Chapter 24
Always move with purpose.
—Yamato Sensei to Bowen (17)
KAIA BREATHED A silent sigh of relief when she saw Carlotta step onto the bridge to habitat two. She’d been stuck in the spot ever since she left the atrium—courtesy of a clanmate who was one of the sweetest people on Ryūjin, but oh how she could talk. And talk. And talk.
“What an astonishing story,” Kaia interrupted when Lori paused for a breath in between rapid-fire sentences. “But I’ve—”
“Oh, but I haven’t told you the best part!” Lori put her hand on Kaia’s forearm, her bright blue eyes twinkling. “That was when—”
“Kaia?” Carlotta’s stern voice. “What are you still doing here? I had the impression you were off to meet your friends for your weekly lunch.” She frowned at Lori. “And you, Loribeth, aren’t you supposed to be teaching a swarm of young ones?”
Glancing at the large watch face she wore on a chain hanging from her neck, Lori squealed. “Oh, my God!” She began to run down the bridge. “I’ll tell you the rest of the story later!”
“Mahalo, Carlotta.” Kaia’s ears were still ringing with the sound of Loribeth’s squeaky voice. It was cute but extremely difficult to halt.
Shaking her head, the older woman said, “You have to cut her off before she gets going, Kaia. You know how guppies are—budgies of the sea, I call them.”
“I know. But she’s so sweet and—” Kaia froze at a surge of shouts from the direction of the atrium, so loud it threatened to overwhelm her sensitive hearing.
It was difficult to separate out the words until she heard Dex’s voice roar, “Alden!”
Kaia kicked off her slippers and ran, arriving just in time to see the enraged walrus close the final inches to Bowen—who was on his feet. She wasn’t going to get to the two in time and Alden’s arm was rising, his huge hammer of a fist heading straight for Bowen’s face. One blow and he could crumple bone, thrusting shards into Bowen’s brain and ending his life.
Still running, she went to scream at the others to stop him, but Alden had mowed down clanmates like bowling pins. Dex was getting up, his craggy face a creation of harsh lines and solid bone, but he wasn’t going to make it, either. No one was going to make it.
Kaia’s breath rasped painfully in her lungs, her blood a roar in her ears. Then came an almighty crash. Horror shrieked through her system. She’d flinched and closed her eyes instinctively at the moment of impact, but when she flicked them open immediately afterward, she came to a halt, unable to comprehend quite what she was seeing.
Alden was on his back on the floor with an upside-down table flat on his face. Splatters of blackberry filling and coffee and what might’ve been scrambled eggs turned his body into a bad expressionist painting. He was attempting to push the table off, but as he lay there like a stunned beetle, Bowen calmly picked up a chair and slammed it down so the point of one leg came within a hairsbreadth of Alden’s privates.
Alden froze.
Lungs burning, Kaia finally looked at Bowen’s face. “No.” She closed the distance between them in a heartbeat and grabbed his jaw. “He hit you.”
“Just a split lip.” Bowen scowled. “I’m slower than I’m used to being, miscalculated a fraction. He got in a glancing blow.”
Kaia scanned his face, searching for any other signs of injury. But his eyes were clear, his nose unbroken. Scarlet liquid welled in only the soft curve of his lower lip. “I—” she began when Dex reached them. His face was white under the tan of his skin, blood vessels sticking out on his temples.
“Atalina’s on her way to meet me for lunch.” He stomped a foot onto Alden’s chest when the walrus finally succeeded in thrusting off the table. “I swear, Alden, if you so much as fucking twitch, I will tear your stupid fucking head off your stupid fucking body.”
Alden went motionless. Hard-faced and formerly hard-living Dex was the station commander because he remained calm even when the world went to hell—but he was also a great white shark capable of doing exactly what he’d threatened.
Wide and soulfully dark eyes stared at Kaia, Alden pleading for help. But she had exactly zero sympathy for him right now. “How far away is she?”
“She messaged two minutes ago.” Dex looked at the time on his phone screen, a kind of painful desperation to him. “She’ll be here in another two.”
Kaia grabbed Bowen’s hand. “Come on!” Avoiding Alden’s sprawled form, she tugged Bowen out of the mess of fallen furniture that Dex was roaring at nearby clanmates to straighten up now.
Atalina wouldn’t be surprised at the mess, not with Alden around. But Kaia’s cousin couldn’t be permitted to see Bowen’s face. Going as fast as she thought Bowen could handle, she managed to make it to her quarters without running into Attie. She put her hand on the scanpad and pushed Bowen through as the door slid back.
And Atalina appeared around the corner. “Kaia.” A beaming smile. “I thought you were planning to have lunch with Tansy and Seraphina?”
“I forgot something.” She pressed a hand to the rapid tattoo of her heart and hoped Bowen would have the good sense to stay inside. “Just ran back to get it.”
“Did you see Dex in the atrium?”
“He was making people straighten up the furniture.” Kaia rolled her eyes. “Alden.”
“When will that boy-man grow up?” Brow furrowing, Atalina waved good-bye and continued on her way.
BO could hear the two women outside the door, but though his lip throbbed, he was far more interested in Kaia’s personal space. The room was open-plan, with the facilities tucked to the back left, a large and comfortable-looking bed in the middle, and a delicate chair set in front of a writing desk against the wall nearest the door.
The back wall was a transparent window into the black.
The bed was bracketed by tall and narrow white shelves that held physical books as well as small treasures. On the right shelf sat a ragged doll wearing a chef’s hat that must’ve come from Kaia’s childhood. Also there was a badly made mug painted with her name, and two computronic frames. One appeared to be glitching, the image on it heavily pixelated and unmoving, but the other displayed photographs of two people: a tall and lanky man with a playfulness in his smile that reminded Bowen of Kaia, and a dark-eyed and dark-haired woman of extraordinary beauty.
He was walking over to look more carefully at the images when Kaia’s bedroom door shut and she strode over to push on his chest until he sat down on the bed. “Let me see that cut.” First, however, she bustled into the bathroom and returned with a wet washcloth and a small first-aid kit.
Bowen wasn’t used to being bossed around, but if it meant experiencing Kaia’s touch, he’d do exactly what she demanded. He winced when she gently dabbed the blood away from his cut. Frowning, she said, “How bad is it?”
“Fucker made me sacrifice my pie.” Bowen’s stomach rumbled on cue. “And I’d barely gotten started on my breakfast-as-lunch.”
Gripping his jaw, Kaia glared into his eyes. “Be serious.”
“I am.” He put his hand on the curve of her hip, wasn’t sure she felt it, she was so focused on his face. “Lip’s nothing. It’s only cut because he was wearing a big-ass ring. My head didn’t get rattled—I’m hungry and pissed, but the experiment’s fine.”
She ran her fingers through his hair. “We have to come up with an innocent explanation for the swelling and the cut.”
Thinking of her panic and that of the rawboned man with the work boot on Alden’s chest, Bowen put the pieces together. “Dr. Kahananui’s a doctor. She’ll know at a glance that this isn’t serious.” He’d come along with Kaia because, honestly, she’d had her hand linked to his and he’d have followed her anywhere, but he saw no reason for the extreme reaction.
Continuing to run her fingers through his hair, the rhythmic motion soothing on a bone-deep level, she said, “Did you ever wonder how my cousin got permission to bring a human test subject down into a secret research station in the first place? A subject who, if he woke up, would then know about this place?”
“I figured it was an act of good faith because of the growing relationship between BlackSea and the Alliance.” After all, it had been prior to Hugo’s allegations.
“That relationship is far too new.” Kaia finished dabbing away the blood around his lip and, opening the first-aid kit, put the washcloth on the back of the lid. She picked up a small tube of ointment from inside the kit before returning her attention to Bo. “And it’s not as if we were talking about bringing an ordinary human down here.”
No, they’d been discussing the human who posed the biggest security risk of them all. “So why am I here?” It had something to do with Dr. Kahananui and the dread on Kaia’s face when she’d realized her cousin was about to walk into carnage, that much was now clear.
“Attie grew up in a big family.” Kaia dabbed the ointment over his cut. “Five younger brothers and me.” She didn’t explain why she’d been raised with her cousins. “And Mal’s family was just down the way, so it was like having six brothers really.”
Bowen had the family connections straight in his head now. Eight cousins, six of them in one family, Malachai and Kaia from separate families. But it sounded as if they’d all grown up together. “Changelings generally have small families.” It wasn’t a secret that they had lower levels of fertility than humans or Psy.
“Auntie Natia and Uncle Eijirō are serious outliers.” Her finger gentle on his lip, Kaia continued to speak when he didn’t interrupt. “I know Attie comes across as scientific and pragmatic, but she’s the oldest of us all, and we grew up knowing that if we needed help with anything, Attie would step in without hesitation. She’s ferociously maternal.”
Bowen watched her put away the ointment.
Picking up the washcloth, she shut the lid on the first-aid kit, then walked silently into the bathroom. He heard water run in there, and when she came back out, it was with nothing in her hands but sadness in her eyes.
He rose, went to take her hand. It was cool from having just been washed. Tugging her over to the window that looked out into the black, he said, “Do you shut this when you sleep?”
A hard nod. “I love the deep, but half the time I think my clanmates treat those inside the habitats as their personal zoo exhibits.” Exhaling softly after that dry statement, she said, “Attie is gifted, one of our most brilliant scientists. That’s why it nearly broke her when she couldn’t ‘fix’ herself. She said that to me—Why can’t I fix myself, Kaia?”
Kaia swallowed hard. “It didn’t matter what the healers or we said to her, how Dex tried to make her see that she was beloved and wonderful and perfect. This is her fourth pregnancy. She miscarried the first three.”
“Ah, hell.” Weaving his fingers even tighter through hers, he said, “That’s why you’re so scared of giving her any reason to worry?”
“She was anxious beyond belief before we brought you down here. All her attention was on not miscarrying and it was causing so much stress on her system that the healer worried she’d give herself a heart attack.” Kaia looked up at him. “Atalina is so well loved that Miane authorized the experiment because it was the only thing that seemed to stop her from obsessing over the baby.”
“I’m a distraction.” Bowen nodded. “I’m fine with that—it doesn’t make the work she’s doing any less important to my people.”
Kaia’s expression softened. “She’s been herself—cool, calm, centered, and practical—since the instant the experiment began.”
Shifting position, Bowen raised his free hand to cradle her face and jaw. “You love fiercely, Kaia Luna.”
Shadows streaked across her face, but she didn’t break contact. And Bo could no more stop his head from dipping toward her own than he could stop the sun from rising or the moon from shining.