STRANDED IN SILENCE. CAN’T CALL FOR HELP. CAN’T CALL FOR ANYTHING. There was a pause, like someone was taking a breath. The ship didn’t need a breath, but it needed to collect itself.VIOLENCE BEGETS VIOLENCE BEGETS VIOLENCE BEGETS—The speaker squeaked and died.
“We’re not trying to hurt you,” Iris said softly. He’d been awake too long and done too much to have any desire to keep his eyes open. The brief flurry of exertion had rendered him drained, and he slurred his words shamelessly, numb to the ache in his shoulder. “We’re just trying to go home.”
The ship didn’t reply. He was alone again.
“I’m just trying to go home.” Iris looked down at Eli’s face, which had greyed at this point, so much so that he couldn’t pass as alive. Blood from his body slicked the floor a metre and a half around them. Iris sat in the middle of it, letting the crimson eataway at his robes. Unable to stay conscious any longer, he shut his eyes and allowed his shoulders to slump forwards and forwards, until his head pressed against Eli’s cooling hand. There was nothing else after that.
The rhythmic dripping of water and a matching pulsing in his shoulder roused Iris from his sleep. The instant his eyes opened, he was startled upright by a looming presence to his right. He suspected, by the thin, curdled film atop the still-liquid pool, that he had been asleep for at most half an hour. Someone was on their knees beside him, right there in the pooled, coagulated blood. A golden flash of the Sychi Institute logo drew Iris’s attention.
“Drink,” Yan said and passed the thermos over.
Mechanically, Iris screwed off the lid and drank. The tea was gone, he noticed with a deep disappointment as he continued sipping on the warm water. When he was done, he rested the thermos on the ground. “I couldn’t save him,” Iris said, voice hoarse, distant.
“I can see that.” Yan’s voice was gentle, like he was afraid of disturbing the deadly silence he had trespassed on. He remained a respectful metre away from Iris and kept his eyes on Eli. “What will we do with his body?”
At the question, Iris tensed. The blood had already drained, but if they were to preserve the body, they would have to make sure the very last drops of it were gone. They would have to remove the organs, just as he had with Tev.
Tev.
Iris fell forwards again, headfirst, and his forehead smashed into the slick ground. Yan didn’t move from his spot. He watched on with a calm focus, saying nothing.
“I can’t,” Iris murmured, his voice on the verge of breaking. “I can’t keep draining their blood and wrapping them in cloth and saying words. I can’t. It all means nothing, accomplishes nothing.”
Yan listened without interrupting.
“I can’t keep pretending that what I’m doing is making a difference. I can’t keep being useless, I can’t keep failing,” he sobbed and immediately slammed his palm across his mouth. Some of Eli’s blood pushed past his lips, and the metallic taste of it sent Iris’s empty stomach into a spasm. He shut his eyes and prayed for Yan to leave him alone. Alone, he could consult VIFAI. Alone, he could break down in peace and then gird himself enough to prepare Eli’s body. Alone. He only knew how to do this alone.
“Fine, I’ll do it.”
A surge of anger flared up in Iris’s chest at the words. “Youdon’t know a single thing about preparing a body, engineer Yan,” he hissed, head still pressed against the bloody floor.
“That’s why you will tell me exactly what to do and then”—Yan gestured to the other end of the space—“you will go over there andrest.”
One word, and all of Iris’s racing thoughts came to a halt.Rest.Yan had used a specific word for “rest,” a word that implied a time away from everyday responsibilities, a time where one spent their efforts repairing their mind. Where food was made for them, and their clothes were laundered for them, and time was provided to just heal. It was an old word, one that wasn’t used often colloquially. A word Iris only had heard from the Starlit.
For what felt like the first time, Iris looked at Yan,reallylooked at him. He had failed to notice in his time on theNicaeathat Yan was barely older than he was. He was far less equipped to deal with death and dying than Iris. Yet, unflinching and unyielding, Yan had witnessed it all. He was braving the most brutal ocean currents with nothing in his arsenal but the doggy paddle, refusing to quit, to let panic take him, refusing to entertain the very idea of turning back.
Iris’s anger dissipated as quickly as it had appeared, and a different feeling altogether blossomed. It was still in its simplest form, timid, cowardly—yet sharp. He hadn’t felt it since his youth, so long ago now that he had forgotten how blindly painful it could be. It was a shy flicker that, if left to its own devices, would grow and grow until it devoured him whole, until he wouldlet itdevour him whole.
“I don’t think there is much we can do for Eli,” Iris said, returning to himself. “I don’t think it will matter. For Jesi’s and Ishtan’s sake, we’ll move him aside and keep them from seeing him, but it’s more important we keep moving now. I fear there’s a good chance we will join Eli very soon.”
Yan looked down at the body and back up at Iris and gave him a nod. “Whenever you’re ready, Vessel. I’ll take the legs, and you take the arms.” He gave Iris a bitter grin and got to his feet.
Despite everything, they were still on professional terms. The last bit of distance stretched between them, and not even Starlit words could shrink it. But the distance was so small, Iris could learn to live with it. He stood up, careful so that his feet didn’t slip on the slick floor. When he reached down to collect Eli’s arms, he winced at the pain in his shoulder.
“We should tend to that first,” Yan said. “If we leave it as is, you’ll be spiking a fever in less than a day.”
Iris chuckled lightly at the words. He looked up at Yan, a melancholic smile playing on his cracked lips. How he wished for the luxury of planning for days to come. “I wouldn’t worry about that, engineer Yan. We don’t have a day.”
Without any further exchanges, they picked Eli up and carried him in silence towards the end of the corridor. Iris, carrying the legs. Yan, holding both bloodied arms. They lay him down below the mural of the godlike tree and closed his eyes. Iris had nothing to drape over the body, and the gaping hole in Eli’s chest stared at him as he recited the words that returned him to the One Beginning. From the corner of his eye, Iris watched as Yan too recited the words, stumbling over them every few sentences, awkwardly pulling them to the forefront from the depths of his suppressed childhood.
“He did the best he could for us,” Iris finished.
“Look where that got him.”
“Sometimes we do the best we can,” Iris said. “And surrender to whatever comes. Sometimes that’s all there is to be done.”
It was then, before the mural of theNicaea’s slaughter, that Iris made a different vow: to direct his faculties towards stopping the newly sentient ship, even if Yan never did believe him, even if it only meant that the engineer, and Ishtan, and Jesi could go home. He would commit the greatest sin a Vessel could. He would kill if he had to, and he knew, deep in his heart, that it would be the only way to end what was coming for them. The decision came far too easily and quickly to him, as clear and undeniable as a solution to a mathematical problem. Once the nascent thought became salient, Iris accepted that he would never wear a Vessel’s robes again, for they were now forever tainted with this violent compulsion.
