Chapter Four
Severine stepped through the ship door and felt the rush of searing hot air sting her face. The dryness filled her lungs and the sensation created an assault of memories on her mind. She didn’t want them. She didn’t want to experience any of them or let them take over the thoughts that she was trying to let control her steps. The further she and Rilex got from the ship, however, the harder it became to deny what immediately came to mind as they began to cross the vast desert of Penthos. In the back of her mind she could hear Ryan’s voice and the shouts of the Valdicians put in command of the training for the hybrid army. Many of the hybrids that she had trained alongside had been undergoing this type of training since they were just a few years old, while others had given themselves into the training, wanting to be a part of the experiment and join the army that they believed would be responsible for giving complete control and power over the universe to Ryan. Severine didn’t fit with either group.
Instead, Severine had been born into the experiments, intended for one purpose but then changed into a soldier later when Ryan’s perceptions of her shifted. There had been nothing more terrifying than those first few days of her training, when she was thrown into the intense, often brutal training that expected her to participate in drills and simulations from the moment that she woke up in the morning until her body gave up and she fell asleep at night. Frequently this sleep wouldn’t last for long before Ryan or members of the Valdician troops that he used as extensions of himself would appear in the barracks and wake them up to force them through further training experiences to test their ability to respond and to fight when deprived of sleep and unprepared.
Sometimes this training would involve being put into chambers that were then filled with incredibly hot, dry air and light so vibrant it burned the backs of her eyes. They would remain there for hours, brought to the brink of what Severine felt like she could endure. There were many times when she felt like she wasn’t going to survive the experience, and they were never told the purpose of the experience, somehow making the intensity of her suffering worse. Now as she took her first steps across the sand of Penthos, she knew exactly why Ryan had subjected them to the blazing heat and blinding light. Those seemingly endless sessions were in preparation for the strenuous conditions of this planet and the battlefield that Ryan knew he would one day use.
Knowing that Ryan had put her through that training to prepare her for the extreme situations that would present themselves when she arrived on Penthos only told Severine that each of the drills meant something very specific. He wasn’t just training them to make them into weapons that he would be able to use however he pleased when the chance arose. Instead, he had planned out how he wanted to use them and was training them to develop the specific characteristics that would ensure they could accomplish the goals that they had for them. This thought pushed her even harder. She needed to get to the ship and to the baby who waited inside.
As her steps sped up, she could hear Rilex rushing to catch up to her. She didn’t turn to look over her shoulder at him or even acknowledge that he was there. Even when he called out to her, she kept her eyes focused ahead of her and never hesitated in her progress. Anything that she thought that she was feeling for Rilex had to be put aside. It didn’t matter what they had experienced or even what Rilex had said. That could never be her life. Her life had been predetermined for her and even if she was no longer in Ryan’s hands, that still defined her. Putting Rilex behind her was the only option that she had. She didn’t know what was waiting for her now or the type of life that she would have, but it didn’t matter. When they left Penthos, Rilex would return to his own life and there was no way that she could be a part of it. Any thought that she ever could have was only a fantasy designed to fool herself. Now it was time to come back into reality, to embrace the path that was already laid down for her and do what she could to redeem herself.
They had walked several yards from the ship when Severine suddenly remembered what she had told Pyra. She paused and waited for Rilex to get to her side.
“You need to walk ahead of me,” she said. “If the other hybrids see us, it needs to look like I have you captive.”
“Won’t they realize that you aren’t one of the army who was here already?” Rilex asked. “Won’t they be able to recognize that you were one who remained in the facility on Earth? That should tell them that you don’t actually have me hostage.”
Severine stopped and turned angrily toward Rilex.
“What do you know about how the hybrids think?” she demanded. “What do you know about anything that we do or know?”
“You aren’t one of them,” he said.
“Of course, I am. I always have been. I always will be. Nothing is going to change that. Right now, you should be thankful for that because it means that I know how these soldiers were trained and what they are most likely to do if they do decide to attack. I also know that they are much less likely to do that if they think that you have been taken hostage and I am forcing you to give me intelligence about the others on the planet. And to answer your question, no, they aren’t likely to recognize that I stayed behind on Earth when they were brought here. We have no names. No friends. No family. No connections. They would see me as just another soldier. There’s no differentiation.”
Rilex seemed like he wanted to say something, but hesitated. Instead, he stepped in front of her and walked along with her close behind. Severine hated to admit what she had. She knew that it didn’t apply to all of them. In her mind, she knew that she would be able to recognize some of the soldiers and remember some of the times that she had encountered them, and she would hope that there were some of them who would feel the same way about her. In reality, she knew that few of them would. They had been raised as solitary beings with no sense of connection among them. Without names or relationships, there was nothing to differentiate each other, and no reason for them to need to identify each other as separate entities. All that mattered was the maneuvers and drills that they were taught to run, and the efforts to get rid of the dead after a battle or bring survivors back for retraining. Those were the only circumstances when it would matter for any of the hybrids to recognize or acknowledge the others.
Severine could almost feel eyes on her as they made their way across the sand, but she didn’t know if she was genuinely sensing the army that had been sent ahead to Penthos watching them as they made their progress toward the vehicle that was waiting for them, or if it was just the knowledge that they were there, the understanding that the soldiers were finally on the battlefield for which they had been crafted and honed, that made her feel so obsessively aware. She knew all too well that if they wanted to be, the hybrid soldiers would be impossible to perceive. They would be implementing the skills that they had learned to keep them totally concealed until they found the right moment to attack.
Just as Pyra had told them, they had turned toward the sun and started walking to make their way to the vehicle, and the further they walked, the brighter the light seemed to become. It wasn’t the pure light of the sunlight on Earth. Instead, it was a darker orange light that soaked into them and obliterated everything ahead of them so that it looked as though they were walking ahead into a wall of flame. Severine wanted to look down, to look away from the burning light, but she had spent too much time looking down already. She was going to keep her head up even as she walked back toward a life of control.
Finally, the horizon ahead changed and she saw the dark outline of the vehicle appear. Rilex quickened his steps and she followed suit until they were moving more rapidly toward the vehicle, hoping that Ciyrs was doing as they had asked and was watching out of the window for them. They were within a few feet of the vehicle when Severine heard a series of clicking and buzzing sounds as the locks and protective shields released, and then a door at the side of the vehicle opened. Ciyrs looked out at them and gestured for them to get inside. Compared to the ship that they had just left, the vehicle looked miniscule and Severine didn’t like the idea of getting inside knowing how many others were in there. She knew, however, that she had to complete what she had offered herself into, and what she knew that she needed to do.
Rilex climbed into the vehicle first and then Severine followed, perching on the edge of the seat and sliding fully in before closing the door behind her. The interior of the vehicle was small, but not as cramped with the number of passengers as she thought it would be, which offered some sense of relief as she climbed her way over the seats toward the back where she could hear women’s voices talking frantically. A few of them immediately recoiled when they saw her, showing a fear that she was sure the appearance of one of Ryan’s hybrids usually warranted for these stolen humans. It was obvious that they hadn’t registered that she was one of the hybrids that had been in the infirmary with them and that they needn’t fear her. Ciyrs, though, held up a hand as he appeared beside her.
“Don’t be afraid,” he said. “She is with us.”
“Where is the baby?” Severine asked, trying to avoid looking at the figure lying across the floor, a blanket draped over it.
A woman whose name Severine didn’t recognize turned toward her and Severine saw the bundled baby in her arms.
“Here,” the woman said.
“I had her hold him while I waited for you,” Ciyrs said. “He seems to be doing well. He’s small, but he’s been breathing and the women say that his color looks good.”
“It’s a boy?” Rilex asked.
There was something in his voice that Severine tried to block out of her thoughts and she looked at the woman, holding her hands out toward her.
“Give him to me,” she said.
The woman looked resistant, slightly tightening her grip on the baby.
“Why?” she asked.
“He needs special care,” Severine said. “Do you know how to care for a hybrid newborn? Especially one who was born prematurely?”
The woman’s face dropped and she shook her head. Severine briefly regretted the way that she had said it, knowing that her words had immediately brought to mind the babies these women were carrying and the concerns that they likely had about caring for the children that they never thought they would see, much less have the opportunity to raise. The emotion quickly left her, though, as she reminded herself that she needed to get them back to the ship as she had promised Pyra and then move on. She held her hands out toward the woman more insistently and finally she rested the bundle in them. Severine drew the baby toward her and looked down into his tiny face. She could see that he was several weeks early and knew that he would need careful care to get him stronger and help him survive.
Holding the baby close to her, she climbed back over the seats and positioned herself near the door to the vehicle. She looked back at Ciyrs.
“Let Elianna know that we arrived and then get ready. We need to get back to the ship.”
Ciyrs nodded at her and relayed the message to the women, instructing them to prepare for the trip to the ship. From the front of the vehicle Oro reassured Ciyrs that he would carry the most wounded and Rilex offered to carry another. Ciyrs confirmed that he would be able to carry others, and that those who were not carried would be strong enough to get the short distance to the ship where they would be more comfortable. Severine waited for them to gather closer to the door before opening it and stepping back out into the brightness of the sun again. Now that she had the rest of the group out of the vehicle and they were moving back toward the ship, she was less concerned about how they looked. If the hybrids were going to attack, how close she walked to them wasn’t going to stop them. Now her concern was the baby in her arms. The small amount of milk that he got from his mother’s body wouldn’t be enough to sustain him for long. She needed to get him to the ship as quickly as she could and find the proper supplies. She knew that Ciyrs did everything that he could to help the baby when it was born, but there were things that even the healer didn’t know.
The journey back to the ship seemed longer than the way to the vehicle and every few seconds Severine found herself glancing down into the little child’s face to make sure that he was still breathing. Finally, they got close enough to the ship that Pyra opened the hatch and she barreled her way into the ship and through the crowd that still filled the open area where she had left them. She tucked the baby as close to her chest as she could and bent her head down over him as she went, wanting to protect it from even the prying eyes of those who had remained in the ship. She could hear the voices of some of the women calling after her, but she ignored them. Just as she had with Rilex, she had closed herself off to them and had to resist the urge to even look at them. They couldn’t be a part of her any longer, either.
Remembering what she had seen of the ship during her brief time on it and the direction that she had seen Elianna go when Pyra told her that she was needed in the infirmary, Severine rushed through the bright, pristine corridors and seemingly endless doorways until she came upon the infirmary. It was far larger than she would have expected, but she found comfort and reassurance in that, knowing that she wasn’t going to have to share a small space and limited supplies with others who might interfere with her care for the baby.
The severely wounded who had been restrained to the infirmary gasped and shouted at her sudden appearance, but she ignored them. She rushed through the room toward one of the supply cabinets and started sifting through its contents, occasionally putting a carton or bottle aside. When she finished, she swept everything she had collected into her bag and then went to another cabinet where she took out a blanket and several sheets. Finished there, she left the infirmary and headed toward the kitchen and the storage rooms attached. By the time that she had gathered everything that she need, Severine could barely hold it all, but she supported the baby carefully with one arm and kept him pressed to her with the blanket and sheets so that he would remain warm and secure.
Wanting to be as far away from as many of the people as possible, she crossed the ship again and returned to the lounge where she had passed the trip from Earth with Rilex. She placed everything that she carried onto one of the seats and then laid out one of the blankets onto the seat where she had slept before resting the baby down on top of it. He was squirming now, his little face starting to redden. She knew that he was preparing to cry, likely from hunger, and went to work with the other supplies that she had gathered to make a batch of the thick, nourishing formula that was given to the babies in the breeding facility. Though she had found a bottle in the infirmary, she knew that the nipple was far too large for the infant’s tiny mouth. Instead, she filled a large eye dropper with the formula and then gathered the baby back into her arms, tucking the dropper into his mouth. He drank deeply and Severine felt reassured by his eagerness.
“That’s it,” she whispered. “Eat. Get strong.” She touched a kiss to his head. “We’re both going to need to be as strong as we can now.”
Behind her she heard the door to the lounge slide open and footsteps come inside. She glanced in their direction and saw Rilex standing there. She had hoped that he wouldn’t come looking for her and now that he was standing there staring at her, she had a sudden surge of anger and frustration. She didn’t want to see him. She didn’t want to look at him a second longer. As she turned away, she saw him taking another step toward her.
“Severine,” he said.
“No,” she said, whipping around to face him. “Don’t call me that.”
“But that’s your name,” he said in bewilderment.
Severine shook her head.
“That’s not my name,” she said. “It never has been. It is just something that you call me. I have no name.”
“You do,” Rilex insisted. “You do now.”
“Nothing’s changed. I haven’t changed. This is who I am, who I always have been, and who I always will be.”
“I don’t understand,” Rilex said. “I thought you were trained to be a soldier. Are you planning on rejoining the army?”
Severine’s eyes closed and she felt her shoulders sag under the weight of the situation that was crashing down around her. She felt like she had already offered so much of herself to Rilex during their time in the lounge. It was too much. She never should have told him so much, or felt like she was in a place that justified that type of openness and vulnerability. It had put her in this place, leaving Rilex feeling as though she owed him even more of an explanation of herself and her life than she had already given him.
“No,” she said.
“Then what?” he asked. “Because this isn’t who you are.”
“Yes, it is,” Severine insisted, settling the now-sleeping baby back onto the chair and tucking the blanket tightly around him to keep his tiny, vulnerable body warm. She looked back at Rilex, knowing that she had to tell him everything if he was ever going to understand, even partly, why she had made this choice, even though there was a large part of her that didn’t feel that it was a choice at all. “I was not always a part of the army,” she said. “When Ryan created me, it wasn’t as a soldier. I was first designed to take care of the babies born into the program. The breeders never have the opportunity to care for their children. They are taken at birth and the breeders are returned to the facility for recycling.”
“Recycling?” Rilex asked, his voice registering the horror that she knew it should even though to her this was just another element of the life that she had lived.
“They were put through a regimen of nutrition, supplementation, and exercise to rebuild their body, then put back into the breeding rotation.”
Rilex cringed.
“How many times did this happen to these women?” he asked.
“Some of them as many as 10 or 15. Most didn’t survive that long, though.”
“Didn’t survive?” he asked.
Severine shook her head.
“No. Ryan might be very intelligent and know a lot about the experiments that his family started generations ago, but what he does know doesn’t outweigh what he doesn’t, and that is far more dangerous. When he started combining the different species into hybrids and attempting to use them as the incubators to breed the new generations, he didn’t always know what to expect from their pregnancies or births. When these women would have complications, he wouldn’t know what to do. More often than not, they would simply die.”
“And he would have more at the ready.”
Severine nodded.
“But it was always frustrating to him to have one of the creatures that he had built die, especially if the baby died along with her. It wasn’t that he mourned the loss of their lives. When they died, all he saw was all of the time and work that went into that hybrid, and the fact that his progress was set back by her death. That’s the main reason that he started capturing human women and using them. While the babies themselves remained hybrids and were often not related to their carrier at all, which could make some differences in the pregnancy, the fact that the breeders were human gave Ryan an extra degree of control. It made it easier to guess the length of the pregnancy and created less eventful and dangerous births.”
“So, you weren’t used as a breeder?” Rilex asked.
“No,” Severine told him. She could see the relief in his eyes. “It was just my job to take care of the babies when they were born. I was there when the breeders delivered them, and then I took them to the nursery facility and took care of them. Ryan had done research into the milk of the females of each of the species that he used in the breeding experiments so that he could identify what was in it. Then he isolated each of the components and found a way to synthesize them.”
“What does that mean?” Rilex asked.
“It means that I was able to take the ingredients that he developed and make formulas to feed the babies that were specified for their nutritional needs based on the different species that made up their DNA. That way they got everything they needed to develop the characteristics that Ryan wanted in them.”
“With intelligence and ideas like that, I can’t even imagine that good that he could have done if he had wanted to.”
“Well, he didn’t,” Severine said. “He doesn’t care about anything or anyone but himself and what his family started. He didn’t care if the babies were comfortable or happy. All that mattered to him was that they stayed alive and grew up.”
“But if you were designed to take care of the babies, why were you in the battle?”
“When he decided that enough babies had been born that he wanted to focus on training them, the breeding program shut down. I was supposed to turn my attention to raising them and preparing them for their training.”
“What happened?”
Severine’s spine stiffened and she squared her jaw. That was enough. She wasn’t going to go any farther now.
“I made a decision,” she said. “I was punished for it by being sent to the war program.”
“That doesn’t mean that this is all that you will ever be,” Rilex said. “That’s over now. You aren’t a soldier anymore. You have your own life to live. It’s yours to do with as you please.”
Severine scoffed and walked back over to the baby, holding her hand in front of his face to make sure that he was breathing properly.
“I will never have my own life,” she said. “I never did. I never would have even existed if it wasn’t for Ryan and the experiments that he wanted to run. I shouldn’t have existed. And the things I’ve done…” she let her words trail off, not wanting to give any more voice to the thoughts that had broken through the block she had tried to put up and were now attempting to make themselves known. She shook her head. “This baby is innocent. He doesn’t deserve to go through anything that I ever did. He didn’t ask to be created or to be born, and he didn’t ask for the only mother that he would ever have to die bringing him into this world. He needs someone to take care of him. I don’t need a life for myself, but I can do everything that I can do to give him one.”