Ashwin

By the ninth anniversary of his birth, Ashwin had learned the fundamental truth of humanity: people are irrational.

Irrational behavior in and of itself wasn't the problem, though. Even the DNA modification they'd performed on Ashwin before his birth couldn't erase all his emotions. That would have been counterproductive. Too much of what made a soldier elite was rooted in instinct, and instinct was nothing more than evolution's slow honing of the basest human emotions—fear, mistrust.

Rage.

Ashwin had been angry when anger served no practical purpose. He'd felt the sharp prickle of fear urging him to alter course, to fall back and protect himself from pain. He'd been trained to recognize those sensations for what they were—chemical stimulus, nothing more. Most of the time, he considered them, processed them, and proceeded on a logical course.

Sometimes he didn't. Sometimes Ashwin was irrational. But the difference between him and the people around him was that Ashwin never lied to himself about it.

Breaking into the clinic on the Base was irrational. He numbered the reasons to himself as he overrode the electronic lock and slipped inside, the layout so familiar he barely had to look around him.

Three reasons this was a bad idea. One reason it bordered on madness.

And one reason to do it anyway.

He heard the unmistakable sound of a pistol's safety being disengaged in the darkness, followed by a long-suffering sigh.

Ashwin supposed there had been a time—a time before training and harsh conditioning—when he'd felt fear the way everyone else did. A shiver up the spine, a clench in his gut. Now, it was almost a taste, bitter and sharp. Unwelcome.

But not unwarranted. The man behind him was the closest thing Ashwin had to a friend—and Samson wouldn't hesitate to put a bullet in his skull.

Ashwin turned slowly, raising both hands as he moved. Palms open, forward. An almost universal sign of surrender—and a good position from which to launch an attack, if Samson hadn't been smart enough to stand out of reach. “You're not on guard duty tonight.”

“What can I say? I had a feeling. Lights.” The bulbs in their recessed fixtures obeyed the command immediately, flooding the room with a harsh glare that drove away the darkness. The light glinted off Samson's sandy hair, as well as the polished nickel of the weapon in his hand. “You're not supposed to be here, Ashwin.”

“I'm not forbidden.” Which was simple fact. His bar codes provided access to every exterior door on the Base, and his retinal scan and fingerprints could get him into plenty of classified areas. But scans left a record, and Ashwin couldn't afford that.

That was one reason this was a bad idea.

“There's a hell of a wide stretch between not forbidden and supposed to be here.” Samson flicked the safety back on, holstered his gun, and sighed again. “If this is official business, spit it out.”

Spit it out. So casual. Samson had always been like this, even when they were young. On the rare occasions they'd been allowed free time to mingle with the other children on the Base, the unmodified recruits had avoided Ashwin, dissolving any game or contest he tried to join, abandoning any table when he sat down. He couldn't mimic their slang or their informal speech, and the comfortable rhythms of their banter eluded him.

But Samson could make himself one of them. No, not just one of them—their king. The other young soldiers had flocked to him, shown off for him, done anything it took to win his regard and respect. And they'd been fools, assuming that Samson must be different from the rest of the Makhai trainees simply because he could smile and joke.

That was how Samson trapped you. He put away his obvious weapons and acted like you were old friends, and you never saw the death blow coming. The only reason Ashwin hadn't closed in to attack was the fact that they were old friends. Ashwin didn't want to kill him. But he'd have to, if he couldn't talk Samson around.

Since one or the other of them would die if he couldn't, the truth was a calculated but necessary risk. “It's not business. I'm trying to recalibrate.”

“On your own?” Samson asked skeptically.

“I can't afford to be taken out of the field right now.” Not now that the O'Kanes had locked down the tunnels. Eden had lost any hope of resupply, no matter how minor. The councilmen would be looking at the food in their increasingly sparse pantries—and plotting action.

“And how exactly do you plan to recalibrate yourself?”

Distaste flavored the word. Ashwin couldn't blame him. Recalibration was merely a polite word for carefully regimented torture.

Moving slowly, he unsnapped one of the pockets on the leg of his pants and withdrew a glass bottle and a syringe. “I need to disrupt an obsessive thought pattern.”

Samson stared down at the vial in Ashwin's hand, not bothering to hide his horror. “You can't be serious.”

Ashwin ran his thumb over the label on the bottle. Not the worst drug available on the Base, but it would go in like acid and get worse. He'd feel like his blood was boiling free of his veins, eating its way through his organs. Men injected with it had betrayed brothers, lovers—even their own children.

If he remembered that kind of pain every time he thought of Kora, maybe he wouldn't tear the sectors apart trying to put his hands on her. “I'm serious.”

“Well, then you need to be yanked out of the field, because you've lost your fucking mind.” Samson stepped closer. “There's a reason they only use that shit with telemetry and a dozen goddamn doctors clustered around. It kills people.”

If he told his supervisor, he'd have the doctors. He'd have the psych team. And they'd drag the truth about Kora out of him, because those doctors were nothing if not efficient. Even if he managed to hold back the secret of what she was, they'd know that she mattered. They'd see another chance to experiment with a Makhai soldier in the throes of a fixation.

They'd find her and use her against him. In his worst nightmares, they found her and gave her to him. They wouldn't care if he ravaged her, if she was unwilling or terrified. If he hurt her.

Ashwin was an expensive, malfunctioning asset. Kora's fear and pain would be an acceptable price if she provided a solution.

“I can't,” he forced out. “There's too much at stake.”

Samson's eyes narrowed. “Is this about her?”

His friend's hands were still relaxed, but close to his weapon. If this went wrong, Ashwin would have to move fast. “Yes.”

The word erased the last of Samson's easy demeanor. “Are you the reason she's missing?”

“No.” That was the truth—Kora had abandoned her home and her life on her own. “And I don't know where she is.”

Samson stared at him for several long moments, his gaze searching and sharp. Finally, he nodded, then gestured to the items in Ashwin's hand. “If you're determined to do this, you will. But I can't let you do it alone.”

Gratitude was an alien sensation. Few things in his life had mattered enough to provoke it. But when he handed the drugs and syringe to Samson, it spilled through him, the sweetness of relief mixed with the sharp tartness of dependency.

He didn't like needing other people.

Samson fell in beside him as he walked to the third door on the right. The exam room was clean and sterile, identical on the surface to the others and the ones in the city. But this was the one they always sent Makhai soldiers to.

There was a panic button near the door, another on the edge of the counter, and a third under the cabinet where a retinal scan allowed access to the strongest sedatives on the Base. Ashwin had once had a nurse apologize to him for their prominence, as if hiding them would be preferable. As if the Makhai soldiers wouldn't still know they were there.

As if they had the kinds of feelings that could be wounded.

Ashwin rolled up his sleeve and slid onto the exam table. If he closed his eyes, he'd see her against the backs of his eyelids. Blonde hair swept up into a messy ponytail. Her lab coat clean and so white, the kind of white that didn't last in the sectors unless you were rich enough to pay for expensive soap.

She'd sutured lacerations and administered tests and removed bullets from Ashwin's body in this room. She'd run her gloved hands over him, searching for bruised ribs and broken bones and internal injuries, oblivious to the effort it took for him not to lean in, bury his face against her neck, and inhale.

She'd teased him. She'd told him jokes, bizarre, inexplicable ones that sent him to the Base's reference library to puzzle out the logic behind them. He'd spent three solid weeks researching knock-knock jokes after she'd tried to tell him one, just in case she did it again.

Every part of this room sparked memories. A hundred times she'd put him back together. A hundred times she'd stirred something in him—not something safe like interest or affection or the chemical lie humans called love. It came from the parts of him the Base hadn't dared dig out, the primal survival instincts they'd dialed up so, so high.

Ashwin thrust out his arm, closed his eyes, and let the memories flood him. Kora seeped into his cells, filled him with the driving urge to tear through the wall and find her, claim her, keep her—

It swelled until it was all he could feel, until the edge of the metal exam table bent under the grip of his free hand. “Do it.”

“Ashwin…”

“Now.”

Fire flooded his veins. Torment chased after it. His back spasmed, and he ground his teeth together, because he couldn't scream, he couldn't get caught—

Kora, touching a bruise on his chest, her brow furrowed.

Acid in his blood.

Kora, her expression serious as she violated protocol and used med-gel to ease his pain, because she couldn't stand to see him hurting.

The acid burned through his veins. Ate away at his flesh.

Kora.

Pain.

Kora.

Agony.

It went on and on until he couldn't separate the two, until his internal organs felt vaporized and his bones felt crushed into pebbles. Kora and pain and Kora and pain—

Ashwin pushed his thoughts of her away and let the fire consume him.