Authors: Sara King
“My plans didn’t
go sour.” A flush of deep, overpowering shame hit his sivvet, a yearning for
forgiveness.
Syuri froze at
the feelings of remorse. Very slowly, he crawled to his feet, fear once more
hitting him in a surge. “You meant for me to get captured?”
“Yes.” More
shame. Anguish so powerful it almost knocked him down. Either the Geuji had
replaced Syuri’s sivvet with something eight times the sensitivity, or
Forgotten was no longer trying to shield his emotions from him.
Syuri swallowed,
afraid to guess what that meant. “And for my
sivvet
to be extracted?”
“They weren’t
actually extracted,” Forgotten said, his voice filled with apology. Shame
pounded at Syuri’s sivvet in an almost too-powerful wave, staggering him with
its force. “I developed a drug for the Huouyt to use that would incapacitate
your empathy-related abilities.”
He…
drugged
me.
But why? “But I
saw
them, Forgotten,” Syuri began. “The
Huouyt held them out on a piece of glass.”
“Those belonged
to the last Jahul I sent there.”
Syuri felt his
internal pressure rising.
“I’m sorry,
Syuri,” Forgotten whispered. “I didn’t want to scare you, but I had to know.
I’m so very sorry.” The guilt was overwhelming, pounding at him from all
sides, a thousand times stronger than anything Syuri had ever felt before. He
groaned and slid back to the tiled floor.
“Jreet gods,”
Syuri moaned, feeling his chambers losing their hold on his wastes under the
pressure of the Geuji’s assault. “Shut it off, you miserable corpse-rot!”
Instantly, the
Geuji’s emotions stopped assaulting his sivvet, leaving a low ebb in their
wake. Syuri gasped and blinked, feeling like a drowning man suddenly given
air.
“Better?”
Forgotten asked softly.
“How…?” Syuri
whispered, his sivvet still pounding from the emotional overload only moments
before.
“I stop
thinking,” Forgotten said. “Find other things to think about.
Less…shameful…things.” The tidal wave of guilt hit again, staggering Syuri
once more.
“Bugger you with
a karwiq bulb, stop!” Syuri gasped. Then, once Forgotten had eased his assault
once more, Syuri managed, “Glorious ruvmestin balls, is that what you meant by
‘trying to hide it from me,’ Geuji?” He felt a whole new wave of awe for the
meddling fungus and hid it by rubbing at his skull with his hands.
“Yes,” Forgotten
said. “I’m sorry.”
Syuri believed
him. He swallowed and rubbed his head with a groan. “Just what,” he managed,
“was that all about?” Now that the pain in his head was lessening, he was once
more being faced with the fact that he had just spent four days being
interrogated by Peacemakers. On Levren. After Forgotten had sent him there.
On purpose.
“I needed to
know if I could trust you,” Forgotten told him. As always, his words carried
that pang of truth.
Syuri’s chambers
gave a startled squeeze. “You set me up?”
“Only once. You
passed every test and more, Syuri.”
“That…that was a
test?
” Syuri shrieked. He remembered his emotional anguish, his four
days of sheer
terror
. “You had them
interrogate
me as a
test
?!”
Another rush of
guilt. “It was the
only
test,” Forgotten said. “You have my word, if
you agree to work for me, I’ll never test you again.”
Syuri was
trembling, on the verge of voiding himself out of fear and rage. “And if I
don’t agree to work for you?” he managed in a tight whisper.
“You’re free to
go.” A pang of regret. Of sadness.
“You’re lying.”
“I don’t lie.”
Syuri opened his
mouth to tell Forgotten he’d lost the only friend he might have had in this
pathetic universe, but was forestalled by a wave of unhappiness that almost
knocked him over.
He knows what
I’m about to say.
Syuri bit his
lip, the same loneliness and misery that he had felt in the basement of the
Space Academy hitting him from all sides in a gut-wrenching wave. Forgotten clung
to the walls in silence, waiting for his answer.
“You want me to
say yes,” Syuri said simply.
Forgotten
hesitated, and Syuri felt the tangy bite of shock against his sivvet. “Yes.”
Warily, Syuri
offered, “So it was a test of my loyalties. I wasn’t in any real danger.”
“Had you
betrayed me, they would have executed you,” Forgotten said simply.
Syuri narrowed
his eyes. “And you did it because you had to know if you could trust me if I
get caught.”
“No,” Forgotten
said. “I just had to know if I could trust you. You won’t get caught.” At
Syuri’s skeptical look, Forgotten added, “A good agent is worth more to me
alive than dead, Syuri. As such, all seven Va’gan sects could put a billion
credits on your head and you would be utterly safe in my service.”
Syuri laughed at
the idea of the Va’gan assassins coming after
him
. “So sure of that,
are you?”
“Yes.”
Syuri sobered
when he realized Forgotten was
utterly
serious. He voided himself just
a little. Cocking his head, he said carefully, “And
are
they going to
come after me, Forgotten?”
Forgotten could
have lied, but he said, “Yes.”
Assassins. He
hated
assassins.
“I know you hate
assassins…” Forgotten began.
“Just shut up
and let me think,” Syuri snapped. His mind was dull from the lack of nutrient
boosts the last four days and it was difficult to concentrate. The assault on
his sivvet hadn’t helped. Struggling for some way to politely tell the Geuji
to take his offer and shove it up his wastes bin, he managed, “So that Huouyt
who interrogated me…he’s your agent?”
“No,” Forgotten
replied. “A contact.”
“And the
difference is…?” Syuri growled.
“I have no
agent,” Forgotten said softly. “I have millions of contacts.”
Syuri narrowed
his eyes. “And an agent is…?”
Forgotten waited
long moments before saying, “Someone I can trust.” He hesitated again. “Talk
to.”
Hagra steal
my deodorant, he wants a friend.
Syuri peered at the irritating fungus.
“You are kidding me, right?”
Forgotten was
silent so long that Syuri wondered which unfortunate planetary com system the
Geuji was in the process of shutting down. Then, almost timidly, Forgotten
said, “A contact is someone I use to monitor my people or perform one of any
other millions of tasks I need accomplished on any given day. The Jahul
working with your interrogator was another contact, though they did not know it
of each other. An agent is…more important. Like I said, I don’t have an
agent. None of them passed the sivvet test before you.” Another wash of
loneliness, of…fear? “And you, of course, hate me for it.” And resignation.
Bitterness. Quiet, unhappy bitterness.
Sensing the same
misery he had felt soiling his sivvet in the basement of the Space Academy, Syuri
felt some of the pressure on his internal chambers ease. “I don’t hate you for
it,” Syuri muttered. “Miserable fungus. I’ll be your damned friend.”
He had said the
words before he realized they’d left his lips, and shock hit him so hard it strained
something inside, like a blood vessel about to explode.
“Shield it!”
Syuri screamed, falling to his knees. “Gods, you slippery corpse-rot, shield
it!”
It took longer
for Forgotten to contain himself this time, and when he did, Syuri was panting
on the floor, seeing stars. Syuri could feel Forgotten watching him in shock
as he lay there, trying to stabilize, despite the fact the Geuji had no eyes to
stare.
Long tics passed
in silence, where the only sound was the beep of electronics. Then, as timidly
as a nervous child, Forgotten said, “Truly?”
Syuri groaned
and rolled onto his side. “You’re going to learn to stop doing that, or our
friendship is going to be very short-lived. I think you just about killed me.”
A wave of
horror, this time, but more subdued. “I’m sorry.”
Syuri grunted.
Agent to a Geuji. That was certainly not on his To Do list when he wrote up
his starry-eyed entrance essay to get into the Space Academy. Then again,
neither was impregnating a commanding officer’s daughter on Grakkas, getting
thrown in the brig, being stripped of rank, sentenced to manual labor, or
stealing a ship and flying against three dozen Ueshi in a brilliant aerial
battle to make the only escape from a ruvmestin planet in the last three hundred
turns. He supposed working for the Geuji was better than spending the rest of
his life trying not to get cheated by Jikaln or swindled by Huouyt.
Into the
silence, Forgotten quietly offered, “Syuri, you’re the first Jahul that’s
passed the
sivvet
test. You’re the first of twelve that’s come back to
me.”
“Because they
turned on you,” Syuri added.
“Yes.”
“And the whole
thing was a
test
,” Syuri repeated, still a bit irritated at that.
“Not all of
it.” Forgotten paused. The room flooded with a feeling of anxiety, though at
a much lower ebb. “Tell me. What did you feel when you opened the vaults?”
Syuri flinched,
remembering the thick hopelessness.
“What’d you
feel?” Forgotten prodded.
“Misery,” Syuri
said.
A wave of
anguish hit him like another sledge before it was quickly shut away. Forgotten
said nothing for several moments before softly whispering, “I feared as much.”
“So when are you
gonna spring them?” Syuri demanded, sitting up to face the glistening black room
that was his employer.
“What?”
“Spring them,”
Syuri said, gesturing vaguely. “I’ll help. Just tell me what to do.” So what
if the Geuji had locked him in a room with alien interrogators and made him
think he was crippled, slated for execution in the bowels of the Space
Academy? What the Peacemakers were doing was
wrong
.
“Syuri,”
Forgotten said softly, “I wish it were that simple.”
Syuri frowned.
“You could do it. I mean, you blew up a
planet,
Forgotten.”
“Call me
Jemria.”
“I like
Forgotten better,” Syuri said. “Why haven’t you helped them yet?”
“It’s what I’m
doing now.”
“That’s why you
blew up Aez?”
“Yes.”
“How does
blowing up Aez help you get your people out?”
“I couldn’t
possibly explain it to you.”
Syuri wondered
if Forgotten was acting superior, then realized he was simply stating the
truth. “All right. So what do you want me to do?”
Again, the
fungus paused. “You’ll continue to work for me?” Another tingle of hope
danced like warm sunlight across his sivvet. “After everything I’ve put you
through?”
“I’d be stupid
not to.”
“Yes. But not
unjustified.”
Syuri scoffed.
“I’m a pirate. I deserve a few blows to my pride.”
“You’re a
smuggler,” Forgotten corrected. “You don’t have the heart to kill people.
Even escaping Grakkas—which was well-done, by the way—you didn’t harm a single
soul, which is why I wanted you.”
“An agent who
won’t kill people?” Syuri demanded. “It’s looking like you’re getting the
short end of the stick here, Forgotten.”
“An assassin is
easy to buy. A friend is not.” Honesty rolled off of the Geuji, heating Syuri’s
sivvet. Honesty...and hope.
Syuri’s mouth
fell open. He tried to speak, but found he couldn’t.
He’s telling the
truth,
Syuri realized.
All this time. He just wanted a friend.
Chapter
26: Piecing it Together
“So,” Jer’ait
said as the two of them watched the surgeons put Flea back together, “Tell me
what’s wrong with your hand.”
Joe fisted it,
his jaw gritting visibly. “Nothing.”
“Daviin tells me
you had a problem climbing into the slave tunnels.”
The Human
ignored him.
“If it’s a
phobia, I can help,” Jer’ait insisted.
No response.
“It’s getting
worse, isn’t it?”
The Human
glanced at him, his expression caught between wariness and desperation. “How
can you help?”
“Chemicals,”
Jer’ait said. “Regular doses, at least while we’re in the tunnels. Maybe once
every four hours.”
Joe snorted.
“Sorry if I’m not jumping at the idea of having you drug me again.”
“I’m an expert,
Joe.”
The Human met
his eyes and Jer’ait saw real anguish there. Longing. Trust. “You really
think you can help me?”
“Yes,” Jer’ait
said. “I’m sure of it.”
The Human
swallowed, hard, his small brown eyes scanning Jer’ait’s face. Then he gave a
nervous laugh and looked away. He glanced down at his left hand, which was
trembling against his hip, then tightened it into a fist. “All right,” he
whispered.
Jer’ait had
expected the Human to concede, but still he was shocked. He knew his Prime
understood what Jer’ait was capable of. Joe had seen it in the tunnels. He’d
fought on Eeloir. He knew exactly what it meant to allow a Huouyt to
manipulate his body chemistry. He was putting his life in Jer’ait’s hands,
entirely, and he knew it.
Not for the
first time, Jer’ait felt a tug of respect for the Human’s courage.
And it
was
courage, he knew. Even knowing everything about him—Jer’ait’s training on
Morinth, his people’s capacity for murder, the Huouyt reputation for switching
sides—Joe was willing to let Jer’ait touch him.
Drug
him.
Another being’s
trust—something so easily gained in Jer’ait’s line of work—had never before moved
him in any way, and yet here, watching the misery play across his Prime’s
features, Jer’ait found himself at a total loss for words. In the silence that
followed, the Human’s gaze flickered up to his, sweat glistening on his face.
“Stunned?” he said, with an anguished chuckle.