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“How are you feeling?” Hess asked with a glance in his direction.
“Great.” Sebastian shrugged, then scrunched his face up. “Well, hungry as fuck, and a little sore…somewhere.” Sebastian gave Hess a sidelong look and was intensely gratified to see a little pink in the cheek above his stubble. “But a lot better than when my guts were falling out of my belly.”
“Was there any damage done to you?” Hess shot him a quizzical look.
Sebastian scoffed loudly. “Hess!” Sebastian turned to walk sideways and frown at him. He made big motions toward his midriff. “I was practically cut in half.” Then he dropped his hands. “Or do you mean, after, when we—”
“No. Not that. I mean, damage to”—Hess scowled, then his lips twisted, and his nose wrinkled as he looked almost embarrassed. He gestured vaguely toward Sebastian’s face—“to you.”
“Oh. No. Nothing permanent, at least.” Sebastian turned to walk forward again. It felt oddly nice to be asked after. Really asked after. “Don’t get me wrong, the lack of blood flow would have gotten me soon if I hadn’t gotten here when I did. I can’t survive outside of a body, and I can’t survive inside a body that’s not alive.”
“What happens?”
Sebastian glanced at him. They were of a different height in this body, Hess being slightly shorter than average. No one ever seemed to realize that, given how much larger than life he always seemed.
Torvars, as a general rule, did not give out the details of their physical realities. Aside from it being generally distasteful to others, torvars were a despised and hunted race, and they guarded their weaknesses closely. There weren’t that many of them, and stories of purges had come down through the generations crystal clear. Sebastian was already an anomaly, living out as he was, and as his infamy grew, he was certain there were torvars out there that resented him for it.
But Hess looked so thoughtful and curious and just a little concerned that Sebastian found himself answering anyway.
“I suffocate, essentially.” Sebastian waved to his chest and throat. “I can’t breathe. I don’t have the organs for it. Without an external circulatory system to bring me oxygen, I’m done for.”
Hess frowned. “That must be unnerving. To need something outside of yourself like that.”
“Not really.” Sebastian shrugged. “You need a circulatory system too. But you’re stuck with just the one. If that one goes, then you’re done for.”
Hess chuckled. “I guess so.”
As they turned into a wide hallway that Sebastian finally recognized as the one leading to the war room, Hess slowed his pace. Sebastian slowed to follow and glanced at him, but Hess looked straight ahead. They walked slowly and quietly all the way to the closed door of the war room, and Sebastian thought maybe the tension was all in his head when Hess suddenly stopped.
“Would you have breakfast with me?”
Sebastian blinked and turned to face him. “What?”
“After this meeting, of course.” Hess nodded to the door but then shook his head, his jaw set and his eyes betraying nothing. “You don’t have to. You’ve been medically cleared and debriefed.”
“I don’t have to have breakfast with you?” Sebastian repeated, still trying to follow.
“No. Your time is your own once we’re done here.” Hess moved to take a step toward the door, but Sebastian caught the front of his shirt before he could.
“But I can have breakfast with you?” Sebastian clarified. “And you would like to have breakfast with me?”
Hess glanced down at Sebastian’s hand on his shirt, still holding him in place, then back up at Sebastian with the barest traces of color in his cheeks. But he still managed to give Sebastian a half smile that seemed almost confident and made Sebastian’s heart flutter. “I would, yes. If you would like to.”
“Yeah.” Sebastian realized how tightly he held Hess’s shirt and quickly let it go. He awkwardly petted the wrinkles down, then glanced into Hess’s eyes again. In the morning light, at this range, Sebastian could see they weren’t just a single unitary dark brown but had swirls of amber shades and a softness that Sebastian wanted to fall into. “I’d like that.”
Hess’s surprisingly pretty eyes crinkled at the edges as he smiled and nodded. But then he took a step back, and Sebastian’s hand fell back down to his side, and a disconcerting thing happened.
Sebastian watched Hess reach for the doorknob, and it was like watching the security systems on a ship turn on. Outwardly nothing changed, but the aura around the ship seemed to hum and spark, and looking at it gave him a feeling of dread and caution. What had once been approachable was now dangerous, and Sebastian could feel it in his bones.
Sebastian followed Hess through the doorway, his own guard coming up in response, and quickly took the measure of the room.
Garrett and Joan leaned against the wall to his left. Joan had her nose buried in her tablet, her fingers dancing across it. Garrett had his arms crossed, his jaw set, and his eyes narrowed as he glared across the room.
On Sebastian’s right stood the people he was glaring at, Captain Mal’ik and Oliver Turner. Neither paid Garrett any mind. Oliver Turner stood with his back to him, looking out the window over Ralscoln. Mal’ik simply stood, still and straight as a statue, except for the fingers of his metal hand, which tapped against his thumb rhythmically.
In the center, Hess’s usual position over the map, hunched Martha. Sebastian pulled up at the sight of her. The same field of danger that Hess had buzzed around her, and it was not an aura Sebastian was used to feeling from her.
Garrett spoke first, with a caustic tone that Sebastian was very used to feeling from him. “I see you managed to slither out of Kaston, as usual.”
