Aftermath - Ann Aguirre [117]
CHAPTER 38
Zeeka comes through the surgery with his natural exuberance intact. The upshot of that is that he can now question everyone else without need for translation. Just now, he’s badgering Hit about why she’s a different color from everyone else.
“What is the purpose of your darkness?” he asks.
She eyes him. “It makes me pretty.”
“You are painted for beauty?”
Hit grins, flashing white teeth. “I like to think so.”
“Me, too,” Hon puts in.
Zeeka looks as though he cannot decide whether they’re telling him the truth. “The others are ugly?”
I suspect to Zeeka, much like Vel, we’re all ugly. Suppressing a grin, I wait to see how Hit will handle this question. Dina’s tapping a foot, one brow raised.
“Beauty comes in many shades,” Loras offers. “And it is made dearer by attachment between sentient beings.”
“Love makes the ugly beautiful?” Poor Zeeka is really confused now.
“It does,” Vel says. And he’s looking at me when he says it.
Maybe he’s thinking of Adele. I remember in the story he told me that day before we visited her, he mentioned that he didn’t find her attractive at first—that none of her features appealed to him. But he came to see past it in time because she had so many other lovely qualities. There’s such sweetness in that.
This is typical of how we spend an afternoon while Loras completes his treatments. He’s receiving a series of injections, one a day for seven days. This incremental approach permits his adaptive physiology to process the chemical neurological change at a safe rate. At the end of that time, he’ll either be cured, or insane with bloodlust. His people, before humanity rendered them docile, had more than their share of aggression. They were insanely fierce and completely xenophobic, so it’s not a stretch to imagine the manner in which this could turn bad. Since he told Carvati he’d rather die this way than in servitude, I figure it’s a good risk.
Still, I can’t help fear for my friend. I’ve only just got him back in my life. I’m not ready to lose him again so soon.
This is the seventh day, and we’re killing time before his last treatment. Vel reprogrammed the servo-bots at Mikhail’s to offer selections more savory for him and Zeeka. While we can eat some of the same things, our palates are a bit different.
“It’s time,” Hit says.
As one, we rise and head for the hover cab. I love flying in Gehenna because there’s relatively little traffic. It takes three tries to find a vehicle large enough for all of us, but we squeeze in, and the bot asks us our destination.
“Carvati’s clinic.”
“Thank you. Enjoy the ride.”
Shortly, the hover cab deposits us on the platform outside. Loras leads the way, coldly determined to find out whether he’ll die a monster or become a free man. The receptionist waves us back to Carvati’s private lab. As always, he evokes echoes of Doc, but I push down the sorrow. It’s not the time.
“Loras?” In that one word, Carvati asks if he’s ready to proceed.
He responds with a slow nod. The doctor turns to the rest of us. “If you could wait in the next room?”
This is standard. The lot of us exit into an open space that appears to be used for training. I can’t imagine what Carvati does in here, but it’s part of his lab complex. Maybe it’s to test certain cybernetic upgrades, as he does a wide range of procedures.
“Nervous?” I ask Hon. If this works, he’s losing his status as shinai.
“This is what he wants.” Deep down, he’s not as mean as his reputation suggests—and maybe that’s the secret. If gossip does most of the heavy lifting, he doesn’t actually have to rape and maim his way through the galaxy.
We wait an hour before Carvati and Loras join us. He doesn’t look any different, so that’s a good sign. If he’d been overwhelmed by bloodlust, he would be snarling and trying to kill us all. Instead, he looks much as he ever does, blue-eyed and fair-haired, with a beautiful face, faintly etched with lines earned by hard experience.
“I need a volunteer,” Carvati says.
“Hon.” Loras doesn’t wait to see who will speak.