“I should kill you where you stand,” he hisses. “What a weasel you are. What a poor reward for a woman like your mother. To think she was so certain you could be trusted.”
I should shut up, I should shut up right now. “What? You’re saying your simulation didn’t predict this?”
Doc Min sneers. “You will regret this.” Then, to the guards: “Get him out of my sight.”
They shove a blindfold over my eyes, which seems unnecessary, since I’ve already seen the worst of what they have to hide. Anyway, I can tell by the number of twists and turns we take that I’d never be able to find my way back out of here, even if I could catalog every hallway and corridor and door, even if I had Jester’s heat map completely memorized. I’m afraid, of course I am, but that’s not even really what has my focus. I’m thinking about Lament. I’m thinking about how he didn’t want me to come on this ridiculous mission, how he already lost one partner. I promised him everything would be okay. I’m breaking that promise.
We walk. The guards are silent. I get the sense we’re traveling downward, though there aren’t actually any stairs. I count the number of footsteps around me, try to estimate just how terrible my odds of escape are. For one crazed moment, I imagine trying to break free. I’d tear out of my cuffs, rip this blindfold off, grab one of their ray guns and just have at it. The guards would take me out, but at least I would go down fighting. Not doing what I’m doing now, which is simply letting my fate happen. A lamb being led to slaughter. And yet, I remember Vera’s words.We’ll come for you.
I don’t want them to die for me.
I don’t want to be abandoned.
The guards pull me to a halt. I hear the sound of a key being inserted into a lock, which seems really old-fashioned given the technology on the rest of The Parallax. There’s something so visceral about the sound of that lock. I wonder if Ran Doc Min installed it on purpose. Like he wants his prisoners to hear the finality of the bolt driving home.
Someone unlocks my cuffs and pulls off my blindfold before I’m shoved into a cell, the door clanging shut behind me. I blink, rubbing my wrists, my eyes adjusting to the low light. I’m in a freestanding prison in the center of a circular room. It’s small—both the cell and the room—with metal bars on all sides. Nowhere to hide, no privacy. The cell is completely bare inside. But it’s not empty.
There’s another prisoner in here. They’re huddled against the other side, knees drawn up to their chest, face buried behind their arms. They’re dressed in rags, their hair overgrown. They look like they might be sleeping.
The guards are gone. The room is quiet. I have the wild thought that the other person in this cell is some kind of lunatic sent by Ran Doc Min to torture me while I’m in here. But no—they’re a prisoner just like me, right? And they’ve been here a long time, from the looks of it.
I want to poke my cellmate awake, even as I very much do not want that. But there’s this urge in me to just get it over with. Rip off the bandage, meet my companion, see how bad this is really going to be.
The prisoner lifts their head. Blinks at me.
“Keller,” Master Ira says.
And then the world crumbles at the edges.
30
When I was twelveyears old, I broke my wrist.
I was out in the woods with my ray gun. It was dark. Nighttime. I’d already been caught by the Master once, but this was after I rediscovered the gun back in my room, after I realized I didn’t have the strength to let it go. Instead, I’d resolved to be smarter. Sneakier. I would wait until the house was asleep, then pull the weapon out from under my mattress, slip through the window, and creep into the woods to practice shooting by moonlight.
It didn’t take me long before I became adept at all this sneaking. It made me overconfident. I stopped paying attention to pits and roots. One night as I was running through the woods toward my usual spot, I stepped wrong and fell over a gulf. Tumbled right down into a creek of muddy water. At first, the surprise was all I could think of. That dizzyingWhat the hell just happened?Covered in river water, disoriented in the dark.
Then came the pain.
That’s how it is now in this prison cell. There’s a full three seconds where I just stand here, unable to process what I’m seeing. My mind has tripped over a gulf, and I’m wondering what the hell just happened. I wait for my thoughts to right themselves, to make some sense of the situation.
Then, painfully, they do.
“Master Ira?” The words burst from me like I’ve been punched in the gut. My head is a tangle of shock and disbelief and… anger?
Yeah. The heat in my chest is definitely anger.
“What the actualfuck?” I shout, backing up against the bars on the cell’s opposite side. “What’s going on right now? Is this some kind of a prank?” The Master starts to reply, but I keep going. “I don’t—this doesn’t—what are you doing here?”
“Sitting, I suppose,” he finally gets in, with a dryness that’s so familiar it makes me choke.
“I don’t understand.” The dim overhead lamp is warping before my eyes, spilling color like a flood. The bars—once solid—appear thin and filmy. I think I’m having some sort of neurological event. “How did you get in here? How long have you been on this ship? Are you”—and now my brain does seem to be catching up—“are you Doc Min’s prisoner?”
The Master pushes slowly to his feet. The man I remember was stout and strong, rosy-faced, with a smile that seemed to come from within. The person before me has the Master’s face, but he’s thin, haggard. He struggles to get himself upright, using the metal bars for support. I can’t really see his frame—it’s buried under layers of filthy brown robes—but from the looks of it, he’s lost a lot of weight.
“To answer your questions in order,” Master Ira replies, “I was forced into this cell against my will, I’ve been here for three years, and yes, I am a prisoner.” He gives a small smile. “It appears I have given you a shock.” The smile quickly fades. He takes his turn studying me, his gaze lingering on the raw skin at my wrists where my hands were cuffed. “Are you hurt?”
“I—”Yes.“No.” A pause. “You don’t seem surprised to see me.”
