I amble to Level 6 in a haze of my own scrambled thoughts. Before I can hold a conscious realization of my destination, I'm already there. My hand locks against the PAHLM of an unknown checkpoint guard. He waves me through.
The room is cavernous. Checking my PAHLM again, I groan.
Level 3 to Level 6 in ten minutes. That has to be a record of some kind.
But now I'm fifty minutes early. Going home to sleep would be pointless, and trying to find anywhere else to visit is equally fruitless. I slip into my chair, fold my arms over my chest, and wait for the rest of the group to trickle in.
Silence doesn't exist in the URE. When we say that we sit in silence or that we wish for silence, we actually mean the absence of human-made noises that top the regular humming of machines, leaking of water, and clinking of gears. There is no real silence down here.
Out of the rhythm of the resonant noises, I identify something vaguely familiar.
The hiss of grinding metal—hydraulics jostling to a quick and shuttering life.
This sound raises every inch of my flesh. I picture it's grotesque form in my mind before I see it lurk around the shadows of the room.
The Xani, possibly the same one from weeks ago, scuttles around the edge of the room, illuminated by blaring, fluorescent sconces as it passes. An involuntary shiver passes through me. I straighten in my chair ready to react to whatever this thing does next.
I think it can sense my gaze. It clatters to a halt at the corner of the room. Its twisted torso and human face snap toward me. Its upside-down mouth drips strings of orange slime from the bottom to the top.
I want to say something to it, but I've turned to goo as well.
My eyes lock on it, disgusting as it is to watch. I can't force myself to look away no matter how much my bones shake.
How will we survive in a universe where something as vile as this can thrive?
Its spindly underbelly whizzes and whistles.
The stinging tik tik tik of its quick feet against the metal floor echoes across the room. The sharp noises pummel right into my skull where they continue in an infinite loop.
Tik tik tik tik.
I follow the noise.
It's a vulgar beat.
A faster beat than my heart. The heart that's about to rapid-fire beat right through my ribs.
It screeches to a halt.
In a sickening, jerky twist, it snaps its head to the side and cracks with each movement.
For once, all the noise of the URE is sucked within that single second where I wait for the universe to react.
It rushes at me.
The disgusting gelatinous face extends merely a breath away from mine in seconds.
Mechanical parts rear up and pin me to the chair. The orange face opens its mouth wide to scream at me without sounds. I drown in its pinching stink.
My hands grip the arms of the chair like I'm about to be shot into space if I don't clasp tightly enough. It's cold metal gears rub against my bare arms. It feels oily, like the acidic cold of slime turned to slush.
I freeze. I can't move. I can't react. I can't even scream. We would be making the same soundless faces at each other with our wordless mouths opening. I don't know what to do, so I stare at it and memorize its ugly, gummy eyes.
Slowly, it removes itself pinion-by-pinion until all appendages are back on the floor. Backing away, it recedes into the shadows. It retreats to the darker parts of the room until all I hear is the original ambiance that surrounds me in this nightmare.
Its entrance and escape are so quick—did it even happen?
The breath I had been holding crashes out of me in a choked rush. I cough and then clutch both hands on my chest to support my own heaving. The stinging smell won't dissipate. When I look around, everything is tinted a sickly russet hue.
"What do you want?" I hear myself whisper to the room. My teeth chatter because I can't believe it's me who said it.
There is no answer.
I say it again. Louder.
Jittery hands, arms, and knees tremble until I propel myself off the chair. I scream it into the shadows.
"You okay, Lorn?"
The long scrape of a chair to my left drags me back into reality. Birgar stands like a question at the next table. He's probably wondering if he should be here at all. Should I tell him to run? Where would he go?
Some response is necessary. Otherwise, questions arise. Questions about sanity, and no one wants those kinds of questions on her record.
I bob my head in diminutive movements that I hope look normal. "Yeah. Good. All good."
He nods in return.
A shuffling at the door captures my attention. Humans. I'm more grateful for their company now than I've ever been before in my life.
I yearn to touch them—just to see if they're real.
The light from the doorway beckons me. I beeline into it and around the corner, ignoring the sparse throng of other soldiers approaching. They see my body language, and the more perceptive raise an eyebrow. Others remain oblivious to my frenzy as I whizz by in opposing airstreams. I look back in a paranoid after-thought to see if the creature is following me.
I drift backward like I'm disappearing, and maybe it's going to be safer that way. The Xani don't exist in nothingness.
Or do they? Will I see them when I die?
"Hey." Familiar fingers brush my arms as I accidentally back into them. "Meeting is that way—"
A delayed convulsion rips through me, sending mixed messages to Dean's hands. He must feel them even though I seem to have gone numb. His voice drops to a whisper. "What's wrong? What happened?"
I can't answer, but maybe he reads the response somewhere in my eyes that are still seeing a gruesome, orange-tinted world. I don't know what exactly this is telling him, but he gets it.
We slip aside to a corner. "Nika. What the hell happened?."
I can barely even stammer it out. "They . . . They aren't human . . . but they look like they could be. Like if I didn't already know about intestines and shit—it's as if you pulled our skin back, you'd find them under there."
Dean's face doesn't change. He still gazes at me with hard, patient eyes.
"The Xani."
"Were they here?"
"Yeah. I was in the room early, and there was one in there with me."
"Did it hurt you?"
"No." I close my eyes, and its image clicks its way back into view. My eyes fly open again to vanish the hideous face.
I feel stupid being worked up over something that caused me no physical harm, but here in the URE, we measure mental injuries as gravely as corporal ones. "It got really close. That's all."
Dean holds me still, and the heat from his warm hands seeps under my skin. The heat reminds me of humanity, and I feel more than see what separates us from the creatures with the human façade. I lean into him. It fills in the gaps that the Xani poked into me when we were head-to-head.
"I'm okay. I didn't expect it, that's all. It took me by surprise."
"You're never surprised."
I snort. "I've let a few slip by here and there lately." Despite being held in his strong grip, I step out of it easily.
"I hate that you're stuck with them."
"Maybe they're not so bad." I chew on the bitter lie. Even I'm not convinced.
He looks down at me. "Not so bad? You should have seen yourself just now . . . maybe they're not so bad . . ." His voice rises in pitch as he mocks me, twenty octaves above where I actually am.
Of its own volition, my body gravitates toward his chest. I move closer and punch him in the arm like I've done a million times before. Instead of his normal reciprocal movements, he touches the end of my braid resting over my shoulder. His hand, the large thing I've held before, brushes against my cheek.
Noise dies behind us. I'm lost in the air between our bodies. We crash-land into each other.
What sat in my belly as sickly fear has vanished and turned into combustion.
Our kiss deepens. His hands move from my head to my waistband. It scrapes warmth across my chilled skin, leaving a trail that boils.
I feel something deep inside jolt, like a crack under enormous pressure. It's so sudden, it makes me gasp into his mouth as he continues to melt me with his hands and chest pressed up against mine. It feels like a rip, a shred, a jagged and painful break. It fills my chest with immense pressure, and all the rushing from this leak pushes against my ribs, making it impossible to breathe.
A sharp sob erupts.
I suddenly have everything that I am losing right here in my hands, and it finally hits home that this will no longer be mine.
He pauses to look at me—to check on these alien sounds. I hope he sees what I need him to see. I'm begging him to look at me and know that right now, without agendas and without desired outcomes, I just want him as he is. As the only one who really knows who I am. One human and another.
I pull him deeper into the crevice that we have fallen. He clutches me as my back presses against the wall of the URE. My body is crushed between the two. But the pressure from the outside matches the horrible feeling on the inside, and the sobbing is muffled.
He pulls away, his hand entwined in my hair, his eyes closed. He breathes the air of our shared pants and rests his forehead against mine. I feel his anguish. It's mine now too.
When we emerge, no one is in the vestibule. Before moving into the room with the rest, he turns to me, pushes a rogue hair away from my eyes, and mirrors my face. If I could put my hand up to his chest and feel the mechanics inside, I swear I'd feel that same break that is piling into collapsed gears and busted parts in mine.
We are two broken people who walk into a room full of the greatest military minds of our race. We sit separately. Whatever phase we occupied in each others' lives is over. Whatever evolution our relationship proceeds in after this will be something twisted but profound. At this point, I know that we are never meant to be partners in that regard. But maybe that's what's meant to be?
Could there be a plan for us? To be something more than genetic material?
My weird visit to the Chapel has me gnarled inside. I could blame Her, but I've yet to see what She might have in store.
As I sit here tonight with Hayomo's even voice flowing from the front of the room, my mind finds a strange, undisturbed station to inhabit. Today, with eyes wide open, I confronted my immediate future. Then minutes later, with my heart breaking, I let go of my past.
The present is clear. What smokey haze and uncertainty existed before lifts. I'm sure if I could see the stars, I could count every single one.
My mission is simple. And now it's the only thing I have left.