[LEGACY VERSION] The Enemy of Time (Book 2 - The Kaireyeh Chronicles)

Chapter 17 - Barenin

Barenin drifted, warm in the steady rhythm of Kaireyeh tides. There was peace.

He opened his eyes. Sensation crawled its way back into limbs--such cumbersome things. There was no need to move yet. He stared up at a gold-tinted ceiling and listened to the beating heart of the ship. The rhythm was not the same as where he had been, but the steadiness was there. The bones of this ship were infused with Kaireyeh.

His mind slowly converged on him, fitting patterns and pieces back into place. His awareness expanded, and he brushed through the thoughts of the minds on this ship.

He began to feel their uneasiness. And in a few, he felt alarm.

Barenin sat up. His body protested and he huffed out a breath and flopped back down. Breaths came fast, and he needed them. He flung his focus Aezthena, but Kaireyeh pushed back against him, making his human-focused lungs strain.

Where was he? His hand hit the edge of a cot. He wasn't dressed--a blanket covered his body. Monitors stuck to his skin, and he pulled them off, wincing at the chafe as hair came with them. He coughed. His mouth felt like it had been stuffed with wool.

Barenin took in the cramped room, the messy desk, the cupboards built into one bulkhead. This was Campa's office. Had he been injured?

The hatch flung open and a medic rushed in, followed by Dr. Mackie.

"Where's Campa?" Barenin rasped.

Mackie's eyes bulged. "Now they ask for her," he muttered.

Barenin strained to graze Mackie's thoughts to understand, but his mind, so clear a few moments before, was hazed.

His thoughts did have some focus, though, funneling toward a distant but familiar point. Damon.

Barenin shoved up again. Damon was in danger.

Mackie pushed him back down, and for a wonder, he was able to. Barenin's muscles felt like rubber. A new panic seized him.

"How long?" he asked.

"Alexi, please, hold still."

Alexi. Yes. He was Alexi here. He grabbed that truth and fitted himself into it. The haze in his mind felt more natural now in this familiar human focus. But he still felt Damon's distant alarm.

Alexi gripped Mackie's arm. A weak hold, but enough to halt the man long enough to look at him. "How long was I out?"

Mackie looked away. "Two weeks. Not long, all things considered. How do you feel?"

Alexi tried to push up again. "Damon. He's in danger--"

Mackie's face puckered. Wariness radiated off of him, so strong that Alexi could feel it through the haze.

"Well, at least you look yourself again," Mackie said.

Alexi looked down at his hands. Olive-brown, his natural color when human-focused.

The hatch jerked open and Oji stumbled through, stopping when she saw him. Her wide eyes were ringed with lack of sleep.

He reached for her and she reached back. She flinched when their fingers touched, then crushed his hand in hers.

"Oji," Mackie said. "Please, I need to examine him--"

Alexi jerked back. No, he couldn't let them examine him. Even a cursory scan would reveal his DNA. He tried to shove through the haze in his mind, to focus just that bit more Aezthena so he could fog the scanners. The effort exhausted him. Kaireyeh had built a wall around him, and he couldn't push through. He bared his teeth.

"Alexi, talk to me," Oji said.

There was more than concern in her thoughts. He could always feel her thoughts even through the focus of humanity. Now, he tasted her fear--fear of him.

"Mackie, is he stable?" Oji asked.

"I am trying to determine that--"

"Yes or no?"

"If you're asking if he will live, yes--"

"Then get the hell out." Oji shoved him toward the hatch, and the medic fled with him. She pulled the hatch shut and flipped the lock.

Alexi found himself panting as she glared down at him.

"Why do your eyes glow?"

He licked his lips.

She stabbed a finger at him. "That! I have seen Damon do that!"

He closed his eyes and lay back, spent. "Damon is in danger," he croaked. He could feel the rising tension through the connection between them.

Oji snatched a metal bottle off Campa's desk and uncapped it, crouching down to hold it to his mouth.

He drank the stale water, coughed, and drank a bit more. Then he shook his head. Any more would make him sick.

Oji's hands shook as she recapped the lid. She stared at him, looking lost.

"You lied to me, again," she said, her voice cracking. "You told me your name was Alexi Valentin. You told me the implants--are they implants?--made your eyes glow. You encrypted our son." She stopped for breath. She was hyperventilating. "Alexi...Campa said you are Damon. Are you?"

He had never wanted to answer that question.

Oji waited, her pain and sense of betrayal growing with every passing breath. He could feel them seeping into his soul. Void, but he'd thought that for once he could live a life unconnected to his past. Have a family that didn't know he was a monster.

"I don't go by Damon anymore," he said. "My name is Barenin Lyr."

There, it was said. His time of respite from that name was over--but really, it had been over when Edora found him at Andavar.

He frowned as his mind put the details of that meeting back into place. There was something important just beyond it. He scrabbled for memories in his inefficient human mind.

"Barenin," Oji echoed. "Damon Barenin Alyras Kynaston. Barenin Lyr. Oh." She rocked back on her heels.

"Oji, help me up. Where is Damon?"

She looked at him like he was crazy.

"I'm not Damon," he snapped, and coughed. He reached for Campa's water bottle, cursing as his trembling hand knocked it over. "I'm Barenin. I'm Alexi. Damon is in danger, where is he?" He looked around him, and only then noticed the pitch of the ship's engines. They weren't in translight. More, he could feel a solid resonance through the Kaireyeh bones of the ship that he hadn't felt since the ship had first appeared in the Resistance hangar on Hale. The Kaireyeh engines had been reconnected, and now sat on standby.

Campa would never connect those engines. Not in a thousand years.

"Oji, what is happening?"

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