Page 3 of Jarran

It was his mind that gave him trouble.

He turned back to the row of broad-leafed plants he’d been tending before the female arrived. One of them was leaning, its stem bowing under the weight of new growth. He reached for it, cupped the base gently, adjusted the stake, and pressed more soil around the roots to steady it. The plant was fine. It just needed support. Most living things did, when they were growing.

A sharp, clean scent lingered in the air where the female had stood. He breathed it in before it faded and felt an odd pull in his chest, low and dull. Not pain. He knew pain. This was different. More like reaching for something on a shelf just beyond his reach.

She had talked to him. Not at him, the way some researchers had when they ran their scans, narrating his responses into recording devices as though he were a crop yield report. She had talked to him like he might have something to say back. He hadn’t, really. But she’d waited anyway.

Doc-tor. She’d said the word. He’d said it back, pulling it apart carefully because the sounds in this language didn’t always come when he called them. Some words lived close to the surface. “Good.” “Soil.” “Water.” “Yes.” “No.” Others hid deeper down, and by the time he dragged them up, the moment for speaking had passed. He’d gotten used to silence. Silence was easier than the frustration of fumbling for words that scattered like seeds dropped in wind.

He finished steadying the leaning plant and moved to the next one in the row. He scooped out enough soil for the roots to have room, then tucked it into the hole and gently secured it to a stake. He checked the moisture in the soil with his fingers. Good. Not too wet. He’d learned the balance without anyone teaching him. Or maybe someone had taught him, once, and he’d forgotten who.

That happened sometimes. Knowledge without origin. He could identify crops he had no memory of planting. He could feel the humidity shift in a hydroponic bay when the climate controls went off balance. His body carried information his brain had lost the index for.

Footsteps behind him. Two sets, steady and measured. The guards.

Jarran’s shoulders tightened, just slightly, before he recognized the rhythm. He knew these two guards, who walked him between the plant bay and his room. These were the ones he thought of as Left and Right, because they always took the same positions flanking him in the corridor. Left was taller and quieter. Right talked more, though he never said much of importance.

“Patient Nine.” Left’s voice, calm and unhurried. “Shift’s done.”

Jarran looked at the row in front of him. Three seedlings left to plant. They sat in their starter cups on the edge of the bed, roots beginning to curl against the walls of the containers. If he left them until tomorrow, the roots would dry out. They’d be weak.

He didn’t get up. He reached for the next seedling and began loosening its roots from the cup.

The guards didn’t move. They didn’t bark orders. They just waited, standing a few paces behind him with their hands at their sides and their hair catching the grow lights in dull metallic flashes.

Baylans were patient. Jarran had noticed this early on, though he couldn’t remember what “early on” meant in any specific way. They didn’t shout. They didn’t threaten. When he’d broken the scanning table in the medical wing, which he only half remembered doing, they hadn’t punished him. They’d moved him to the agricultural bay and let him put his hands in the dirt, and the noise in his head had gone quiet.

He planted the second seedling. Pressed the soil firm. Reached for the third.

“Very well. Finish up,” Right said. Not warmly. Baylans didn’t do warm. But there was something steady in it. Professional decency. They treated him like a job they took seriously and did well, not like a thing they wanted to get rid of.

He pushed the last seedling into the soil, packed it down, and checked the lean on its stem. Straight. Good. He stood up slowly, unfolding to his full height, and the guards’ eyes tracked upward. He was slightly taller and more muscular than both of them.

Jarran wiped his hands on his work pants and nodded once. Ready.

They walked. Left on his left, Right on his right, through the double doors and into the corridor. The lighting shifted from amber back to that cool, flat Baylan blue-white. He blinked to adjust. His eyes preferred dimmer light. He preferred the plant bay to anywhere else, actually. Outside of it, the air lost its moist, rich fragrance and went crisp and filtered. The transition always made him feel a little sad. If he had a choice, and he didn’t, he’d stay in the plant bay all the time.

His boots were too heavy on the smooth floor. The guards’ footsteps were nearly silent. Baylan males moved like the metal they controlled, precise and frictionless. Jarran moved like what he was: too slow and clumsy for most spaces outside of the plant bay.

They passed a small researcher with enormous yellow eyes, who was of a species that didn’t look familiar, carrying a data tablet. She looked up at Jarran and looked away quickly, walking a little faster as they passed. He was used to that. Most of the non-Baylan researchers on board gave him a wide berth. He didn’t take it personally. A male his size with dark tattoo-like marks running the length of both forearms probably deserved a wide berth. He didn’t know where the marks came from. They were just there, inked into his skin, part of a story he’d forgotten.

An implant sat at the base of his skull, a small disc of Baylan-forged metal pressed against bone. He couldn’t feel it most of the time. It was just there, the way his teeth were there, or his heartbeat. But sometimes, when dark, chaotic thoughts rose up in his mind and he couldn’t control his body, he felt it hum. A low vibration, barely perceptible, and then the shapes dissolved. The tight feeling in his chest unwound. His thoughts, which were…horrible, settled back into their usual quiet.

He didn’t know exactly what the implant did. He knew the Baylans could activate it with their minds. That was what Baylans did. They controlled metal the way he controlled his hands: by thinking about it. The disc in his skull was just another piece of metal in their field of influence.

He was grateful for it.

That was the part he suspected most people wouldn’t understand. But the alternative was worse. Sometimes strange, fragmented memories surfaced without warning. A room with no windows. A voice giving orders in a language he used to speak. The smell of chemicals that made his stomach lurch. His hand holding a weapon like an extension of his own body. And with the fragments came impulses that didn’t belong to the person he was now. Cold impulses. Calculating.

Those moments terrified him. It was like having a second mind flickering to life behind his eyes, looking out through them, assessing exits and weaknesses and threats. The second mind knew exactly what it was doing. It had done these things before, many times, and had been good at them.

When the second mind overcame him, and he lost himself to it, the implant hummed and the second mind went dark. He became himself again. Patient Nine. A male who grew plants and slept in a white room. He’d take that. He’d take a hundred implants if it meant the second mind stayed buried.

They passed a junction in the corridor, and Right keyed open a door. “Your meal is in your quarters.”

Jarran stepped through into his room. It was small, simple, everything white or pale gray. A bed. A table bolted to the wall. A chair. A narrow doorway to a washroom. No windows, but a light panel in the ceiling that he could dim when he wanted to sleep. A tray of food sat on the table. It was a generous portion of protein cubes, sweet grain mash, and some sliced vegetables and fruits from the agricultural bay. He recognized the fruit and vegetables. He’d helped grow them, and pulled the early fruit so the later ones could ripen fuller. Growing food and then eating it felt like closing a circle. Start to finish. One complete thing in a life full of broken pieces.

“Have a good rest,” Right said.