Karr’s chest ached as he stared down at them, alive and well. He wished he could reach out; grab ahold of them, and beg them not to fly to Xurax, where they would meet an early end. Beside them, curled up in a chair, sat a much younger Cade. His cheeks were still plump with youth, his eyes limned in silver as he looked up at his parents.
“Karr is dying,”their father said, placing his heavy hand on Cade’s shoulder. The sound of his voice, so familiar, so long unheard…
“Dad,” Karr breathed. He placed a hand over his mouth, holding his breath to ward away the tears. But they were already falling over the edge of the boat, rippling the memory like stones tossed into a pond.
“He’s dying.”his father said.“And if we wish to save him, then we must do something unforgiveable.”
“We have to make a choice, Cade,”their mother said. Her face, much younger then, looked heavy with grief.“You must understand that the burden is ours to carry. But we must ask you to carry it after we are gone.To keep a secret from Karr, because if he ever learns the truth, Cade… we fear it would destroy him.”
Karr didn’t remember this. Perhaps his unconscious mind had held onto the truth, while he’d been sleeping in that bed. He’d been sick when he was younger, had a heart defect that had always kept him from playing with the other kids when they landed on planetary docks. But he’d grown up. He’d grown stronger, taken medicine all his life until he was older… and then he’d grown out of needing that, too.
“This is where it changes, my heart,” Eona said. “This is where the truth is told.”
Again, the image morphed until it became a memory that belonged to Soahm. The same thing Karr had seen in his dreams, watching the Soreian prince get taken just beyond the mouth of the cave. There was Sonara, younger and terrified as she ran, leaving Soahm behind.
The memory flickered back to theStarfallagain.
It showed Karr on a table, unconscious as a man came aboard. A man that was tall, with dark eyes and a silver suit. Much younger than he looked now, but…
“Friedrich Geisinger,” Karr said now.
At the same time his father, in the memory, stood to greet the man.“Geisinger. You’ve agreed to help us.”
Geisinger nodded, looking down at Karr’s tiny, unconscious body. Wires connected to his chest, and a tube inside of his throat, breathing for him. He didn’t remember any of it. Unless… perhaps he did.
The flashes of pain, a bright room that came frequently in his dreams.
A man, standing over him with only his eyes showing, a mask over the rest of his face.
“It will not be easy, but the boy will live, assuming his body accepts the donor heart,”the memory-Geisinger said.“The Dohrsaran heart is genetically superior to the human’s, having evolved to be able to sustain life for centuries in their poisonous atmosphere. It will be far better… capable of giving him new strength. A long and prosperous life. And the terms of our deal?”
Karr’s father wrapped his arm around Karr’s mother. She sat, shaking at Karr’s bedside as she held his tiny pale hand. She did not look away as she wiped her tears and whispered,“Do it.”
Karr’s father signed a contract.“A lifetime of servitude,”Geisinger said,“in exchange for payment. It won’t seem so bad, when your boy lives. Grows old. Has children of his own, and never knows the sacrifice you made in order to save him.”
“And the donor?”Karr’s father asked.
“The abductee, from the dwarf planet?”Geisinger shrugged.“He won’t feel a thing.”
A new memory.
A shift.
Karr saw through Soahm’s memories again, as he lay on a table, a shot injected into his arm. A poison, leaching into his system.
It did hurt,dying.It burned like a raging fire.
Soahm screamed from the inside, only the sound never made it out, for his heart stopped beating. His breath stilled on his lips.
His heart was removed, healthy and alien—and found to be much stronger than any Earthen donor’s could dream of being. Geisinger placed the heart inside of Karr’s open chest and sewed him back together, the scar an ugly reminder of what his parents had done… but one that would fade with time,with emerging science.
As Soahm’s lifeless body was removed, Geisinger set aside an alien amulet: a black rock inside of a ring of gold, that had been around his neck.
Soahm’s memory shifted into Karr’s again, months later.
“This was given to us by a very dear friend,”Karr’s mom whispered, as she held him in her lap, and they stared out the viewport at a beautiful blue moon, a delicate orb that hung aloft in the black sky. This memory, Karr did remember. “You should wear it. Keep it safe, always above your heart, and be grateful that you live.”
She placed a necklace over Karr’s head, letting it fall just above where a scar sat on his skin. Soahm’s necklace. The amulet that had been with him when he was abducted.
