ReDawn (Skyward #2.2)(58)

I grabbed the gag and pulled it off of his mouth.

“Tell me something so I know it’s really you,” I said.

“Our first lesson in cytonics,” Rinakin said. “I tried to teach you to meditate, and you told me you thought it was a waste of time.”

That was true. I still got impatient with it, but now at least I saw the purpose behind it. Rinakin looked over my shoulder at Arturo. “Did you do it? Did you truly make an alliance with the humans?”

“I’m working on it,” I said. “Come on. We need to go check on them.”

I helped him forward and untied his wrists. He was favoring one of his arms, though I didn’t know if that was from the impact or rough handling by his captors. Arturo stepped to his other side and helped me guide him through the hangar and down the tunnels toward the control room. As we passed beneath the skylights I scanned the sky for ships, but it was too dark for me to see any. As we neared the control room the platform shuddered and the miasma parted off to the side, the mindblade weapons slicing the miasma into ribbons.

    Rinakin stared in the direction of the fire. “I think I’ve missed a few things.”

“You have,” I told him. “There was someone pretending to be you, making speeches about how you were joining the cause of progress.”

“That I did know,” Rinakin said. “My captors played the broadcasts for me. That was…unpleasant to listen to.”

“I don’t have time to explain everything,” I said as we reached the control room door. “I need to get out there and help the humans.”

“You’re back,” Rig said, turning from the main control panel to look at us with surprise.

“This is Rinakin,” Arturo said, helping him inside. Rinakin slid to the floor next to one of the defense system boxes, holding his arm.

“Jerkface,” Rig said into his headset. “Alanik’s mission was a success.”

“Good to hear,” Jorgen said over the radio.

“Way to go, Alanik!” I could hear Nedd say.

“Did anyone follow you?” Rig asked.

“No,” Arturo said. “Alanik took care of them.”

He meant the diones. I hadn’t killed them. I’d simply marooned them. Not like that ship I shot out of the sky. It would have reached the core by now, crashed there, entombing the body of the person who’d burned alive inside.

Arturo put a hand on my shoulder, pulling me outside. “Are you okay?” he asked in a low voice. “You’re shaking.”

    My whole body was trembling, and though I tried to get a grip on myself I couldn’t make it stop. “I’m fine,” I said.

“The hell you are,” Arturo said. “What’s wrong?”

He didn’t know. I’d shot someone out of the sky and their ship exploded before they could eject and I killed them and he didn’t think anything of it. Probably more people had died in the battle here at the platform. I could hear Rig talking to Jorgen over the radio inside. We needed to get up there.

The world seemed unstable though, like the platform was wobbling in place.

“Talk to me,” Arturo said.

“We need to go—”

“And we will. But first tell me what’s wrong.”

He was probably worried I knew something he didn’t, that I had some plan I was hiding from him. “I swear, I’m not going to betray you.”

“I know,” he said. “I believe you.”

He seemed like he meant it, but he was still looking at me with concern. If he didn’t think I was going to betray them—

Arturo’s grip tightened on my shoulder. “Alanik—”

“They didn’t eject,” I said. It felt good to say it, like I was confessing some sin. “I shot down that ship and the pilot didn’t eject.”

“Oh,” Arturo said. He looked down at the ground. “You’d never killed before?”

“No,” I said. “We play games in our ships. We tag each other with lasers. I don’t know what I’m doing out there! And I shot someone down, and I killed them. And it shouldn’t matter, because they were the enemy, but—”

    “I used to think like that,” Arturo said. “Before we knew who the Superiority were, when they were still a faceless evil. It didn’t hurt to kill them. Scud, it felt good. But now that I’ve seen their faces, some of them anyway—” He shook his head. “I don’t know. It’s not as easy anymore. Maybe it never should have been.”

“Easy seems better,” I said. “When the enemy shoots at you, you have to shoot back.”

“Then what you did was justified,” Arturo said. “But it feels terrible.”

“Yes,” I said. “It does.”

Saying that out loud steadied me a little. Arturo dropped his hand from my shoulder. I wished he hadn’t, because that was steadying me too.

“Can you fight?” Arturo asked.

If I didn’t, and some of my allies didn’t make it, I would never forgive myself. “Yes,” I said. “Yes, I want to help.”

Arturo leaned against the doorframe to the control room. “Jorgen needs to give the order to get back inside the platform. We got what we came for and now we need to go.”