Page 64 of Chosen By Swift

Alys doubted anyone was perfectly safe with this man. He had the look of a killer, but if Hallie said she would trust her children with him... “Okay. I’ll see what I can do to help.”

“Thank you so much, Alys.” Hallie seemed relieved. “They’ve had such a hard time, and I’m all out of ideas.”

“I can’t make any promises, but I’ll try my best.”

“You’re a saint, Alys. Thank you! Oh—and don’t forget our lunch date tomorrow! I’ll message you before I come down to pick you up, okay?”

“Okay.” Alys turned her attention to the image of Terror as he waited patiently on her doorstep. “I’ll be right out.”

“There’s no rush, ma’am.”

She didn’t believe him. From the haggard expression on his face to the slump of his shoulders, Terror looked like a man who was ready to admit defeat. She grabbed her messenger bag from the closet and stuffed her tablet and a sweatshirt she had stolen from Swift’s drawers inside. The few places she had been on the ship were colder than she liked, and she figured having something warm on hand would be useful.

When she stepped into the hallway, Terror scrutinized her. Finally, he said, “You’re very tall for a Calyx woman.”

“Everyone in my family is tall.”

He gestured toward the elevator in the center of the hallway. “I heard that you have a dozen siblings.”

“Fourteen,” she said. “Well, fifteen if you count the one Mother’s currently carrying, but only ten of us are still living.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

Alys shrugged. “It’s not that unusual where I’m from.”

“Illness?” He stepped into the elevator first, and she followed.

“Only Colleen,” Alys replied, remembering her younger sister. “She was eight when she passed. She started coughing late one night. Four days later, she was gone.” She could still remember the silky softness of Colleen’s blonde hair under her fingertips as she brushed and braided it every morning. “She was a wild little thing. She would have loved it up here.”

“OnlyColleen? What happened to your other siblings?” Terror asked as the elevator began to move.

“Lindy was a cradle death.” Her mother’s anguished wail upon finding Lindy blue and cold in her cradle echoed in Alys’ memories. “No one knows why those babies stop breathing. It’s no one’s fault. It just...happens.” She glanced at Terror, suddenly wondering if it was different up here. “Do you know why it happens?”

Terror shook his head. “It was discussed in our prenatal course. It's very rare here, but I suspect that’s because we have monitors on our babies from the moment they’re born. It makes it easier to catch health problems.”

“What about stillbirths?”

“Extremely rare. Pregnant mothers wear a monitor at all times.” He touched his stomach. “The first hint of any sort of irregularity in either the baby or the mother triggers alarms.”

“I wish we had that down on the farm.” How much suffering could her mother have avoided if she’d had access to that kind of technology? “Mara, the last baby Mama delivered, was born sleeping. Absolutely perfect and beautiful but she never breathed.”

“Your mother must be a very strong woman,” Terror remarked. “To lose three daughters?” He shook his head. “I can’t imagine.”

“And a son,” Alys interjected. “Anders, one of my older brothers, he died in an accident when he was seventeen. Grain silo,” she clarified. “He was walking down the grain on a neighbor’s farm, and he hit a pocket of air and down he went.”

“Down? Where?”

“Into the corn.” She realized he didn’t know what a grain silo was. “Some farms store grain in these big buildings. Big enough to hold twenty, thirty, forty thousand bushels of grain. Sometimes the grain settles and pockets of air get caught in the layers. If you’re walking down the grain, and you hit one of those pockets?” She shook her head. “It’s all over. You’ll suffocate or be crushed or both before anyone can even try to rescue you.”

Terror seemed taken aback. “I had no idea farming was so dangerous.”

“Most people don’t.”

The elevator stopped, and they stepped off and onto a floor with only a handful of doors. The housing units here were apparently much larger. She glanced at Terror’s rather plain uniform and wondered what the black color of it signified. Whatever it was, he clearly was someone very important.

“I forgot to mention,” Terror said as they drew near a door, “my mate is deaf.”

“Does she sign? Or use paper and a pencil? Or read lips?”

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