The Human Experience
Chapter 4

Ten-Quarter P, day 20, 3410.

For such a public figure, Orcadis is absurdly private about his personal life. I didn’t know he was married until he showed up one day with a toddler at his heels. I didn’t know his wife had gotten Infected until I overheard him telling his then nine-turn-old son that he would never see his mother again. After that, he threw himself completely into his mission: eradicate the Voices. At all costs.

I’ve wondered since then. Did he let her go on the Exodus, or did he kill her to prevent it?

One T-Turn Later

The faraway look was back, misting Varali’s amber eyes in that way Hector had grown to know and dread. He rapped his knuckles on the table to get her attention. She blinked, the fog clearing.

“Focus, Vara,” he insisted. “Now a T-turn is how many days?”

She blew out her cheeks. “Four-hundred days: one rotation of the earth around Tychon.”

“And a P-turn?”

“One-hundred-fifty-two: one rotation of Pyrrhus around Tychon.”

He nodded and slid a piece of parchment across the table to her. “I’ve given you the speeds at which the earth and Pyrrhus orbit Tychon, and the distance of their orbits. Calculate how often the stars eclipse each other, then tell me how many times a T-turn Pyrrhus passes between the earth and Tychon.”

Varali propped her head in her hand, elbow on the table. He could see her attention drifting as her eyes roved blankly across the page. “Isn’t that when summer happens? Twice a T-turn, then.”

Chills shot through his spine as he realized her Voice might’ve told her that. Maybe it was information harvested and stolen from a previous victim. “You’re supposed to calculate. After that I’m going to ask you about high summer – when our hemisphere tilts towards Tychon and Pyrrhus happens to be passing in front of the earth.”

She stared dreamily off, twisting her long bangs around her index finger. “Lykus? How come the Star-Gods get to be suns and the Star-Goddesses have to be moons?”

It wasn’t remotely close to the astrophysics problem he’d posed, but by the stars, Varali had shown interest in something! Hector sat upright, eager to answer before she retreated into her mental world.

“It’s symbolic. Tychon was the mythical god of the universe, so the ancient people said he was the sun that gives us life. Pyrrhus, his conjoint twin brother, was smaller and weaker and, like the sun given to him, had no choice but to follow Tychon.”

“Pyrrhus and Tychon weren’t even the most important of the Quintet,” she argued. “Delmira was their mom. They had to listen to her, didn’t they?”

“And the ancient people named the largest moon after her because they were too primitive to understand that the suns are bigger but farther away.”

“And Amaris? She got her brothers to kill each other so she could rule the universe instead. Why does she get the smallest, dumbest moon? Moons are useless.”

Hector smiled at the inquisitive spark in his sister’s eyes. Rarely had he glimpsed that human curiosity since the parasite had taken root in her mind almost a T-turn ago. “Moons are not useless,” he said. “They give us the tides in the oceans and light up our nights. The Amaris moon, like the goddess she was named for, shaped our destiny. If that asteroid hadn’t crashed into Amaris thousands of turns ago during the last Alignment, sending a chunk of it slamming to earth, life as we know it wouldn’t have evolved.”

She mouthed something to herself, then looked at Hector. “And do you think an apocalypse will come this Alignment, too? Will Pyrrhus blow up?”

“Who wants to know?” Hector struggled to keep his hands slack on the waxed tabletop. When Varali remained unresponsive, her eyes dimming, he snapped his fingers.

Nothing.

Hector slammed a fist on the table. Vibrations travelled down his forearm to shake the table’s legs. The light in Varali’s eyes returned as if someone had powered her back up.

“You’re not to speak to it,” he growled. “How many times must I tell you, Vara? Now do the damn problem and your lessons will have finished.”

She ran her hands through her hair. “We don’t get it, Lykus.”

He felt the store of rage rise up before his muscles locked against it. Hector forced his next words out through his teeth. “You are separate from that thing. Don’t forget it.”

His first experience with hate. It really was a poison, though Lykus had always thought that cliché. The Voices poisoned him with hate as they poisoned his sister’s mind. How could such powerful loathing be aimed at something intangible, something not even human?

Something that couldn’t feel.

How many people hated Lykus? He couldn’t feel, but they hated him anyways.

He blinked the thought away. Where in the fine print had it said Hector would come with a nagging voice to reprimand him for hypocrisy and other such things? It must have been that conscience Chirurgeon Padon warned him about. Still, it reminded him of those parasites, because it, too, was intrusive, and nobody had asked for its input.

“Are you going to leave, Varali?” he found himself asking. “Please, just tell me. Tell me when you’re going to go. I won’t try to stop you. I...I just can’t take the waiting anymore.”

He couldn’t take sleeping on a bed of needles, ready to pounce at the slightest noise and bolt to Varali’s room to make sure she was still there; treating every moment with her like it was his last...

His sister’s face softened and Hector looked down to replace two quivering droplets on the table. Tears had stolen quietly down his cheeks. And he’d thought he’d gotten better at controlling them.

“When the Call comes, it comes,” she said gently. “My Voice needs me to go.”

“I need you to stay.” He leaned forward, clasped her hands in both of his. “You used to follow me everywhere. We did everything together, remember, Vara? I taught you how to walk, say your first words–”

“You mean I’m a turd?”

He hurried on. “When I was captured on our last assignment for the Helms you jumped out of your hiding spot and did that disgusting cross-eyed thing so they’d take you to the asylum with me. I could barely convince you to let me take a piss by myself and now you’re happy never to see me again? And all for these...these creatures? The ones you helped me destroy for so many turns? Can you really love them so much more than me?”

“No, Lykus,” she sniffed. “I’ll never love anyone more than you. And I’m not going to leave forever. I’ll be back one day, you’ll see.”

Hector slumped in his seat, letting her hands slip from his. If someone had told Lykus the surgery would have him changing places with the little sister he’d thought clingy, he’d never have done it.

Weak. Pathetic. Helpless. That was how love made him feel. Could he blame Del for her coldness? Coldness was the only defence against letting those you loved tear you to bits with their indifference.

Varali reached for his hand, but Hector slid it under the table. Best not draw out the suffering. Best distance himself now.

The girl rose and came to him, huddling on his lap like she didn’t realize she was fifteen and fucking heavy, burying her head in the crook of his neck.

“We love you, Lykus.”

Hector went cold. He stood, shoving her off. “I love you, too, kid. I just hate your Voice.”

He turned his back on her wounded expression, feeling in his pocket for the card he’d carried with him since the day Varali had gotten Infected.

Now he flipped that card over and over in his hands. From the pastel-blue background and border of golden lotus flowers, it could have been an invitation to a damned resort. Don’t be scared. Don’t fight. Grant them their freedom. The Radiant Thinkers will guide you.

The Radiant Thinkers: leaders of the Exodus, advocates for the Voices – people Lykus the Iron Wolf had been systematically executing, by the Star-King’s mandate, for over a decade. Would the Radiant Thinkers make sure Varali took her medication? Had they learned to anticipate her attacks? Would they hold her every night until the convulsions stopped wracking her frail body and she yielded to a troubled sleep?

Join the Exodus...join the Exodus.

To think if he’d stayed with Orcadis and the Iron Helms, he’d have picked off the Radiant Thinkers by now. The Exodus could have been stopped. It was said only a select number of them knew where the Exodus was headed. Without them to direct the Voices, what would happen?

Someone gave a sharp rap on the door, startling Hector. A voice pierced the wood like arrows. “Open up in the name of the Star-King – a routine cleansing is in order.”

“Get out of sight,” Hector hissed to Varali, moving up to the door as it quivered on its hinges with the intruder’s pounding. She melted into the shadows of a broom closet.

He opened the door and felt like he’d been doused in a bucket of ice-water. A pair of Iron Helms. Brown cloaks, their insides lined with red velvet trim, fastened with iron brooches at one shoulder; black pants tucked into leather boots rising to the knee; ivory lace-up tunics and chainmail-inspired belts, clasps, rings and collars.

And resting atop their brows, matching coronets of sterling silver, both plain bands with garnets imprinted at regular distances along their diameters.

These weren’t just any clowns, he realized. The number of jewels along their headbands marked them well up the Helms’ ladder.

“Yes?” Hector said, fighting to keep a look of cool curiosity on his face.

“Good afternoon. There’s been a complaint, sir, by the townspeople. They say the young girl who lives here has stopped attending school this T-turn.”

Hector moved his body into the doorframe as he caught the speaker throwing glances into the house. “Yes, my sister has fallen ill. We’ve informed her school.”

He held his breath as though this could stop the hounds from sniffing out his thoughts. The men tilted their heads up to catch his scent, seemed to read him for a moment, and then one of them drew a scroll from his sleeve that he unrolled before Hector.

Skipping the tiny font of the intrusion warrant, Hector found the signature at the bottom: The Honourable Orcadis Durant, Fist of the Iron Helms, Holy Diviner of Vangarde and Personal Consultant to His Excellency the Star-King.

Hector wondered if his old guardian and master knew he’d signed for the capture of the girl he’d helped raise.

“I don’t understand,” Hector lied. He tried to control his thoughts, to conjure images of Varali ailing in bed.

But the more he tried not to think of her hiding in the broom closet, Infected, the more impossible it became. His stomach flipped when, in unison, the Helms shifted their gazes down the hall to where she hid.

“Protocol requires us to check, sir,” one proceeded out of formality, though everyone knew the game was over. “We have several witnesses who claim to have seen her talking to herself on the street. For her safety and that of the Vangardian Empire, she must be taken for examination. If she is Infected she must be put into isolation.”

Hector grabbed the doorframe to keep the men from slipping past him. “You’ll catch her illness if you come in,” he tried, cold sweat snaking down the nape of his neck. “And she’s too sick to make the journey to an examination centre. She’s not Infected, I swear. She’s a little slow. She’s always talked to herself. Ask anyone in the village!”

But those Priers had already read him, their hawk-like gazes fixed on the broom closet. Their hands twitched inside their chain-mail gloves and Hector knew he only had a second before they reached for electric guns or whatever weapons were stowed within the folds of their cloaks.

They gauged his intention before he fully did. One’s eyes widened. The other grappled faster inside his cloak.

Hector, still gripping the doorframe, swung his legs outward in a powerful double-kick, catching both men in the chest. One tumbled down the front steps, entangled in his cloak. The other staggered, threw out arms now equipped with throwing disks, and hurled them before regaining balance.

Hector leapt from the threshold and landed in a crouch on the pebbled walkway. Stones cut into his palms, but there wasn’t time for pain. Spinning on his haunches he met the first attacker head on, darting between his legs. Hector was on his feet before the Helm realized where he’d gone. He yanked the man back by his own metal chain-linked collar, pulled it tight, and spun him around to face the house.

Gasps gurgled in the man’s throat as his pale fingers shot up to counter Hector’s death-pull. The disks had breathed their deadly freeze-vapour on the door, coating the once lustrous cherry-wood with an icy sheen.

“Move and I’ll send your friend to Pyrrhus’s Pits,” Hector snarled.

The man by the door didn’t even glance at his companion before disappearing into the house with a flourish of his cloak. Hector cursed himself for forgetting how well Orcadis trained them.

The other had stopped choking and, though his chest contracted spastically, he reached into his cloak. Hector tightened his hold until he felt the chain cutting into the man’s windpipe, but the bastard’s willpower was incredible. He’d drawn out an electric gun just as Hector hurled him aside and flew up the steps into the house.

He slammed the door behind him, barely managing to throw down the latch before electricity harassed the wood on the other side.

The broom closet stood open, its contents on the floor. Varali and her pursuer were nowhere. Hector took the stairs two at a time and burst onto the upper landing. Movement flashed from an open window at the back of Varali’s bedroom. He clawed the rippling curtains aside and saw Varali pouncing from the ledge into the backyard. She landed nimbly as a cat and looked up at him framed in the window.

The door exploded open behind him.

“Run!” he roared at his sister.

Crack. Pain blossomed in the side of his skull. Through darkening eyes he saw Varali’s mouth open in a silent scream. He tried to implore her again, but couldn’t even hear himself through the thick whine in his ears.

Hector’s knees folded and he found his vantage shifting lower and lower until he was staring at booted feet, something warm and wet trickling down the side of his face.