A Calypson stood there, a man, wearing an outfit that resembled the shirt and pants Iax had worn, though these were a deep blue. He held a tool in his hand, a diagnostic device.
Though nothing about him seemed threatening, the kids all shrank against the bulkheads, and Wynn instinctively stepped in front of them.
The man did nothing for a long while, only stared at them with the same unblinking stare Iax had used on her when he first arrived at her outpost. Then he turned abruptly, passing the kids at a clipped pace to head to the lift they’d just used. The door opened with a quiet swish.
“He will not return,” Iax said after the door closed.
Wynn stiffened. “He’s leaving this deck because of the kids? Because of us?”
“Yes.” Iax turned his head to meet her gaze.
She clenched her fists. “Everyone is going to have to get over it. I’m here. These kids are here. We shouldn’t be treated like we’re diseases. Especially when they were the ones who wanted tocollectme.”
Iax stared at her for a long moment, then agreed with a nod. “I will tell them.” His words had taken on a hard edge.
Then he continued down the corridor, and she hurried to catch up. “Are you in trouble? With The Four?” They hadn’t seemed happy with him, though they hadn’t shown much emotion at all.
“I have completed my mission,” he said simply.
That didn’t really answer her question, but it made her say, “They might give you another mission.” They could send him to collect someone else.
“No,” he replied. “They won’t.”
She wanted to ask more, but he stopped in front of a door. It opened silently.
“These quarters are vacant,” he said, stepping into a sparse space.
Wynn followed, and her shoulder relaxed at how normal it looked. They could have been quarters on any space station, dated in its style, but not overrun with those large, structural ropes that seemed to take over everything else in this place. A bank of tall windows took up the side opposite the door, revealing an unobstructed view of the nebula in all its glory, colorful and undulating.
Bex gasped, making Wynn turn around, but then the girl was rushing toward the windows, her jaw slack and her hands tight on the toddler in her arms. The rest of the kids followed. The twins pressed their faces against the transparent aluminum as they stared.
Wynn’s heart clenched. “Please don’t tell me you’ve never seen this before,” she murmured, but that was exactly what she was witnessing: kids who had never seen the outside of a cargo hold, who knew nothing of the outside world at all.
Disgust welled up in her anew, followed by a fiery anger that burned through her chest and up her throat with the need to scream.
Iax stepped toward her, settling his hand on her spine.
“We need books,” she said, her words thick. “And computer terminals, or tablets, or even PALMs. I need to teach them… everything.” She swallowed around the sudden dryness in her throat, the gravity of what she was about to take on weighing on her shoulders.
Ari squirmed out of Mack’s grasp, and he set her on the deck. She ran around with her arms spread wide. Maybe she’d seen a ship in the distance and mimicked it. The playful sight calmed Wynn a little. It made her believe these kids would be all right.
Mack put his arm around Bex and pulled her in close to his side, his hand on her hip as they stared out the window together.
Wynn’s breath caught as an extra worry formed in her mind. “Are they siblings?” she asked Iax. “Brother and sister?” She gestured to the pair, who looked to be in their early teens.
He tilted his head, and she got the feeling he was asking someone who was not in the room with them.
“They are not related by blood,” he said finally.
Wynn exhaled a slow, relieved breath. The way they looked at each other, it would take a lot of awkward explanation about genetics if they’d been siblings, and Wynn wouldn’t have relished it.
“Genetics connect only the two lookalikes,” Iax added after a moment.
Wynn nodded, but that got her scientific curiosity going. “Then it’s random? The anomaly thing?”
Iax paused a moment. “No one has predicted it yet.”
It was another thing she needed to study now that she was here. She wouldn’t assume that Calypson scientists had explored every research path when they couldn’t even teach these kids language. She would need to analyze their blood, and hers, and try to find connections. Her mind moved to how big a control group she would need.
