Page 78 of Odder Still
“I do not think—”
“Are they not latched?”
I cover the speaker with one hand and raise my voice, hoping it transfers through the walls. “Please, one at a time.”
“It can understand.” The translator degrades into unintelligible syllables, then dies to static before a single voice returns: “You, host, speak: why do you do this?”
I don’t know if the odd phrasing is natural or a failing of Elspeth’s translator. I choose to ignore it. “I’m from the South, where your kind live in trees and are left to do as they wish. I’ve come because I want to help you—because the aurora inside me wants to help you.”
A buzz rises from the translator again, too many auroras speaking at once for the machine to catch them all accurately. When the chatter finally gives way to a single being, it sounds sharper somehow, despite the monotone of the translator’s preprogrammed voice. “The origin of our failing is of the place from which our energy comes. We feel it like a dream, but we are here, not there, and we are too weak to pass between. We cannot see the cause, nor the solution.”
I leap to my feet, leaving the translator on the floor so I can pace. “Then what the fuck can I do?”
The translator spits out static so empty and useless that I feel it in my chest like a knife. When the aurora finally speaks again, I nearly miss its voice. “The sickest of us were taken to another place. They are in pain, so much pain. We feel their screaming. They may give to you their remaining strength, that it will help your aurora see into the place from which we fell—see what the cause of this dying.” That term for the ancient beings sounds odd coming from the translator, knowing that Elspeth programmed it with the only word they had to describe the creatures and not the one the auroras use for themselves.
“Another place? You mean Lachlan’s laboratory in the Findlay tower?” As I come to the other end of the hallway, I turn, but my gaze catches on the space where the final two feather duster worms must once have stood. Only chucks of rock remain, splintered at their centers as though someone hacked into them.
I rub my face.Do you agree with them? With enough energy, can you find out what’s causing this death in the first place?
My parasite releases a rush of agreement combined with flashes of larger and larger ignits that I take as its indication of the ridiculous amount of energy it requires, but it still twists and churns anxiously. It draws out my blade and flicks it between our fingers. The Trench auroras’ plight is only a small piece in a larger puzzle. But if I can help the auroras in pain, then they can help me. Can help us. I don’t have any other options. And our time to choose is running out.
I turn back toward the Trench auroras. “Is there anything I can do for you before I go?” The moment the question comes out of my mouth, I feel both the echo and the initiation of it from my parasite, its longing to help so strong it’s more a part of me than my own limbs. “Feeding on ignation made my aurora stronger. Can it do the same to you?”
“Perhaps. But perhaps we, like our kin, are too far gone.” It pauses; the static seems like some kind of thoughtful hum. “Return, when you are able, and we may see.”
I give the knife a final flip and slip it back into my belt. “I’ll try.”
I feel as though my entire being is still just a reverberating question mark, but I can think of nothing else to ask. I shut off the machine. The sound of the auroras’ overlapping voices remains, replayed in my head as I stare at their withering owners. It hurts, a physical pain that squeezes my heart.
My parasite curls closer. Gently, it tugs at my memories of death.
I know. Their dying hurts us both.
But as much as I feel its agreement, frustration mixes in. It pulls up the dream it gave me, back when I slept in Tavish’s room, focusing in on the image of its recreated self, so like me yet twisted, oversaturated, a stained-glass version of the person I see in the mirror. I recall the way it pointed to itself:‘I get odder the more you know of me.’
My stomach twists.You’re dying, too, or will be, at least.
This time its affirmation is endless and sad. It finds a new memory, this one of Lilias threatening me from my own porch. The pounding terror and guilt of that day rages through us, the emotions that forced me to make a deal with Lilias even though I knew there was a high chance of things ending badly, because the other option was to let her ravage my home—the only other option I could see at the time, anyway. Just as no one would be here to save the auroras without my parasite.
A thought creeps in from some backwashed crack, like it’s lived in my head all my life, just waiting to be noticed. I try to swallow it down, but it won’t go. Now that it’s reared its head, I have to let it run its course.If we can’t figure out how to fix this, will I die too?
It draws up a memory of monsoon clouds so thick I can smell the coming storm.‘Only hold off a little longer.’
I breathe out.Then we’ll do this quickly.We’ll figure out what’s causing the death and stop it. Soon you’ll be back in a mangrove, happy and healthy, with your kin the same.
Its warmth floods through me as we leave the Trench. A quiet lab greets us. Tavish holds a little portable radio in one hand and fiddles with Greer’s card. His gaze seems to stare straight through the rocks around the tank and to the auroras within. He slips the radio away. I glance at Elspeth, but they shake their head. He didn’t call.
I hand Elspeth back their translator. “The Trench auroras are failing like their ignits. Two of them were taken up to Lachlan’s lab. If I can get to them, there’s a chance my aurora can figure out what’s causing all of this.”
Tavish scrapes at one of his cuticles. “My father’s lab must have been converted from one of the old tower rooms—it would be too obvious to build an entirely new chamber.”
“I saw some of it in my nightmare.” The haziness of dreams still clouds its edges, but with my parasite wrapped so firmly through my mind, we pull it up in an instant. “Fancy, high ceilings, lots of glass.”
“Until last year, my mother hosted small, elite parties in a ballroom attached to the Findlay tower’s underside by a spiral staircase—apparently you can see the entire city through the glass tiles of the floor. She closed it when a maintenance report came in that the support holding it to the tower had rusted through, but no one has ever finished the repairs. Hosting a secret lab inside could certainly be a reason for that. We’d have to walk though most of the estate to get there though.”
“What about the private elevators?” Elspeth asks, pointing across the room to a set of gleaming metal doors with a high-tech brooch reader. “It has to lead to somewhere in the estate. Since the front entrance was disabled, they’d still be bringing out the samples and carrying in food from somewhere, specifically a somewhere nobody else in the company would notice.”
I grunt, not feeling the level of relief I’m sure I should be with all my parasite’s lingering agitation still in my system. “Do you have another eruptstone for it?”
