As we open the doors and the Nokira rush out, I read their expressions. Some look as if they want to kill me despite the rescue, but most just look tired. And sad, a heavy sorrow that jars against the relief I’d expect from them in this moment.
When we get to Kaizahn’s cell, I hesitate before unlocking the door. Maybe because it’s probably the last time we’ll ever see one another, maybe because I’ll be labeled a traitor to the human race if anyone finds out.
When Kaizahn does step out, he gives me a brief look of gratitude before nodding to Santos, and then the three of us unlock the other cell doors before sprinting down the corridor, dozens of Nokira prisoners behind us as we head for the south side of the prison.
When we step outside the facility, I’m hit with the moss-scent of humid air. My eyes adjust to this planet’s strange predawn light, and in a few seconds I’m able to see through the light mist that hovers over the grounds. When I’m certain all is clear, the Nokira rush to the black waters of the swamp, their prison-garbed bodies submerging quickly and quietly. They can breathe underwater. Part of me wants to follow them, to discover the secret they’ve kept so successfully.
Kaizahn steps forward, but turns back to face Santos. Some communication—something closer to reverence than gratefulness—passes between them. Then he turns to me.
“Salquay.”
The translation program isn’t turned on, but I don’t need it to know what he’s saying: Thank you.
Hoping he understands everything I put into the gesture, I nod: You’re welcome. I’m humbled. I’m ashamed. I’m sorry.
There’s something else in Kaizahn’s expression, in those too-human eyes of his.
But before I can interpret it, he’s off, and then he’s gone beneath the murky deep.
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
Needless to say, this morning, all hell broke loose.
The base commander was beside himself. “The damned orcs!”
But there were no altercations, no throats slit in the middle of the night. The orcs, thanks to us, disappeared without a trace.
Still, while everyone prepares to head out, some of us have been ordered to patrol one last time beyond the perimeter in hopes of securing at least a few of the Nokira.
Santos and I have been riding in the pod the last two hours, and we finally park near the edge of an especially large expanse of swamp water.
“What do you think is down there?” I ask.
“Nothing,” Santos says.
I turn to her. “What do you mean?”
“There is nothing and no one, Mitchell. The Nokira are all they have. Each other and the clothes on their backs.”
“There’s got to be something . . . Santos?” But she just keeps her gaze fixed on the water. “A couple of minutes and we head back.”
Santos turns to me. “I’m not going.”
“We’ve got to get back to base right now or we’ll be stuck here.”
Santos dives forward and frees the navigation cell from the dash. In half a second she’s wrapped her jacket around it, and before I can stop her, she drops it out the window, at the roots of a black tree with winding, leafless branches.
I glare at her. “Is this some kind of tantrum?”
Theoretically, the pod could travel even through space back to Earth, though without the navi cell, only on manual mode. But we know our way back to base, so I don’t understand the point of throwing the navi cell from the window.
“Santos.”
She stares me down.
“You want to stay here?” I throw up my hands and panic shears the edges of my voice. The transport ship will be leaving in just over an hour. “This planet is dead. There’s nothing here.”
“But there will be.”
“Why did you throw out the navi cell?”
Silence.
When I ask again and she doesn’t answer, I bang my fist against the tempered glass. Beneath my consciousness something stirs . . . “Santos!”
“I drop you off at the base, and I keep the pod.” She means it with every blood cell in her body but her voice is also strangely practiced, like she’s reciting a line.
“You’re seriously trying to stay? Alone? Why?” But I don’t wait for an answer because the question was just a distraction.
I lunge for my door in an attempt to get out and grab the navi cell, but Santos has secured the doors. We end up staring at one another, chests heaving, limbs trembling.
“We’re going to need the navi cell,” Santos says. “Much later.”
“We?”
The navi cell is virtually indestructible. Meant to stand the test of time. A long time. I feel like I’m going to be sick.
Because I realize.
I see everything Santos must’ve known for days, now. I understand the sadness of the Nokira as they escaped: they, too, are separated from their families by time. And I understand the look Kaizahn gave me a couple of hours ago: solemn expectation.
I whisper, “This navi cell . . .”
They need it. Thousands of years from now, the Nokira will need it to find their way to Earth. Because thousands of years from now, they’ll have developed an entire civilization. And they’ll have built spaceships.
I swallow. “They have to find Earth to find us so that we can come out here and . . .”
“And they can exist in the first place,” Santos finishes quietly. “We’re their ancestors.”
My knees weaken and my head pounds at the paradox but there it is.
She whispers, “You don’t have to stay.”
“You don’t either.”
“I do. The reason they even have a chance on Earth is because they are part human, too. It’s a small part, but it’s in their genetic makeup.”
Their eyes.
That strange sensation of encountering someone foreign but familiar. I recognized it in Kaizahn, in all the Nokira. I recognized myself. Their bodies are stitched with human DNA, are fueled with whispers of human blood. Whispers of Santos.
“But just you alone?” I say. “You’re enough to influence genetics so far down the line?”
“There will be others. Five UDLs are staying behind.”
We’re their ancestors, Santos said. We. Goddess Santosa and her retinue, and the Nokira.
“If you stay,” Santos says, “it will make all the difference. Genetically speaking.”