He tugged Wynn forward to meet them, officially completing his mission.
But the first direct thought The Four shared had him pausing mid-step.
Humans have corrupted you.
Chapter forty-one
It was the silence that kept getting to her.
Wynn thought she knew solitude. After working at her outpost, both with Foster and alone, she knew what quiet meant. But there was something unnerving about the silence of this place.
Corridor after corridor, they encountered nothing but a quiet hush and increasingly peculiar plants. Having Iax beside her helped stave off the panic that might have wanted to take hold—him, and the continual swirl of questions in her head. Every time something distracted her, like hostile foliage, it wasn’t long before she circled back to her outrage.
But the sight before her whisked it away, and she didn’t know where to look. At the transparent dome above, revealing a view of the nebula that she could stare at for hours? Or at how that dark, organic-like construction material was here too, surging out of the bulkheads covered in leaves, twisting up and through the plants and trees? Or the viewersthat seemed to grow out of those same trees, like heavy, electronic appendages too big for their branches? Or at the massive tree that took up the middle of the space, twisting and twirling on itself, with branches thicker than her body and a trunk that she wouldn’t be able to wrap her arms around?
Or, most disconcertingly, the four people standing together near the center of the space, right next to it?
Wynn’s feet halted, and she swallowed around the nerves in her throat. Not people,Calypsons, right out of the history banks, just like Iax had said: Leon Sweeney, Heath Wiseman, Miri Bondar, and Briar Galloway.
They all wore matching bland expressions, and clothing that resembled what Iax had worn when he arrived at her outpost, black garb in that mesh-like material. Now Wynn saw similarities between it and the bands of dark growth that had woven themselves through the bulkheads of theCalypso. Three of them had bare feet.
Wynn’s eyes landed on the woman standing in the middle of the group and stayed there as Iax tugged her forward, his fingers linked with hers. Everything was quiet, but for the soft whooshing of air swaying the leaves on the trees, even more aggressively near the top of the biodome.
Her heart pounded in her head as the space between them and the four Calypsons diminished. With each step closer, the knot in Wynn’s stomach grew and hardened. She squeezed Iax’s fingers, and he returned the gesture.
They stopped a handful of meters away from the group who stood as still as statues. Briar Galloway’s unnerving stare captured Wynn, freezing her beneath the warm glow of the synth lights.
Whenever Calypsons communicated outside of Sector Ten, it was Galloway who did the talking—brief though it always was. A sour taste coated the back of Wynn’s tongue. This was the woman she had seen in her memories. And if Galloway was the person in charge, then she was the one who put Wynn on that ship with the other kids.
Heath Wiseman stood beside her, as he always did in those communications. Second in command, he stood taller by a few inches.
On Galloway’s left stood Captain Sweeney, and like the rest of them, he hadn’t aged a day since setting off on their mission so long ago. If possible, he looked even younger than his personnel records from theCalypso’smanifest. He was the only one wearing shoes, boots like Iax had worn.
Lastly, Dr. Miri Bondar stood on the far right. She’d been the head geologist on theCalypso’soriginal mission, and Briar Galloway’s best friend by all accounts.
The silence between them grew as the seconds ticked by, echoing louder than weapons fire. A sense of waiting, of expectation, grew along with the emotions churning in Wynn’s stomach. She flexed her hand in Iax’s.
“You will speak your thoughts aloud,” he finally said, the sound jarring in the hushed atmosphere. “So Dr. Wynn Lambdin can understand as well.”
Her eyes snapped to him, then returned to The Four. They’d been speaking with each other this entire time?
A cold emotion bloomed in her chest. These people could say whatever they wanted to each other, abouther, and she would never know the difference. She had never felt more like an outsider than she did right now—in the place of her origin.
She accepted it, what Iax had told her at her outpost, about what she’d seen when mentally tortured in that white box. As peculiar as this place was, there was also something familiar about it. As much as she hadn’t wanted to come here, it felt like the place she was supposed to be.
And they’d sent her away. Discarded her like garbage.
Her grip on Iax’s hand tightened.
Finally, one of them spoke. “Your state of mind has turned volatile,” Galloway said, her voice rough and unused.
It took a moment for Wynn to realize Galloway wasn’t speaking to her. All four of them stared at Iax.
“You have returned changed,” Sweeney said a moment later, a hint of inflection in his voice, something close to censure. Wynn probably wouldn’t have noticed except for spending so much time with Iax.
Her gaze swung from him to the others, then stayed on Iax.
“I am angry,” he said aloud, his shoulders tense and his hand rigid in hers.
