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“What is it?” I ask.
Malix shakes his head again. “I’m no scholar.”
“Hazard a guess?”
He hums to himself, the light of his algae bulb gliding across the wall. “It’s a…creation story, I think,” he says. “We have something similar on Logos, enshrined in the Directorate.”
“The beacon,” I infer. “You think they’re related?”
“They have to be,” he says. “The Skoropi knew about this, right?”
I shrug. “Who knows? The Houses are so divided that it’s hard to tell.”
Malix follows the line, and I peer closer. The energy of the wall draws me in, deeper,closer.Maybe it’s some kind of charged mineral—like a magnet for…well, I don’t know, faces?
I reach up.
I tentatively touch it with the barest glance of my fingertips.
And something grabs back.
My hand is suddenly yanked into the wall, my fingers splayed across it as pain rockets through my arm. I cry out and Malix is at my side in a heartbeat, his hand on my shoulder.
“Frankie, what—”
White noise fills my ears, drowning him out. The room disappears, his voice disappears, mybodydisappears.
The universe expands in my field of vision.
A shooting star arcs across the sky…and lands on an ocean planet in a cloud of dust.
I see bits and pieces of something, someone, a humanoid figure with blurry edges. Human, Lyra, Skoropi, or something else—I can’t tell. I open my mouth to scream and nothing comes out, just another person’s voice.
Survive, it says in my head.Survive.
The biological imperative is survival. Cross-breeding to obtain the best possible result. Where we have failed, our children will succeed.
Will thrive.
Survive.
Heat builds in my stomach, pleasure flooding my veins, reminding me that I have a body. I snap back into myself and my eyes blink rapidly, my hand still glued to the wall and pulsing with euphoria.
“Frankie!” Malix says. “Frankie, what’s wrong?”
I meet his eyes, grabbing him by the wrist. He tries to pull away, but I’m infused with strength, the humanoid figure in my vision still calling the shots.
“Look,” something hisses through my lips.
I press his hand to the wall.
The vision comes back, envelops us both. I give into the sensation of pleasure, enhanced everywhere I touch Malix. Information floods me, a jumble of images that I can’t make sense of but that feel profoundly important.
My body becomes my own—pressed between Malix and the wall now, his form prone as he shakes off his own stupor.
The biological imperative is survival, a voice echoes in my head.
His pale eyelashes flutter open.
