The transport had begun life as a cargo freighter. The conversion had been recent, and rushed, to meet the Nearer Fringe’s refugee crisis. Walls and floors were bare and ugly, wiring hummed loudly in places while pipes vibrated in others, and the air conditioning was uneven. And there were no private cabins, or quiet rooms. It was all just a series of open spaces, flooded with several thousand human beings.
None of it did Kio’s mood any favours.
He didn’t know how long he’d leaned up against the toilet stall wall, hands on either side of the mirror, head dangling, but it was long enough for someone to start knocking on the door.
The stall was the portable sort, a part of a row that had been fitted together like puzzle pieces, then bolted in place. It was the only place he’d found where the incessant din was muffled. Here he could have some damned peace. Until someone started knocking. Or the speaker went off.
“Landing planetside in three hours.”
Kio let out air in a choked rasp. His heart was beating too fast. It was weakness. But he’d been proven weak, hadn’t he?
His left hand tapped the wall, the sensation dull and distant, as if he’d been letting it rest in cold water.
The fate of the weak.
Tap-tap-tap.
Knock, knock, knock.
He looked up, finally, into the crummy plastic mirror above the sink. His still-juvenile beard had had a couple of weeks of undisturbed growth, and the cut above his left eye had had longer still to heal. It was still red and angry, and unless he had it removed it would always be there, as a reminder of the fight where he’d gotten it. And the person who had inflicted it. The one he couldn’t kill. The rock his strength had broken against.
He touched it with his good hand, hard enough to summon some of the remaining pain, then travelled down to the big birthmark that his left eye rested in, like a giant bruise. The skin there had always felt different; dull and strange. Now his left hand felt much the same.
Tap-tap-tap.
Knock-knock-knock.
Three hours. What are you going to do?
He looked at the numb hand. He’d managed the power that one time. Not as well as the mentor… and he’d missed… but it had coursed through him and out into the world, tearing and burning and destroying. And it had left his skin blackened and dulled.
He wiggled the fingers. They still worked. There was still some sensation in there. And when he clenched hard enough there was pain too. Maybe it would heal and become normal again. The mentor’s hands hadn’t looked like this, although the man’s skin had been marked in other ways.
Power shows, Kio. Power mortal flesh was not designed for. Power that puts us ABOVE. We defy the rules. That is what will elevate you. If you are strong enough, Kio. IF you do not fail me.
Knock-knock-knock.
Kio punched the wall next to the mirror with his left hand. The bang was loud, but the impact was dull.
He’d fled. He’d thrown his blade away and fled.
Kio punched the wall again.
The ritual in that tower had been the culmination of it all. What it had all been building up to. A turning point in the war. The start of a new era, of order and rule by the strong.
Kio punched again.
His final test. Slaying that Warden was to be his crucible to be allowed to undergo the Razing. The final release of everything that was holding him back, and a full embrace of power.
Knock-knock-knock.
Instead, he’d thrown his weapon away, and Tunnelled out of there.
Knock-knock-knock.
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The mentor had died, the war had turned in the other direction, and he was cast adrift.
He punched with his other hand. It hurt far more, made him angry, and he punched again. The pain was the final stress on his temper, and it snapped.
Kio whirled around, flicked the lock off the door, and flung it open. He stepped out, hand reaching, face grim with rage, and found a girl of maybe fifteen years, who shrank back with a startled yelp. He drew in a sharp inhale as he stopped himself, then punched the door frame and stormed off. A man who’d been behind the girl in the line gestured at him and started saying something disapproving. Kio did a little turn on his heel and channelled his rage and considerable strength into a brutal shove. The man flew, hit some people in the line for the neighbouring stall, and Kio went back to storming.
The crowds swallowed him up, as loud and suffocating as ever, and only getting more so as he made enemies by bumping into people. He couldn’t sustain the momentum, or the mood. Both fell away in little chips, and by the time he reached the other end of the deck he simply felt numb.
Just like before.
His seat at one of the benches had been taken, but he couldn’t muster more than a flicker of annoyance at it. He lurched over or to the wall, put his back against it, and let himself slide down.
The noise continued unabated. These weren’t soldiers returning home, or heading to an engagement. These were families, most of them left homeless by the battle for Ciinto Res. Mostly these were parents with young children, hoping to land on a world whose social services were less exhausted than what they’d left behind.
It all, of course, meant a lot of tired, crying children. The parents tried to deal with them, to a certain extent, chatting to their spawn in Ciinto Res’s dominant language, which Kio didn’t understand a word of. But they themselves were almost as tired and wound up, from all that had happened, and from days spent on a ship with very limited amenities.
Kio covered his ears.
Shut up, all of you. Just shut up.
It did no good, and Kio switched to rubbing his face in frustration. That was when he realised that he’d forgotten his bandages in the toilet stall.
He squeezed his eyes shut in yet more irritation, and opened them to find some little kid staring at him, or rather his eye, like a quick summary of his own childhood. He’d forgotten to put the damn things back on, and now his most distinguishing features were on full display.
The man sitting next to him said something.
“What?” Kio said back in Larin.
“Did you fight?” the man asked through a mouthful of accent.
He pointed to the aft of the ship, as if it indicated a straight line back to Ciinto Res, then at Kio’s face.
“Did you fight? Battle?”
Kio clenched his numb hand.
“Yeah. Did you?”
Feeling that he knew the answer already, the question came with an edge. The man had a hapless, haunted look to him. He seemed to be anything other than a fighter, and indeed he shook his head.
“No. Hid. Town… hole. Bunker.”
Kio did nothing to hide the scrunch that hit his face, and it mercifully killed the man’s interest in the conversation.
You were weak too, Kio.
He closed his eyes again, and rested the back of his head against the wall, rather too hard. He sought an escape from that fact, or to erect walls against it. But that Warden had plunged her sword into the bricks and left them to crumble apart slowly.
So for the next two hours he just sat there, as the decay continued, and his own thoughts assailed him mercilessly.
“Landing planetside in one hour.”
That put a stir in the mass of people. The volume got even louder, but now with a sense of urgency as there was the promise of release for all that pent-up energy. Kio himself just sat where he was for a while. He simply felt like a sack, and sacks couldn’t stand.
The people around him were in motion, gathering meagre possessions, making plans in groups, setting up the beginnings of disembarking queues. And little by little the reality that he had to take action forced its way to the front. Somehow, he did find the strength to stand up, and his feet lumbered slowly to the nearest queue.
In front of him was a woman with a travel pack on her back and a plain skin box in her hand.
“Hey,” he said, and got her attention. “Trade you for it.”
He took an immunoset out of a pocket in his jacket and held it out. It was worth a good deal more than a cheap skin box, and was surely more useful to a refugee. He saw those facts play out on the woman’s face for a couple of seconds, and then she accepted the trade.
As the ship descended through the atmosphere and towards the docking towers, Kio smeared gunk on his birthmark. The stuff reacted to the surrounding skin and adjusted itself on a molecular level to copy it perfectly, hiding the mark little by little. He’d always stubbornly refused to do anything like this, but circumstances were what they were.
A little holographic display reflected his face back at him, and once he was satisfied he pocketed the box, and just waited, until he felt and heard that distinctive shudder of docking.
The crowd finally started moving in an actual direction, and Kio went along. Each deck had a different airlock, so it was over relatively quickly.
“Welcome to Planet Yvenna.”
The dread that had been gnawing at him so incessantly doubled in strength, and clawed its way up from his stomach to clutch at his throat.
He was back home.