“Do you remember the crash of the Icarus eight months ago?”
Merendsen launches into the strangest story I’ve ever heard—a shipwreck with two survivors, a planet terraformed but with flora and fauna twisted, voices on the wind, visions everywhere. He tells it briefly, matter-of-fact and confident, but even so it’s difficult to believe. A planet terraformed in secret, no settlers, no record of it in the government’s permits. But he’s not done.
“We found creatures there. Beings. Different from anything we have here.”
“Here…on Avon?” Flynn’s sounding as dubious as I feel.
“Here in this universe.” Merendsen hesitates, then plows ahead. “LaRoux Industries opened a rift on that planet, a gateway between this dimension and another. Like the ones ships use to travel through hyperspace, but this one was permanently jammed open, and there were sentient creatures living there. LaRoux’s scientists pulled these beings through and trapped them.”
“Beings?” I can’t conceal my skepticism. He sounds like the rookies we get here on Avon, all too willing to believe the locals’ wild tales of wisps in the swamp.
Merendsen flashes me a grim smile. “You don’t know the half of it. I don’t know what they were, not really. Lilac and I called them the whispers.”
“Why do you think this has anything to do with Avon?” Flynn’s voice is taut. “There are too many people here—someone would have noticed if there were creatures on this planet.”
“Not if LaRoux were concealing them in a secret, moving facility,” Merendsen replies, raising an eyebrow at Flynn. “The whispers could do things we couldn’t begin to understand. They changed the planet we crashed on in the years they spent there. They sped up its plant growth, altered the animals originally seeded there.”
My eyes snap to Flynn, who stands suddenly stricken as he stares at my former captain. He and I only met because he was there that night in Molly’s, pumping soldiers for information about how the facility in the swamp might be connected with Avon’s stunted terraforming progress. The arguments that had sounded so insane to me at the time—his conspiracy theories that Avon’s owning corporations were slowing down its development on purpose—come rushing back in a flood that sends a chill down my spine.
The tang of sudden anger prompts me to lurch to my feet. “If you’re right, how can we hope to fight these things?”
Merendsen’s eyebrows shoot up. “Fight them? Lee, they’re not the enemy. They’re LaRoux’s victims as much as Avon’s citizens are. The whispers were never hostile toward us—in fact, they helped us. But they’re not like us, they don’t see us the way we see each other, as individuals, unique. They don’t really understand death. They’re all connected.” His eyes flick toward the window, avoiding mine.
I can sense him avoiding the truth, picking up on a dozen tiny clues: the way he won’t meet my gaze; the twitch of his hand as he stops himself from running it through his hair; the short, casual sentences that belie the importance of what he’s saying.
“Sir, what aren’t you telling us?”
He glances up, eyes falling first on me, then on Flynn. He’s silent for a time, then sits up straighter. “Something happened there that…changed us. Changed me, specifically.”
“An experience like that would change anyone.” Flynn’s voice is dry.
“I mean really changed,” says Merendsen quietly. “I can sense them sometimes—they’re a part of me still. Distant, and quiet, but there. And they’ve been getting louder.”
My body wants to shiver, to scan Merendsen’s features and try to find some evidence of what he’s telling us. I’m slow to sit back down, my anger on Avon’s behalf—on Flynn’s behalf—draining away. “What are you saying? That you’re not…you anymore?”
“I’m me,” he replies instantly, an uncharacteristic hint of defensiveness in his tone. “I’m me, the same person I’ve always been. You know me.”
He’s right. I do know my captain, and he’s never been overly concerned with protecting himself by hiding the truth. The shiver is spreading, sending a creeping, cold certainty through my body. “What would happen if LaRoux Industries found out about you?”
Merendsen meets my gaze finally, and in his face I see the confirmation of my suspicion: fear. And I don’t think I ever saw him afraid in all the time we served together. “They’d take me away, Lee.”
I think of the girl in the monitor, the times Merendsen stopped her from speaking, how quick he was to come when he realized these so-called whispers were involved. All the little clues, the fragments in their conversation, the pieces Merendsen’s left for me to assemble. It keeps anyone from thinking she’s hiding anything. They’re watching us. Trust what you feel. That’s my girl.
“I understand, sir.” My voice comes out fierce.
Merendsen nods. “Thank you, Captain.”
Flynn’s watching us with a wooden expression. I know he doesn’t understand what I’ve just promised my friend; you’d have to know Tarver Merendsen the way I do to begin untangling these clues. But Flynn knows me. He recognizes the intensity in my voice, the feeling in my expression. And when he sees me looking at him, he jerks his eyes away.
“Sir.” My voice shakes, and I can’t stop it. “When you were talking to Lilac, you said these whispers had caused a bunch of researchers to go mad before.” If it was one of these creatures controlling me, and not my own mind cracking and my insanity massacring those people, would it be any better? Would it matter to Flynn? The questions die on my lips as quickly as they come to me.