Chapter Four

Jacob reached into the oven and pulled out a gleaming metal sheet then carefully reached down to close the door. He stared at the steaming buns on the sheet as he carried it over to the table as if concentrating on them would prevent them from slipping off as had happened more times than he would have cared to admit. He slid the sheet onto the table, smiling at the accomplishment of not having cast any of the buns onto the floor, and took off the heatproof mitts he wore. He was blowing on the buns, knowing full well that that wasn’t going to actually help cool them any faster so that he would be able to eat them, when Phaedra walked into the kitchen. Jacob smiled at her and she stepped up to him to give him a kiss.

“Good morning,” he said.

“Good morning. That smells wonderful. What is it?”

Phaedra walked around behind him to one of the cabinets on the wall and took out a mug. She pressed it into a recess on the wall and filled it with coffee. He tilted his head and narrowed his eyes at her.

“Phaedra…” he said.

“It’s decaf. I promise. I just need the taste.”

Jacob laughed and turned back to the buns. They weren’t steaming as much now, and he was tempted to slide the whole sheet into the cooling drawer to take the edge of the heat, but he knew that the sudden change in temperature would ruin the delicate texture of the crust.

“I wouldn’t think that coffee was something that you were able to have much of in the last year,” Jacob said.

He regretted it as soon as he said it, but Phaedra didn’t seem upset. She took a long sip of the coffee and shook her head.

“No,” she said. “We weren’t allowed it at all. I think that’s why I want it so much now. I’m allowed to have it, so I want all of it.”

Jacob crossed the room to her and wrapped his arms around her expanding waist.

“You can have anything that you want,” he said. “No one can tell you what to do anymore.”

He felt a thud against his torso and Phaedra curled slightly, giving a small grunt. Jacob stepped back and watched as she rubbed her belly.

“I don’t know,” she said. “This little one seems to be pretty good at telling me what to do.”

Jacob laughed again and took her by the elbow, guiding her over to the island in the center of the kitchen and up onto one of the stools bolted into place beside it. She perched on the edge and leaned forward onto the island with her elbows, holding the mug with both hands.

“He’s just hungry,” Jacob said. “Or she wants to judge my cooking. Either way, I’ve barely seen you eat anything for the last few days.”

“I just haven’t been feeling like it,” Phaedra said. “I don’t know if it’s just pregnancy symptoms or what.”

“Well,” Jacob said, walking to the other side of the kitchen to open a cabinet and pull out a plate. He opened a drawer and took out a spatula and a fork, “you have to eat. You need the food and the energy. Both of you do. So, I made you my very favorite dinner. My grandmother taught me how to make it when I was little. She came to live with us right after my grandfather died and after school I would always find her wandering around the kitchen making something or another. She would make us these amazing dinners with recipes that had been passed through the family for generations.”

“I remember you talking about her,” Phaedra said.

Jacob smiled sadly. He had been so lost in his memories of his grandmother and the time that they spent together in the kitchen that he had forgotten Phaedra knew of her. She had never gotten the chance to meet her, but she had seen pictures of them together and heard his stories about her. Jacob’s heart ached when he thought about his grandmother. For his entire childhood and his teen years she had been a fixture in his home, always there even when his parents weren’t. She had been unlike any other grandparent that he had ever met. She never seemed weak or frail. When they were cooking together she would often mutter that she just didn’t understand why his father hadn’t just let her stay in her own house. She would have been fine, she always contested. She didn’t need someone there to help her. Jacob always smiled and agreed with her, but he knew that it wasn’t quite the truth. As vibrant as Meemaw was, she was also dealing with the lifetime aftermath of breaking both hips and a stroke that had nearly taken her from them several years before. His grandfather had taken care of her as much as she took care of him and Jacob knew that alone she would have been in too much danger.

He thought that Meemaw would always be with them. He just figured that she would be there throughout the rest of her life, at least until he was grown and had children of his own. That was when he would feel secure, ready to move forward in his life on his own without relying so much on her. It wasn’t long after he left for college, though, that things changed and Meemaw went to live in an assisted living community nearly two hours from the family home. Jacob hadn’t seen her in months when he left for the excavation. Going to visit her was the first plan that he had for when he returned home. His throat tightened as he thought about her and the years that had disappeared in the time that he had been gone.

“She knows how much you loved her,” Phaedra said softly, obviously seeing the emotion on his face.

“I don’t even know if she’s still alive,” Jacob said.

“You can find out. Once this is all over, you can go back to Earth and find her. I’m sure she will be thrilled to see you.”

“I have no idea what they told her, if anything at all,” Jacob said. He still had a sense of bitterness toward his parents for how things worked out with Meemaw, but also for the fact that his mother had so easily believed what the company had told her when he disappeared. “Does she think that I’m wandering around Europe somewhere and haven’t gotten in touch with them in five years, or that I just haven’t bothered to come see her in that time. I don’t really know which would be worse.”

“We’ll find her,” Phaedra said. “This won’t last forever. When the fighting is over, we’ll go back to Earth and we’ll find her. We’ll explain what happened. We’ll make sure that she knows that you didn’t mean to leave her.”

“It won’t make up for anything.”

“It will. At least she’ll know that you thought about her and that you haven’t forgotten all that she did for you when you were younger.”

Jacob couldn’t handle thinking about it any longer. He didn’t want to think about his grandmother or any of his family. He had chosen to stay behind on the ship with Phaedra rather than joining the rest of the crew in the fight so that he could take care of her and make sure that she was handling everything well. He needed to focus on that, not anything else that was happening around him or that lay in his past.

Forcing himself to smile through the thoughts and the pain that he was pushing to the edges of his mind until they faded away into nothingness, Jacob stepped back up to the table and used the spatula to distribute two of the buns onto the plate. He carried it over to the Phaedra and put it in front of her.

“I can’t believe that I never made these for you when we were dating,” he said. “I used to eat as many of these as I possibly could whenever I had the chance.”

He started cutting into one of the lofty white buns and saw Phaedra narrow her eyes at him.

“Aren’t they just rolls?” she asked.

Jacob shook his head.

“That’s what they might look like at first glance,” he admitted. “But oh, no. You have been deceived. These are far more than just dinner rolls.”

The filling inside the bun finally broke through and he scooped up a bite onto the fork. The rich smell of the meat, cheese, and spices filled the room and he felt his stomach grumbling with hunger. Jacob brought the fork up to Phaedra’s lips and she opened her mouth to take it in. As soon as she closed her lips over the fork, he saw her eyes flutter closed and she groaned.

“Oh, wow,” she said. “That’s delicious.”

“I know,” Jacob said, taking a bite for himself. “I could probably eat my weight in these things.”

“I think that I could, too,” she said, taking the fork out of his hand to take another bite. “You know, I have to admit, I’m pretty impressed that there would be a kitchen like this on a ship.”

“Oh,” Jacob said, snitching the fork back. “I thought that you were going to say that you were impressed by my cooking mastery.”

Phaedra picked the rest of the bun up off of the plate with her fingers and took a bite out of it.

“That, too,” she said as she swallowed. “But I wouldn’t have expected to see something like this on a ship unless it was one of the luxury residential ships.”

“This ship might not have been designed for luxury,” Jacob said, “but it is a residential ship. Some of the crews remain on these ships for months at a time. There have been missions that have gone on for more than a year without returning to Earth or staying on any planet for more than a few days at a time. This ship has to be as comfortable and accessible as possible for the people who travel on them. I’m sure that they would get tired of the prepackaged rations after a while.”

“I guess they would.” Phaedra sighed, looking down at the plate.

Jacob went to the table and got another bun to put on the plate.

“Is something wrong?” he asked.

She shook her head, but didn’t look at him for a few seconds. When she did, her face looked strained with concern.

“I was just thinking about the rest of the crew,” she said. “It’s been a long time since they left. I wasn’t expecting it to be like this.”

“What were you expecting?” Jacob asked.

Phaedra took the fork and poked at the new bun. She shrugged.

“I don’t really know,” she said. “I guess I didn’t really know what to expect. This all happened so suddenly. I think part of my brain is still getting used to the idea that I’m not stuck in that tube anymore. I’m on a different planet, in a ship with you, and I still think that I’m going to turn a corner or come out of our room and Ryan’s just going to be standing there. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and I’m worried that if I open my eyes I’m going to find out that all of this was a dream, that you never actually came for me and that I’m still there in that lab.”

She shuddered, and Jacob came around the side of the island to wrap his arm around her. Phaedra curled against him, resting her head on his chest and seeming to relax slightly at the sound of his heartbeat.

“I wish that you weren’t afraid,” he said. “I wish that there was something that I could do to make you feel better or to help you see that nothing like that is ever going to happen to you again.”

“I know,” Phaedra said. “I know that you are doing everything you can, and I love you so much for that, and for everything. This is me, this is my mind that is broken.”

“It’s not broken,” Jacob argued. “What you went through is unimaginable. No one can blame you for still being scared or for not being completely over it yet. You might not ever be totally over it. And that’s alright. I will be standing here by your side no matter what.”

Phaedra leaned back and reached up to run her hand down the side of his face. She paused with her palm tucked around his cheek.

“How are you feeling about all of this?” she asked.

“I’m glad that I stayed here so that I could take care of you and make sure that you are alright, but…” his voice trailed off.

Phaedra tilted her head to get a better look into his eyes.

“But…?”

Jacob sighed.

“When I first went to Earth with Jem, I didn’t think any of this had anything to do with me. I had just escaped the stream that I had settled in after going through the portal and I was getting used to living in the kingdom with Galadriel and Vyker. Angela had left to live with Jem on his planet and it seemed like life was going to settle down. It had been so long, it didn’t even cross my mind to believe that I would ever go back to Earth. Then I went to visit Angela and she told me that she and Jem were going to go back to his planet to help his people. I knew that meant passing through Earth, but in my mind, that was just a brief stopover. We would bring him to Uoria, I would make sure that Angela was safe, and then I would probably make my way back to the stream that I had started to consider my home.”

“Then Rilex found you.”

Jacob let out the breath in his lungs and nodded.

“Yes,” he said. “I had already encountered him, of course, but I was surprised when he came to us. He told us everything that had been going on and suddenly we went from heading to Uoria to reconnect Jem with the Denynso to being in the middle of a war. I admit that I was angry at first. This wasn’t something that I was supposed to be involved in. I wasn’t supposed to be a part of this conflict. It had nothing to do with me. I had barely even heard of the Denynso or Uoria, and I certainly didn’t know anything about everything that Ryan was doing. I couldn’t understand why Rilex and Angela were so willing to go along with it. Even when we first started learning more about it, I didn’t think that it impacted me. The only reason that I was willing to be a part of it at all was to help Jem.”

“And now?” Phaedra asked. “What do you feel about it now that we’re here?”

“I didn’t see any connection between me and the fight, but I wasn’t seeing the true situation. I wasn’t seeing the larger fight. That’s changed. I realize now that this is far more complex than I ever could have imagined, and that what happened to me is related to what has happened to you, to the Denynso, and to the hybrids. It’s all linked.”

“Hadn’t you already realized that?”

“Yes, but not like this. It’s becoming more and more clear now. I might have ended up on Earth with Jem and Angela by chance, but I know now that I didn’t truly go through that portal by chance. There was a reason behind that just as much as there was a reason behind Ryan capturing you, Nyx 23, and everything else. I should be out there fighting with the rest of them. This isn’t just about them. This is about us. This is about you and our future child.”

He reached down and rested his hands on her belly. It had grown even in the time that they had spent on the ship, telling Jacob that this baby was already heavily influenced by the species that had been mixed with human to create it. Her pregnancy was progressing far more quickly than a human pregnancy, and he knew that she was already thinking about the birth. Phaedra looked down at his hands and joined them with hers.

“This baby will be here soon,” she said. “I wish that I knew more about it. Ryan and the creatures he had helping him never told me anything when they examined me. They kept such careful track of the baby, but would never tell me about anything. That was one of the worst parts about being trapped there. I was lying there being prodded and pulled and scanned, and they were talking about me as if I wasn’t even there, like I wasn’t even alive. Then I would see them recording all of their notes in my file and I knew that they knew something about the baby, but I could never see the notes. Every day that file was right there next to my tank, but I couldn’t get to it. I could never see what was in it or what these people knew about what was happening in my body. I know that everything that I want to know was recorded in there. What blend of species makes up my baby. When exactly I was impregnated. The development of the baby. When they expect the baby to be born. If I could only know those things. If I could have just figured out a way to look into that file.”

“I saw some of the records,” Jacob said.

“What?” Phaedra asked.

“I found records and I went through them. I read some of the information for one of the women in the program.”

“Who?” Phaedra asked, her voice rising and her tone beginning to sound almost frantic. “Which woman?”

Jacob thought back to when he brought the file to Pyra, but he couldn’t remember the woman’s name. He shook his head.

“I don’t know. I can’t remember her name. But what I can tell you is that the records of the pregnancy itself were in code. I couldn’t understand most of what was in them. Even if you were able to somehow get your hands on your record when you were there, you probably wouldn’t have known what they said. That would have been worse, knowing that the information was right there, literally at your fingertips, and yet you couldn’t understand it. It’s better that you just weren’t able to see it at all.”

“What else did you find in the file?”

“What do you mean?”

“You said that the part about the pregnancy was in code, but what about the other stuff? What was it?”

Jacob didn’t know if he should tell her. He knew how painful it was to find out about the company deceiving his family to cover up his disappearance, and he didn’t want Phaedra to feel that. At the same time, she deserved honesty.

“There were letters that were supposedly between her and members of her family. They were supposed to explain why the woman went missing, but it was obvious that she didn’t actually write them. I wouldn’t think that anybody in her family would believe them, but unfortunately I know all too well that they probably did.”

Phaedra looked down at her belly again and ran her hands along it, tucking them beneath the swell as if trying to cradle the baby within it.

“I can only hope that I am somewhere safer when it’s time to bring this baby into the world. I don’t want my child born somewhere as horrible as this.”

“I wonder if this planet was always like this,” Jacob said. “Maybe it was different once, before the Valdicians built the prison colony here. What could it have been if they had never chosen it? If someone had stopped them before they made it here, or when they first built the colony.” He sighed and shook his head. “Sometimes I think about Nyx 23 and how the crew must have felt when they got here and they saw the colony. It was already well-established by that point, which means that they knew that there had been years, years, that they had been researching other things, going on other missions, while the prisoners were being tortured here. How did they feel knowing that if they had just questioned the planet earlier or put together their mission sooner, they might have been able to stop it?”

“There’s no point in thinking about that,” Phaedra said. “We can’t do anything about it anymore than they could. All we can think about is now.”

Jacob shook his head.

“No,” he said. “That’s not true. There’s plenty more that we can think about.”

Jacob reached for her hands and eased Phaedra off of the stool. Keeping one of her hands grasped lovingly in his, he led her out of the kitchen and through the ship toward the observation dome. He had been waiting to show it to her since he had heard Ciyrs talking about it and now he felt that it was the right moment. She needed something to calm the ache in her heart and bring the brightness back within her. As thrilled as he was to have reunited with her and to know that they had finally found the commitment that they should have had all along, there was something that was still missing in Phaedra, something that Ryan had tried to kill but that Jacob refused to accept was gone forever. He knew in his heart that she was still there, that all of her still existed deep within her, guarded and blocked by what she had gone through. He simply needed to be patient with her and the process that she needed to go through to rid herself of the pain, fear, and violation that Ryan had subjected her to and someday he would find her again. For now, he could give her a moment of peace and of beauty. What she had said about the planet being such a horrible place had struck Jacob and was still reverberating through his mind. He knew that she felt like she was still tied to Ryan and the breeding facility when she was on Penthos and that she may never be able to escape it. She needed to see that there was much more than just the hardship that existed in the desert and the devastation that the Valdicians caused first and Ryan and his army continued.

They stepped into the observation dome and Jacob closed the doors behind them. The shields were closed, making the room nearly dark with the exception of the bright green emergency lights that created veins of illumination across the dome. He felt his way across the wall until he found the control panel and pressed the large button in the center. The panels of the shields parted, revealing the scattering of stars above them. Phaedra gasped when she saw it and Jacob felt a smile come to his lips at the accomplishment of his goal. He walked back to the center of the room with her and wrapped his arms around her waist, then drew her hand up into his, beginning to sway her gently in a tender, barely perceptible dance.

“We don’t have to just think about now,” he said to her. He kissed her on the tip of her nose and smiled wider at her grin. “We can think about what’s to come. There aren’t as many stars here as we’ve been able to see from Earth, but that’s alright. One day, I will dance with you under the brightest, most beautiful stars that you have ever seen.”

“You will?” she asked.

Jacob nodded, turning them gently.

“Absolutely. There is nothing that will keep me from being with you now and every day for the rest of my life.”

Their mouths were nearing each other and Jacob could feel the tightness in his belly when the door burst open and the pilot stormed in, his face red and tight with anger.