Page 83 of Alliance

Page List

Font Size:

The glittering of the foliage sharpened, and I looked away, taking the hot soup when he offered it to me. "I see a lot of data echoes skirting the tops of the trees. I can't hear them from here but there are some radio frequencies popping in and out of my transmission range."

Fásach dropped his ration bar, then scooped it back up with surprise. "Already?"

I nodded, then opened my mouth. Shilpakaari pop music faded in and out, popping from loud to quiet, depending on the direction I turned my head. I closed it and ran my tongue over the walls of my cheeks, trying to abate the unpleasant tingle. "I don't know what it means, except that there are people that way when there shouldn't be. None of the maps Traveler gave us have shipping routes this deep over the jungle."

Fásach abandoned trying to eat his ration, his hands falling limp in his lap."Scocite."

My brows stitched together. "Fás... I think I was doing something bad on the antenna. I... I think Gil was right to shoot me."

His ears twitched, then they flattened against the sides of his skull. He knelt in front of me, pressing his palms into my silk, and I relaxed into hands that made me feel every sensation as if I were a live wire.

"You're your own person, remember? I can hear it in your voice. You didn't go up there with bad intentions."

"I went up there to complete a task I don't remember," I argued. "I know the echo and the voice, but I can't remember—" [Warning] I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to recall the file from my LMem, then shook my head. "When I pull up my recording, it's encrypted. What if..." I licked my lips, gathering my strength even as my heart leapt up my throat. "What if I want to go to the colony because part of me is corrupted?"

Fásach straddled my thigh and pulled me into his fur with a comfortinghuhuhuhrolling through his chest. "You're your own person, Roz. You've proven that you can deny your coding as much as you please." He brushed my curls away from my face. "I know it's new, but trust in your free will. Don't give up on yourself. I can hear your truth louder than anything."

I squeezed my thighs together with a sense of urgent fullness and he snapped his teeth, brushing his palm up my leg."Do you want to prove how free you are again?" he simmered, his eyes blowing out until those horizontal pupils were nearly round. “Let me beg you. Deny me to the edge of sanity.”

"I feel like I'm going to burst," I admitted with a grimace, shaking my legs and squirming. Fásach leaned in and I stopped him. "It doesn't feel like the same thing. I feel something... urgent?

“Urgent?”

Near a panic, I wondered to myself if this was how I was going to expel the corruption I felt. "What if-if... What?!"

Fásach's ears were perked, a boyish, playful smile lifting his features as he bit his bottom lip with bright white teeth. Then he pressed on my abdomen with a chirp, and I gasped.

"No, now it's worse!"

Fásach rocked back on his heels and laughed, full belly. His face lifted to the black and looming trees, his mouth spreading open wider than a human's ever could, showing every ridge and point of his incredible teeth. I smacked his arm, on the brink of dying.

"Roz, sweet melody, I think you just need to pee."

"P-pee?" I shorted, shocked. "I don't have that bodily function."

"Are you sure?" One of his ears flopped sideways as he tilted his head, leaning his jaw on his knees. Never had I seen him so full of youth and joy. And atmyexpense. I should have been happy, but instead I was miffed.

"How do I pee?"

He shrugged. "It's a lot like sleeping, I guess. You relax, and then your body will do the rest." He stood, offering me a hand. "Find a tree close by and pull down your pants first though."

I couldn't stand up straight, hugging where my bladdershouldn'tbe, but a system check revealed that my parumauxihad grown one anyway, taking over a section of my fluids filtration system. Which my vitals deck now also called kidneys, even if they were a single tube with several filtered chambers and not biological kidneys at all.

Unable to think about it any harder, I slid down the boulder and shuffled behind the closest tree trunk while Fásach watched with amusement from his perch.

?

"Nothing's happening!" Roz called from behind her tree. Fásach could just see the corner of her bare knee poking out from behind the black trunk.

"Relax!" he called back. Silence.

Fásach's smile fell. He creased his brow, considering Roz's concerns about herself with oily worry. Opening his holotab for the first time in days, he looked through his notifications and found, predictably, nothing. Still, he needed to reach out to Vin and Novak again. Sizzle too, if it was possible.

But all of their comms were offline. It was so unusual that unease settled into his chest and wouldn't let go. What was happening that no one would log in to the guild network? He pulled up Vindilus's profile and sent a quick voice comm.

"Hey, Vin. I ah,fuck.I need you to pick up. I need to talk to you. I'm on Yaspur and bringing the girls to the colony. If you get this, comm me." He kept his voice low so that Roz couldn't hear the strain in it, then sent it priority through the guild's encrypted pathway. It was the best he could do. He opened Novak's name next, then Sizzle, and did the same.

"Fás! Fás!" Roz called from the trees. She jumped up, wriggling her pants back on. "I did it! I peed!"