Page 85 of Invasive Species
He sweeps it along my right forearm, grunting when it fails to beep. Now his eyebrows beetle with anger. “Where’s your chip?”
“She must have damaged it. I’ll get another installed immediately.” I can’t move from his unyielding grip, and I know from our trio that the slow way his scales strobe is a bad sign. He’s signaling his wave brothers, and one of them will be the Apex who will instantly know I’m lying.
Double drok.
“Oh, there you are,” a warm voice says. The older E27AH maneuvers between me and the suspicious Parthiastock. “Thank you, good worker, for finding him. He’s not well and is easily confused.”
“Who are you?” the Parthiastock barks.
“E27AH, and I’m so glad you found my batch brother before he hurts himself.” He holds up his wrist for scanning, smiling evenly as though he lies every day.
What is he doing? If he’s caught giving a falsification they’ll euthanize him alongside me, choking us both to death.
The Parthiastock murmurs in satisfaction at the reassuring buzz from his device reading E27AH’s chip. “What’s wrong with him?” he asks, eyes sliding toward me.
“It’s complicated, but he won’t be any harm to me, and I can handle him from here.”
“So you vouch for him?”
I suck in a breath. This will seal E27AH’s fate, making it so if I’m picked up by the Parthiastocks in future, they’ll come for him, too.
“Of course,” E27AH says as if answering an easy anatomy question.
Satisfied, the Parthiastock releases me, and I nearly gasp as feeling returns to my fingers in an unpleasant tingle radiating up my forearm. Scooping up Mae, who finally deigns to let me touch her, I hurry in E27AH’s wake, leaving the Parthiastock staring thoughtfully after us, my blood all over his fingertips.
“You’ve tied your fate to mine,” I gasp as I catch up to E27AH.
“Yes.” He doesn’t seem fazed, just purposeful as he leads me to a gray dorm building.
“Why?”
“For my patient.”
That steals the rest of my breath. “How is she?”
“Dying.” E27AH’s don’t slow, but my legs feel as though the muscles have been cut, heavy and remote at the same time. I can’t move or I risk falling.
Arra-bellah, dying?
E27AH turns to face me. “Come, we have to get to work.”
My nature kicks in. I put one foot in front of the other despite the world-ending news. My arms tighten around Mae, making her squawk.
Arra-bellah, dying.
She won’t. I won't let her.
A shadow passes over E27AH’s face and he peers up at the billboard floating above our heads, making a slow circle of the Milagrove tree. His scales go a blue I associate with the sky on Earth, pale with wispy white patches like clouds.
“Look.” He points, and I crane my neck to see. Droplets from the waterfall tails splash my face as I stare, but the constant damp fades into the background as the latest ad-screen sails above the plaza.
It displays a stylized picture made of interlocking overlapping lines swooping and coalescing to make… me.
I know Arra-bellah’s art, and this is it.
I come to a halt at the intensity of my face, the tightness of my jaw, even the burning light of my eyes, and I know this is what Arra-bellah sees when I look at her.
She's made more art, pouring her heart into it, and she mademe.
