{Enki | Cinder’s Shrine}

Kyle had smoked his last joint out of Andrew’s stash an hour ago. He rifled through his multiplying pockets, searching for more, and found Legir’s gift from earlier. When Kyle was still screening the Icarean army into Cinder’s shrine, the leader of Yu had approached him.

“Do you miss your forge?” The telepathic alien with no mouth gently invaded Kyle’s mind.

Aloud, Kyle chuffed. “Every fucking day.”

Straight to the point, Legir spoke into his gray matter. “You’ve lost a lot, haven’t you?”

The Progeny sighed rather than answered. Kyle wasn’t looking for a pity party, but yes, his ‘have’ column was shrinking as of late. Everything was slipping away from him. Rayne, his forge baby, his noble station at the desert fortress on Earth, the security of their house on Reipon, his sisters—One to trauma and the other to a snot-nosed, thug turned world leader—

Fuck it. Kyle missed Silence. She was his, and that felt right for the brief time they’d spent together. It felt right. It also didn’t hurt sticking it to Xelan and Nox in the process. Kyle missed the exciting way she posed on furniture all wrong and turned whatever clothes someone loaned her into a sexy and amusing practice in apocalyptic fashion. Her scent…

Legir stood there silently for a good minute. Kyle turned to see why and found the alien holding out a flower. The most bizarre flower he’d ever seen. “It’s glowing.”

Yu’s leader bowed his circular head on top of that upside-down triangle he called a torso. Inside Kyle’s head, he elaborated, “It’s made of a special organic phosphorous similar to some of your kelp on Earth.”

The blue light from the flower reminded Kyle of Rayne’s eyes. So bright it almost hurt to look at it. “Are you giving it to me?”

“Yes. A moment will come, as they always do, where you’ll need your calm. This will provide it better than the weak Earth shit you’ve been smoking.”

Bones, Twenty-One, Iuo, and Andrew could make Kyle chuckle. But Legir here made him snort on a bark of laughter. Kyle took the flower. “Do… do I smoke it? Or eat it?”

Legir’s eyes smiled for his mouthless face. “One lick should suffice but be careful. The Progeny physiology is complex. Your reaction to it is unpredictable.”

Kyle flagged the man a salute. “Thanks for the warning, Chief. I’ll save it for a special occasion.”

Waiting for Pax to respond while Ross’ life hung in the balance counted as a special occasion in need of more calm. With shaking hands, Kyle reached into his pocket and retrieved the flower. Everyone was staring at Xelan, leaving no prying eyes on Story Taker while he brought the glowing bloom to his mouth and licked it.

When Andrew was six, he asked for nail polish for Christmas, and his parents got him a bebe gun. Sagan secretly took cooking lessons from Tempest to impress Korac with one hell of a spread from all over the Vast Collective. Iuo, the Porn Baron, was a virgin. Lamassau’s original occupation on the Tritan homeworld was as an author of children’s books. Pehton burned every prisoner with a history of pedophilia in her first week as Executive Warden. Korac was afraid of Chihuahuas. Xelan never learned how to ride a bike. And Tumu was closed to Kyle entirely.

Story Taker didn’t go looking for stories. He couldn’t turn it off. All their lives he experienced in real time all at once. It reminded him of Andrew’s view of the Probability Matrix, but more concrete and less fluid. The area of effect spread and spread—

Control. Kyle needed control, and fast before it affected someone in the allied armies with no tolerance for this level of an obtrusive invasion.

Out and out and out—

Focus. Breathe. Seek shelter somewhere safe from this storm—

Quet.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

Remorse.

The loneliest existence.

Escape and Cascading Light.

Elden.

Happiness.

Confusion and hurt.

Pain.

Loss.

A baby girl.

Sleep.

“Kyle.”

Cinder’s shrine melted into the carousel of Silence’s—no, Surra’s—memory scape. Vast and full, it spun. Each scene was sprinkled with black fire. Standing upside-down on the ride in the most beautiful ceremonial dress was the Mother of all their existence. The layered necklaces covering her breasts and her skirt stayed fixed as if gravity obeyed her will. Even her unusual hair stayed in place. But of course it did. Everything about Silence was extraordinary.

“How did you reach me?”

How should Kyle explain this? He started with shoving his hands into two of a zillion pockets in his jumpsuit and wandered closer to the magical merry-go-round, displaying various windows into her life with each turn.

Silence kept her eyes on him with unveiled, sensual hunger strong enough to make Kyle’s ears burn. The maker of their galaxy paid him a greater compliment than he’d ever assumed. And she apparently liked the jumpsuit. Win. The girls could dress him anytime.

Self-conscious, Kyle rubbed his neck. “So… I’m kinda in the middle of a trip, and I needed somewhere safe to hide until it goes away.”

Damn. Silence’s movie star smile always blew Kyle away. Her eyes even sparkled, and he felt rather proud of himself. Her husky voice did a number on him, too. “You seek me for sanctuary?”

“I seek you for comfort.” The words spilled out of Kyle with no thought. He didn’t want to waste time on pretensions. “I miss you.”

Silence’s lashes fluttered, and she looked at the carousel. Standing almost directly beneath her put him about a meter under her eyes. The images reflected on the steel in them. Softly, she confessed, “I wanted us.”

Kyle held out his hand to her. “We can have us. There’s no need to hide anymore. I know everything now, Silence.” Sorta. The images stopped when she met him on Earth. He didn’t know where she was in Enki or what she’d done since coming here, but he believed in her. “You’re Shadow.”

When the carousel turned between images, the breaks cast Silence in darkness. In one such pass, a glowing blue light pulsed under her skin. Frowning, Kyle asked, “What is that?”

Silence smiled, but not the thousand-watt grin Kyle loved. It was sad. It ladened her voice when she said, “So… not everything, then.” To his surprise, she took his hand and, with a little hop, flipped onto the floor before him without a single hair out of place.

Gentle. Don’t scare her away. Kyle lifted Silence’s knuckles to his lips and kissed each one, assuring, “You can tell me anything.”

She slipped her hand from his to unzip his jumpsuit. He wasn’t about to argue, but… her features put a stop to any erotic thoughts. Instead, Silence pressed her hand over Kyle’s chest between his heart and his throat. Over his nacre. She stared at her hand and said, “Tritans have a cruel sense of ownership. They aren’t kind masters.”

This was heading in an unexpected direction, and Kyle frowned as Silence went on.

“Rayne has it, too. They hate her as much as they hated me. They hate what they fear, as all things do.” When Silence met Kyle’s eyes, the full weight of a lifetime serving the Twelve Worlds in her gaze staggered him. “The frequency increases. Not long now. For me or for her. Soon, our stories will end.”

No, no, no. No.

Kyle cupped both sides of Silence’s face. “What?! Tell me. You don’t mean—”

“It’s why I went to sleep. It afforded me a few more months to find the means of freeing my children. I stayed long enough to bring Savis into a world which treated her as unkindly as it had treated me. And Elden…”

Panic and concern clogged Kyle’s throat until he had to swallow it all to speak. “What can we do? For you and Rayne? Is there anyway?!”

A tear fell from Silence’s ancient eyes and splashed into his hand where he still held her face. Only then did Kyle feel the moisture on his cheeks. She wiped it away and brushed his lip with her thumb until he tasted the salt. With her voice in six pitches, she said, “Ishkur will save us. Tameka is the key.”

Silence’s memories on the merry-go-round dimmed.

This rung a little wrong in Kyle’s ears. It was too close to what Celindria had said, and it bothered him enough to force a step back. Reevaluate. With a little suspicion in his voice, Kyle said, “Tell me I can trust you. Tell me you won’t break my heart again.”

The carousel spun slower, and the darkness lingered on her.

Silence’s hand fell to her side slowly as Kyle moved out of her reach. Her little hiccup of a sob pulverized his heart, but he couldn’t blindly trust anyone, especially her, again. Almost as if she understood, Silence answered with a force of honesty in her multi-octave voice which touched him. “I will break your heart one last time. To save my children, I would do anything. This cannot exclude causing you more pain. Forgive me, Kyle.”

End of the ride.

Kyle blinked and saw Xelan standing in the alcove, waiting for a response from his son. Not even a second had passed since Kyle had licked the flower. But… the conversation with Silence was real—

A glance down at his exposed chest confirmed it. Kyle really talked to Silence, and she really told him the Tritans who created her—Quet and Remorse—stamped her and Rayne with an expiration date like they were a gallon of milk—

Andrew clutched Kyle’s shoulder in a comforting gesture. At Kyle’s distraught glance, the other man leaned in to say, “This almost has me in tears, too. Poor Pax.”

Right. The here and now.

Work through this shit first.

Tell Xelan and Tameka about Rayne, Silence, and Ishkur.

Never lick that fucking flower again.

Attainable goals mattered in a time of recovery, and Kyle would find a way to salvage this.