“Th-thoughts,” Kori stammers, adjusting her posture and her borrowed clothes and generally trying to pretend we weren’t on the verge of kissing again.
My own embarrassment burns like acid in my gut, but hers strikes me as endearing. I wonder if she sees mine that way; I wish I could see myself the way she does.
“You’re having thoughts,” Kori says. “That’s a big deal, Aspect. How do you feel about it?”
Aspect cocks their head, processing. I wonder if they learned that one in passing from mirroring Russ’s goofiest face. “Feel.” Their arms give a strange little wiggle, prompting Russ to lean one head sideways in concern. “Aspect—is having—FEELINGS?”
“I mean, I assumed if we’d activated independent thought, then you were likely experiencing an independent emotional psyche, as well,” Kori sputters, drifting into technician mode, “but it’s totally okay if you aren’t. There are plenty of sleep cycles to alter the connections, examine the new spontaneous wiring—”
Aspect waves their arms wildly about. “ASPECT IS HAVING FEELINGS!”
Abruptly, Russ lunges forward. At first, I think Aspect’s bursts of volume and newfound instability have alarmed my dog, perhaps into attacking. But instead, two tongues lap at Aspect’s head from either side, Russ’s center head nudging itself into Aspect’s chest. Aspect wraps both arms around the head and pulls it close, like a safety blanket or a stuffed toy. The robot has no true mouth to speak of, but they press their crudely drawn smile to Russ’s big, wet nose all the same, making artificial kissing noises.
Still my comms tablet screeches at me with increasing urgency. My stomach twists, fearing what I’m going to find when I open its display. But how can I check my messages while this … this …madnessis happening? Against all odds, the dayfolk robot … is sentient. The robot issentientand using their newfound self-awareness to aggressively cuddle my three-headed dog.
When was the last time my life made even a lick of sense? I don’t know anymore.
“Okay, you are having feelings.” Kori runs a hand through her hair, struggling to process almost as much as her creation. “That’s … that’s …”
“Amazing,” I finish for her. “You’re amazing, Kori. No one else would’ve dared to try this, let alone crossed the planet’s borders to make it happen, even gone so far as to trust me with the results.”
“It would appear I made the right decision.” Kori beams as Aspect continues to feign kissing my dog. “I never really let myself think I’d get this far. I have so many things I want to try. I could teach them how to pilot a starship. We could workshop jokes to annoy my doctor together.” Her jaw drops as another realization dawns. “They coulddo my homework.”
I can’t help but laugh at the homework bit, but the previous sentence catches my attention. “Your doctor?”
“Oh, Ednit. My mother insists he give me regular checkups on my Morpheus chip to ensure everything is running correctly. Basically he just sedates me and pokes around in my brain for a bit and—”
“Is he a regular doctor, or just a Morpheus chip technician?”
“Both.”
“Then shouldn’t he have known if Pagonian radiation wouldn’t kill you?”
Kori blinks hard. “No. He would tell me. He can’t … He wouldn’t …” But realization closes over her, swallows the syllables. “Hemusthave known. And if he knew—”
But she never gets to finish her sentence. Because the sliding door to my chamber shrieks open, and standing on the other side, hands fisted at his sides, chest heaving, deep-set gray eyes brewing a veritable storm, is Thaane.
“The generals are all trying to reach you.Ihave been trying to reach you. What in the Beyond are you—” But that’s when he spots Kori, unarmored, unmasked, and I can practically see lightning in his eyes flash to join the thunder in his voice. “What is the meaning of this? Why is she here? Why …howis she …?”
“I wish I knew,” Kori answers before I can. “But I’m going to go home, and I’m going to find out.”
“Oh,nowyou’re going home.” Thaane saunters forward, arms swinging rigidly, and I half think he’s about to take a swing at Kori himself with one clenched, three-clawed fist, but he doesn’t. “Before we ever get Adria’s precious ransom, and long after you broughtsun serpentsto our doorstep.”
I’ve trusted Thaane all through my cruel childhood, straight into an adolescence forcibly mutated into adulthood as I seized a throne by force that I never even wanted by birthright. But in this moment, perhaps for the first time, I lie to him.
I lie to him, and it’s so incredibly easy. “We have no reason to believe Kori is at fault for the serpent attack.”
Thaane snatches my comms tablet from the bed and waves it overhead like a blood-drunk warrior would an axe. “You would know otherwise if youchecked your messages.” I want to protest that surely, they could have spared a messenger or gotten a telepathic close enough to deliver updates indirectly, but I’m afraid that if I dare lash back at Thaane, I’ll only learn more about how horribly I failed my soldiers during this attack. So I keep my lips locked tightly shut. “Those broken fragments of the Diakópsei, the ones Elysium continues to insist are securely caged—Azarii must have gotten into a rogue cultist’s head, because one of his rebels got her accursed claws on a fragment. Enough to temporarily overcharge herself. Enough to send out a telepathic message strong enough that it summoned every sun serpent formiles, specifically to go afterKori.”
“What?” My voice feels like it’s coming from someone else. I feel cold all over, goose bumps trailing down my arms. None of this makes any sense. Azarii’s rebellion could have simply targeted me directly, if they had power over sun serpents, so why attack Kori? Why go through so many extra steps? “When did this happen?”
“While you were pleading with Neo to free you of your foolish affections,” Thaane snarls, “your enemies were moving to take advantageof your most obvious weakness. And sheisa weakness, Adria.” He points at Kori with a singular claw, and my throat clenches. “Surely even you can’t deny that anymore, or you wouldn’t have been on your knees before your ownprisoner, begginghim for some measure of relief. Which you could’ve obtained yourself, mind you. You could’ve just sent the dayfolk heiresshome.”
I open my mouth to protest, but Thaane barrels straight on anyway, undeterred.
“But no, you had to wrap your adolescent crush in false promises of a dramatic ransom, a chance to turn the tide of war—a war you’ve practically stopped fighting, because you’re busy training your own prisoner to defend herself amidst shadows she shouldnever have entered.She doesn’t belong here, Adria. She never did.”
Kori’s face has gone terribly pale. Russ hunkers down into himself, all three heads tucked in, a ball of shuddering fur. Aspect wobbles, wordless, from foot to foot, which produces some awkwardly loud squeaks from their peg leg in the process.
