Page 18 of Jarran

Tomorrow, she’d resign. She wasn’t sure how much of the truth she’d tell Silca, but she knew one thing for sure: she needed to get out of there and away from Jarran. It was the only right thing to do. For both of them.

EIGHT

Everything was different.

Jarran worked on his plants in the agricultural bay, but his thoughts were somewhere else. The toramdo plants needed attention. The back row was overdue for its first harvest. But instead of attending to those matters, he was thinking about Evie.

The pulse racing under his touch. Her warmth against his fingers. The way she’d shivered when he’d touched her. That shiver had been a relentless pull on his mind since yesterday. Every time he closed his eyes, he felt the soft skin of her inner wrist, the flutter of her heartbeat quickening under his fingertip. He didn’t think she feared him, which meant she’d felt attraction, but the fact that he couldn’t be sure unsettled him almost as much as the memory of his brother’s face.

Taron. The name was permanently etched in his brain now. He’d spent the night turning it over in his mind, and other recollections had come loose with it. He remembered an underground house with stone walls. A courtyard with pink-leafed trees and windows on the ceiling that let in soft light. Taron had been younger, running ahead of him down a corridor, and talking nonstop. The adoration in those green eyes when he’d looked up at Jarran had been impossible to miss.

He had more words for everything now, too. Brother. Younger brother. My responsibility. Language was returning in clusters, whole concepts arriving intact, and with them came the heft of understanding. He’d been someone’s older brother. He’d been the one who was supposed to keep Taron safe, and he’d loved that boy more than he could explain, even to himself.

But other things had broken loose, too. Darker things. Things that woke him in his quarters with his sheets soaked and his hands shaking and a throbbing in his head so bad his skull ached.

The bay doors opened and he heard her footsteps. His entire body responded before his mind caught up. Shoulders dropping. Breath evening. His chest swelled as he looked toward the sound of her shoes on the floor.

She came down the row carrying her equipment bag. He tracked every detail, from the set of her jaw to the tension in her shoulders. She held her tablet against her chest instead of in the bag at her side. She didn’t look quite right. He’d seen her tense before, but this was different. Her smile when she reached him was a little too bright.

“Morning.” She sat and turned on her tablet. Quick, efficient movements.

“Morning.” He wiped his hands. “You okay?”

“Fine. Let’s get started.” She didn’t meet his eyes.

She was not fine. Her body language was closed off and her voice was higher than usual. She was avoiding looking at him for more than quick glances. He wanted to ask what was wrong, but her expression had an edge to it that kept him quiet. She looked braced. Preparing for something. He’d give her the space to get there.

She set up the scanner and he settled across from her. Their knees were close, and he was aware of every centimeter now. The warmth of her body radiated across the gap between them and his skin prickled with it.

“Tell me about your night,” she said, activating the device. “Any dreams? Memories?”

He had a lot to tell her. The words were coming easier now. He’d noticed it yesterday, during the breakdown, and again this morning when he’d spoken to the guard who brought his meal. Full sentences. Pronouns. The right tenses, mostly. His vocabulary was still limited, but the mechanics of language was rebuilding itself, and the relief of being able to say what he meant was enormous.

“The memories are getting worse,” he said. “Stronger. More detailed.”

She looked up from the tablet. “Tell me.”

He rubbed his palms on his thighs. “A room. Cold, dark. Stone floor, metal walls. I was locked in. Starving. I don’t know how long. Long enough that I begged to be let out.” He paused. His throat was tight. “I wept. I pounded on the door until my hands bled and I wept.”

Evie’s fingers stilled on the tablet.

“Then they took me out. Bright light. White room. A…laboratory.” He touched the back of his neck, where the implant sat. “Similar to the ones they bring me to here, but different. There were small aliens. They…” He frowned and tried to explain what he himself wasn’t even sure of. “They did things to my head. Instruments. Machines. It hurt. Headaches so bad I couldn’t see.”

“Can you describe the aliens in more detail?”

“They had pale yellow skin and huge dark eyes. Short. Up to here.” He held a hand at his mid-abdomen. “Thin. Quick hands. They didn’t speak to me. They spoke to each other, but I didn’t understand the language.”

She was typing rapidly. “What else?”

“After the laboratory, there was a male. Large. Bigger than the yellow ones, almost my size. He wore a mask over his face. He gave orders and I…” Jarran’s hands curled into fists against his thighs. “I obeyed. I couldn’t not obey. My body did what he said. Walk. Stop. Sit. Hit. I wanted to stop, but my body kept moving.”

He could hear his own breathing, too fast. The implant pulsed at the base of his skull, a warning nudge. He consciously slowed his breathing to calm himself through it.

“The worst part is the feeling behind the obedience. I wasn’t angry or scared. I was...empty. Following orders with no feeling at all, and then afterward, when I was alone, the horror of what I’d done would hit me.” He pressed his knuckles against his thigh. “I don’t know if these things happened once or a hundred times. The memories come without warning. I’ll be working or eating or lying in the dark and they hit me. I’m shaking, sweating. Can’t speak when it’s happening. The implant calms me down eventually, but it takes time.”

Evie set the tablet on the ground. She was looking at him with an expression he hadn’t seen from her before. Focused, calculating, her brows drawn together. She was putting pieces together behind her eyes.

“Jarran, do you think these memories are from when you were abducted by the raiders?”