When A Life Is Lost (NaNoWriMo 2013)

Chapter 21

Chapter 21

The next morning was tense to say the least. Alykana had no idea what had been going on the night before, so she was shocked to see that Ania had moved to the front of the truck.

"Did you have a fight?" Alykana asked Ania, concerned when she wouldn't talk to either Malus or Eoius.

"Sort of," Ania replied quietly, turning her face away, "I don't want to talk about it."

Alykana tried to coax her for a little longer, but sighed and walked over to Malus, who was sitting where she had seen him the night before.

"What did you do?" Alykana asked furiously, jabbing his chest with her finger.

"Nothing," Malus replied, "She just overhead me and Eoius talking last night."

"You and Eoius talking?" Alykana laughed, her elation echoing over to Ania, "And you didn't kill each other?"

Malus gave her a look of mock anger, before shaking his head and smiling for a moment. He caught Ania's eye, but his smile faded as she turned away from him. She sighed, but continued to listen to what they said.

"I was just telling him about how Ania knows me. He saw a Mem," he told her gravely, and she looked shocked for a moment, "Ania overhead - I'm not sure how much. And she was upset about it."

Ania was suddenly furious, so she marched over to Malus.

"Why would I not be upset?" she snapped, her voice choking as it went on, "I'm supposedly one of the last of my kind and you expect me to be happy about it?"

Malus looked surprised when she came over, but his expression changed to sadness when tears started to escape her eyes. He reached a hand out to wipe them off, but she jerked backwards, moving out of reach from him.

"And you lied to him," she told him quietly, "You told him that you knew me."

Alykana stood there for a moment, but when she saw that Malus and Ania needed to talk it through, she edged her way backwards and practically ran towards Telkus, mumbling something about breakfast.

"I didn't lie," Malus told her, his voice was louder than she expected, "I told him the truth."

"So why him before me?" Ania asked, her voice choking again, "If we were so important to each other, why did you have to tell him first?"

"Your sleep projection forced me to tell him," Malus replied, surprising her. As far as she'd known, the condition had all but cured itself. She didn't know a lot about it, but Malus knew more than her.

"A Mem?" she guessed, her eyes widening when she realised that she was right, "From when?"

"From..." Malus's voice choked up for a moment before clearing it - it was the closest Ania had seen him to tears, "From when you knew me. Before you went home."

Ania was even more shocked than before. She didn't think, even in her wildest dreams, that this was what Malus had been hiding. Although her heart already knew that they had some kind of history, her mind could not remember it.

She knew that that broke Malus's heart the most. And she didn't want to stand around and see it.

She walked away from him, still telling herself that he was lying, and also angry with him for not telling her about her kind. She'd known about the Fall - the demise of the High Council and their home planet - but she had assumed that they had evacuated beforehand.

She had never expected for everyone to die. Well, everyone that Malus knew about, at least. There could be some people he didn't know about that escaped.