Winter Dread, page 36
If I’d been standing, I would have fallen over. I dropped the dagger, fumbling to pick it back up. I swore, then said quietly, You can do that?
Yes, Kyle. I can. I can numb all your senses like I did last night.
While you were so out of it, you didn’t have the capacity to answer me.
“Please, whoever you are,” I almost begged it. “Take it away, all of it.”
I laughed. I really did. Those words had meant the most to me. Because he was trying to help. I hadn’t even known he was in my head. For over a year . . . silent.
I pushed myself out of the liquid around me, spluttered and screamed once more.
The light faded, and I sank back down. I heard the pod lid shift once more and felt those large arms lifting me out again.
I knew softness. Being carried. Warmth and then darkness.
Kyle? There was a voice with me. Kyle, I know you can hear me, you going to wake up?
Hiroto?
Yes, it is I.
I pulled the blanket up, and over my shoulders. They seemed cold. I’m alive?
We are alive, Kyle. I . . .
We?
You saved me. I came so close to losing it. You took me inside your mind again.
Wait, you’re . . . I sat up in the dark and realised then he’d been talking inside my mind.
Is there anyone else?
There was no answer. Silence from the inside. Other than the presence from Hiroto there was nothing. Sadness and urgency overwhelmed me. I wanted to get up, talk to everyone, see everything was okay. When I tried to move, my limbs were like lead.
I looked into the darkness, and then heard a noise, a door. “Kyle, are you awake?”
It was a woman’s voice. I coughed, and answered, “Yes. I am. Have you some juice, or food?”
“Of course, I’ll be back soon. You feel up to any visitors?”
“Not yet. May I eat and have some time?”
“Yes, I’ll return, soon.”
I sank back into the blankets and pillows, breathing in deep. That was close, so close.
I brought up my character sheet then and read over it slowly.
It seemed so strange to see Hiroto’s name back with mine, but I sighed on the inside. I couldn’t lose you, I said to him. I would have done anything.
I know, Kyle. If I could hug you right now, I would. I’ve never been so scared.
I saw it all, your life. The bullies, the torment because you were so clever. I’m sorry.
I guess you know me as much as I know you then. You don’t need to be sorry. It’s made me who I am today. Being with you did as well.
But I saw you with . . .
Dylan? he asked.
Yes. That’s a little strange.
I like him, a lot.
I do too. I said.
You’re not upset?
No way. How do you feel being back here, with me?
Almost like home, if you understand me.
And that is what it felt like. It felt good. There was deep sadness inside us, though. He was in a lot of emotional pain. I didn’t know how to make it feel better, to help.
Kyle, this is different. I will do the best I can.
I know you will. I’m here for you. You know that above everything else.
You’re the best friend I always wanted, thank you. Silence drifted between us. Both exhausted. I’m sorry.
The door clicked open, and the denti nurse came in with a tray of food and fluid. I realised it wasn’t a nurse, it was Sadie. She put a small light on, and the room illuminated enough for me to see quite a bit. “I’ve alerted the others you’re awake. They just told me to let you know to rest, they’ll come by and see you in the morning.”
“Thank you,” I said. She checked my stats at the end of the bed, then moved to leave.
It didn’t take me long to work my way through the food and the fluid. I started to feel better, at least on the inside and then the outside.
I heard a knock on the door just as I was about to fall asleep. Sitting up, I saw Jai’s familiar face. He nodded at me the once, then closed it behind him.
I lay my head back down and rested, hoping that something would come to me, some inspiration on how I was going to do this. Now more than ever.
I woke to another face peeking in at me. Shion. I smiled at her, and she rushed inside.
“Oh, Kyle.” She threw herself at me, and I hugged her as tight as I possibly could.
“I missed you,” I whispered into her hair, kissing the side of her face, her neck. Then I kissed her, her lips soft against mine, her body firm and needy. Just as I was.
She pushed herself back from me, knowing. “It’s okay. Hiroto?”
“He’s okay, we’re okay.”
“They’re all waiting to see you,” she said. “But I know two people who want to see you just as much as I did. Do you want to talk to them first, like now?”
“Dylan,” I knew he would be waiting to talk to Hiroto. The other . . . I thought to the one person who had helped me the most when I needed him. “Xirob?”
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“Yes, they were both pacing the hall all night.” Her lips curled, and she looked adorable. “I had to shout at them more than once.”
“Ah, you are amazing,” I said and pulled her to me once more. Her scent filled me with strength.
Hiroto, do you want to see Dylan first?
I don’t know if I can, what to say. The feelings he had washed over me in a huge wave.
This transfer is different, I said. I’ll see if you can take the helm.
You’d do that?
I always said I would. I can’t stop feeling the same things you are right now, and I admit it’s strange, but I don’t want you to suffer at all. You need to see him, to speak. I’ll do my best to shut my eyes.
Then, yes, I would like to see him.
I kissed Shion once more, and she slid off the bed. “Don’t go batting for the other team,” she winked.
Where the hell did she hear that term? I asked Hiroto.
I have no idea. He shied away.
I laughed. Ready?
I could feel his nerves there. If it doesn’t work. I’ll still be here.
It was admittedly just like I stepped aside for Xirob those times. This mind share was very different.
I felt strange, like I had with Xirob, but I also thought a lot, a lot of Hiroto.
The door opened and Dylan came in. “Hey,” he said.
“It’s me,” Hiroto said.
Dylan rushed to him, almost like Shion had to me. Yet when they kissed, it was much harder. I was overwhelmed at the strength and power of Dylan as he pulled our body towards his. I almost felt like saying back off, dude. But I reined in my own emotions. I wasn’t in control.
“I thought I lost you,” Dylan said. “I could hear everything they were saying. When Kyle said he’d take you in, I didn’t know—”
“I’m okay, I am. It’s just—”
“I don’t care, as long as you’re in there.”
“I can’t always be with you,” he said.
“No, but we’ll figure something out. We had something before the physical. I love you.”
It was hearing him say those words that broke me on the inside. Everything we were as human, as denti. That was what mattered the most.
“I love you too,” Hiroto said. “I should have said it before. I should have . . .”
Dylan met his words with another kiss, and I was swept away as they were.
I did put up a little wall in the end.
“Thanks, Kyle,” Dylan said. “I’m not going to push either of you, but thank you for letting us talk. We all do need to see you out in the war room. Gather yourselves, and we’ll catch up properly with debrief after you’ve seen Xirob.”
The walls were down, and Hiroto stepped back with his own thanks.
I steadied myself and waited to see if Xirob really would come in. The door opened once more, and there was the face I knew now, belonging with him.
He stepped towards me, his head low. “Thank you for seeing me,” he said. He stood at the end of the bed and looked more than lost.
“Will you sit?” I said and pointed at the end of the bed. “Please, you’ll strain my neck.”
Xirob did, and then he met my eyes with his. The kenosi sparkled inside his iris. He was pure denti and very powerful. I didn’t know his current levels. But I could feel them.
“You deserve the truth, Kyle,” he said. “I wasn’t ready to talk to you.”
“But you are now?”
“I should have earlier. For that, I’m sorry. Just like I’m sorry for many things.”
My fists tightened. I was angry, of course I was. But I wanted the truths. The truths he’d hidden from us for so, so long. How, I had no idea. I would learn.
“I’m listening,” I said. “Help me understand everything. From the beginning.”
He sucked in a big breath. His hands rested on his legs, but they were agitated.
“I am one of the original council members that negotiated with Arndale many, many years ago.”
“But you’re Eekan?”
“I am, and I still am. The denti queen and I made mistakes. More than I can ever atone for, but I have been trying. We have been trying.”
His words were chosen, rehearsed maybe. But his emotion was evident. “It was many years ago. I had gone in to see the queen, to report on the latest from Arndale. I found her collapsed, blood running down her cheeks. When she looked at me, it was as if I looked into the soul of the damned.” He started to wring his hands together. “She started to talk at me, mumbled at first. I was going to call for her medics, but she held onto me and cried for me not to. Her fingers gripped me so tight she drew blood, but I didn’t call out. The mumbling stopped, and her words grew in complexity. Out spilled her decisions. Those she had made, both good and bad. The choices that were before us as a species, the wrong choices. The consequences. Billions would die, billions more would keep dying. I tried my best to get her to calm down. I locked the doors and kept everyone out while I talked to her. Talked her though the pain, the new decisions. We made those decisions together.”
When he looked at me this time, and I saw him swallow, his eyes held something else. Something terrible. I saw something else in him and I had to react. I reached for his hand then. As tough as it was, the anger inside me was still there, the tightness in my muscles. When I connected with him this time, it melted away, and he carried on.
“We knew so many things, had so much to work through. But we did,” he said, and he gripped my hand, just as tight as I did his, and his eyes never left mine. “She told me there would be someone coming who might be able to help, to ease the pain and the suffering. But he wouldn’t survive for long because Arndale would do everything they could to ensure his death.”
My breathing hitched as his words came. “Whatever decision she made then didn’t make any differences; they tracked you, they found you wherever, whatever we tried. The days passed. The time blurred. She kept bleeding from her eyes. Her guards, her family were going crazy wanting to see her, but she wouldn’t let them. She had moments which were full of clarity, then others where she would scream the palace down. As much as they begged, ordered me to let them in, her doctor, anyone—she was strong enough to keep them all out. She only wanted me.”
“You weren’t her mate though, were you?”
Xirob trembled before me. “I wanted her to be mine. I would have done anything for her. I did comfort her in any way she’d take me then. It was nothing more than physical. Emotional at the time. But no, we never were anything more. Anything that could last. We couldn’t be.” He lowered his head, couldn’t look at me.
“With me,” I said softly and sucked in a breath. “In . . .” I counted. “Out.” I repeated this, till his trembling stopped.
He breathed in and out with me and met my eyes once more with his. “I had to let in food and supplies and not let them in. I could see their pain. Witnessing hers was more horrific than anyone could ever endure.”
“I’m sorry, Xirob,” I said, and I really was. I could also see how painful it was now to tell me.
“It took weeks for us to find a solution. Something I said one morning as I held her crying frame against mine. I said if I could do anything to save you, I would. That was when she asked me—did I think I would survive an integration?”
I mean, I knew it was there. Our history did entwine more than anyone else’s.
“At first I said no,” he told me. “Because I didn’t think I was strong enough. But her visions came faster then, and she knew it was something I had to agree with. I could only do it if I wanted to.”
“Friend,” I said. Xirob looked away from me then. He couldn’t find the words he wanted to say. I gently let him know I wasn’t going anywhere squeezing his hand. “No matter what, you can tell me now.”
When he looked back there were tears, and almost as if I knew I reached for a towel resting at the side of the bed. They dripped blood onto his hands, his uniform. But he stopped me. “I am ashamed I said no, and our paths should have crossed sooner, much sooner. I let thousands more die because I wasn’t strong enough to do what she needed.”
His sobs were loud, and the door opened. It was Shion. Her hand went to her mouth, seeing him like that, but I waved her away.
“But you were strong enough,” I said, taking his hands back in mine. “You made the decision in the end.”
He nodded. “She came to me later. She begged me. This was our only chance of redemption and after the things I’d witnessed, I listened. It came with different connotations; it came with everything you know as your past.”
“Xirob, I will understand all the decisions or the loss you feel, or even how differently my life could have been if things in it had changed. I do feel inside that you did everything you could, when you could. That’s all any of us can do. That’s all we can build on, move forward and keep trying.”
“Can you forgive me?” he asked.
I let go of his hands, picked up the towel once more. Then I wiped the blood tears from each one gently as I thought. And I thought hard. It wasn’t that I wanted to punish him or make him feel any worse than he did. I couldn’t do that. He was already making himself miserable, and beyond anything he really should be feeling.
I breathed in, tried my best to steady everything in my heart, my mind.
“When you were stood with Ohara and you saw me for the first time on Armastai, what were you thinking?”
He looked to me and answered quietly. “That the one person I wanted in this universe as a friend would never forgive me for keeping things from him.”
“I thought you were Ohara’s subordinate. But it’s the other way around, I’ve seen it.”
“Almost,” he said. “We are equals. I lead the front line. Ohara takes training and feeds me there.”
I had many more questions. So many.
Kyle, Hiroto prompted. That man is on his knees. Please answer him first.
I didn’t need Hiroto to tell me that. I’d never seen tears like that before.
It is a trait of only the Eekan, Hiroto said. Those with the greatest of pain.
I stopped my hands from shaking, and he noted that then looked to me once more. Taking in a deep breath I answered him. “I will forgive you on one condition,” I said.
Hiroto’s shock reverberated through me as he thought I would push Xirob away for good.
“Have you seen Faith?” I asked gently.
He swallowed, not knowing where I was going. “I needed to see you first. She didn’t even know I was alive either till I boarded Artemis.”
“I will forgive you” —I straightened my back, met his eyes with mine once more— “If you stand by my side as the man you are, the friend you became, and fight with me with everything you have, but . . .” I said. “Only if you go to her right now and make that woman yours forever, take her and never let her go, ever again. She and your daughter Finn deserve that.”
He smiled. “I have a daughter?”
“Yes,” I gasped. “Xirob, she’s beautiful. We created her together. The four of us. Remember.”
His eyes glazed over. “You, Hiroto, Faith, and me. I remember.”
“They need you,” I said.
“If Faith will have me,” he replied. He closed his eyes, breathed in and out again. Then when he opened them at least the blood red was duller, his pain eased. “It would be my honour to stand with you. Are you sure?”
“Oh, hell, yes.” I smiled at him, reaching for his shirt, and I pulled him to me. “I’m totally sure. Because what we’re doing and where we are going, I’m going to need all the help I can get.”
“What are we doing?” he asked, his eyes crossing, trying to look at me. “And where are we going? I thought you were going to fight on the front line?”
I let him sit back, locked eyes with him. Anger bubbled within, flooding my veins with adrenalin. I focussed that energy, pooled it into the one thing I could to get the insider information I might need. Future Insight.
As images of those mighty battles flashed past. I saw other things. Friendships, funerals. My emotions cycled from anger to loss, then to determination.
A ship bigger than anything I’d seen so far grew before me. The name flashed by with it. The Saigo. I saw Yun, and their world ship, the Soteria.
Things slowed then, and only one image remained. Blue, green, fluffy. Not so innocent. The skies were grey, and I felt evil wash over me.
When I looked back into his eyes, I knew exactly what my future held.
Exactly what I had to do.
“First,” I said to him. “I’m going for Edward. Then we’re taking the front line and pushing the darkness back through that rift so nothing else can ever taint this side of the universe again.”
“Sounds good,” he replied. “There’s more though?”
I frowned, thinking of everything I had just witnessed. “Then we’re going for Earth.”
To be continued in Spring Changes
About Dawn
