ARC10

Chapter 21.3

Fully dressed, I make my way back through the Rotunda to the marketplace. Not too many people greet the day at this hour, so I have my pick of the corners in which to observe the world lurch forward. The baker leaves his sacks of flour in a mound where he can swing by once a day to grab the bags of powdered wheat bits and synthetic wheat material.

I climb atop the mound of flour sacks. From this height, I can observe everything.

I watch the people of the URE in the marketplace either wandering around like ghosts or talking rapidly to one another, gesticulating around their wild opinions and harsh criticisms. Their movements are rough and abrupt, exactly like the cows moving in their stalls. Some have pointed to the cracks in the URE and worry that we can't get out soon enough. Others believe there's no chance we'll survive out there if we leave.

At any rate, they need to come to terms.

I lean against the wall in the shadows. When Dean and Connie, talking casually and smiling intermittently, enter the marketplace, I avert my gaze. But not before I catch her long fingers rest on his arm. Not before I see her wrap her hands around his bicep. Not before I see her line her palm against his.

Lady Almighty, I miss those hands.

"We aren't meant for space travel." A sharp voice breaks my mind away from my loneliness. "If that's where the Invaders are from, why we meeting them up there? Wouldn't it make sense to just get rid of them?"

"I'm sick of war," says another. "It's high time we started over."

"Started over? We've been on Earth hundreds of thousands a years. Why don't these 'allies' shoot 'em down instead of ship us out?"

"I wonder whose side they're really on."

The arguments become more childish from here. Their exact words drizzle into a background fuzz as I let my gaze wander through the crowd.

Startled out of my lazy scan, I spot Kai standing out against the frantic movement of the squalling masses. I find him as easily as I could pick out a potato in a basket of steel-wool. His blue eyes lock with mine before I even realize he's there. He wears the small grin that transforms his face from subterranean to supernova.

"Lorn." He sidles next to my flour perch.

"Kamalani." I scooch away to allow him space in my shadowed observation deck.

When he joins me, we stare into the whirlpool of people for a long time before saying anything else. We haven't talked since the day of the flyover. When two people share something that terrible, small talk seems rude. But it happens anyway. "How are things with—"

"You actually want to know?"

"Why do you guys think I can't handle it?"

"Great, actually. We have crazy, loud, hot sex every night. It's awesome."

"She isn't pregnant yet?" I hide my grin, repressing the exultation from the idea that I'm not the only one who has trouble. Maybe the HHP rushed me because I'm nearing the end of my timeline, but if we started earlier, Dean and I could have taken our time . . . No. Stop right now. There's no point in falling through that dark hole again.

"She is. We just do it anyway."

"Congratulations, Papa Kamalani." My hand lands on his back with a boisterous, hardy slap. It's the first body I've touched in forever. My palm is hot on impact.

"Yeah, it feels good to be significantly contributing to the success of the human race." He hits his chest proudly, puffing it out before falling back to lean on his elbows.