CHAPTER TEN
Lem
Only the soft sound of men breathing punctuated the silence of the dark barracks room as Lem Benzaran shifted her weight to the edge of her bunk. She had a habit of sleeping in her full armor—an odd habit, but not completely unheard of among the most battle-hardened Growen ranks. Banks, poor dude, assumed she’d picked up the habit from a hardcore ranger unit, and teased her every morning at mess while they downed that ridiculous orange slop.
The best kind is orange, Lem remembered as she stretched her foot down the ladder past Banks’ head now. Not a creak.
But the armored foot-gear still clicked on the crisp cement floor in the dark, no matter how she tip-toed every time. She missed her soft worn leathers.
These are better for the kind of combat we do, she corrected herself. She might have her preferences, but she didn’t dare doubt the Growen manufacturers had her best interests as a soldier in mind.
As she reached the door, and the soft blue light of the hallway fell over her companions, Lem took one last look back at the bunkmate who’d laughed at her jokes the last couple of months. The other guys in the barracks didn’t mean much, but Banks just had that familiarity and naivete. Look at him now, sleeping with his mouth open and neck exposed like an idiot. A really lovable idiot. Nobody really looked that tough sleeping, after all.
She choked on her sigh, and closed the door behind her.
Commander Diebol was on to her. She’d played the conversation over in her head too many times already, and the more she lay awake thinking about it, the more she risked exposing herself to the Mind-Reader. So even if Diebol wasn’t on to her, and she was just being paranoid, the paranoia would give her away if she didn’t change identities ASAP. And having a court martial on the table wasn’t exactly incognito-juice, either.
“It’s not fair,” she muttered aloud as she crept down the hallway toward the bathroom. “I serve the Growen. S’not my fault I grew up with Frelsi loyalties. I just don’t want to get kicked out. I want to help unify the galaxy. I shouldn’t have to change who I am to do that.”
Liar.
Oh no, not again!
Lem gripped both sides of her head as her heart fluttered in her chest. There is no lie, she answered the Accuser. There is no secret, no lie, no nothing!
Shyte. She knew better than to use negatives. “There is no” only made you think of the thing you wanted to stop thinking about—like saying “don’t think about naked mole rats” made you think exclusively about naked mole rats.
And now Lem was thinking about naked mole rats.
She closed her eyes as she squished through the polymerwall to the restroom and let her should-thoughts reverberate through her brain. I’m here to help you, Bricandor. Diebol. Whoever else might be listening. The only secret is that I am ashamed of my past.
In the bathroom, Lem stripped off her chest-plates and gauntlets, allowing herself a wink in the mirror at the handsome pink-haired bandit-man she’d become. She liked Zej. She could’ve kept him up for years, maybe, if not for Jei. She’d reworked all her ideals to create this honest loyalty to the Growen without betraying Njande, this careful balance—and now she was hearing again.
I found you, it hissed, vibrating through her skull. Lem steadied her breath as the wave of terror traveled through the bone, down her back … she clutched the edge of the sink, choking on thoughts as opaque and rich as oil, and wondered if in the mirror she’d see Her peering back.
I found you, found you, nana-nanana, I found you …
Aw, man. No, it wasn’t Her. Just It. Just the same old invisible monster that’d hunted her since the day she joined up with the Growen: the twisted ba-eater, the ephemeral brain worm Stygge Bricandor kept flitting over his ranks seeking brains to devour and chi energies to slurp out. Who would’ve guessed that the army that wanted to wipe out invisible friends had one in it.
Sometimes it disguised itself to mimic her conscience.
On bad days she thought it was Njande hating her.
I know, I know, I smell like Jei, and you’re mad you didn’t get to eat him last year, Lem grumbled inwardly. You probably found me because you recognized him when my platoon got close, and when I engaged, well—you put two and two together.
She sighed, shaking the monster off her shoulders like a fly as her mind continued its task. She’d considered ending Frank Zej with a fake suicide but didn’t want to do that to poor Banks. Instead, from her seat on the porcelain throne, she bit her lip, wet her pencil, and scribbled a different confession on the back of the take-out menu pressed against her armored knee.
Frank Zej told his buddy Banks he couldn’t take the guilt of their last mission and wanted to defect to study a different way of peace. Not to the Frelsi—just to freedom. She wove a metaphor for Njande in it and left hidden clues for Banks to discover Njande’s voice on his own. She smiled. Maybe one day Banks would search the old Biouk settlements, or plumb the archives of the messages on the extranets …
The cold, invisible slime seeped up her back to her earlobe.
You really think you can bathe in all this evil, just wade right into my territory, covered with just a thin sheen of memory?
Ugh. Lem clawed off the rest of her armor and yanked the chlorinated cleaner from the maintenance hatch in the wall. She doused everything to remove her real DNA for Plan B while she drew on interdimensional biology 101: smaller invisible beings avoided the territorial scent of the biggest one.
So Lem stuffed her head full with her own giant interdimensional, Njandejara: his giant, hammer-wielding human form looming over a bloodstained battlefield; his chimeric lizard-lion Crajk beast form leaping to rescue her friend; his wind-and-fire spirit whispering through the jungle; his still small voice itching at her ears … the messages he’d left her. I will never leave you, her favorite, and another: The one who overcomes will become a pillar in my house … “I would love to help you build your house, Njande.”
The memories pushed the ba-eater off Lem like bug spray to a bloodsucker. If she held them tightly enough, she became completely invisible to it, hiding under the shadow of Njande’s wings, and the ba-eater couldn’t find her. For now, the offended energy being hung snarling in the bathroom air around her like a cloud, filling the small space with its scent: doubt. Soon enough Njandejara’s smell will wear off you. Then I’ll get you. I’ll wrap you up like a spider wraps a fly, and suck your little brain dry …
“What a cute rhyme,” Lem said, crouching now to wash her uniform in the sanitizing bin. A few more minutes of meditation and the Accuser would completely miss her identity swap—he wouldn’t see where she’d gone, or who she’d become, and he’d have nothing to tell his human pal Bricandor.
Now, in more physical matters, Lem still had to solve this problem of cameras. The Growen believed in security over privacy, so right now, while she did her bathroom business, a camera watched from the top right-hand corner of the waste cubicle. It saw Frank Zej scrubbing like a murderer; she didn’t want it to see him transforming into Wandla.
Yeah, wash that uniform. Wash it good, the ba-eater taunted. Someone else wore it to kill children.
“Njande is my shield and my ezer kenegdo,” Lem chanted her safety spell. She felt the Accuser fading further and further back into his own dimension …
Hm. She’d have to switch identities right as she passed through the polymerwall. Both identities had access to this bathroom, she hoped. Of course. Of course they did! If not, the wall would harden mid-transformation and lock her in place to suffocate.
Oof.
Lem stood, stretched, and faced the door, stripped down now to her tank top and her jump pants. She shook herself out, rubbed her hands over her bare chestnut shoulders, and glanced up at the camera. Alright. Just not thinking about metallic ceramic forming over her face, filling her nostrils and eyes in those silent terrifying minutes in airless darkness before she finally lost consciousness and died …
Sure, I can’t see you now. But I will. I will see what form you have taken, and when I do, I’m going to tell on you. I’m going to tell little old Grand General Bricandor, and he’ll tell little Diebol, and little Diebol will shoot little you before you find Her, and …
“Well then at least I’ll be alive outside this wall, huh?” Lem smiled.
She put her hand just behind her ear, index fingernail just under the edge of the strip that projected Frank Zej’s DNA, middle finger poised to activate the new girl.
“Whew. Deep breath.”
And step.
The soft wall embraced Lem’s skin. She made the switch, peeling off Frank Zej and pinching him in her fingers to keep from losing the valuable sliver in the liquid wall as Wandla awakened.
And through the wall, in the dark hallway, a fat shadow emerged from the bathroom. What was I afraid of? Of course the janitor has access to the bathroom.
In the darkness, the hallway camera couldn’t make out the details of the being that slipped a note under Frank Zej’s barracks’ room door and slunk away.