Page 38 of Meteor Storm

“What exactly does that mean?” Penny asked.

“We lost our world long ago,” I explained before Sunhai could put her own spin on my peoples’ past. “Before the valerians went to war with the gek. Before they even took to space. We drifted for many cycles in colonies, unable to settle another planet. We lost many to sickness. Space was not like our home. We were dying, adrift in living ships. To survive, we evolved.”

“They bred the weakness out of themselves with experiments and mutation,” Sunhai added, her use of the human language broken. “Monrians are engineered. Not natural.”

“We are not mutations,” I corrected. “We are bred strategically to eliminate imperfections.”

“You’re not bred. You are grown,” Sunhai chuckled. “And in great numbers. Numbers enough to sell their soldiers to those willing to pay for contract.”

“You’re…” Penny said. “Soldiers for hire?”

“Armies for hire,” Sunhai corrected. “And ever since they colonize their moon, they engineer billions from the thousands they were. They are great warriors. It brings shame to have been captured and collared like animal,” she laughed.

Penny’s eyes drifted toward me as if to ask whether Sunhai was telling the truth or not. I said nothing to argue it. It was all true, despite the sarcastic and nonchalant way she delivered her words.

“So, you crossbreed the best genetic bloodlines and then just sell your services? For what? What’s the endgame?”

“Survival,” I muttered.

“But there are billions of you now,” she shrugged. “What are you surviving?”

The corner of my lips curled up ever so slightly. “You are new to this world. There is much more to the galaxy than humans can even fathom. Perhaps when your planet is long gone, your people will understand how small it was.”

Her eyelids fluttered like the thought had glitched. Then she shook her head with a long, heavy sigh.

“I think my head might explode. Maybe humans weren’t ready for space.”

“No one is ready for it,” Sunhai said. “That is why everyone always be fighting.”

I watched Penny process everything quietly. Calmly. Her gaze settled on a section of the floor outside her cell and lingered. That word whispered across my mind again. Depression. When I finally found the definition in the back of my thoughts, my shoulders sagged a little for her.

Humans, from everything I had gathered from her little device, were a deeply emotional species. They allowed their feelings to dictate nearly every aspect of their lives, a trait the monrians had spent thousands of cycles trying to breed out of ourselves.

Even so, a small percentage of monrians had always proven defective in that regard.

I feared my time on Mekah was placing me among them.

I found myself struggling to think with the cold logic that had once come so naturally. I harbored hatred for Pek-Tol and his men. For the games and the audiences who sponsored them. I felt protective of Penny. And beyond that, there lingered an undeniable, shameful spark of desire that I could not seem to extinguish.

Vengeance. Desire. Hatred. Anger.

Emotions clouded the mind, yet I allowed them to fester.

I was monrian by blood, but little else. The disciplines I had spent my life perfecting were slipping away, eroded by every passing day on Mekah.

If I returned to monrian society, I would likely be rejected.

The thought should have concerned me.

It didn't.

None of it mattered anymore.

This had to end.

“Thilar?” Penny’s soft, fatigued voice chased me from my thoughts. There was a shudder in her voice like she was deeply uncomfortable. “I’m not stupid. I understand how this works now.” I heard her swallow just as her voice cracked. “If we don’t make it all look good, they’ll just find a way to kill us off. You’ll look for me in the next game, right?”

Gods, she was so tired. I wanted to know why she wasn’t sleeping. Perhaps it was the depression she noted. Either way, her body needed rest and she wasn’t getting it. There was fear in her withering tone as if she’d been up thinking about the grim possibilities.