Page 4 of Jarran

“Thank you,” Jarran said. The words came out easily. Small words were easy.

The door closed. The lock engaged. He didn’t mind the lock any more than he did the implant. Locks meant the boundary between him and the rest of the ship was clear. Inside this room, he was contained. Whatever lived in the dark parts of his mind was contained too.

He ate standing up, because he had been bent over enough today and his body preferred to stretch out. He washed in the small shower, water warm but not hot. The Baylans kept everything at precisely regulated temperatures. Even the towels felt engineered. He dried off, changed into the clean sleep clothes folded on the shelf, and sat on the edge of the bed for a while with his hands on his knees, looking at nothing.

His tail curled around one ankle. It did that on its own sometimes, wrapping around the nearest solid thing. He’d stopped being surprised by it. The tail had its own opinions about comfort.

Eventually, he lay on his back. The bed was the correct size for him, and it was comfortable. He stared at the ceiling and let his thoughts drift to the one interesting thing in his life. The female.

Her hair was brown. But no. It was more nuanced than that. It was the color of rich soil, and the grow lights had revealed red highlights when she’d bent to look at his plants. Freckles dusted across her nose, small and scattered, like tossed seeds. She had light brown eyes, and she had smelled nice. She’d said her name was Evie and that she would come back tomorrow.

People said things to him all the time. The researchers told him to hold still, extend his arm, look at the light. The guards told him when to walk and when to stop. The Baylan who ran the plant bay told him which crops to tend and which to harvest.

Evie had told him his plants looked wonderful. She’d said it like she meant it. He didn’t know why that mattered, but it sat in his chest beside the clean smell of her and the image of freckles on her skin, and the three things together made the quiet of his room feel slightly less empty.

He closed his eyes. Tomorrow she would come back, or she wouldn’t. People came and went on this ship. Researchers rotated in and out. New patients arrived in the bay and old ones were transferred. Nothing stayed.

But she’d said she would come back. And his plants still needed tending. And both of those things, small as they were, were enough to fall asleep to.

THREE

Eight cycles aboard the Korath-7, and Evie had a routine.

Wake up. Do morning routine of exercise, shower, getting dressed. Drink the Baylan equivalent of coffee, which tasted like hot water filtered through cardboard, but woke her up fast. Review her notes from the previous session. Walk to the lift. Ride it down to the agricultural bay. Try not to contemplate the fact that she spent her days running brain scans on a male who used to run a criminal empire.

The bay doors opened, and the air shifted. Warm, humid, alive. She breathed it in and felt her shoulders relax. She’d started to understand why Patient Nine preferred it down here. Everything else on this ship was engineered within an inch of its life. This place actually grew.

She found him in section 5B-4, three rows from the back wall, kneeling in the soil with his hands around the base of a green, broad-leafed plant. He looked up when she walked in. He looked up now, which was new. For the first few visits, he hadn’t acknowledged her until she was standing right next to him. Now his head came up the moment the bay doors opened, and his face softened into an almost-smile.

“Good morning,” she said in Universal.

“Morning.” He wiped his hands and stood up. The full height of him still caught her off guard sometimes. She was five foot six, which was average on Earth and basically pocket-sized out here. He towered over her, broad and solid, dirt on his knees and under his fingernails, his black hair pushed back from his face. His dark green eyes tracked her as she set her equipment bag on the edge of the planting bed.

“How are the plants today?”

He considered this. “Good. This one.” He touched the plant he’d been tending. “Growing fast.”

“Faster than expected?”

He nodded, and there was that almost-smile again. Quiet pride. He grew things and they thrived, and that mattered to him. She pulled her scanner from the bag. It was a handheld Baylan device, sleek and pale, about the size of a tablet. When activated, it projected a thin field that could map neural activity in real time without physical contact.

“Ready to work?” She held it up.

He eyed the scanner. He didn’t like it. She knew that. But he sat down on the edge of the planting bed and angled his body toward her, which was his version of consent. A cycle ago, he’d flinched every time she raised the device. Now he just went still and waited.

“I’m going to show you some images,” she said, pulling up the assessment sequence on the screen. “Just like yesterday. Just look at each one and tell me if anything comes to mind. A feeling, a word, anything. There are no wrong answers.”

“No wrong answers,” he repeated. He said that back to her every time, and she’d started to suspect he found it funny.

She held up the first image. A Virilian transport vessel, standard class, silver hull.

He looked at it. “Ship.”

“Anything else? A memory, a feeling?”

He studied it for a moment longer. “No.”

She noted the neural response on her scanner. Minimal activity. Recognition only, surface level. She swiped to the next image. A curved Virilian blade, ornate handle, the kind used in formal combat.