment, I felt the whisper as the shuttle departed Nadim and made its way back to Typhon.
I also felt the continu
ed, muted burn of pain from our ship. Whatever Typhon had done to him had hurt enough to leave marks.
"Nadim? Are you all right?"
"Yes, I'm fine," he said. Liar, I thought. "I didn't want Marko and Chao-Xing to go, but I didn't have a choice."
"You mean you didn't want them to go to him," I said. "Right?"
He didn't answer, but I was on target. He disliked Typhon. He feared him. He also longed for the Elder's approval. It was a sad, familiar story, and I hated that we had that in common, even if it explained why I understood him so well when I hadn't been with him long.
The quiet startled me when I realized I was completely alone with Nadim. Bea had gone for her shower and probably to drop exhausted into her bed. Even Typhon had withdrawn, presumably pleased with the discipline he'd delivered. It bothered me that the Leviathan didn't seem to know better than humans in this regard. Some might crack under sufficient pressure and pretend to comply, but others, like me--and maybe Nadim--would fight until we broke our backs. On a deep breath, an old memory washed over me.
I was six years old, maybe, and my teachers found me hard to handle. Intractable. Incorrigible. They were already saying that about me, and my odd medical problems didn't make me easier to deal with. My father accused me of faking the headaches like I was some kind of a criminal mastermind in elementary school.
The first time my father hit me, he kept saying, "If you cry, I'll stop. If you cry, then I'll know you're sorry."
For what? Being born? Having pain that the doctors couldn't diagnose fast enough? I remembered clenching every muscle in my body, especially my jaw, until my teeth ached, echoing into a feedback loop with the awful throbbing in my skull. But I never cried. I never fucking cried.
I refused to give him that victory or let him imagine even for a second that I was sorry.
It had been a long-ass time since anything could compel my tears; I considered them trophies, and I didn't yield them often. But I could almost weep for Nadim, for the way Typhon had brutalized him. I wasn't exactly sure why it had happened, but part of me wondered if it was because I'd demanded answers he wasn't supposed to offer.
"You're so sad."
My breath hitched. "Sorry."
"Because Beatriz left you alone? I don't think she meant to upset you. She was just tired."