“The Queen of Five is still at the outer reaches of this sector. We have secured all of the known Antogin on Betta’s Station. I expect to begin interrogation protocols within the hour. Betta Reganta will monitor from your vessel. As you are the victim in this case, we have agreed that you may participate as well.”
“Okay. That’s a good idea.” Jadis groaned inwardly. “Let me know if you hear anything from my stations.”
“I have made you the primary contact. Is there anything else?” Agent Brown asked.
“No. Thank you.”
The hologram vanished and Jadis decided it was time to do some personal diagnostics while he waited.
Completely reintegrated, his next step were a few medical scans. The one in his cargo bay was older, but reliable. His body did feel different. Was it the new clothing?
Now dry, he pulled on his coat. Normally, sweat would ooze from every pore at this point, but he was still cool. He was also more in control of his emotions. A few hours in the pool was the perfect release.
Sliding open the door, Jadis stopped abruptly at the threshold. Music poured from the speakers and a lithe figure danced in zero gee. Her arms extended, she spun and flipped over the large chairs, a grin on her face. He watched her move gracefully. All of the awkwardness he’d seen a few hours before was gone. It was like she’d been born to the non-existent gravity. He was tempted to reproach her for using him as a guide when he noticed the two pulsating mounds at her shoulder blades.
Chapter Nine
Together
“Betta.”
Betta nearly lost what control she had, spiraling forward head first. Catching hold of the railing at the end of the deck, she quickly righted herself to face Jadis. It wasn’t his interruption that threw her off. It was the softness in his voice. The sound was unlike anything she ever heard come from him. Her suspicions were reinforced when he pushed off from the doorway, gliding easily to her side.
“How do I know you’re really Jadis?” Betta asked. She pushed herself so that there was a good distance between the two.
“This again,” he grumbled. “The queen isn’t in control of my mind.”
“How would you know?” She was actually convinced at his grumbling, but she couldn’t resist digging into him. That was the Jadis she knew. Of course, she’d only known him a few days. Did she really know him? She could tell from the way his jaw moved that he was trying to control his emotions.
“I think something happened to you… to us. I have a medical scanner in the cargo bay. I think we—”
The words came out quicker than Betta could think them. “I am not getting in a box. Besides, I feel fine. I feel great, better than I have this entire week. You go get in the box if you want.”
“I think somehow…” Jadis did that thing where he wouldn’t meet her eyes again.
Betta moved closer, grabbing his chin and moving his face so that they were eye to eye. In zero gee it was so much easier to be short. “Always look at me. You don’t have to be afraid to look at me. I just don’t like to be boxed in. What’s the problem?”
“I think I might have infected you with something,” he said quickly, as though if he wasted any more time it would never come out. “It’s never happened, but—”
Betta pulled her hand back in revulsion and a clear gummy substance came with it. She floated there, her left hand filled with the same substance that attached itself to Jadis’s chin.
A flash of memory, and she was certain it was a memory, ran through her head.
The floor metallic. It was flat and cooling on his furred legs. His scaled torso froze at its touch. As such, he sat with his legs extended, his shoulders hunched down, and his eyes on the slit in the doorway. It’d been days since that slit provided food or water, yet he stared at it, willed it to work again. The craving for food ended days ago, but the thirst was always there. A few gulps of water would quench it.
There was nothing to give the impression that anyone living existed outside the door, only the sound of the ventilators as they pushed oxygen into the chamber. If he could have walked, he would have made a bigger effort. His legs were too large and his torso too weak. The muscles in his back weren’t even strong enough for him to lift his shoulders any higher than a hunch.
Time passed. Days, hours, minutes. It was hard to say how long he sat there. The metallic floor called to him, begged him to lay upon it and allow the chill to take him to another place.
The click of the lock was next. Looking up, a massive reptile took up most of the doorway. The forked tongue hissed and moaned out words that he couldn’t understand, though it gave him comfort. He moved his own forked tongue to repeat the sounds. They came out jumbled.
The creature in the doorway reached down and gathered him up in its scaled arms. He folded his arms around its neck, and finally slept.
Jadis blinked, staring into Betta’s own wide eyes.
“That was…” she whispered.
“Did you see it too?” he gasped, his hearts competing with one another.
“I was a boy. I was trapped in a room,” Betta said.
“The lab where I was kept. That was D’yanna’s father, the king. He came for me when the other scientists abandoned the facility.”
“They kept you there.”
Jadis reached out to sever the connection of gummy fluid that now solidified into fleshy cables that anchored themselves, pulling against his chin and Betta’s hands. The tips of his fingers touched the strange connection, and there was the shock of thoughts that were not his own.
She laid her head against the warmth of her mother’s chest. Rocked gently back and forth she could see the dark figures that flitted back and forth about the small chamber. The tune her mother hummed soothed her and she simply lay listening. There was the sound of boys that laughed and played and the beating of her mother’s heart against her face.
The time went quickly, and then the boys were led to their own stasis boxes, one by one. Her mother received hugs and kisses from each, and she received a light kiss on her cheek. Then it was silent, save for the sound of her mother’s humming.
She was the last to be laid in the box. Her mother smiled with all the warmth that could fill a room, kissing her gently on the lips, and then sliding the box closed before the darkness took over.
Betta swung her hands into what was now a tangled mess of fibers that connected the both of them. The connections came through the fabric of their clothing, and the more they moved, the more the fibers strengthened and intertwined to bring them closer. Their faces were inches apart. Seconds later their breathing matched a rhythm of shallow quick breaths.
“Jadis,” Betta pleaded in a sharp whisper, “Stop this!”
“I don’t know how. I’m sorry!” Jadis cried, the tears coursing down his cheeks of their own accord.
There was only the sound of the moving flesh and their cries for some time. When it felt like they could take no more and Betta was ready to die, they were forced closer together as the flesh below their shoulder-blades tore open.
Each screamed their own agony as green fibers extended from the mounds of pulsating flesh on their backs. Betta tilted her neck to look in horror at the fibrous wings that grew rapidly, expanding around them and folding them into a cocoon of shared heartbeats and memories.