For Darkness Shows the Stars Part 15

"Only that the things I saw today were actions that could not be performed by the boy I knew." But the man who stood before her was not the boy she'd known. Wasn't that what he was always saying to her? "Or by any natural human."

"I am a human. I am a most human of humans."

A dozen generations of her ancestors recoiled at the thought. "I know what you are. I know what you did." Her voice was very soft, her tone very grave. It was the sound of the Luddite speaking to the liege, but she couldn't help what slipped out next, Elliot to Kai. "How could you?"

He seemed to grow several centimeters. Was it a trick of the light, or some other kind of trick, some monstrosity she'd not yet discovered? "I will not stand here and be judged by a Luddite who knows nothing of my life."

There was no point in continuing the conversation. Yes, she was a Luddite. There had been times she'd doubted it, but the proof lay in every churn of her stomach as she thought of what he'd become. For weeks now, Elliot had told herself there was no way Kai could hurt her anymore.

Every day, she was shown to be wrong again. He hurt her when he looked her way, and when he did not. He hurt her when he spoke to her with derision, and when he ignored her.

But now . . . now, surely, it was over. For this man-this Malakai Wentforth-he'd killed her Kai. Overwrote his very DNA.

It was ERV. She'd never seen it, but she knew the signs. They'd been the stuff of nightmares since she'd first learned them in her nursery. The insidiousness of ERV lay in its very simplicity. You didn't need to replace your body with computerized parts. You didn't need to insert tiger or jellyfish or hawk genes into your spinal fluid. ERV simply reached into your DNA and flipped a few switches. Anyone could do it, and once, long ago, nearly everyone had.

He was Kai, and yet not Kai. More than Kai, better than Kai, different than Kai. All this time, she'd thought it had been his years of living free that had brought him back to her so strong, so swift, so fine. But it was more than that: he'd mucked around with the body G.o.d had given him. Didn't he care about the risk? Didn't he care what he might have done to his descendants?

"You don't know what it's like, down in the enclaves."

Elliot shook her head. "I surely don't, you're correct about that."

"It's not just stories the Luddites tell to scare their Posts into submission. There are desperate people there. They do desperate things."

"And that's what you did?" she asked him. "Something desperate?" Her voice broke on the words, shards of hope bursting through the skin of her anger.

Was this how frail her entire upbringing was? There was no excuse. None!

"I would have been desperate if I hadn't taken this risk," was what Kai said. "There are people who've done things far worse than this. When you're hungry, when you're cold, when you're alone-I consider myself lucky that this was what came along and not something worse."

"There's nothing worse," Elliot insisted.

"There is. You know people who could tell you about it." Kai's face was cold, his jaw set. "There are bad people in the enclaves. There's opportunity, yes, but a lot of danger. People whose slavery is worse than that on any estate. I learned to start measuring risk on a different scale. You can't judge me. You weren't there."

Her skin burned. No, she hadn't been there. Was this her fault? Could she have stopped him, if she had been there? Or would she have been just as desperate? Would she have been willing to risk her values, her future children, her life?

"So I did it. Me, and Andromeda, and Donovan. We were all part of an experiment, and it succeeded. We have faster reflexes, stronger stamina, keener vision. It's what makes us such extraordinary pilots."

"And what makes you still Kai?"

"I told you not to call me that." His face might have been made of marble, it showed so little feeling. "You must know by now that I am not that person anymore."

"Oh yes, I know." Everything she was raised to believe had taught her that what he'd turned himself into was an abomination. A dangerous one, that if allowed to live, to thrive, would bring about another disaster, a second Reduction.

She knew it, and still she didn't care. Elliot hated herself for that, but she couldn't deny it. He could have come to her in a tin body with gla.s.s eyes and a metal heart, and she'd still know him for Kai. Always always always Kai.

"Will you betray us?" he asked.

"You know me better than that."

"I know you are a Luddite," he said. "And that what I have become must disgust you."

Then he didn't know her at all. For she was something less than Luddite, and she felt so much more than simple disgust. "I don't know how you could do it," she said instead, staring into eyes that were so much like the ones she knew, and yet so different. "How you could take that risk. You say your experiment was successful. Were there others that were not? Other subjects who wound up Reduced? Dead?"

He was silent for a long time, and Elliot began to think she didn't want to know that answer.

"How could this be worth it?" she asked. "To what? See in the dark? Sail your ship with a little more finesse?"

"Is there a reason you'd find acceptable?" he asked. "Can you not imagine what could drive a person to break the protocols?"

Her jaw grew tight. "Not to become a better pilot," was all she trusted herself to say.

"What about to save a life?"

Twenty-five.

SHE CLOSED HER EYES, but she doubted it hid her response from him. He knew her too well, and now he saw too much. "Whose life?" she asked. "Whose life was worth risking a dozen generations of your children?"

"Sophia Innovation," said Kai, and she opened her eyes. "Her mother was looking for a cure for her condition. She needed controls-other young Posts, especially second generation like me. I was looking for a chance. We each had what the other needed."

"But Felicia didn't find a cure," said Elliot.

"No." Kai shook his head. "Unfortunately not."

Sophia had died, and Kai-her Kai-had the seeds of Reduction sown within him. For nothing. For nothing!

"They used you," Elliot hissed. "They ruined you."

"They employed me," he replied coldly. "They saved me. Do I look like nothing more than a test subject to you, Elliot? Felicia's experiments failed with Sophia, but they didn't fail with me. And the Innovations are my friends. We've turned the project into something so much greater, something that means all our work, all our risk, was not in vain. I'm a captain of the Cloud Fleet. I'm building a ship that can travel across the ocean. I have everything I've ever wanted in my life. Power, freedom. Who was I here? A mechanic? Living in a barn? You think about that and then tell me who it was that used me."

Elliot squeezed her jaw shut to keep the sob from escaping. She had no response. But it wasn't fair. The Cloud Fleet had had options. What could she have done for Kai? Nothing. He was a North estate Post, and she was a North. She couldn't change it. They'd known it back then. He'd had to leave, and to be together, she'd have had to go, too. Once, she'd told him she was willing to give up everything for him. And if it was only Elliot that would have been sacrificed, she might have gone through with it, too.

But she hadn't, and now everything was destroyed. Did he even care? Did he even want children someday?

He spoke again, and his tone was soft for once. "What choice do we have, Elliot North? What is the purpose of escaping Reduction if we are still forced to live within its limits?"

In his face dwelled a sadness she knew well, and a perception she could not comprehend. He was not her Kai. He could not be, for his DNA had been changed. He was an alien, an abomination, a ticking bomb that could set fire to everything her ancestors had managed to salvage of the world.

He was not her Kai.

He was not her Kai.

He was not her Kai.

But it was no use. She could burn the words into her skin and she would still not believe them. She breathed in the scent of hay and wet wood. Of manure and spoiled milk, of oil and leather, of lanterns and the night wind. The scents she'd known all her life. The ones that said barn, and freedom, and him. She took two steps toward Kai and laid her hand on his chest.

His heart pounded beneath his shirt, but he did not move. The deep thrum sounded so normal, so familiar. This, at least, they had not changed.

Elliot raised her face to his, recognizing in every plane and line the boy who lived inside her heart. He was breathing hard, matching the pace of his pulse. She was sure she was in the same state. For four years she'd subsisted on memories of this-his voice, his face, the sound of his breath and his heartbeat. She felt him like a leaf feels the sun, like a magnet feels metal.

"Elliot . . ."

She listed toward him, unwilling to reply with his name and risk breaking the spell. For four years, she'd been looking for direction, spinning as uselessly as the compa.s.s on her grandfather's wall. She'd tried her hardest, but without Kai she was lost.

"Please . . ."

His voice sounded like all the Kais in her memory. The ones who'd asked for books, for string-boxes, for company on his adventures. He sounded now like the Kai she'd once loved, like the Kai she still loved more than she loved the life she'd been born to lead.

"I'll give you whatever you want. Whatever it takes for you to keep our secret. A sun-cart? Or money? I have plenty. How much will it take?"

She blinked, as the dream smashed around her. So this is what it had come to. Kai didn't trust her. He'd never trust her. If he did, he wouldn't think he'd have to buy her silence. Because now it was Elliot, the Luddite lord's daughter, who was the beggar, the desperate one, who'd compromise the principles she'd had drummed into her since birth . . . for money. He thought she was a hypocrite, a traitor to her people, and he might be right. But not the way he thought. She'd do it for him. Not for money. Not for a sun-cart.

He loved the people who'd stolen his humanity, but he'd never loved her.

She stepped back. Stumbled, really. And sputtered. "Get out."

It was Kai's turn to blink in surprise.

She waved the lantern at him. He was fortunate she didn't throw it at his head. How could he know her so well and so little at once? "Get out of my barn. Now."

He stepped away from her, his hands held out to brace himself should she choose to swing. "I'm serious."

"So am I." She advanced, and he retreated toward the door. "I don't want anything from you." Not his money, not his pity, and most especially not his false kindness. "Don't you ever speak to me again, Malakai Wentforth. I hate you. I hate you. And I'm not sorry anymore."

"What?"

"I'm not sorry I didn't go with you. Because I hate the man that you've become."

He had pa.s.sed the threshold now, and she slammed the door shut in his face. For a moment, Elliot let that door support her. She panted against the wood, giant, gulping breaths that did nothing to soothe her or stop the tears that sprang to her eyes.

The Kai she'd known could never have made her that offer. He would have asked a favor from a friend. She'd been wrong about him all along. He must have been telling the truth the night of the Innovations' party. He'd never cared for her at all. Perhaps he'd always only seen her as the rich girl in the big house, the one who could help him, who could give him things, who could protect him from punishment, who could get him out of trouble. Why shouldn't it work the same in reverse, now that he was the rich one? He'd never loved her. Maybe he'd never even liked her.

She slid to her knees on the packed dirt floor. She rested her forehead against the ground. She raked her hands through her skirt and her hair, and she wept.

Many minutes later, she heard his voice, soft and low, on the other side of the door. He was centimeters away. "You were sorry? You were sorry you didn't go with me?"

Hadn't he spent every moment since his return making sure she was? Hadn't it been the unspoken meaning behind every cruel comment? "I said go away!"

"No, you said 'get out.' I'm out."

"Now go away."

Silence. And then, "No."

For a second, they were both fourteen again, bickering. Bantering. For another second, Elliot wished it could stay that way. But too many things had changed. "I mean it," she tried, though she was terrified she didn't.

"I need to know-" she heard him growl under his breath. "I need to know your mind."

She jumped to her feet and threw open the door. He was kneeling on the other side, and when he looked up at her in surprise, he nearly took her breath away. But her anger prevailed.

"Get out of my sight this instant or I'll scream," she ordered him. "I will scream to the world what you are, Kai. Believe me, I will."

He regarded her for a long moment, and then he, too, stood. "I have been unfair to you," he said at last. "I know you wouldn't tell. You never have."

Ten minutes ago, those words might have meant the world to her, but it was too late. Not after what he'd said. "Good. You have the answer you wanted. You and your abominable friends are safe. Now go away."

"Elliot-"

She shuddered. If she heard him speak her name again she might vomit. "Don't you understand? You disgust me. Go. Away."

His expression turned hard, and then he left. Elliot breathed a sigh of relief.

It was true. He did disgust her. But not for the reasons he should.

PART III.

True North.

I can listen no longer in silence. I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach. You pierce my soul.

-JANE AUSTEN, PERSUASION.

FOUR YEARS AGO.

Dear Kai.

Please do not hate me. I couldn't bear it if you hated me.

But I cannot go with you.

I thought I could. Last night, I thought everything was possible. I thought you were right, that there was nothing for me here, either. Mother's dead, Grandfather's locked in his own head, and you're leaving. Why in the world should I stay? It was a beautiful dream. But outside your room, outside the barn, in the cold light of morning, I realized that was all it was. A dream. There is nothing for me here, but that doesn't mean I am nothing to the North estate.

Today, when I was supposed to be packing, I wandered the estate. I watched the Posts in their little cottages, I watched the Reduced in the fields, and I thought about our lots in life.