1
YAAF
The three-meter-high concrete wall cast a long foreboding shadow on the dirt path in front of Number One as he walked out of the enclosure gate.
Sullha was behind that wall, but right now the concrete seemed like a much easier barrier to surmount than the chasm that had opened between them after what he'd told her, what she now knew about him.
He could take it back, could thrall the memory away as if it had never formed in her mind, but to what end? It wouldn't change the truth of what he was. Eventually, he would need to tell her anyway, and her response then might be even worse because she would feel betrayed that he'd kept it from her for so long.
The rest of the collective waited for him in the Humvee. They had done their best to allow him some privacy during the visit, but they'd been present when he'd confessed to Sullha that he wasn't just Yaaf anymore but one of eight minds working as one. For now, their individual nodes still retained a modicum of autonomy, but for how long?
What would happen when they were fully integrated and couldn't tell where one ended and the other began?
It was already difficult, especially when Number One needed to be just Yaaf and the others had to retreat and give him space.
He climbed into the passenger seat next to Number Seven, who started the engine and pulled onto the service road.
That was a mistake,the collective thought.How can she love you now? She could've loved Yaaf, but she would never love all of us. She won't accept Dave.
Number One had no response because there was none. They were right. He'd seen how Sullha's expression had changed after he'd told her, how it closed up. He'd felt the rejection to the marrow of his soul, and the others had felt it with him.
Instead of trying to defend his actions, he turned to look at the scrubby vegetation that lined the road and the dark shapes of the volcanic ridges beyond. The sun was setting, and the sky was an angry shade of crimson with some purple in it.
You should have waited, Number Four thought.You should have let her fall in love with who she thought you were. Once the feeling was established and took root, you could have introduced the rest of us slowly.
It wouldn't have made a difference,Number One thought.The moment she understood what I was telling her, she closed off, shutting me out.
The Humvee bounced over a rough patch in the road, and Number Seven adjusted the steering without comment. The others kept the discussion going, not speaking aloud because there was no need. The collective conducted these arguments inseconds, the equivalent of hours of debate compressed into the time it took for thoughts to form. The conclusions were always reached together, even when the individual nodes disagreed about the particulars, but today, Number One needed time alone with his own thoughts.
He closed his eyes and retreated into the corner of the hive mind he'd carved out for himself.
Yaaf could still see Sullha's face. The way she had looked at him when he'd told her about the other seven minds that were merged with his, the way her gaze moved from him and shifted to her son, anchoring herself on the one person in her life who was solid and whom she knew everything there was to know about.
Tomek was hers and hers alone, and she didn't need to share him with anyone.
At least for now.
She'd needed that secure connection after the world she'd been constructing about her childhood friend collapsed around her.
Sullha hadn't cringed or pulled away as someone less disciplined might have done upon learning that the man sitting beside her was actually eight men sharing one consciousness, and that the seven others had been privy to every word she'd ever said to him in confidence.
She had just gone very still.
"Are you okay?" he'd asked her. "Are we still okay?"
"It's a lot to digest," she'd said. "Of course, we are still okay. You will always be my friend, Yaaf. That will never change."
A friend.
That was all he could be to her. Whatever had been growing between them, the tentative interest that had been forming a delicate web at the edges of her awareness was gone. It had been replaced with cautious friendship.
Thankfully, she hadn't reacted with fear or revulsion, only with a measured kindness, the sort that was reserved for friends.
She'd reclassified him.
He was no longer Yaaf, the boy she had grown up with and might learn to love as a man. He was Dave, not an individual, but a collective that didn't fit the image of a person she could've grown to love. So, she'd moved him back into the category she was comfortable with, to what he had been to her as a boy, or maybe even less than that.
You should have waited, Number Two thought again.
