Page 70 of The Space Between Stars

He pushed against the colossal force of the Survivor. First, it pushed back. But its short-lived resistance abated—it knew, one way or another, that Calver always fell back into submission. Quite suddenly, Calver endured the usual sensations brought on when the Survivor yielded: the throbbing of injuries he couldn’t remember sustaining, hunger, thirst.

He hissed through his teeth as he adjusted, taking in the space where he stood. Marble pillars lined the walls, carved with the faces of Fates and djinn. They vaulted the height of five men to support a ceiling inlaid with an apocalyptic mosaic. At its center dangled a chandelier, made with hundreds of crystals. Beneath it, a dining table had been carved from a single slab of polished wood, wider than any tree Calver had ever seen.

The Survivor’s memories filled in where Calver was lacking, fanning out into a web of images. As a martial figurehead, his master inhabited a manor house within the Tera’thian royal compound. The elaborate dining room was at its center. He was alone. Cul’Mon had sent him indoors to collect a set of riding gloves from his quarters. They would be traveling the half-league toward the laboratory at the westernmost end of the compound.

Anticipatory fear set ice into Calver’s veins. The Survivor roiled, and he staggered against its renewed pressure.

No, he begged, you can’t make me go back there.

{It is your destiny.}

Calver clutched the table for support. Victory over the mind can only come with an embrace of the VOID.

As his spike of panic eased, the Survivor’s pressure subsided, though he could still sense it lurking. He wouldn’t be able to hold it off forever. He needed to know what had called to him from the void.

A pinprick of light radiated from a glass orb on the table, so bright it was as though the sun itself had been shrunk down into a bead. Something metal rotated at the globe’s base, emitting a soft whirring sound. Calver couldn’t take his eyes from it.

{A distortion lamp. Cul’Mon smuggled sixty from Nelfindar for his palace.}

That had been the item of interest among the Skywalk-goers in Kaidech. The distortion locomotive had been built just months before he’d been taken from Kaidech, but he’d never seen a distortion lamp this close before. Calver picked it up, seeing new callouses on his hands, thickened hair on his muscled arms.

How long have I been under?

{Time is irrelevant.}

But it wasn’t. He was a Tume’amic. Tera’thian slaves did not survive their eighteenth year. They were taken to the mill.

{Search our memory. Can you be sure that is the path laid out for you?}

Calver did. Each moment was at Cul’Mon’s side, doing his bidding: mortifyingly procedural gamete extractions, conquest after conquest, blood all the time. He recoiled at the memories, each more merciless than the last. He would not dwell on them. I didn’t.

{We did.}

Void.

This was his fault. He’d let it take control. Had he resisted, he never would have let it. Anger boiled over. Get out.

{Impossible.}

The lamp’s inner workings began to rotate more quickly, and Calver could have sworn the blood burning in his veins pulled toward it. As if it was charged by the same electrical threads, but caged by skin instead of glass. Calver’s chest swelled as the anger dissolved into elation. This feeling—he didn’t want to let go of it. This lamp… it was made for him.

Following his instincts, he looked across the dining room to the prep room. There was a sink. Calver ran to it and drenched the lamp with the faucet. When it continued to whirr, he plugged the drain and submerged it.

Watching its glow beneath the water made his heart race. I can escape with this.

He’d once failed an escape through the aqueduct. A segment in the water vein turned vertically down. The only way through was submersion. The lantern he’d held to guide him through the pitch black would have been extinguished. But this lamp… He could swim with it all the way out of the compound. Into the city. He’d never have a better chance. He could find transportation to the coast and—

{An act of futility.}

The creature fought for control. Calver fought back.

No.

{How will you get to Nelfindar? No one will transport you. You are property. Filth.}

Escape now. Assess later.

The aqueduct delivered water for the manor through channels beneath the maintenance ward. He made for it.