The captain leaned forward, getting right in my face. “We’re not playing around here, Morris,” he said quietly. “I’ve answered your questions honestly. Now, what did Brenton want with you?”
I didn’t like the captain’s tone one bit, but he had a point. He’d answered my questions, and fair was fair. Also, I was pretty curious myself at this point.
“He wanted to know about the xith’cal ghost ship,” I said, meeting Caldswell’s stare head-on. “I didn’t tell him anything, but then his mercs hacked the medical records and found out I’d been bitten. After that, he got a little crazy and said I was the one who was going to save the universe.”
The words sounded just as pretentious and stupid coming out of my mouth as they had coming out of Brenton’s, but Caldswell was suddenly looking at me like he’d never seen me before. “Interesting,” he said after a long silence.
“Interesting?” I cried. “That’s it? That’s all you have to say?” I slammed myself back into the soft couch with a furious snarl. “Why the hell am I here, then?” I demanded. “What do you want from me?”
“To be perfectly honest, I’m not sure,” Caldswell said, returning to his chair. “Did Brenton tell you about the daughters?”
“He had a girl with him,” I said cautiously. “She looked exactly like Ren, but thinner, like she was sick. He called her Enna.”
It might have been my imagination, but I thought Caldswell winced when I said the girl’s name. Whatever it was, though, it was gone in a flash. “I wasn’t entirely accurate, earlier,” he said. “We Eyes help to hunt and subdue phantoms, but we don’t kill them. The daughters do. So far as we know, they’re the only ones other than the lelgis who can actually kill the things.”
I took a breath, remembering the flash of light when Ren had touched the downed phantom back on Mycant. “They’re plasmex users.”
“They’re much more than that,” Caldswell said. “They’re some of the most powerful plasmex users humanity has ever produced, created from the most powerful plasmex user, a woman named Maat.”
That name sent a cold shiver through me. I was sure I’d heard it before, but I couldn’t place it before Caldswell went on.
“Our job is to protect and guide them,” he said. “The daughters pay a great price for their power, and we do whatever we can to honor their sacrifice. But killing the phantoms isn’t all the daughters can do. They’re also the only ones who can see the damn things. Or they were, until you.”
“Don’t be stupid,” I said with a nervous laugh. “I’m not a plasmex user.”
“No, you’re not,” Caldswell admitted. “Frankly, Morris, I have no idea what you are. Because of their centuries of isolation from the rest of humanity, Paradoxians have the lowest plasmex sensitivity of all humans. But according to Hyrek, your numbers are even lower than the Paradoxian average. You have about as much natural plasmex talent as a piece of plastic, and yet somehow you can see what no one except the most powerful plasmex users can.”
“That’s ridiculous,” I said. “I’ve only seen one phantom, and it was really really big. I didn’t see the one on Mycant at all.”
“But you’ve seen every one since,” Caldswell said.
I was about to ask what he was talking about when I figured it out. “The bugs,” I groaned.
Caldswell nodded. “Phantoms come in all shapes and sizes. The little ones are everywhere. Fortunately they don’t get dangerous until they’re bigger than a person or we’d all be long dead. Considering the number of ‘bugs’ you told me about earlier, though, it also seems that you’re attracting them. If you were actually plasmex sensitive, this would be normal. Phantoms are drawn to plasmex use. But since your numbers are in the gutter every time we run them, you can see my confusion. If Brenton hadn’t tried to make another grab for you on Ample, I would have written you off as a freak anomaly.”
“Hold on—Brenton?” I said. “That HVFP team was Brenton’s?”
Caldswell rolled his eyes. “Nonlethal anti-armor pistols and a symbiont? Who else could it be?”
I hadn’t actually thought about the fight on Ample through the lens of my returned memories yet. Now that Caldswell said it, though, I had to admit he was probably right. “You think that’s why Brenton wants me, then?” I asked. “Because of the seeing phantoms thing?”
“No,” Caldswell said. “He’d never risk so much for something that small. Whatever he thinks you are, it’s big enough for him to gamble everything. I’d actually meant to go over what you’ve been seeing in more detail to see if we couldn’t figure it out, but you took longer to wake up from the memory return than we expected, and we’re almost out of time.”
The cold dread began to creep back into my stomach. “Out of time for what?”
“Talking,” Caldswell said. “I had Ren send for a pickup as soon as we got away from Unity.”
“A pickup?” I repeated dumbly.
“We’d already be in hyperspace if we could jump ourselves,” Caldswell said. “But the phantom wrecked our air system when it squeezed us. Fortunately, our emergency jump protocol dumps out in a pretty dense area of space, so Basil was able to limp us over to the closest planet to wait for reinforcements. That was five hours ago. The pickup team should be here any minute to take you to headquarters.”
The creeping dread in my stomach went colder still. “Why would I go to headquarters?”
Caldswell looked at me, and what was left of his amiable captain mask vanished. “We lost a planet today, Morris,” he said quietly. “Tomorrow, we could lose another. I don’t know what the hell is going on with you, but if you can see phantoms like the daughters do, there’s a chance you might be able to learn to kill them as well.”
“But you just said I can’t use plasmex!” I protested. “I can’t do anything like Ren can do, I can’t even do stuff Nova can do.”
“Maybe I haven’t made our situation clear,” Caldswell snapped, pinning me with a glare. “Other than the lelgis, who, as you’ve seen, only help when they feel like it, the daughters are our only weapons against the phantoms. Right now, we have sixty-two of them in active service. Sixty-two weapons to cover a front of nearly three hundred thousand inhabited planets across the known galaxy. You’re a soldier, you can see exactly how bad that situation is. We’re holding the line by the skin of our teeth. I might not understand what’s going on with you, but I know John Brenton. If he was willing to risk as much as he did to get you, it’s worth investigating. I don’t have the tools to do that here, so I’m sending you to the people who do.”
“And what about me?” I cried. My voice was shaking openly now, but I didn’t care. I was just starting to realize what all this meant. Caldswell was giving me to his secret phantom killing organization. Giving me over to be made into a weapon, like Ren. A shudder went through me at the memory of her blank eyes, the tears on her face back on Io5 when she’d begged me to free her. I didn’t want that. I wouldn’t let them do that to me. “I’m not going.”
I expected Caldswell to tell me I had no choice, but he didn’t. Instead, the captain looked me over like I was a troublemaking cadet. “I’ve always liked you, Morris,” he said. “Even when you were being a pain, you were always a good soldier. You did your duty and fought with honor as a Paradoxian should. This is just the next step.”
“Disappearing into some secret organization isn’t my idea of honor,” I snapped.
“But serving your king is,” Caldswell calmly replied. “The Eyes protect Paradox and her colonies just like we do every other planet. Are you saying you would not lay down your life for your homeland?”
I closed my eyes, cursing him for bringing the Sacred King into this. When he put it like that, he made me a traitor and a blasphemer if I denied him, but I could not accept what he was saying. If I did what Caldswell asked, my future was finished. My dreams of being a Devastator, everything I’d fought for, my whole life would be gone. I couldn’t do it. I would not throw myself away just so Caldswell could have the possibility of a new weapon in his war, and I was about to tell him so when I felt a hand on my knee.
I jumped, my whole body going rigid as my eyes snapped back open, but Caldswell didn’t let go. He grabbed my knee and held it, his fingers strong as steel and surprisingly warm through the soft fabric of the thin pants I wore under my armor. “This isn’t the end, Morris,” he said quietly. “Whatever you might think of us, we’re not monsters. You’ll be well taken care of.”
“Like a lab rat,” I muttered.
“Like a resource,” he corrected. “A valuable one.”
His words rang hollow. “I didn’t fight for a decade to become someone’s resource.”
“Better than being dead,” Caldswell said, giving my knee a final squeeze before standing up. “I’m going to go back into my room so you can have a few minutes alone before the retrieval team gets here. It might be your last time to yourself for a while, so I suggest you make the most of it. And if you have anything to say to Rupert, I’ll pass it on.”
I lifted my eyes. The captain’s face was all concern, but I knew now that it was a mask, just like Rupert’s. “Go to hell,” I snarled.
Caldswell sighed deeply, but then, as he’d promised, he left, retreating to his room and shutting the door to just a crack.
The moment he was out of sight, I started trying to break free. I bent my body into shapes I’d never known I could make as I yanked with everything I had on the plasma binding my feet and the metal cuffs that kept my wrists locked behind me. But all my struggling earned me were strained muscles, and after a few moments I flopped defeated back onto the couch. Fighting was useless, it seemed. Everything was useless.
Since it didn’t matter anymore, I threw back my head with a string of curses that would have made my mother faint. In a matter of minutes, my whole life had unraveled. Even if I did turn out to be nothing more than an anomaly who could see floating bugs, they’d never let me go after everything Caldswell had told me. Not alive, anyway.
I shut my eyes tight, but it didn’t help. All the things I’d lost were pounding on me one after another. Nine years of armored combat, all my honors, my illustrious record, gone. I’d never go home to Paradox again. I’d never be a Devastator.
I felt the moisture welling behind my eyelids, but I kept them shut tight. I felt more hopeless right now than I’d ever felt in my life, but I was determined not to cry. Caldswell had taken everything from me—my future, my past, all of it—like hell was I giving him my tears as well.
To distract myself, I turned to the window. The heavy reentry shutters were down, but I could see bright daylight shining through the cracks. I could tell from the color that the light came from a yellow-star sun, probably somewhere in the Sevalis. If I’d had my computer, that information might have been enough to narrow down my location, but my suit was almost certainly locked up in some cabinet by now. They probably wouldn’t even take my equipment when they came for me, I realized with a pang. I might never wear my beautiful Lady again. She’d rot on the ship until Caldswell sold her, and then we’d both be victims of the Glorious Fool.
That thought brought me closer to crying than anything else had yet, and I doubled over, pressing my forehead against my knees. I would not cry. My will was the only weapon I had left. I would not let it crack now before the fight had even begun.
I was still swearing oaths to myself when I felt something touch my cheek. It was a tiny brush, little more than a breeze, but my head shot up anyway, teeth bared for a fight. But fast as the anger had risen, it fled, because it wasn’t Caldswell standing in front of me. It was Ren.