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She laughs. “Raskarrans don’t care about being naked, silly. Only humans.”
But she dutifully stands in the doorway for me as I head to my locker, grabbing out a towel and a change of clothing. I only have more fatigues, and I glance at the supple, light looking trousers Jassal is wearing with some envy before peeling out of my grimy clothes and heading into the showers.
I figure there has to be some power left over in the base - enough to keep the cryostasis pods ticking over, and hopefully enough to generate at least decent water pressure, even if it’s every bit as cold as bathing in the stream. I’m surprised when the water runs hot after a moment, and quickly scrub myself clean with the soap from the dispenser, just in case there’s a time limit before it turns freezing again.
I’m pulling a blissfully clean pair of socks on, towel resting around my shoulders, ready to dry off the soft fuzz of my hair when I sense Jassal watching me. I look up, meeting her gaze as she scrutinises me shamelessly in the way only a kid can. The back of my throat burns with the embarrassment I attempt to swallow down.
The drugs they take to… facilitate.
Too ugly, too manly for my military tier fellows to get a hard on for. And I expect Maldek to see me any differently?
But he does look at me differently, I think. If those looks he’s given me weren’t full of heat, then what were they? And he’s touched me all afternoon. Hasn’t stopped.
But he hasn’t fucked you, the dissenting voice of my subconscious says.He hasn’t even tried.
“Do you think I could be as tall as you when I’m grown?” Jassal says, and the soft hope in her question cuts through all the noise in my head.
“You… you’d like to be?”
She nods. “Uhuh. My Papa is small for a raskarran - he says he was the runt of his tribe. But he’s still so much bigger than Mama and all the other humans. But you’re not tiny like them. They all need protecting, but you could protect yourself, I bet. Because you know spears now. Papa said it was hard sometimes to protect Mama. I want to be able to help him protect her, especially if the bad people from Mama’s old tribe come back.”
A kind of shame fills me. She doesn’t say it like she includes me, but I’m definitely one of the ‘bad people’ Jassal refers to. The Mercenia team that came here. I don’t know what her mother’s link to the team is, but it’s obvious her experiences weren’t good, and that the other humans here are equally concerned. I’ve always felt righteous as I’ve carried out Mercenia’s orders, but the words from the briefing ring in my ears again, and I don’t know anymore if I want to be one of Mercenia’s soldiers.
Primitive, dangerous, savage.
Nothing about Jassal is savage. And primitive by what metric? Her clothes aren’t factory made, but her father worries about protecting her mother. Her tribe has protected a group of frozen women they don’t even know. Protecting others weaker than yourself is the highest calling, a sign of a well-developed civilisation. My tutors and superior officers have always said that.
“Is your papa taller than me, do you think?” I ask, sitting down next to Jassal as I pull my awkward boots on.
“I think so.”
I nod. “Well, that means you’ll probably be about my height, then. That’s how genetics work, you know? The baby has half information from their mother, half from their father. It’s not exact, what bits you get. But if one is short, and the other is tall, then the baby might get half short, half tall genes and end up somewhere in the middle. Or maybe they get all the height information from one parent and end up the same height as them. But you’re already much taller than I would expect a nine-year-old to be, so I think you got plenty of your papa’s tall genes.”
“You really think so?”
Her eyes are bright with excitement.
“Well, I’m not a scientist,” I say. “I’m not that smart. But I know that’s how they got me so tall. Picked the tallest and strongest to have children together, so their children would be even taller and stronger, down through the generations.”
Until it was my turn. What tall, strong military tier guy would they have chosen for me if I’d hung around to do my duty?
Fangs and claws flash in my mind again, but this time, the memory doesn’t stop there. It plays out so graphic in my head, it’s almost like I’m seeing it in front of me and living it at the same time. Fangs and claws and me cowering on the floor, trying to shield myself, trying to cover my body. My bare, naked body.
I sway where I’m sitting as the memories assault me, images flooding into my mind in a rush. Snippets and flashes, filling in so many of the gaps, but too fast for me to make sense of them. My head hurts, and I press my hands to my temple as I try to breathe through the sudden agony.
“Brooks?” Jassal says, her voice small, frightened.
“I’m okay,” I say, trying not to hiss through clenched teeth. “Jassal, go and get Maldek for me. Tell him I remembered something. Tell him I need to talk to him.”
CHAPTERFOURTEEN
Maldek
Shemza accompanies me to my linasha’s side, the pallor of Jassal’s face putting a fear into both of our heartspaces. But my Brooks shakes her head at Shemza’s healing attentions and only makes the sleeping and talking gesture to me.
“She has trouble with her memories,” I say. “She can use the dreamspace to remember.”
I recall how she shrank the memories down, turned them to all angles when she was examining my fight with Basran’s tribe. I have never heard of such use of the dreamspace before. Human headspaces think differently to raskarrans’. I have known this since first meeting my sisters. But seeing it so starkly is fascinating. Much as I am wary of what my linasha is remembering - especially considering it appears to have pained her some - I cannot help but be curious of what else she will show me.
