Page 39 of Alliance

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He shook his head, then nudged his face against the underside of my jaw.

“Enough,” he huffed, ruffling my curls. “Go charge so you’re topped off for tomorrow.”

“You’re right.” I stood up and snuck out of the nest, careful not to bump the girls in their vital pods. “But it’s cold where we’re landing.”

“It is,” Fásach confirmed.

“And my coat isn’t nearly as warm as yours.” I stopped just short of the door sensor and looked back to meet his eyes in the dark. They reflected back at me, iridescent discs like a hunter watching me at night.

Perhaps Fásach thought I couldn’t see him, but I could see just fine. He licked his teeth in a slow, deliberate way, lingering on the points of his canines as his stare coasted over my bare limbs, and I remembered a concept that had come up more than once in the data packet theMummerhad given me.

Harmony.

Like a lot of migratory animals, the yiwren apparently had the ability to sense or even hear the magnetic field of their planet. Over time it evolved into a more sensitive instinct, affecting their relationships with others. Harmony was when they found dynamic balance with another person.

Dynamic being the important part.

If Fásach wanted to become predatory, I could help him transition more quickly if I was prey-like, or maybe even a threat. Now that I understood he was more comfortable in his predatory state anyway, I was more than willing to help him however I could. Biting, fighting, hissing, punching. Whimpering, bending, struggling, pleading. Whatever he needed, I was happy to switch on a dime. Because helping Fásach didn’t feel like I was a pay-to-play slot machine; I felt like a dance partner. A wingman.

When he didn’t say anything, I pushed him a little further, my voice apprehensive despite the exhilaration coursing through my veins. “Are you willing to keep me warm, Fásach? If I need you.”

His ear twitched, claw sinking into the plush bedding with a growl that was definitely subconscious. “Youwillneed me.”

“Yes, I think so.” I paused for a heartbeat, then waved at the dark room with a bright smile. “Well, good night!”

Then I stepped into the relative light of the hall, turned immediately for my room, and spent the rest of the night charging, thinking about Fásach and how to help him transition faster. The look he’d given me in the dark that made me feelpowerful and warm. The oily crackle of meat on a grill in Little Havana and licking lime off my lip. About how the colony smelled like mulch and the humidity was thick enough to drink. The way my feet carried me from one home tower to another, and the hilly footpaths that made me pant for want of exercise.

Even though my systems were locked down for charging, my heart raced. I’d lulled myself into a glitch of thought. Running and running up those black dirt paths lined with long black grass, never reaching the important thing I was meant to reach. Whoever was at the top of that hill…

They needed to be warned.

12

Roav stood in the corner of his shared cell with his arms crossed, staring at Roka Lokurian’s back from across the cell block. The venandi hadn’t stopped hrumming to himself since he’d been tossed in covert holding beneath Renata’s hangar. Every waking moment, the broken commander’s diaphragm vibrated, forcing sound through ragged vocal cords.

Roav had recorded hours of the sound once their batteries had been charged for questioning. At first, he’d been suspicious that the venandi was transmitting something. A distress beacon, maybe. But it had been nothing of external importance, simply the sobs of a broken man.

That morning, sitting across from Arms Master Vindilus Renatex and his newvira,Imani Renatex, Roav had wished biognostics could express their agony in such a way rather than let the heat of shame build to a fever pitch with no way to crumble. The converged human’s eyes alone had pierced him, and unlike biological species, he would have a recording of her potent mixture of triumph and betrayal until the day his code unraveled. She had been right about them—abouthim—and the revelation wounded her.

Despite all of her accusations and vitriol, Imani Renatex hadhoped…

Warm silicone settled on Roav’s shoulder, the palm of Jharim’s hand. He didn’t look at the older biognostic, ratherkeeping his lenses trained on the venandi as he clawed his way back from reviewing that recording for the hundredth time.

“Roav,” Jharim urged.

Roav’s skull casing blinked in quantum binary, completely engrossed in the venandi’s insanity.

01010111 01101000 01100001 01110100 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01100110 01110101 01100011 01101011 00100000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01110100 01101000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01100111 01110101 01111001 00100000 01101111 01101110 00100000 01100001 01100010 01101111 01110101 01110100?

Jharim chuckled, but Roav was serious.

“I do not understand,” he insisted, his partner apparently in the mood to speak aloud. “He does not respond to any external stimuli. Don’t biological species require this? He will deteriorate.”

“He’s lost hisvirafor the second time. Surely you can understand,” Jharim teased.

“He was caught abetting illegal human doll production in an effort to clone her,” Roav corrected stiffly.

“Avirwould do anything to find and protect his other half,” Jharim said, sobering. “Committing treason in her name would be no contest for a man like him. Conviction and desperation are two sides of the same coin. It is how villains are made.”