Stranger Skin ch 2: Not a Puppet

It seemed like of lie of omission for the door to be so plain—average size, no ornamentation, not even a label touting what room it shrouded. Even without a sign, Xlack knew some of what awaited him through this doorway: He would stand before the Adjuvant leaders, and they would decide his future.

“Just be yerself,” Rifo admonished, “because if that’s not good enough, well, then ya shouldn’t be here anyway, right?”

“Thanks.” The word escaped as an anxious sigh followed by a breath for courage as Xlack slid the door aside and stepped into the room. Rifo trailed him, Stevalok and Entrycii shadowing a few paces behind. The latter pair placed themselves on either side of the frame and sat, attentive and respectful. Xlack had never seen them so genuinely serious.

I’ve only known them a month.

Twi and Rifo had coached him in the basics of Adjuvant hierarchy and culture, as had Entrycii and Stevalok, though he found most of what these latter two said to be purposefully inaccurate. He wished Twi were here standing with him, but after that one outing where she found him by the ravine, Dr. Qcoice confined her to the med-center. The leaders would speak with her separately.

As he had been told, there were five of them. They sat behind the only furniture, a raised, curved desk that lined the back wall. It was brushed metal like the rest of the room.

Worry and suspicion wafted from a Knalcal woman nearly invisible in the far corner, draped in layers of cloaks and completely hidden. In the opposite corner, he recognized Qcoice’s robust frame in her doctor’s scrubs, overlarge, vertical-slit eyes focused on him.

Next to her sat Mystis, entirely too amused by all this. The hood of her voluminous cloak was pushed back, revealing the bright scarf that held her unruly, snow-colored hair, no shadow obscuring her dark skin lined by time or the gleam in her stippled irises.

Playing Mystis’ opposite in nearly every way, a middle-aged Tala man who resembled Rifo filled the seat closest to the hidden woman. In the center posed another Tala, the oldest besides Mystis. This one, Myr, exuded calm, and Xlack focused on him, hoping that tranquility would be contagious.

Silent, Myr stared back.

“Do you want to be an Adjuvant?” Qcoice began.

Before Xlack could answer, Mystis chuckled. “That is obvious, isn’t it?”

“Even so, we have to hear him say it,” her opposite growled.

“Please, Terkis,” Mystis scoffed, “his answers will be much more entertaining if I ask the questions.”

Rifo winced, and Xlack instantly knew an interrogation by Mystis was something to be avoided. Yet, what could he say to stop it?

“I want to be an Adjuvant,” he chirped. The two Tala among the leaders would spot the duplicity that escaped with the declaration. He did want to be an Adjuvant, and yet he didn’t.

Too late to take it back now.

His eyes flitted along the row, this time skipping over the center man. That one’s charcoal gaze was too heavy, like rain trying to soak him.

They all waited for Myr to speak, and insects joined the unseen deluge on Xlack’s skin, trying to bore between his cells. Rifo sent him a sideways, inquisitive glance, and Xlack realized his own breaths were a bit harder than necessary.

It’s because of Myr’s stare.

All of it was, the feeling that he was drowning, a city under siege.

He met the old man’s gaze and pushed back. The attack didn’t lessen, but a grin appeared on the leader’s face, and finally, he spoke.

“We will each ask him a question. Qcoice, yers has already been answered. Terkis?”

“What do ya hope to gain from this?” The resentment burning that question nearly bowled Xlack over.

He shot back, “Life.”

“Ya mean to kill us, then?”

Annoying double meanings.

“No! I mean to make a life here for myself, not to take lives. I don’t have anywhere else to go.”

“Not true,” Terkis huffed.

“But I want to be here. I want to be useful.”

Glee shined in Mystis’ eyes, and Xlack turned back to Myr. His stare had grown even heavier, and Xlack pushed against it again, gaze falling into a crooked glare, a facial tick his uncle had often advised him to lose.

He wasn’t here to impress his uncle, to be a proper Mind Aylata pouring fear into the hearts of any who dared oppose him. Maybe it was alright if one eye narrowed further than the other.

“Stella,” Myr cued.

The hidden woman’s voice was like syrup: thick, smooth, and too sweet. “If so ordered, would you kill Rifo?”

Rifo frowned but remained soundless, a speck of curiosity in the look he trained on his prospective amaraq.

Xlack forced himself not to gape at her. “Who…who are we saying gave this hypothetical order?”

“That’s irrelevant.”

“It’s completely relevant!”

One of her layers fluttered. Did she wave a hand somewhere in there? “Twi, then.”

“Twi what? Twi gave me the order, or some nobody ordered I kill her?”

“Either.” Another possible hand wave. Or perhaps someone else was in there with her.

A muscle in Xlack’s jaw twitched, and he tried to loosen it, to keep his face neutral. “Twi would have a reason, an irrefutable one.”

“Your answer is yes, then. If Twi ordered you to kill Rifo, you would do it?”

Xlack clenched his fists. “I trust Twi.”

Stella raised her head, and though the shadow of her cowl still concealed her face, her speckled eyes caught the light, resembling a pair of distant galaxies. “Do you trust me?”

No, but what answer did she want? He wandered her eerie gaze. She did not have Mind Talents, but still her eyes promised power.

“He doesn’t know ya, Master.” Rifo stepped forward. “So, no, he doesn’t trust ya yet.”

Mystis laughed. “Dear Stella, this is how you ask a question like that.” She tossed Xlack the sleeping handle of a laser knife. “That kanaber comes with a choice: Kill Rifo or kill yourself.”

“You mean hypothetically, right?”

“No, little Aylata. I want to test your real loyalties, not your hypothetical ones.”

Xlack remembered the week his Protector mentor had made him attend common school and a lecture he had heard there about job interview skills. The teacher had emphasized to nervous students that no matter how badly it went, a job interview wasn’t likely to kill you.

That teacher had never met Mystis.

A question slipped into his mind, silent to any but him. ‘Are ya going to outright reject her order?’

Xlack turned slightly toward Rifo, noting he had retreated a few paces. Entrycii and Stevalok slid between them.

‘I think blatant defiance is the opposite of the answer she’s looking for.’

A half-grin tugged on Rifo’s lips. ‘Do ya trust me?’

‘I’m trying to.’

‘Then stab yerself.’

Xlack sent back incredulity.

‘If ya trust me, then do it. It’s not only an answer from ya she wants.’

Xlack’s eyes slid to the weapon in his hand as it flipped around, blade end nearest his pinky. ‘You’d better have some plan.’

The kanaber snapped on. The blade’s glow flashed ominously off the buckles on Xlack’s new sleeves as it raced toward him.

It was yanked away, stolen by Entrycii’s Kinetics. Rifo and Stevalok leapt on Xlack, pinning him, arms wrenched behind his back.

Eyes locked on Mystis, Rifo called, “Good enough, Master?”

“Rifo, you ruined my fun,” she pouted, but a smile belied the rebuke in her tone.

“Then, Master Myr, I believe it is yer turn.”

As Entrycii and Stevalok returned to their stations by the door, Xlack stood slowly, surreptitiously testing his right shoulder. Stevalok had wrenched it harder than necessary.

Myr’s grin resembled that of an elitbeast just before it pounced. “My question is more of a test.”

After Mystis’ ‘question,’ that was the last thing Xlack wanted to hear. “It doesn’t involve weapons or anybody diving onto me, does it?”

“From a certain point of view.”

Xlack scowled, sinking into a ready stance.

“I want to see how ya communicate, how ya explain yerself and what ya hope to be, even when the answer is far from simple. Are ya a civilized asset or an idiotic buffoon? The test is this: Explain ’netic Talents.”

Xlack blinked and straightened. That didn’t seem so hard. His studies had been thorough concerning the sciences behind his Talents.

“How specific do you want me to be? How much should I assume you know?”

“Assume we know athra.”

What was athra? A legend? A science?

If I ask that, he really will assume I’m an idiotic buffoon.

Xlack nodded, bluffing comprehension as his mind raced to find where to start.

‘Athra is the opposite of everything,’ Rifo supplied.

So, nothing, then.

In most Napix languages, ‘nothing’ was absolute, hence the proverb, “Nothing is nothing except the concept of nothing.” Even in the deepest corners of the universe, there was still a speck of light or a drop of energy.

Xlack found his starting point.

He grinned. “Let’s presume you still understand basic words and ideas. What is space?”

“Where the stars hang out.”

Xlack threw Rifo a chiding look. “The opposite of mass. Space reacts to mass. This reaction is what holds atoms together, what tethers moons to their planets, planets to their stars, and so on. We call this reaction gravity.

“Think of space like a stretchy fabric.” He pulled an emergency-shelter pack from his pocket and opened it, releasing a length of cloth nearly his own height. It hovered at his Kinetic command. “Place something on that fabric, and it dips.” His closed Ier dropped onto the sheet to reinforce the point.

Seeing where he headed, Rifo tossed him a couple combusters, chrome spheres of varied weight.

Demonstrating with these props, Xlack continued, “If you roll other objects past the first, their trajectory is altered by the heavier item. How much their trajectory is affected depends upon their relative mass and velocity. The heavier the original object, the deeper the dip, and the greater the effect on other objects.”

To Entrycii, Stevalok whispered, “So, the more massive you are, the more attractive you’ll be.”

Entrycii guffawed. “But you’ll attract the slowest ones first.”

Xlack ignored them. “For the most part, you cannot see your influence because you’re so close to a massive planet whose gravity is much greater than yours. You’re insignificant. But we know an object’s attraction can overcome that difference. Magnets, for instance.

“Magnets can also repel, like creating a bump in the space-fabric.” He pushed up on the sunken Ier, and the combusters rolled away from it. “Kinetic Talents are the ability to adapt your influence. Sometimes you pull. Sometimes you push, and with practice, you can control it consciously.”

Stevalok faked a yawn. “Anyone else bored yet?”

Nails curled into his palms, Xlack stepped back toward him, tongue held, but barely. Maybe Stevalok would find it less boring if he were part of the presentation.

Behind him, his hand unfurled, arm extending. Though Stevalok’s attire was made of stubborn Adapt, he relied on Entrycii’s influence for some of his acrobatic feats, so highly malleable threads were woven in. These heeded Xlack’s call despite Stevalok’s scrambled attempt to stay put.

“Hey! Let me go!”

The representation of space-fabric draped over him, and Xlack pretended not to hear his muffled rant.

“Those with Kinetic Talents can also feel this space-fabric, like seeing ripples in a pond, or”—he flicked the struggling Stevalok, and a cloud of black dust wafted to the floor—“like being caught in a net.”

A web remained, enmeshing Stevalok’s limbs. Attached to an invisible frame, they didn’t allow him much movement, and the more he fought, the more tangled they became, pulling his arms higher and further apart.

“I’m not a puppet. Get these strings off me!” A few threads coalesced over Stevalok’s mouth and wove a gag. “Rifo, help!”

“No, I think I want to see where he’s going with this.”

Xlack plucked one of the cords, and it hummed, varying in pitch as Stevalok thrashed. “Every move you make affects the web, and any movement made by another will tug on you. Try to push something too big, and, if your shove is strong enough, you will move instead.”

“Nice,” Entrycii praised, plodding closer, “but we’re not all tied up like Stevalok.” He strummed the strings, and one by one, they snapped and slithered free to dance around him like bubbles in a boiling pot. “My influence could be stronger than yours, even if I’m not bigger than you. Care to explain how it is we ‘move’ exactly?”

Xlack stole back influence over some of the threads and re-coiled them around Stevalok. “What does life require?”

“That’s an open-ended question,” Rifo mumbled, but a rare gust of seriousness swirled around Entrycii.

“Primarily? Energy.”

More strings wriggled free of his amaraq, seemingly cut by a sharp gaze.

Xlack nodded and released his hold on the stolen threads. “This energy gives your influence a pulse unique to you but categorically identifying, like DNA. No two individuals have the same code, yet one’s species can easily be discerned by it. We adjust this pulse—or life-signature—in our cells to affect stable objects in our vicinity, things without a life of their own.”

Challenge prowled in Entrycii’s stare. “You make it sound easy.”

“It’s not. It takes incredible skill, dexterity, and practice to control multiple cells in a precise way. That’s why we most often command with our hands. Our cores are denser, potentially stronger, but fingers have greater finesse.” He released Stevalok and swiped at some of Entrycii’s wafting strings. They wove around his fingers, forming a net that spelled out his last word.

Dropping to his hands and knees, Stevalok spit out the remnants of his gag. “You mean working a delicate task with your core cells would feel like trying to paint with a brush shoved into your navel?”

Xlack paused, gaze sliding over Mystis, Qcoice, and the other woman. His mother would have reprimanded him for mentioning navels within the hearing of ladies, but none of them seemed bothered.

“Yes, Stevalok. That does sound like it would be difficult.” He turned back to the leaders. “Was that explanation good enough?”

There was more he could say. The topic was familiar, something he had trained in and for and enjoyed. Myr, at least, smiled, and the persistent push on Xlack’s mind had vanished.

Was it too much to hope that this had gone well?

Continued in Chapter 3: Priceless and Breakable

Thank you for reading!