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Chapter 16

ELLA

We climb into the driver-less car I ordered to take us back to the research facility. Kila clutches the DVD box I gave him, eyes flickering over the colorful cover with childlike fascination. I’m too exhausted to tell him that love is a little more complicated that watching one cartoon movie.

“Hey, Kila.”

He looks up and tucks the DVD inside the Kar’Kali jacket he wears, a tactical zip-up with many pockets and an attached snood that pools around his neck. “Yes?”

“You’ve said this phrase a couple times, while we were…” I am tempted to say ‘making love’ but I know it would only confuse him further based on our recent conversation. “While we fucked? It didn’t translate for me. Kava… Kavin…?”

He grins and repeats the words: “Ka’Vinna ma oti?” I still get no readout from my translator chip.

“Eh, this will be hard,” he says, scratching his head. “Do you ever burn your dead?”

I squint at him. “Like, cremation?” Does my naked body really bring burning corpses to mind?

“Yes. When a warrior dies and a funeral can be held, the body is burned on the Ka’Vinna. What do you call this in your language? The mound on which the dead is burnt?”

“A funeral pyre? Where the hell are you going with this?”

He snickers. “A funeral pyre, then. I said, ‘Carry me to the funeral pyre.’ This is a common phrase suggesting your end is near. It can be used as a joke. Or in my case, I used it as an expression of disbelief. An expression that meant the sight of you would kill me so I must be carried to the funeral pyre.”

I sniff. “I guess that’s not so bad. I didn’t know your people had many jokes.”

He elbows me gently. “The Kar’Kali way is about separating oneself from emotion to enable efficiency and strength. It is not about destroying all happiness, as I think you might believe.”

Happiness without understanding love? That just seems delusional to me, but I say nothing. I don’t think either of us have the strength to start up again with the same conversation from last night. I watch out the window for the rest of the ride, zoning out until we finally pull through the outer gates of the facility. The driver-less car is mapped to stop at the bus wait station. As we hop out, I notice the employee parking lot is surprisingly full for a Sunday. In theory, the only cars there should belong to security staff, Jen, and Hassan.

“What’s going on?” I murmur.

A crowd is gathered outside the inner gates, and I notice many of the same faces and signs that assemble daily from the protest group. But there are others, too—all clogged around a central hubbub. As we approach, I realize there is a reporter with a news van and cameramen setting up to film with the facility as their backdrop. Kila hovers behind me, and I can feel him tense up.

“We should just push past and get inside,” I whisper to him.

He nods. But before we can get very far, Vic rears his ugly head by bobbing in front of me.

“Ella!” he greets me as if we are old friends and claps a hand on my shoulder. I glance over to gauge Kila’s reaction. His nostrils have flared but he does nothing. “Did you come back to find out all the gory details? Or is your work somehow related to all this? I kinda thought you were more of a desk jockey?”

“What are you talking about?” I demand. I watch as Vic’s eyes finally slide over to take in Kila, who stands at my back like a bodyguard.

“Breaking news,” he says, eyes shining with excitement. “An entire planet’s population in Sector 5 was wiped out by some kind of biological warfare. The kicker is, reportedly, that the tech was designed here using Alliance funding and then sold by a defector— or well, stolen— we just don’t know… to the Azza.”

“What?” I rasp and then whip around. Kila’s eyes have gone absolutely black and he seems to reel from the influx of information.

“Kila!” I call to him. “Kila, shhh, calm down… It’s okay. Let’s go inside and find out what’s going on—”

“Woah, Ella,” Vic interrupts and pulls me away from Kila. “I wasn’t gonna say anything, since you work here and all, and I figured this guy worked with you, but he looks a little dangerous and I’m not sure you should be—”

“N-no! You don’t really understand, Vic,” I say, tugging my arm from his grasp. He blocks me with his body. I’m guessing he means to protect me from Kila, but well, that’s just stupid in every sense of the word.

“Unhand my female,” Kila snaps.

“Your female?” Vic puffs out his chest. He thrusts out his arms to chivalrously trap me behind his back. “Not cool, man. If you want at Ella, you gotta go through me first.”

I weasel out of his arms and rush to Kila’s side. Vic looks pretty flabbergasted by this turn of events. The crowd that was gathered has now turned around to watch us instead of the reporters. I am expecting the worst, bracing for him to hulk out and beat Vic to a pulp. For far too long, his black eyes glimmer menacingly, right on the edge of madness. Then, just as I’m wincing, he throws back his head and laughs. The sound of it is all wrong and hollow.

“Pathetic human male,” he seethes out the words like a demon. “The fact that you think to stand between me and my Ella as if I would harm her is comical. If you so much as think to touch her again without permission I will snap your neck before you have the sense to regret it. As for the news that you so blithely reported to us… If it is true…The next time you stop to treat the extermination of a species as an entertaining turn of events, consider this— by the time the Azza turn to you and your planet, ready to crush you like an insect, they will have mastered the act of destruction while you slept safe in your bed and made posters. Then, you will only have yourself to blame for the ease with which they brutally end you.”

Kila takes the frozen hand I had placed on his forearm and begins a furious march across the remaining length of the lot. I do my best to keep up with him, with only one chance to look back and take in the stunned expression on Vic’s face and the gaping mouths of the people in the crowd.

***

KILA

Within the past twelve Earth hours, I have traveled from the lightest moment to the darkest. To think that when the sun was down, I was deep inside Ella, in bliss and unfettered by my guilt and anger. Now as the sun is high in the sky, I am paralyzed by rage, receiving a grave briefing on how my home has been ravaged by death.

When Jen ushered Ella away from me, her wide blue eyes were watching me with undisguised terror.

It is only to be expected. I knew this was bound to happen. My outburst in the lot outside the gate was the perfect example of how dangerous I am in this emotional state. I managed to control my desire to swat that presumptuous human, the one who so gleefully told us the news of my species’ fate. I had been seeing blood behind my eyes at the realization that he might be speaking the truth… and then he dared to touch her and push her, ignoring her words of protest.

I could have killed him. And Ella saw the truth in my eyes. I was one thread of self-control from stabbing my fingers into his tender eyeballs until he screamed for mercy.

I sit in a conference room in the basement of the research facility with my crew and an Alliance investigation team. They arrived with a Starvax droid transmission bearing the findings of a Sector 5 probe and a dossier on the defector that designed a bio-weapon powerful enough to eradicate my species. A defector that had been in this very facility only months prior to our arrival on Earth.

“How is that we were not made aware of this?” Pakka demands.