Stranger Skin ch 1: He Doesn’t Want It

“This is disgusting.” Xlack Ekymé held a shish-kebabbed pair of putrescent vegetables at arm’s length.

On the grass that ringed Vlavaran Base’s gardens, he sat with four people from his new hrausq. That meant team, he reminded himself. They were supposed to look out for one another. They were Adjuvants, Talented hybrids who defended the weak, a silent voice for those no one saw.

This was not the food of heroes.

He was the only one not eating it. Stevalok had already gobbled most of his two gourds before Xlack even pulled his out of the lunch kit, let alone unwrapped it to find a steaming, smelly duo of gooey blobs on a stick.

“More for me.” Stevalok swiped one of Xlack’s veggies and stuffed it in his own mouth.

Juice spattered his russet cheeks, or at least, that was how Xlack imagined the scene would look if he could see colors. He couldn’t, but he knew Stevalok’s skin was supposed to be a warm brown, not the smooth gray he saw.

Lanox’s cascades of platinum hair blew in the wind from her own frantic wave. “Don’t eat his food!”

“He doesn’t want it.” Stevalok reached for the second one, pointed teeth peeking from his grin.

Lanox blocked him.

“Ya should eat it, Ekymé. It’s going to be a long day, and it’ll only seem longer if ya are hungry,” Rifo admonished, red brows high over mud-green eyes as he gestured with his neatly nibbled meal.

Xlack had seen both colors many times in the memories his new teammates had shared with him, but these bright shades were harder for him to render in his mind’s eye. He tried, though, because he knew that was how the others saw Rifo, how Rifo saw himself, and Xlack wanted to fit in as best he could.

He tried to see Rifo’s jacket as jade, to add the appropriate crimson to his explosion of hair and the amalgam of blues to Entrycii’s bedhead. One of those blues was supposed to match the cerulean of Lanox’s crooked shirt. Dressed in yellow, Stevalok was arguably the most eye-catching.

But did Xlack have to learn colors and eat weird food?

“It has tendrils.”

Sticky incredulity coated his gray skin. All of him was in grayscale, as was typical for those of the planet Napix, a place to which he could never return. Just a few weeks ago, he had been considered elite on that world, an Aylata, a hybrid of Napix and Magni, mandated with protecting the Napix Empire.

But change had swept that empire, and Xlack had chosen to save Navaria Twi, who belonged here in Alliance territory. Her team had taken him in, and he was grateful, but they were also the offspring of chaos—loud, unconventional, and annoying.

“Yer Ier also has tendrils.” Rifo’s squinty gaze flicked to the sheathed weapon on Xlack’s belt. At the moment, it looked like a flat square.

“I wouldn’t eat my Ier either,” Xlack grumbled. “And at least my Ier doesn’t stink.”

“Stink like what?” The chrome splotches traipsing diagonally across Entrycii’s tan skin glistened as he narrowed his eyes, a sure sign he was up to something.

Gaze on his unwanted veggie, Xlack ignored it. “Stink like armpit.”

Stevalok laughed. “You must have some nicely scented pits if they smell like globina.”

Revulsion scrunched Xlack’s face. “See, globina doesn’t even sound appetizing.”

“Do your pits really smell like globina?” Nose twitching, Entrycii inclined closer.

Xlack leaned away, hands creating a barrier. “I thought Knalcals had personal space issues.”

From his opposite side, Stevalok also leaned in.

“Hey! Rifo, help!”

“They’re only trying to get a reaction out of ya.” The image of serenity, Rifo sipped his drink.

“It’s working,” Xlack huffed and scrambled to his feet. He dropped the unwanted shish-kebab, and Stevalok caught it.

“Ooh! A reward.”

The odorous blob was gone in one bite.

Lanox’s slit nostrils flared. “Ya are such a gkapu.”

Xlack pictured Stevalok’s face on the viscous, spherical creature. It tucked in its small skull and stubby legs and rolled across a flower-filled field in pursuit of Entrycii. Just before it smashed him, Xlack swept in to save the day with an oversized grill.

Magni gkapu might have been a disastrous introduction to the Knalcal ecosystem, but when cooked in traditional Napix spices, they were delicious.

Xlack’s mouth watered. “I’m going to walk around some.”

With a post-lunch lazy sigh, Rifo stood. “I’ll go with ya.”

“I don’t need a babysitter.”

Rifo shrugged. “Neither do I, but that’s what it means to be an amaraq.”

Annoyance settled over Xlack like a blanket of woven thorns. Their hrausq was made up of smaller two-person teams referred to as dyads. One’s assigned partner was labeled an amaraq. Xlack was supposed to fill the vacancy created when Rifo’s amaraq had died.

Wherever one amaraq was, there the other was supposed to be, so went the mantra, but Rifo didn’t trust Xlack, and Xlack suspected Rifo only stuck so close because he wanted to make sure the former Aylata didn’t blow them all up.

“If I said I headed for the bathroom now, you wouldn’t follow me, would you?”

“No, I’d tell ya I’ll be within whispering distance, but try not to need me.” Rifo scratched the back of his spiky head as he plopped, and the fish-shaped pendant on his bracelet caught the light. An Adjuvant emblem. It said he belonged here.

Xlack didn’t have one.

“Lazy lumps of dirt!” Stevalok’s mentor hollered, purpose in her long, quick strides toward the group. No, Xlack did not remember her name. It was enough just to keep straight all nine members of his new hrausq family, let alone the names of their teachers.

“Lazy lumps of dirt have no ears with which to hear you, Master Kukani!” Stevalok shouted back.

“They do when they’re you, tiny clod.” Kukani stopped behind her student and leaned over him to meet his gaze upside-down. Her sans sclera, overlarge eyes held a zeal that reminded Xlack of Fire Aylata. Stevalok’s grin only grew as she chided, “If you’re done eating, the soil isn’t going to till itself.”

No, mechetts did that. Mechanical drones performed the hard labor involved in farming back home, as far as Xlack knew, but here all Adjuvants were expected to take part in food cultivation. It helped them ‘connect with the land’ since they were all at least part foreigner. If they expected the planet to support them, they had to give it at least a little in return.

Stevalok remained motionless, grin both defiant and expectant.

“Well?” Kukani pressed.

“Master, I’m never done eating. Lanox thinks I’m a gkapu, and I think she might be right.”

“Then I’ll put a yoke on you and have you pull a plow. Get up.” Her long fingers wrapped under Stevalok’s arms and lifted him as if he were weightless. Kukani was one of the largest people Xlack had ever seen.

Stevalok easily slipped out of her grasp, flipped into a somersault, and returned to a sitting position a few body lengths away, grin even wider than before.

Rifo pulled Xlack’s attention from their game. “We’d better get going if we want to be back in time for yer meeting with the leaders.”

“Are all five leaders really coming to see him?” Lanox asked. “I mean, Vlavaran is a minor base. I thought they would call him to Mumir.”

Rifo shook his head. “They want to see Twi, too, and she can’t travel right now.”

Insects crawled through Xlack’s gut, chewing away at his insides. It had been a month since he had turned his back on his own and brought Twi here.

“Reckless energy never emerges gracefully and dies easily,” she had told him, sitting on death’s doorstep.

What he had done was reckless, but he wouldn’t let himself regret it. She lived because of it. She would recover, and he would do everything he could to help her, even meet with Adjuvant leaders.

“We’ll be there at your interview,” Stevalok called as Kukani carried him away, “to support you and all.”

“He really means we’ll be there to get out of chores.” With a mischievous grin, Entrycii slinked after his amaraq.

Head wagging, Lanox crossed her arms. “Those two are so immature. Well, come find me after yer interview. I’ll be in the med-center with Twi.”

With a perky finger wave, she rushed off across the field. Wishing he headed in the same direction, Xlack watched her until she was out of sight.

***

“People have a hard time seeing potential,” Rifo lectured as he and Xlack walked through the endless halls of Vlavaran Base.

Some of the passages had been left in their natural cave-like vestige. Some were tiled in bronze and white. This was one of the smallest bases, but Xlack didn’t quite believe it. How did they keep everything hidden if it was so large? Why hide anyway? Aylata didn’t hide. They were respected.

“If ya want the leaders to see ya as an Adjuvant, ya need to stop walking, talking, and dressing like an Aylata.”

“How exactly do I ‘walk like an Aylata’?”

“Yer shoulders are too stiff, like ya forgot to take the hanger out of yer jacket. Try slouching a little and talking like me.”

Xlack adopted a halting lilt. “My. Teachers. Would. Have a. Fit if. I talked. Like ya.”

“Well, that didn’t sound natural at all. I hope old man Pongoi has come up with a good outfit for ya.”

Memories of the tailor taking his measurements last week formed weights around Xlack’s ankles. “Tell me again why I can’t just choose my own outfit.”

“Did ya choose that outfit?”

“Yes, actually.” A long time ago, but he still liked it. It was as familiar as his own skin, and he wouldn’t trade away the convenience of Adapt material. It was not alive, but it almost felt like it was.

Rifo tossed him a dubious look. “Why did ya choose something so…complicated? I mean, seriously, how long does it take ya to even put on yer shoes?”

“Less time than it takes you to wake up.”

Only five straps secured each of Xlack’s boots, but the way they crisscrossed, he admitted it did look like more. His jacket followed a similar pattern, straps woven around his right side, but he could prepare for the day three times over in the time it took Rifo to emerge from his half-dream world.

If spoken to while in such a state, Rifo might respond, usually incoherently, and if anyone happened too near, they might receive a punch and the excuse, “There was a gkapu on yer face!”

“And what’s with the loose strings hanging from yer sleeves?”

Xlack grimaced. “Have you ever tried to tie something on your own wrists?”

“Point taken, but don’t they get in the way? Or do ya use them to tie up the bad guys ya catch?”

Xlack snapped his arm, and the laces in discussion whipped the back of the critic’s neck.

Rifo’s fingers consoled his stinging skin. “Ow! That seems petty.”

“I’m getting a new outfit today anyway. Stop picking on my old one.” He tried to say it with a smile but felt the corners of his lips tremble and fall as Rifo stepped up to a nondescript door and pressed the chime on the frame.

As the tailor’s voice bid them inside, Xlack’s heart tried to flee without him. The room smelled of fabric, glue, and dye.

“I think I’ll put him in black and green,” Pongoi had said as he measured.

Rifo had complained that those were his own colors, and Xlack had been grateful for the objection. He wasn’t comfortable wearing colors, but he couldn’t explain why. He knew why, but he didn’t think it was a reason with which Rifo would agree. It showed he still thought like an Aylata, and the whole point of this wardrobe change was to prove the opposite.

But he was an Aylata.

This felt like trying to pretend to be something else. Someone else.

Pongoi led him to a small, screened off space with a garment bag hanging from a hook. “That look on yer face says ya think I’ll give ya Lanox’s hand-me-downs.”

Xlack tried to laugh along, but that possibility hadn’t occurred to him, and now it was a stubborn doubt protruding from the back of his mind like a deadly arrow.

Pongoi left him alone behind the screen, and Xlack slowly opened the bag. A bud of relief blossomed when the fabric appeared in grayscale.

Of course it does. I wouldn’t be able to see if it was colored or not.

If I don’t know, does it matter?

He pulled off his shirt, skin prickling in the conditioned air, and slipped the new one over his head. It smelled of chemicals with no traces of home.

It fit exactly like his old one, black and snug with sleeves hooking over his thumbs, but its high collar lacked the insignia of his home territory. So did the shirt lying crumpled at his feet—the pin was safely hidden back in the hrausq room—but this one lacked the marks of ever having worn that proud symbol of where he belonged.

Where he had belonged.

He paused as he secured his belt. Again, these pants fit much the same as his old ones, but the outer seam of the right thigh was monochrome and blank, devoid of clan pattern.

Ekymé the Great had picked up the ruins of the infant Napix Empire and built something powerful out of it. The impression of stacked squares Xlack had always worn represented that, said he was part of that line. He had that greatness in him.

His leg felt bare without it, a guilty reminder he had betrayed his heritage and his family.

He threw the rest on quickly and stepped out from behind the screen.

Rifo’s disappointed gaze slid to Pongoi. “He still looks like an Aylata. It’s black and gray.”

Relief swelled into a whole garden, and Xlack just wanted to lie in the middle of it.

“Not entirely.”

Paradise shriveled. Xlack couldn’t move, a statue slowly crumbling away.

Pongoi’s fingers flicked toward the reflective wall beside them. “Look in the mirror and tell me what ya think.”

Languid as the sinking sun, Xlack swiveled.

“There is no black in this outfit,” the tailor explained. “It is the darkest shade of blue, same as Twi’s hair.”

“Which looks black ninety-nine percent of the time unless the light hits it just right,” Rifo grumbled.

Xlack’s gaze ran along his double. He couldn’t tell the pants were blue, and apparently neither could Rifo.

It’s fine. It’ll be fine.

The mirror didn’t show the blankness of his pant leg. The light gray jacket’s lower hem hovered even with his knees, split up the front and flared to allow plenty of room for movement.

“His hair and even his skin are gray,” Pongoi observed. “Any color I add has to be subtle or risk overwhelming him.”

Xlack saw the double-meaning of ‘overwhelm,’ in that, whether Pongoi meant it or not. If they told him his pants were the color of a ruby or a sunset, he wasn’t sure he wouldn’t tear them off and run through the halls half-naked.

That would be a great impression to greet the leaders with.

Rifo shook his head. “I see the labyrinthine boots are the same.”

“They were my inspiration.” Pongoi swept a showcasing gesture along Xlack’s arm. “Note their influence in the crisscrosses on the jacket’s sleeves.”

Rifo chuckled. “At least he’ll still be prepared if he needs to tie someone up.”

Xlack’s gaze traced the wide straps. “You volunteering to be my first victim?”

Pongoi cleared his throat and rocked on his heels. “I haven’t heard yer verdict.”

Xlack’s reflection was a stranger, but wasn’t that what he wanted? Who was he becoming? Who was he supposed to become?

“I like it.” Truth. And also a lie.

Continued in Chapter 2: Not a Puppet

Thank you for reading!