Chapter 25 (Static)

  The voices floated around me like a garbled mess. My head, full of cement, was a challenge to lift. I pushed against the firm bedroll I was lying on and my body instantly screamed in protest. I slumped back, lips quivering as a small whimper slipped out.

  “She’s awake?”

  “She jhust treyed tuh gheht uhp.”

  My weakness made me frantic. I reached for my core with dreadful anticipation and realized that I couldn’t reach it. Not again. I’d been captured again. They’d already collared me with an inhibitor, getting ready to sell me back into slavery.

  The canvas walls seemed to lean in, too close, too low. The air went thick and hot, like I was breathing through a wet blanket. My vision tunneled, the corners going dark as if someone was slowly closing a box around me. The voices stretched and warped into echoes, just like in Gratam’s stone cell—sound bouncing off walls I couldn’t see, nowhere to run. My heart pounded against my ribs hard enough to hurt. My fingers twitched against the blanket, desperate for something to grab, some door handle to shove open, like a kid trapped in a closet who already knows no one is coming if they scream.

  I could feel the inhibitor draining me, fixed around my arm rather than my neck. I groped for the device, groaning and whimpering with each movement. At last my fingers found the leather strap. I ripped at it, pain flaring as it refused to give. I gritted my teeth, pulled again.

  Snap.

  The strap broke, and I flung the device across the tent.

  “Waiht, no, zhat’s zhere tuh help y’ou—”

  My energy rushed back into me like a warm flood. My lungs opened; the crushing weight on my chest lifted in an instant, leaving only a shuddering aftershock of relief. My core hummed faintly, then stronger, and my body began to knit itself back together from the strain it had been under.

  In that relief, I realized my eyes had closed. When I opened them again, the light had changed. It was dark now, and the soft crackle of a fire filtered through the canvas along with voices—still distorted, but clearer than before.

  “They destroyed ze sqannerrh, zhey destroyed ze barriere, ahn zhey ahlmosst keeled uhs. In qwhat wohrld ihs stahing ah smahrt choyce?”

  “We arrh zhis qlohse tuh ob-tayneeng ze mosst valyuahble mahterials in ze wohrld. Zhis ihs qwhat we qahme khere fohrrh!”

  Evidently, I’d woken up to a pretty heated argument.

  I pushed myself up on the bedroll. My head throbbed with a dull, insistent ache, and my muscles still held a deep soreness, but it was nothing like the leaden, crushed feeling from before. Instinctively, I closed my eyes and sank inward, reaching for my cores.

  I gasped.

  My large core had finally deepened into a strong, vivid orange, the color rich and steady. My smallest core—my first—had crossed cleanly into a bright, true yellow. No more muddy yellow?orange edge, no trace of orange clinging to it—just pure, brilliant yellow that almost seemed to glow from within. The middle core shimmered beside it, also yellow, but softer—less vibrant, like a sun behind thin cloud. It, too, had shaken off its orange influence but hadn’t yet started to lean toward that sharp yellow?green that would mark the next stage. The big one still burned as a clear, intense orange, its vibrancy sharpening, like it was gathering itself for its own shift toward yellow.

  It shouldn’t have been possible, not with the way I’d been living.

  The yellow was so beautiful.

  I smiled without meaning to, and a tear slid down my cheek, hot with pride. Then guilt flickered underneath it. Had these accomplishments been mine, or stolen? I’d only gotten here after spending—who knew how long—out of my mind. How long had I been lost? The thought of that lost time, of the things I’d done while the beast was steering, wrapped cold fingers around my throat and squeezed. More tears followed, silent and shaking.

  “What about ze girl?”

  I wiped my eyes, surprised to feel fabric under my fingers. I had clothes. A simple tunic, patched together from different pieces of material like someone had made it just for me. Despite everything, curiosity pricked at me. They were still arguing, and apparently I was part of the problem.

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  “Qwhat about heur?” an older man’s voice groaned, heavy with annoyance.

  “Qwhat arrh y’ou going tuh do iff zhomething happens tuh heur while we’re ouht here?” The strong female voice cut through the night, thick with indignation. Silence fell hard enough that I could hear the fire outside spit and pop again.

  “Ze girl doehs… qomhplicate things,” the man said at last. “Boht y’ou khave tuh undeurstand zhat zhis was ze mission, noht ze girl.” He sighed, long and exhausted, like he was arguing with himself as much as with her. “Iff we dohnt qhomplete zhis, Ai’m afrahid Ai’ll neveur gheht ze qhance tuh qahme back ouht here ah?gain…”

  “Docteur, y’ou’re ze lead researcheur in ahll ov Dijik. Iff y’ou want ano?zheurh expeh?dition, zhey’ll gheev eet tuh y’ou,” a younger male voice cut in, his own frustration bleeding through.

  “It’s, ahs y’ou’ve said, ghetting approval ihs noht ze issue…”

  Silence settled again, softer this time, broken only when another, older female voice spoke up.

  “Qwhat was y’our proghnosis, Docteur?”

  “Six monzhs… ahn afteurh neqhst week, Ai’ll beh in mai fourth.”

  Like a log splitting in a fire, a sharp crack of emotion snapped through the camp. I flinched.

  “How unbelievably selfish ov y’ou.” The strong?voiced woman again, each word striking with its own force. “Once ah?gain ehverything ihs ahll about ze famous Docteur Ruslan!”

  “WUYING!” A third man’s voice boomed, deep and startled, thick with feeling.

  “No, Milos… she’s rhight…” the old man—Ruslan—said quickly, as if trying to steady the explosion he’d just caused. “Ai… needed zhat.”

  “Y’ou khave three people here who qhare deeply about y’ou, ahn suppohrt y’ou despite ahll ov y’our insufferable traits,” Wuying shot back. “Ahn now y’ou khave ah lihttle girl who’s been stuhck ouht here for God qnows how long. Zhis ihs no lohnger jhust about y’ou. It’s mai jhob tuh prohtehct y’ou ahll ahn gheht y’ou back tuh Mahalo. Arrh y’ou going tuh lehyt meh do mai jhob or noht, Docteur?”

  “Plehse…” Ruslan’s voice cracked, roughened by something more than age. “Jhusst ghive meh tomor?rowh tuh search, ahn iff we dohnt feend zhem, we leahve.”

  The woman groaned, the sound low and torn, making it obvious how hard the choice was for her. “Y’ou khave one day,” she said at last. “Ahn afteurh zhat, Ai sweahr tuh ze spirrits we arrh leahveeng, weeth or weethout y’ou.”

  The conversation thinned after that, voices dropping as people drifted away to sulk or cool off. One set of footsteps turned toward my tent instead of away. The flap rustled open, and someone stepped inside.

  “Oh, y’ou’re ah?wake?” The voice was gentle, but it quivered at the edges, like it had been pushed hard recently and hadn’t quite recovered. I didn’t answer. I just watched her.

  She was… beautiful, in a worn way. Her silver hijab, once bright, was dust?stained and frayed at the edges from the Wildlands, but it was still carefully wrapped, the folds neat and deliberate. Her dress matched—silver with threads of blue and white worked through it, now dulled by dirt and travel, but mended wherever it had torn. Her brown skin carried faint lines of sun and worry, and her dark eyes were soft but steady as they took me in.

  “Qhow deed y’ou end uhp here, girl?” she asked.

  I studied her for a moment. She didn’t feel like a threat. Not like the men in Gratam had. But the situation was too strange, too fragile. I wasn’t about to spill my entire life to the first stranger in a pretty headscarf.

  “I… I don’t know?” My voice came out dry and scratchy, scraping my throat and sending me into a coughing fit. She moved quickly, grabbing a pitcher and pouring water into a clay cup, then helping guide it to my lips.

  “Oh, Ai’m sohrry. Do y’ou undeurstand meh?” she asked, slow and careful, putting little breaks between each word.

  I tilted my head, confused. “I can…” I wiped the water from my mouth, then froze as my fingers brushed my lips.

  I was speaking English.

  “I’m sorry,” I blurted. “I didn’t mean to…”

  “Qwhat lan?guahge ihs zhat?” she murmured, more to herself than to me.

  “I can understand you, but I can’t speak what you’re speaking…” I tried to explain. The words stacked up in my chest, then fell apart on my tongue. It was like all the pathways between thought and sound were scrambled.

  “Ai’m sohrry… Ai dohnt undeurstand… uh, one sehh?qond.” She rose from her kneeling position and slipped out of the tent.

  She was gone long enough that the fire outside sank a little and the night sounds grew louder. When the flap finally opened again, she wasn’t alone. The woman she brought with her had cooler?toned skin and long black hair pulled back from her face. Her dark eyes were narrower, her features sharper, and something about her cheekbones and the angle of her jaw tugged at memories of Yashir.

  “So, y’ou qnow qwhat lan?guahge she’s speahking?” the kind woman asked the newcomer before turning back to me. “Goh ahead, sweety.”

  She meant try something else. I took it as permission.

  They had no idea what my words meant—English was just noise here. That made it safe. For once, I could say exactly what I wanted and there would be no consequences beyond their confusion.

  “I come from another world,” I said in English, perfectly calm. “I got reborn, and when I was five years old I got sold into slavery, but later I was sold to my master and he abandoned me here in the wilderness, and for some reason I lost control of myself and I ended up waking up here surrounded by you people.”

  The two women just stared at me, blinking slowly.

  “Ai’ve neveur heard ahnything lique zhat before,” the strong?voiced woman said, baffled.

  A laugh bubbled up in my chest. I tried to smother it, but it slipped out anyway. I could understand both of them perfectly, and they couldn’t catch a single word of mine. Some childish, wicked little part of me found that absolutely hilarious.

  “Is she lahf?ing ah?t uhs?” the gentle woman asked, though she was already starting to smile.

  “Ai… Ai theenk she ihs,” the strong woman answered, a reluctant grin tugging at her mouth. “Can y’ou undeurstand uhs?”

  I couldn’t help it. I grinned back and nodded.

  “Qan y’ou speak Dijiki?” the gentle woman asked. Her gaze dropped to my cross?legged posture, and something like recognition sparked in her eyes.

  The other woman’s eyes lit up with a different kind of curiosity.

  “Arrh y’ou Yugenese?” she asked, the cadence of her words shifting—lighter, quicker, a different music to them.

  I tilted my head and smiled, then shook my head no.

  “Boht y’ou undehstand meh now?” she pressed.

  I nodded again. Of course I knew Yugenese after spending so much time speaking nothing else with Yashir.

  “It seems she qan undeurstand, boht she qahnt speak ahnything else rhight now,” the Yugen woman said slowly, clearly thinking it through as she spoke.

  I reached for something else, trying to shove my mouth into a different shape. “Kann y’ou undeurh?stahnd meh?” I asked, the sounds coming out heavier, harsher, like German fed through a grinder.

  “Oh, zhat’s Osmiran!” the gentle woman gasped, delighted to finally recognize something. I, on the other hand, felt only a spike of frustration. My own mother tongue—my second life’s first language—and it felt wrong in my own mouth. I focused harder on their words, trying to hear the differences, to mimic what they were doing, but everything sounded… normal. Like English. Like just language.

  I tried again, leaning the sounds in another direction, twisting consonants until they rasped against my teeth. “Doh y’uh underrh?stahnd nowh?” I asked tentatively.

  “How many lan?guahges doehs zhis girl qnow?” the dark?haired woman muttered, half to herself, making me giggle again.

  “You guys are funny!” I said, still in their Dijan, the words finally falling into a groove that felt almost natural.

  Both their faces lit up.

  “Oh, y’ou qahn speak Dijan!” the gentle woman exclaimed, and then all three of us were laughing.

  It was so refreshi

  ng to laugh again. It felt like it had been so long since I’d held these precious things—security, peace, joy—that I’d forgotten how light they were.