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He holds it out to me and I take it, clutching it to my chest.
"Hungry?" Kazex immediately darts to the doorway and gestures at a tray there. "Erzah brought us food. He knew I wasn't leaving you alone. If you're not hungry, that's fine, too. You don't have to eat if you don't want to."
The words race out of him as if he's excited and breathless. Like he's thrilled to feed me somehow. It makes me relax a little bit, and I sit on the very edge of the freshly-made bed. "I could eat."
It's the right thing to say. Kazex practically beams with delight and carries the tray in, thumping his boot against the door so it'll slide shut behind him. He sets the tray down in front of me and crouches a short distance away, watching me closely.
There are a bunch of little pots and covered bowls, and I recognize none of them. I’m suddenly frozen by indecision. I can’t choose one. He clearly expects me to but the thought of reaching for the wrong thing paralyzes me. I tentatively reach a hand out for one, only to draw back again. What if I pick wrong and I disappoint him? He’s being so nice.
“It’s all right,” he says in a cheerful voice. “Sakkar—that’s our medic—says that those newly freed from slavery sometimes suffer from post-traumatic stress. It happens a lot. With some people, it makes you afraid to make decisions. You want me to pick for you?”
I’m relieved, all of the terror bleeding out. Maybe that’s what it is. It’s just PTSD that’s causing me to freeze up with anxiety. I nod.
He nudges a plate with crunchy-looking cracker-like things toward me. “Try these.”
I hesitantly pick one up and take a bite. It's cloyingly, disgustingly sweet, and my stomach turns. I immediately put it back down on the tray, trying to hide my revulsion.
His face falls, and I tense up, worried I've offended him. "Sorry."
"Does it taste bad?"
"Too sweet," I say, wrinkling my nose.
Kazex nods. "If they had you on sedatives, it can affect how things taste for a while. Try the noodles. They're not sweet." When I hesitate again, he picks up one bowl and pulls the lid off. "This one has bits of pickled veg in it."
It looks a lot like ramen, and I'm suddenly so hungry that I grab a fistful of the noodles and hungrily devour them, slurping noodles and then licking my hand clean of the juices.
"Eating...sticks..." Kazex says after a moment, holding something else out to me.
Oh. Embarrassed heat flushes my face. "Sorry."
"Never apologize to me, Ruthie. I've been where you are. I understand. Did they not feed you much? Or was food a bargaining tool? When I was a slave, we were given a gruel that sat out all day. It was hot and bugs landed in it, and if we wanted to eat something better, we had to double the amount of ore we pulled from the mines. I remember I always fought hard to get that better meal." His mouth quirks a little on one side. "Not that it was much of an improvement, but there were no bugs."
I give him a shy smile, taking the sticks from him. Maybe he gets it, then. "We were thrown protein bricks. Everyone fought over them and there was never enough to go around." Even now, I can taste the cloying sweetness of one of the bricks in the back of my mouth and my stomach turns. "You were a slave, too?"
"My entire race is created to be slaves." He says it matter-of-fact, like today is Tuesday. "Business owners that need cheap labor put in an order for a batch of a'ani, and we are cloned and shipped out. I'm lucky that Lord Straik found me and hired me here instead, or else I'd still be in an asteroid mine."
I'm shocked at what I'm hearing. I know I'm in space but...asteroid mines? Entire cloned races? While it explains why that other woman has my face, I feel more out of my depth than ever. "I thought I had been taken from Earth," I admit in a small voice. "I didn't realize I was...a clone."
"You might not be. You might be the original. Any scars or tattoos? Markings? Something that would denote that you weren't grown in a lab?"
I try to think, running my hands over my arms and legs, and eventually I shake my head. I should be more terrified, but more things feel as if they're clicking into place. "I don't know. I don't think I have much in the way of memories, either. I thought things would clear up once the drugs were gone but..."
He nods as if he understands exactly what I mean. "You're fine until you reach for something that isn't there. A'ani get that sometimes when they first leave the labs. It fades when you start making your own memories."
