gaian consortium 06 - zhore deception (7 page)

But then there was pressure on her flesh, someone’s fingers wrapping around hers. She’d floated in darkness for long that she instinctively latched onto those fingers, clinging to them the way someone drowning might grasp their rescuer’s hand.

Gabriel’s voice. “How do you feel?”

Realizing it was his fingers she clutched so tightly, she let go at once, then forced her eyes all the way open. She lay in a hospital bed. Tubes ran from a machine placed off to one side and terminated in her left arm.

No, wait…that couldn’t be her arm. The skin was black as night and yet shimmered with all the colors of the rainbow at the same time. And when she jerked in shock, staring down at the unfamiliar limb, she could see the scales rippling as her muscles moved beneath that alien skin.

One of those hateful chuckles. “Yes, the operation was a complete success. No rejection of the foreign tissue so far. But the doctors want you to stay in bed for another twenty-four hours. After that, you’ll be able to get up.”

Even though she hated to display such weakness in front of him, she had to know. Almost of their own accord, her fingers reached up to touch her face, to explore the contours of her cheeks and nose and chin. Yes, that felt like her eyebrows, like her mouth. The bones underneath hadn’t changed. It was only the skin that lay on top that was so very, very different.

“I suppose it will take some getting used to,” he added. “On the other hand, I think it suits you. It brings out your eyes.”

She wanted to scowl at him, but it hurt. That was when she realized she ached all over, as if someone had shoved her in a sack and then kicked her repeatedly. Well, maybe that wasn’t too far off the mark. It wasn’t every day that you had your entire epidermis replaced.

All right, not exactly replaced. According to Gabriel, she was still underneath there somewhere. She certainly didn’t have the strength or the courage to make a tiny little cut in that new skin and find out for herself whether her own human skin lay untouched below it.

Off to her left, a door opened, and a doctor entered the room. At least, Trinity assumed the tired-looking woman was a doctor. She came over and peered at the readouts on the machines, then tapped a few notes on the handheld she fished out of the pocket of her scrubs.

“Everything all right?” Gabriel inquired.

“Healing nicely,” the doctor replied. “I understand the need to speak with her, but try not to tire her out too much.”

“Of course.”

Brisk fingers against her wrist, feeling her pulse, and then the doctor made a final notation before letting herself out again.

“How long?” Trinity finally rasped, the words feeling like sandpaper against her dry throat.

Gabriel didn’t reply at first, but instead lifted a blue plastic cup from the bedside table and held it against her lips. “Try some ice chips.”

She let them slide over her tongue and then down her throat, cool, soothing. “More,” she whispered.

Obliging her, he tipped a few more of the chips into her mouth. She hated feeling like this, like she didn’t even have the strength to lift a plastic cup. And she hated even more that it was Gabriel Brant helping her, watching her helplessness and somehow taking a perverse pleasure in it.

Then he said, “Three days.”

Three days of her life gone. Three days she’d swum in darkness. She remembered nothing of the surgery, which was probably just as well.

It hadn’t all been dark and empty, though. For some reason, she recalled a man’s voice, soft, deep, speaking words she’d never heard before, a language of sibilant sounds and rounded vowels, one that seemed to wrap around her and warm her.

“
Zhara sel tranhir?
” Gabriel asked, and she responded automatically,

“
Zhahir en trallen
.” Then her eyes widened. “Was that…?”

“Yes. Zhoraani. We had the sleep conditioning going the entire time you were out.”

Trinity blinked. Yes, Gabriel had said that her language training would go on in the background while she swam in unconsciousness, would be implanted in her mind so she would not have to spend rigorous weeks or even months learning the alien tongue, but she hadn’t thought it would be this easy. She hadn’t even stopped to pick out the words, but had replied as naturally as if she were speaking the Galactic Standard that she’d known all her life. What they’d said was,

You are all right?

I am fine.

Was it possible that this insane plan might actually have a chance of succeeding?

“Your accent is very good,” he said. Then he reached down and touched a strand of her hair. It, too, was black as night, startling against the white hospital gown she wore. If she hadn’t been so tired, she might have flinched.

“Sleep now,” he added. “We can talk again tomorrow, after you’ve gotten more rest.”

Trinity wanted to protest that she’d already slept for days, but for some reason, she couldn’t find the energy to speak. Instead, she felt her head sliding back against the pillow, lassitude overcoming all her limbs. Maybe she’d had enough of darkness, but it hadn’t yet had its fill of her.

The next morning, she asked for a mirror. Yes, she knew she was changed, altered to become a facsimile of something unutterably alien, but she needed the evidence of her own eyes to tell her it was all real.

“Go ahead,” Gabriel told the nurse, who hovered near the door, looking anxious. “She’ll need to see sometime.”

The nurse nodded and then fled, returning a few minutes later with a small steel-framed mirror approximately ten centimeters square. However, she didn’t give it to Trinity, but rather to Gabriel, as if she wanted him to be responsible for any reaction Trinity might have to her altered appearance.

He smiled. “I’ll call if I need you.”

And of course the nurse went right back out again, closing the door behind her. Trinity still didn’t know his exact title, but it was fairly clear that Gabriel’s word was law around here.

Gazing down at her, he turned the mirror over and over in his hands. Stray images reflected in its surface and then disappeared — the blinking lights of the machines overseeing her recovery, the muted fixtures overhead, the face of the man who stood next to her bed, with those gleaming charcoal eyes and ironic mouth.

But not once was she able to catch a glimpse of her own reflection.

“Please,” she whispered. She knew by doing so she was giving in to his need to see her subordinate to him, but right then being able to see what they had done to her was far more important than playing mind games with Gabriel Brant.

Wordlessly, he handed the mirror to her. She took it from him, her fingers touching the cool surface. Strange how the information transmitted to her brain from her skin didn’t seem any different. She’d worried about that, wondered if having the world translated through another race’s flesh would change her perception of it. But no, the mirror felt like a mirror, although the hands holding it were so incredibly altered.

A long pause. She was conscious of Gabriel’s eyes on her, but she didn’t dare glance up at him. Bad enough that he was there at all. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of seeing the fear in her eyes.

Then she slowly lifted the mirror toward her face.

The eyes were the same, although their blue-green shade now seemed intensified a hundred-fold because of the night-black skin around them. Her lashes were as sooty and black as her hair. And that was her nose, and the high, wide cheekbones. Strangely, her mouth seemed the most different, although as she looked more closely, she realized its shape hadn’t been altered, only that it appeared so changed because it was more or less the same color as the rest of her skin, and she was used to wearing deep-toned lip stains that contrasted with her fair complexion.

So…it was her, that reflection, and yet it wasn’t. It was Trinity Knox, translated into Zhore.

“Well?” said Gabriel at last.

“It’s…different,” she managed. A silly response, but she really didn’t know what else to say. She wasn’t about to confess to relief that she could still see herself in there, if she looked closely enough.

“True.” He moved closer to the bed and took the mirror from her. “You’re beautiful, Trinity.”

She did slant a glance up at him then, sure he was teasing her in the cruelest way. And perhaps he was, but she couldn’t tell for sure. He looked serious, the ironic glint gone from his eyes. For once, he wasn’t even smiling in that smug way of his.

“I don’t know about that,” she replied. How shaky her voice sounded. She could only hope he’d attribute that tremor to her continued recovery from the surgery she’d undergone.

“I do.” He set the mirror down on the bedside table and turned back toward her. “So how do you feel today?”

“Better, I suppose. I don’t hurt as much. My head still aches, though.” Which was only the truth. She’d woken up with her temples pounding. Her thoughts had seemed to ring with alien syllables, sounds that she could only translate if she didn’t concentrate too hard.

In a way, it had reminded her of being twelve again and having her talent — or curse, depending on how you looked at it — descend on her. At first, she’d thought she was going crazy. The inside of her head had sounded as if someone had turned on every channel in their entertainment unit simultaneously. It was too much, and she’d missed almost three weeks of school, writhing in bed, hands pressed against her ears, until slowly she began to build up the barriers she needed to keep out other people’s thoughts. She’d had no one to assist her; it had all been trial and error, pushing at the voices in her head until they finally, mercifully left her alone.

Well, unless she wanted to hear them. She’d learned to focus on a particular person, if she needed to know what they were thinking. It wasn’t nearly as much fun or as interesting as she’d thought mind reading might be, once she understood what this particular gift of hers entailed. People’s thoughts tended to chase one another, round and round, and as for their opinions of those around them…well, they weren’t nearly as charitable or as complimentary as Trinity had hoped. She’d quickly learned to keep them all at bay. It was just easier that way.

She must have been frowning as those unpleasant recollections surfaced, because Gabriel leaned toward her solicitously and asked, “Should I call for the nurse? She can give you something for that.”

Trinity was sure they had all sorts of useful drugs on hand. Now that she’d come out safely on the other side of her surgery, however, she didn’t feel at all inclined to dull her senses any more than they already had been.

“No, it’s fine,” she replied, summoning a smile, although the flesh of her face felt strange as the skin on her cheeks stretched. Perhaps Zhore skin wasn’t as elastic as human skin. “I’m sure it’ll go away soon enough. My headaches generally do.”

He seemed satisfied with her reply, since he put aside the discussion of her headache and said, “Good. I was hoping you’d be recovered enough to begin the next phase of your training.”

“Which is?” She didn’t think she liked the sound of this “training,” although she knew there was probably a great deal more preparation she’d have to go through before Gabriel and the people pulling his strings deemed her ready for her infiltration of Zhore society.

“Nothing too strenuous,” he told her. Now the smile was back, showing his amusement at her trepidation. “We went back and forth on this, but we decided that it would be better for you to experience as much as you can in this form, so you can get used to it, so it can become you. You’ll be training with Blake next. Your power to read minds is very strong, according to him, but your natural defenses aren’t as robust as they should be.”

Trinity began to bristle, and Gabriel raised a hand.

“I don’t mean that as an insult. But besides Blake, have you ever met anyone with your particular talents?”

She shook her head. “No.”

“Not surprising. We’ve calculated that the incidence of true psi powers such as yours is less than one in a hundred million. So it makes sense that you would never have crossed paths with another ‘talented’ individual, and therefore wouldn’t have developed the abilities that would allow you to keep intruders out of your mind.”

No arguing there. The way Blake had been able to penetrate her mind had been disturbing, to say the least. True, she’d created her own barriers, but those were intended solely to keep other people’s stray thoughts from getting into her brain. Dealing with someone like Blake was completely different.

Since she offered no comment, Gabriel seemed happy to plow ahead. “But living among the Zhore will be very different. They aren’t true psychics, but they still can sense emotion, as far as we’ve been able to tell. So Blake will train you how to keep all that banked down. After all, the last thing we want is for the Zhore to smell fear on you.”

No, she supposed not. Precisely how easy it would be to train that fear out of her…or at least block it…she wasn’t sure. After all, she’d never counted on being dropped in the middle of an alien planet to spy on its inhabitants…to get closer than she’d ever dreamed to one of them….

A shiver went through her, and all she could do was nod. In that moment, she thought her fear and her worry must be so intense that the Zhore could sense it all the way from their home world here to Gaia.

She didn’t think a barrier existed that could conceal terror like that.

CHAPTER FIVE

In the end, Zhandar did not contact Jalzhin, agent of the Ministry of Health. Instead, he waited until he and Leizha were alone, the other workers in their department out on their various field assignments, making sure the plants and flowers of Torzhaan continued to replenish the air and feed both the stomachs and the souls of the city’s inhabitants.

Since he was the supervisor of the department, he had a large private office situated in one corner of the building. Leizha came to him there, trepidation clear in her hesitant steps and the way she cast a glance backward at the empty space behind her. Zhandar had heard that the Gaians liked to put their workers in little boxes to work, but that was not the way here on Zhoraan. He had his office, true, and Leizha, as his assistant, a smaller one, but the rest of the workspace was open, with tables and chairs arranged attractively in the center of the floor, and potted plants all around. Water cascaded down glass waterfalls to either side of the corridor that led to the banks of elevators.