Vai

I floated above my body. The green light that had tethered me to my body had been severed, but I didn't rejoin nature like the Awakened One just said I should. I didn't see a bright tunnel. I didn't go to a heaven or a spirit world. I wasn't reunited with my mother. I didn't disperse. I was just there.

El ushered Owen - who had stopped screaming - Esther, Shel and Minmin onto the shuttle. She called out to Lieutenant Tanpo. Tanpo ran towards my body behind Warpaint, but she stopped at El's words. Tanpo looked at my body then to El and back again.

The Awakened One took giant steps towards me, but he urged the others onto the ship.

Millions of the Corruption rose into the sky. The pink shimmering smoke charged the Awakened One and Lieutenant Tanpo. They ignored Warpaint.

"Sir," Warpaint said quietly as he reached my body. It was obvious I was dead. My body was shredded. He opened his front. His insides shifted to make room. I had once thought that I might be able to fit into him like a suit, but I never imagined it would be my dead, bloodied body.

He closed his front. I was pulled not to my body but to Warpaint's head. It was its own gravity that I couldn't resist. I bounced along with him as he jogged back to the others.

El and my friends were on the shuttle. The Awakened One and Lieutenant Tanpo wouldn't make it in time. The Corruption would reach them first.

Lieutenant Tanpo screamed - a low guttural scream of frustration. The apricot shield of light she had around her expanded, thickened. It encompassed not only her, but the Awakened One and the entire shuttle. It pushed the pink cloud of Corruption away from all of them - back towards Warpaint. Warpaint turned so he faced away from Lieutenant Tanpo, the Awakened One and the shuttle. Red spread from the thin lines on his body to cover the white. His chestplate opened and his Aether shield shot out towards the pink cloud. The cloud fizzled into nothingness in many place. The rest of the Corruption dispersed and fled.

Warpaint closed his chestplate and ran back to the shuttle. Lieutenant Tanpo boarded and waved Warpaint onto the shuttle. He ran passed her. The others stood looking out the windows. They turned to Warpaint when he entered.

Owen rushed to Warpaint. "Is he okay? He's okay, right? You put him inside you to keep him safe, right? He's not dead is he? My friend can't be dead."

"He's not dead," Warpaint lied. Why he lied, I wasn't sure. Maybe to keep everyone calm until we got back. I was definitely dead.

"Is he conscious?" Minmin now stood beside Owen. Her green eyes seemed extra large and puppy like as she stared up at Warpaint. "Can we speak with him?"

"No," Warpaint simply said.

"Maybe we can give him some first aid," Esther said.

"He's safer inside me," Warpaint said.

"Sit down, everyone," El said. "I'm sure Vai will be fine." She lied too. The way she looked at Warpaint, I was sure she knew I was dead. No one else, but Shel seemed to notice her look. Moisture sprang into his blue eyes, but he swallowed hard and they were gone. So he knew too, or at least suspected.

"The Awakened One won't fit inside the shuttle," Lieutenant Tanpo said.

"I don't need to," the Awakened One said outside the shuttle door. "I will fly next to your vessel until we reach space and then we will part ways."

"We can't part ways. Not again." Esther had been seated, but she rose to her feet at the Awakened One's words.

"We can communicate better now," the Awakened One said. "The Corruption found me. I need to hide again. I will call out to you once it's safe."

"You don't have a ship of your own?" Lieutenant Tanpo asked. "You will die in space."

"We don't need vessels to fly and survive in space," the Awakened One said. "You got a small glimpse of your power today. Your defense can help their offense. It is just as important. Don't forget." He lightly tapped the side of the shuttle. "Go now. The Corruption regroups to attack."

Lieutenant Tanpo shut the door and slid into her pilot seat. Warpaint sat next to Owen. I fit so perfectly inside him that every place he bent was a place I naturally bent. My father had him commissioned perfectly for me. Almost as if this was Warpaint's main purpose. The shuttle lifted.

"Vai's going to be fine, right?" Owen asked.

"He will be," Warpaint said. And then something ticked in Warpaint's internal workings. It wasn't until my father answered his okulus that I realized Warpaint placed an internal call to my father.

"What is it?" my father asked.

Warpaint didn't have a volo for my father's image to be projected through, but my father's image was projected backwards into Warpaint's internal workings through one of his eyes. Like a backwards volo. My father stood on the bridge of the Remembrance at the A.I. station. His fingers ran quickly over the computer terminal.

"Code 0." Warpaint didn't speak the words with his mechatronic mouth, but my father heard it on his end.

My father froze. I had never seen him show fear until that moment.

"Lieutenant Commander?" someone I couldn't see said to my father. "Are you all right?"

"No." My father stepped away from the terminal. "I have to go." His long strides took him to the doors of the bridge in a matter of moments.

"Lieutenant Commander." A human hand grabbed his arm. I didn't recognize the human, but I recognized he wore the symbol of captain. "The A.I. isn't . . ."

"My son," my father said. His voice choked.

"He's injured?"

My father nodded.

"Badly?"

"Yes," my father lied. I was sure code 0 didn't mean injury. "I must go back to the Shadow now."

The captain let go of his arm. "Go. I'll have a shuttle ready for you."

My father rushed through the doors and onto the elevator.

"Follow procedure, Warpaint," my father said to the empty elevator. "No one can see the body."

"Yes, sir."

The internal call ended.

The body. Code 0 meant I was dead. Why the secrecy? It wasn't like he could put me to sleep for another 79 years. My bodied wasn't diseased. It was shredded. I wasn't inside it anymore.

Outside the shuttle windows, dark space encompassed us. The Awakened One lifted a large hand in farewell and then he blinked away. I didn't see any sign of the Corruption following us.

We landed on the Shadow. Warpaint didn't wait for Lieutenant Tanpo or anyone else to open the shuttle door. He opened it himself and stepped onto the shuttle bay. And I bobbed along inside his head unable to go anywhere else.

Dr. Rags and a medical assistant waited just outside the door. Warpaint turned his head to look at Lieutenant Tanpo.

"I called ahead for medical assistance," she said. She had no idea that was the exact opposite of what my father wanted. "Let Vai out, Warpaint. Let Commander Ragear take a look at him."

"Yes," Dr. Rags said. He had his celluplasor ready in his hand. His volo hovered around him ready to scan me and tell him all my injuries. That wasn't necessary since I was dead.

"No," Warpaint said.

A shuttle entered and landed nearby.

"What do you mean 'no'?" Lieutenant Tanpo said. The others came out of the shuttle behind her. El stood in the door frame - not quite ready to come fully out. "Vai is in need of medical attention. I saw him fall. I saw the blood."

She didn't see all the cuts - my skin cut into shreds - my heart nothing but tatters.

"That's enough!" My father's voice boomed across the short distance. "You are not needed Commander Ragear."

"Lieutenant Commander," Dr. Rags said. "This is my area of expertise. You need to stick with what you're good at and let me do my job."

"My son is my job and expertise," my father said. He stood between Warpaint and the small Starwatcher doctor. "If you have a problem with that, take it up with the captain."

Esther, Owen, Minmin and Shel stood in a line behind Tanpo. They all held hands. They all looked at the exchange between my father and Dr. Rags except for Shel. He watched his mother. El looked down at the metal floor of the shuttle - quiet - almost defeated which I had never imagined was possible for her.

"Warpaint, with me," my father said. He walked away from them. Warpaint followed.

"I will take it up with the captain," Dr. Rags called out to my retreating father.

My father ignored him. Warpaint followed him all the way back to our quarters and into my father's room. It was my first time in my father's room. There was no bed. Instead, the room was filled with science equipment. Including a few cylindrical tubes that went from the floor to the ceiling. Lights lit up the front of the tubes and each tube had a small computer terminal. There was also a long table filled with small tubes and beakers. My father brushed these aside with a sweep of his arm long arm. He didn't seem to care when some fell to the floor. Where did my father sleep? Did he sleep?

"Open up, Warpaint. Let me see him."

Warpaint opened his front. My father caught my body as it fell forward. He placed it on the table. He glanced over it once from head to toe and shook his head. "It isn't salvageable. Let me have the Laumalie preserver." He held a hand out to Warpaint.

Warpaint put his 3 arms over his chest - hugging himself. The mechatronic didn't have feelings like we did and this seemed more like he was protecting himself - or maybe my father - rather than actually hugging himself.

My father had been studying my dead face, but when Warpaint didn't obey my father looked at him.

"He isn't there," Warpaint said quietly. "I had two important tasks - to protect Vai and if that failed to capture his essence. I failed in both."

My father's dark skin took on an ashen tone I hadn't seen before. "He has to be there," he whispered.

Warpaint put his arms back to his side as my father approached him. My father opened Warpaint's chestplate. He unhooked wires and moved things around. Finally he pulled out a square crystal that had wires coming out of it. The crystal was dull. My father collapsed into the only chair in the room.

"He's not here," he whispered.

"I failed," Warpaint said. "I need to be destroyed."

"No, Warpaint. This isn't the end. I can still make this right. I can't live without my son."

He slid the chair to a computer terminal that was independent from the ship. "I still have all of his memories from before. Do you have his volo?"

Warpaint reached inside himself and pulled out my volo. My father took it from him.

"Is our son dead? Commander Ragear is communicating with Captain Axa that you won't let him tend to Vai's wounds."

I didn't have a body, but the tingling sensation ran throughout my spirit self. The ship's computer spoke to my dad in my mother's voice. I remembered it now. Very clearly. My mother's voice, her inflections. Did my father really make the Shadow's computer a reflection of my mother?

"I can save him," my father said. He connected my volo to the independent computer terminal. He retrieved my okulus from my wrist.

Save me how?

"The Gathering Counsel should not have agreed to your experiments. You should have let us both go," my mother's voice said. "It is not right for my mind to be this ship. It is not right to replicate our son."

The tingling sensation inside me spread - jumped, twirled. Replicate?

"I can't live without either of you," my father said. He went to one of the cylindrical tubes. His fingers worked rapidly over the computer terminal. A seam ran down the front of the tube. The front opened from side to side into two pieces. Inside was my body - fresh, unblemished, lifeless.

My attention went from the fresh body to the torn one on the table and back again.

"They should never have allowed you to clone our son," my mother said.