The Stars Are Legion(5)

“Why would someone throw away a child?” I ask.

Sabita sees the scalpel in my hand for the first time. She takes a half-step back, though I can see she is trying to mask her fear. “Why do you ask that?”

“Something I heard,” I say, which is an easy lie for her to catch because who would I have heard that from?

But she does not seem bothered by it. “Throw them away where?” she says. “You mean recycle them?”

I search the sliver of that first memory I woke with, the one I know is mine. Shake my head. “Blackness. A black pit.”

“Children get recycled when they come out wrong,” she says. “Just like anything else that comes out wrong.” She looks me up and down. “Or anything that goes wrong.”

“What are you doing here?” Jayd’s voice.

It startles me. I tuck the scalpel under the vehicle, because I don’t want to think what Jayd will do if she sees me with a weapon. When I glance over at Jayd, I see her gaze is not on me but Sabita.

“Neither of you should be here,” Jayd says.

I pat the vehicle one more time. “We’ll be together soon, friend,” I murmur, and Jayd frowns. Let her think I remember more than I do.

Sabita smiles at Jayd; a flinty smile. Her gaze is black. “I’ll leave you to her,” Sabita says. She walks past Jayd.

“Don’t come back here until she goes out again,” Jayd says.

“Of course,” Sabita says, and she is already crossing the mouth of the door, out and away.

“What did you talk about?” Jayd asks.

“Nothing,” I say. I stand. “I got tired of being locked up in that room. Went for a run. Saw some work here that needed doing.”

“I’ll talk to the mechanics,” Jayd says. “They should do a better job maintaining these for the next assault. And keep the doors closed.”

“When’s the next assault?”

“When you’re ready.”

“I’m ready.”

“No,” she says.

I lean against the vehicle and fold my arms. “I’m done being treated like an invalid child,” I say. “I came here for my memory. You’ll give it back or I’ll make of you what I made of those people in the training room.”

“No, you won’t,” Jayd says, and her certainty surprises me. “I’ll tell you when you’re ready.”

I move toward her. I am taller than Jayd by half a hand and outweigh her by a good measure. But she stands firm. Only raises her head to meet my look.

“I could kill you,” I say.

“You could do any number of things,” she says. “But you won’t.”

“How about this?” I say, and I reach for her. I mean to pull her into my arms and kiss her, but it startles her, and she dances away.

“Enough of that,” she says, but her voice trembles, and she will not look at me now, and I know in that moment that I’m right. She’s not my sister. These people are not my kin, and she is drawn to me as much as I am to her.

“Why the game?” I say. “You must know I don’t believe a word you’ve told me.”

“The game isn’t for you.”

“Then who?”

She smooths her hands against the fabric of her shift. She still will not look at me. “Please come back to your room, Zan.”

“And if I don’t?”

“Then I call Gavatra and she drugs you, and we haul you there ourselves,” she says. “Would you prefer that?”

“No,” I say.

“Then come with me,” Jayd says. “You must trust me, Zan. I know that’s difficult, but the only reason we’ve gotten this far is because you’ve trusted me.”

“Gotten this far to what?” I say.

“To the Mokshi,” she says. “Do you trust me?”

“No,” I say.

*

After another round of calisthenics on my own—Jayd won’t say what happened to those women I beat up last time—I tuck the spongy blanket around me back in my cell of a room, but cannot sleep. Instead, I watch the play of lights moving under the membrane of the ceiling. It’s eerie, like observing the inner workings of a beast.

At some point, I must sleep, because I dream.

I dream of a woman with a great craven face walking along the surface of a massive world. She is a titan. She snatches flying vehicles from the air and crunches them in her diamond teeth. Green lubricant and yellow puffs of exhaust escape her gaping mouth. Little blue insects flitter through the ether, and when they encounter the yellow mist, they fall down dead, like leaves.

The surface of the world is covered in wavering tentacles, and the titan grabs on to them for purchase as she strides across the world, snarling and spitting out the corpses of her enemies and poisoning everything she breathes on. She snatches at one of the flying vehicles and stabs herself in the stomach with it. She cuts long and low, and though I expect her to cry out in pain, she only roars and shows her teeth as gouts of blood pour from her body and float lazily to the surface of the world, sluggish and distorted by the low gravity.

When I wake, the pulsing lights in the ceiling have dimmed. Jayd stands over me with a blade in her hand. I snap awake and snatch her wrist.