I sat down at the table, my hands knotted in my lap.
Today was the last time they would try for me. My twenty-fifth birthday marked a day that would lead me to forever or the day I would be recycled. I felt sweat bead on my forehead at the thoughts. I wiped it away. The room was so warm.
Why did they keep it so warm?
I had been in this room so many times before but nothing had stuck, it seemed that there was nothing that would work for me. I had spent countless hours praying to nothing that it would work each time I tried. I prayed endlessly that something in my brain, my body or even my soul, would shift to allow the pairing to stick.
I once again rubbed at the sweat on my forehead before swallowing against the dryness in my throat. They never kept any water on the table and no one was around to ask for any. Ami'la, my case worker had sat me down and left. I hung my head, fighting back tears.
Why did it have to happen to me?
I had gotten wonderful grades. I hadn't been in any trouble. My father was a genetic researcher for the Orrians and my mother had been a specialist for interstellar plant growth. Everything should have been perfect, I should have been perfect.
I looked at my hands, wondering how they looked fine when I was so broken on the inside. Something they couldn't fix with medicine or surgery because when the soul was broken and unable to bond, there was nothing anyone could do. I lifted my head as Ami'la opened the door. Her ever-present high heels clicking on the tile floor as she brought another man in.
One last try.
"Liv, this is Tony." Her tone was soft and I closed my eyes tightly, sending up a silent prayer that this one would work. That he was the one that would make my soul sing and my world stop, the one that would be my forever. I opened my eyes slowly and looked at the man.
My heart sunk in my chest, there was nothing, just like the times before. My mother used to say the heart never lied and it wasn't lying now. I stood up looking at Ami'la before shaking my head.
Ami'la let out a large sigh. "Then there is nothing more we can do, Liv." The door burst open and my heart pounded harshly in my chest, as if trying to escape its bone cage. The fear was all-consuming but I couldn't move as hands and arms wrapped around me, forcing the air from my lungs. I couldn't breathe and black spots danced in my vision as I gasped for air that I could never take in.
I sat up in bed with a gasp, my lungs greedily taking in air as my limbs shook with the panic that surged through me. I pushed off the remnants of the nightmare and pressed my hand to my chest, feeling how hard my heart pounded. The fear lingered but the powerful pounding was calming. I was still alive, as long as my heart beat in my chest I was okay. The urge to cry because of the nightmare was nearly overpowering but I fought it off.
I should have been used to the nightmares by now. They had started when I had turned eighteen, right after the happiest day of my life had turned into the worst. It was when everything had fallen apart, when they had told me I might be broken. It was always the same nightmare, the same car, the same room, the same faceless person Ami'la presented as my soulmate. It always ended the same as well.
I died.
I looked at the clock and sighed heavily, rubbing at my face. At six in the morning there wasn't much sleeping I could do with my meeting in two hours. The very last meeting I would have with her. I wondered if I could lie, could tell them that we had bonded but I pushed the thought away. I couldn't do that to myself or Ami'la. She had been on my case since the beginning. She had taken it when no one else would because they were all certain I would just end up being recycled in the end anyway. Turned out no one really wanted to deal with dead ends and heartbreak. I couldn't blame them for that.
I had forty-three different men and forty- three identical failures. I had turned twenty-five and now it was time to pay the price for being broken. Ami'la had promised me one last chance and I had taken it. It was a fool's hope but one I knew I should have wanted anyway.
Humans needed to pair off, it was part of the way things had always been. Orrians had come to Earth over seven hundred years before to help us. We had followed the same paths of destruction over and over again and they wanted us to stop, to evolve. So they stepped in, they took over.
While it was true not everyone agreed with the decision and the most vocal seemed to be a portion of the Orrians themselves. They wished to destroy humanity and build on our corpses but thankfully the more civil Orrians won out in the end.
The Orrians had instituted customs and laws, a lot of silly and unnecessary laws it seemed, but it worked. Nothing fell out of place. Humans were paired off in a soulmate system that the Orrians themselves used. I should have known how it worked considering how many times the system had failed me but I never understood how it functioned. I didn't care to.
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath in before letting it out, my heart slowing to a more normal rhythm as I continued the deep breathing. I had been continually instructed about the relaxation technique due to my sometimes reoccurring panic attacks. I shook the thought away as quickly as it appeared. There was no need to think about it, not today.
My fingers absently played with the medallion around my neck, turning it around and around, twisting the chain it hung on. The medallions were an integral part of the pairing system. Ami'la told me that they were the physical representation of a person's soul. They were what the Soul Makers had created to house that soul. There were many different types of medallions, some had pictures, some had just colours, some were gemstones or rocks. No two were alike but in special cases your soulmate's could be similar or somehow complete yours.
I reversed the direction of my twisting, my fingertips taking in the familiar smooth edges of my medallion. It was like an oval coin but smoother and more plain with a set of engraved symbols that Ami'la told me were Orrian. The simple translation was that they were symbols for 'Love is'. She also told me that in all her years of being a case worker, she had never seen a medallion like mine. The Orrian writing was uncommon with the Orrians and nearly impossible with humans but there I was.
I was her little oddity, her little freak show. I knew she never felt like that but sometimes, as I had people inspecting what was essentially my soul with such scrutiny, it felt like she was running a circus with me as the main attraction. I rubbed the metal with my thumb, a habit I had developed after I learned of what an oddity it was. Essentially I had been trying to rub the symbols out, to make it seem more normal. It never worked but the action comforted me regardless.
If the meeting today didn't work, I would be recycled. It is what happened to all the broken things and it happened to the people who had been born with life threatening disabilities that couldn't be cured. To be fair, an act of recycling wasn't a go to decision and the last person to be recycled had requested it and that was fifty years ago.
However, it was how it was, the law was the law. Broken things got recycled, even defective humans.
The Orrians had been helping humans remove all sorts of genetic flaws to negate the recycling by sharing their DNA with us. It was what my father did with his time and it gave me an inside look at how it worked. The Orrians shared their DNA with us to stop our genetic flaws and in turn humans would help the Orrians fix their infertility. As a clause of the ancient contract, no human could be born with more than fifty percent of Orrian DNA. As far as I knew, there were no such cases. The Orrians were very adamant about it. Every human was tested in-utero for the DNA boundaries. If a fetus tested over the allotted amount, it would be aborted and another, more acceptable fetus, would be placed in the mother instead.
Some people found the system to be reprehensible but after seven hundred years it was now the norm. No one blinked an eye at it anymore, I certainly didn't. Even the thought of genetically engineering soldiers wasn't something immoral. It just was. Although, when I was younger I had sometimes wondered that they paired humans up at eighteen because the engineered soldiers would be put out in the intergalactic front at the age of nineteen. Almost as if they wanted them to have something to fight for back home.
It had made sense to me but Ami'la had told me that while it was a romantic thought, they picked the age of eighteen because it was when Orrians came into their adulthood. They then carried that age over to humans because it saved them from trying to adjust the system. Well that and the overwhelming majority of soldiers waited until after their time on the front before they were paired up. To my younger self, that thought was almost more romantic. They were protecting their soulmates even before meeting them.
I shook my head of the thoughts. I wasn't that young or naive anymore. I gave another heavy sigh as I pulled off the covers and shifted so I sat on the edge of my bed. The clock blinked quarter after six and I forced myself to stand up. It could be the very last time I ever got out of bed and the thought nearly made me crawl back into it. Human civilians needed to pair up by the age of twenty five. I didn't know why but we had to. The law was the law, even if it didn't make any sense.
I sighed before I pushed everything out of my mind. It was just another day, just an ordinary day that would end like every other day. I reached for a pair of jeans from my basket and pulled them on. I wasn't going to dress up for the occasion like I had when I was eighteen.
It had only mattered back then. I had picked my favourite sundress and had been allowed to wear my mother's heirloom ruby necklace. I thought I had looked pretty but if that mattered then I wouldn't have been in the position I was in now. I would have fallen in love with Mark, we would have had two children, and would have been living in a new house in a good neighbourhood with a pet dog. I had been so excited back then. Ready to take on the world but that sickening feeling of realizing I didn't love the man they presented to me was overwhelming.
I had rejected many men since then but that feeling was the worst I had ever experienced. The only feeling I had about the subject now was the inevitable disappointment. I tugged on a button up shirt and looked at myself in my mirror. Tired eyes gazed at me with a slight hollowness to them. I blinked and looked away. I didn't like looking at myself in the mirror anymore, the reflection always seemed to mock me. Like it was tormenting me over the fact that I couldn't see what was broken, no matter how hard I tried.
I undid my braid and carefully brushed my hair before redoing it. My hair was longer than normal. Women usually kept it shoulder length or a little longer but I kept mine even longer than that. It rested mid-back when loose and it drove Ami'la crazy. I couldn't remember how many times she had threatened to cut it all off if I didn't get it cut to the appropriate length. Long hair was reserved for the more important Orrians and despite being two separate species, humans adopted the custom but didn't enforce it like the Orrians did. I was looked upon very strangely for having longer hair but no one said anything to me about it, except for Ami'la of course.
I left my room and quietly made my way to the backyard where the sun was starting to rise over the horizon. I watched it until the light burned my eyes and I was forced to close them, letting my face warm up with the beams of a new day.
"You're up early. Another nightmare?" My dad's voice was low and I nodded, unwilling to open my eyes and spoil the moment. Everything was almost perfect, the sun on my face and a faint breeze that brought in the scent of the night. The faint scent holding out until the sun would warm it as well, chasing all the shadows from the night away.
"This could be my last sunrise, did you know that?" It was a morbid thought but I knew my dad would understand. He was the only one who would discuss such things with me, my mum seemed to be hell bent on ignoring any possibility it wouldn't work. I could understand but her refusal to actually think about the possibilities was almost as bad as the possibilities coming to pass. It was if she believed if we ignored it, it would all go away.
"I'm aware, Liv. I hope it isn't. I'm praying to the Source it isn't but we must be prepared if it is." His voice brought memories of my childhood. They flooded my mind until I felt like I wanted to cry. He said nothing else as he wrapped his arm around my shoulder and kissed my temple. "You're my little girl and you will always be my little girl. Never forget that, Liv." He let me go and I opened my eyes, the moment lost as the sun pushed further into the sky. I heard him go back inside but I stood still, not wanting to move. I knew that if I did, I couldn't go back.
It was now or never and even if I wanted never, I knew it wouldn't work. I let out a small sigh as I slowly turned my back to the rising sun and stepped back inside the house. I could hear my dad in the kitchen moving pans around and I knew he was going to make breakfast but the thought of food made me slightly nauseous.
I fought it back before stepping into the kitchen. "Do you need any help, dad?" I glanced towards him. His back was turned to me and he gave a small nod.
Nothing else was said as I grabbed a pack of eggs from the fridge and turned on the stove top. It was a simple thing to make breakfast, it was almost cathartic as I listened to the sounds of the food cooking and the shuffling of my dad as we moved around each other. A part of me was breaking inside but I ignored it. I had known for seven years that my life might end earlier than most and I had decided that if it came to it, I would meet my end like the heroes of old. To hold my head high and shed not a single tear because I was braver than that.
"Oh, you two are already up." My mum's voice sounded surprised and I looked over my shoulder with a tired smile.
"I couldn't sleep." I pushed my head to the side as she walked over to kiss my cheek. I tried to imprint the soft feel of the motherly kiss into my memory. I didn't know if I would ever feel it again. I watched as she grabbed a cup for some coffee and shuffled over to the coffee pot.
"Careful, your eggs will burn." At my dad's reminder, I flipped the eggs before turning off the stove. I dished up two plates and handed one to my dad as he walked by then set the other one on the table for my mum. She gave me a concerned look and I gave her another smile.
"I'm not hungry. Nervousness and all that." I watched as she went from concerned to sympathetic.
"Don't worry so much. This time it will stick, I just know it. Last time you were so close." At her sweet smile I looked down at my hands. I couldn't discuss it with my mum. She never listened. I couldn't hug her and tell her that she was the best person I knew or even hug her and cry because she truly believed I was fixable. "You were with him for nearly two months. This time will be the perfect one. Just believe in yourself, Liv."
I winced at the memory. One month, three weeks, and four days I had played at being a mate. I had tried for everyone involved but myself and in the end I couldn't pretend to love someone who was practically a stranger. Everyone had been so disappointed but I felt like an actor in a movie. I was saying the lines but not meaning them. It made me resent the people who pressured me to try, my mother included. She was under a false hope that somehow I could get better and it broke my heart.
"Eliza, let Liv be. She has a big day and doesn't need that pressure right now." Dad's voice was low as he scolded mum slightly but I just shook my head before looking up.
I gave him a tight smile. "It's okay, dad. Mum is right, maybe this time it will work. Or maybe it won't and I'll be shoved into a garbage disposal." I ignored her harsh intake of breath and pressed my lips tightly together. The words were meant to wound because I was angry that I couldn't discuss it with her, that I was stuck screaming about it in my head without a release because she couldn't handle what very well could be reality for me.
"Liviya! Don't you ever say something like that again! It will work! It has to. You have to try." The outrage in her voice suddenly brought tears to my eyes, tears I had been holding back for years. After the fourth try I had given up tears like I had given up hope of ever finding my soulmate.
"I've been trying for seven years. I'm tired of trying, mum. How many more do you think I have left? I turned twenty-five three days ago, this is the last one. There is no one else." I shook my head, wiping at my eyes, hating the wetness that made my vision blur. "Not for me." I stared at her and she pressed her hand to her mouth. I could see tears welling in her eyes and I felt my heart twist in my chest. I didn't want to hurt her but I couldn't pretend anymore. I was tired of going through the motions in a futile effort to bond with someone my heart didn't want.
"I'm sorry, Liv." She walked over before she wrapped her arms around me and I took in her scent. She smelled like dirt and lemons. A scent that permeated my childhood memories and reminded me of a time before everything had become so difficult. "I'm sorry." I knew what she was saying. She was sorry that I was born broken, that I had drawn the short end of the genetic lottery.
I wrapped my arms around her and realized she felt small and fragile almost like a baby bird. I felt for her, I really did but reality was what it was. "I'm sorry too, mum." The words were slightly choked but I cleared my throat. Someone needed to be strong and I had prepared for seven years to be that person. I pushed her away and lifted my chin, trying to show my strength but the action felt weak.
She grasped my face in her hands. "You were the prettiest baby. I loved you from the moment I knew we were going to have you." She let me go and returned to her spot at the table. I stood for a few more moments, trying to imprint the feeling of being in their presence into my mind before looking at the time. It was a quarter to eight, time to leave it all behind.
"I should go. I don't want to be late." It was a flimsy excuse but I held on to it as I turned away and walked to the front door. I pulled on my shoes and took a deep, shuddering breath in, trying to calm my nerves as I quickly opened the door and stepped outside. I looked at the government provided car. It had been programmed to take me to the Ministry of Soulmate Affairs and arrived last night. I quickly walked across the yard and got inside. As it drove away, I refused to look back, not wanting to shatter my strength with memories that would make me want to stay.