The Human Experience
Chapter 6

Two P, day 18, 3416.

H.E.C.T.O.R. isn’t entirely dead. It’s maddening, a whole P-turn of waking up Hector and going to bed Lykus. Lykus slacked from his construction work and got fired. Hector keeps alienating Del by bursting haphazardly into tears for Varali and his own conflicted identity. Del hasn’t spoken about leaving anymore, but I think it’s more to make sure Lykus doesn’t return to the Helms than out of any concern for me. I don’t know what to do. Again I don’t know who – or what – I am.

I didn’t think things could get worse. But then, as second summer approached, a message arrived from the capital.

‘Had enough? When you’d like to bargain, I await you at the Iron Keep.’

Varali’s voice had issued through the soft oak of her bedroom door for over twenty minutes. Listening, Hector chewed his cheek until he drew blood. Red crescent-shaped imprints bit into his palms as he stared at his balled fists resting atop his knees, the cartilage of his knuckles taut and white against his skin.

The Voices were cautious. Hers must have known Hector was listening, because it guided Varali’s speech so he’d glean no information from her.

“I know, you keep saying that,” Varali sighed from inside, “but nobody who has joined the Exodus has ever returned. How’m I supposed to believe I’ll see Lykus again?” She paused, waiting for her infirm mind to conjure some response. “What’s the Alignment got to do with it? Are you trying to be deep? D’you mean we’ll see each other again after the Alignment because Pyrrhus will blow up and we’ll all be dead?”

Some invisible squid in Hector’s stomach writhed, its tentacles sloshing. If that parasite tried to get her to commit suicide...

“How, then?” she continued, somewhat lessening her brother’s fears. “Of course I’ll tell Lykus if you tell me. No, you can’t just do that!” Her voice cut sharply through the wood. “Fine, be that way! I get that you don’t have emotions, but just so you know, what you’re being now is called rude. That’s when you invade someone’s mind and make them do a huge favour for you that you won’t even explain. This is killing Lykus. Can’t you tell me where you’ll take me and when I’ll be back, for his sake?”

Hector held his breath, praying his sister would turn against the intruder that had wedged itself between them.

“No, I don’t understand why you can’t,” she said, moodiness colouring her tone. “I love Lykus better than you, you know.”

He clenched his teeth against the swelling lump in his throat.

“Stop apologizing. Being sorry means you’d have to feel guilt, which you don’t. Lykus knew that. He never apologized for anything. You keep telling me you had no choice in invading my mind, but how can I be sure? What do you mean you would’ve died otherwise?”

It means the Voices need a constant stream of thoughts for sustenance, like food. And when they clear your skull of everything valuable, the fattened bloodsuckers move on to the next victim. That’s why they’re parasites. Hasn’t Orcadis taught you anything about them, Vara?

Unable to stand more, Hector rose from the kitchen table and gave the door a brisk knock.

“Uh, who is it?” Varali asked in a guarded voice.

“Your brother.”

Silence. Finally she asked: “Hector or Lykus?”

Why did it matter? It didn’t, unless she was doing something worry-ridden Hector wouldn’t approve of. Oh, by Tychon’s light! He turned the knob, pushed –

And yelled. Perched on a sinuous branch of the linden tree outside her window, its leaves shuddering and swaying in the night’s breeze, was Varali. Patches of moonlight moved across her face as wind shook the shadows of heart-shaped leaves.

“Oh, hello, Hector,” she said.

He dove to the open window and stuck his head out to blink into the warm rain, sizzling as it hit the sidewalk’s sun-baked stone. “Are you crazy?” he barked up at her. “Get down from there or I’ll come up and beat you senseless!”

She slid her skinny, gangly figure closer to the trunk as though afraid Hector would shake the tree until she dropped out. “But we sit like this all the time,” she said with infuriating calm. “It makes us feel better to be closer to the stars. Look, Hector, Amaris shines directly on us.”

Even she couldn’t hold onto calling him Lykus when such fits of passion overtook him. “Are you trying to kill me? Get down before I have a heart attack!”

Varali frowned. A hot summer breeze sighed through the branches, swinging her perch and starting a whisper of rustling leaves. Hector choked on the tightness in his throat, but Varali only laughed as the motion whipped her hair around her ears.

“You can’t live in fear, Hector,” she said over the groaning of moistened wood. “That’s not what emotions are for.”

Hector swung one leg over the ledge. “Damn it! You’ll be sorry when I get my hands on you!”

But emotions were a game to Varali. Shrieking playfully as she did when Lykus challenged her to a game of hide-and-seek to get her out of his hair, she grasped a higher branch and hoisted herself up, replaceing footholds in the crooks between branches and trunk.

“Don’t!” he roared. “Stop acting like a halfwit!”

Leaves scattered fat raindrops on his head as Varali scrambled higher. She poked her head out of the foliage and stuck her tongue out at him. “I don’t want to talk to you right now. Bring back Lykus so we can laugh at what a grandma you’re being!”

As if he could summon the identities at will. He clambered onto the ledge, grabbing a branch for balance. “I want Lykus back, too, you little shit, because caring about you is the worst damn curse the Star-Gods ever gave me!”

His yell echoed through the stifling night. Rain pattered the linden’s leaves like tears lamenting Hector’s cruel words. He was breathing heavily now, the humidity settling densely in his lungs. Branches snagged the wet clothes clinging to his body, grazing his cheeks like slaps. He remembered the wallops his mother had given him that one hot night so like this one, the only time she’d ever touched him – the night he’d thrown his baby sister out the window.

A sob moved into his throat, but he swallowed it. “Vara?” No motion fluttered the leaves near the canopy’s top. Hector squinted into the branches. He peeled them apart to no avail. “Vara, I’m s-sorry. I didn’t mean it. Please come out.”

Branches moaned in response. A powerful gust of wind made twigs catch Hector’s hair, freeing strands from the long braid down his back.

“Vara?” Sobs jerked his chest. “P-Please?”

Rain tinkled, wind howled, branches creaked.

And a soft voice choked.

He’d made her cry. The idea made self-disgust arc through him. But then her chokes became gasps, and the gasps turned to splutters. Dread gripped him. Vibrations passed from the inside of the tree to the outermost branches, sending a family of pigeons swooping from their roosts.

His cry barely rose to his lips before a limp figure dropped from the tree’s canopy, battered by its limbs as they caught and snapped on her descent.

The finalizing thump as she hit the damp earth speared through Hector’s spine. Clutching the ledge with one hand and a fistful of leaves with the other, one foot on a thick limb, Hector stared down at Varali’s body. Her back was arched over the gnarled root she’d landed on, her head thrown back and red foam oozing from her lips. Moonbeams bathed her broken body, letting Hector see the amber eyes fixed sightlessly upon him, slick with that opaque gloss so characteristic of Lykus.

A cluster of bell-shaped linden flowers floated down onto her forehead.

Hector screamed until his throat was raw.