Blunder

(English)

Madeline might have asked if Jordan and I were eighteen, but the more people showed up, the more I thought she was messing with us. Half the people showing up to this meeting were sophomores at most.

Every new abductee I met was another disturbing glimpse into the mind of ENVY’s creator. Whoever our abductor was…they were one sick twist. Abducting people was awful enough. Abducting teenagers was worse than adults…I think. But the majority of abductees were even younger than that.

It was one thing seeing the twenty-three bodies from my own abduction ship. Daniel and I had been the two oldest among us, as far as I could tell. But seeing that same trend play out in Kemon’s camp was a disturbing reminder that two-thirds of abductees had been in middle-school when they were abducted.

So responsibility fell to us older abductees. And when you put all of us in one room, it started to feel a lot like high school again just by the numbers.

Johnny, Madeline, Sidney, Donnie, Aarti…if not for psionics, I’d never remember all these people’s names so soon. Drew and Knox would be the only two I’d recognize without them. Blatant invisibility and secretly being an alien were hard to forget.

Then again, Drew wasn’t the only person sporting striking augmentations.

One guy’s eyes twisted and undulated as he focused on different things, a bit like Umtane’s augmented eyes had. Another girl had thin antennae sticking up from her temples—just going by sight, they would have been easy to miss. But both augmentations gave off a gentle psionic buzz.

And I thought I’d been so clever figuring out Michelle’s external psionic prosthesis.

Twenty-nine kids in the room and seventeen of us were Adept, one of them even having activated in the time since Jordan and I had arrived.

Knox wandered toward me, all subtle-like, but I blew him off.

The Vorak hadn’t backstabbed me yet, but I had no illusions about there being any real trust between us. We had common interests in lying to Kemon. Maybe Mirsus could turn out to be a real ally, but I wouldn’t count on it just yet.

No, instead I picked a seat next to Jordan while we waited for Kemon to actually arrive.

“Thoughts?” she asked.

“If you’ve got a penny,” I said.

“About this place,” she said. “Been here a few days now. What’s going through your head?”

“Honestly? I want to start some trouble,” I said.

“Oh, brother…” she rolled her eyes. “You’re going to make a scene in front of everyone aren’t you?”

“You know it,” I smirked.

“Well at least tell me you have a plan,” she said.

I wasn’t worried about being overheard. Not that nobody was in earshot, everyone was just embroiled in their own conversations to be paying any attention to ours.

“A loose one,” I said. “I talked to Madeline, and Win has them convinced the Vorak will attack.”

“I got Drew to tell me more,” she nodded. “Get this, they’re calling that Adept-combat group ‘the Ronin’.”

“Oh brother, indeed,” I said. “But I suppose it would be more precise to say they’re only convinced someone will attack. Win is very insistent that they can’t know it will be the Vorak for sure.”

“…Makes me wonder if they know something we don’t,” Jordan said.

“Yeah. I’m thinking of calling Kemon out,” I said. “At least enough to start making people question what his motives are. Because everyone I’ve talked to thinks this is all from the goodness of his heart.”

“I hate to say it, but if I hadn’t been told beforehand? I might think this was all benevolent too,” Jordan said.

“He’s still breaking important rules, and he knows it. Either he shows some cracks in the façade, or he digs himself deeper by directly lying,” I said. “Either way, we make progress.”

“You sure? You said it yourself, this guy’s a snake. You never know what he might do.”

“Nothing ventured, nothing gained,” I replied.

And with that, the Casti of the hour entered.

Kemon was shorter than I expected. I’d met very few Casti who were taller than me, and—while I was tall—I wasn’t that tall for a human my age. Kemon looked small next to even the high school freshman making up half the room.

So I noticed when everyone’s eyes were suddenly on him. Every conversation in the room died out in two seconds flat, and all attention was on him.

“Good evening,” he said in English. Stiff, just like Win, but even less practiced. “I was gone longer than I anticipated, therefore I’m especially grateful for your patience.”

I frowned. Contractions. His English sounded notably worse than Win’s, but he was using more advanced grammar? It warranted a peek toward his psionics, but Kemon had a firewall that was definitely not the default design…

That was strange. Win was using the default firewall. So who’d made Kemon’s?

“The information I’ve tracked down can wait, however,” Kemon said. “I understand we have some new arrivals.”

Kemon’s eyes quickly picked Jordan and I out from the regular faces.

“I’d ask you to introduce yourselves,” he said. “But I understand you arrived three days ago.”

“That’s Jordan!” Drew grinned—even invisible, you could hear the smile in her voice. “My sister.”

My blood ran cold at Kemon’s next words, and my first mistake was failing to understand why.

“I’m so sorry,” he said softly.

The whole room deflated, just a bit. I couldn’t put a pin in why it disturbed me so much. Not quickly enough. But instead of holding my tongue and figuring it out on my own, the words slipped out of my mouth before I could snatch them back.

My first mistake: “Excuse you?”

Kemon blinked.

“I’m sorry?”

“You said that already,” I said, suddenly acutely aware of every eye in the room on me. “You’re sorry she found her sister?”

“I’m sorry because she just found out her sister was abducted,” Kemon said.

I practically bit my own tongue off. The same thought had gone through my head when we’d first arrived, and I’d managed to forget it in just three days. Or was I just unprepared? Keeping my cool in front of someone I knew to be lying was harder than I’d ever expected.

What made it harder was how sincere he sounded.

He might even be sincere. I didn’t understand his goals enough to know.

“…Right,” I mumbled, shrinking back.

Too many eyes lingered on me.

“You must be Ted, then,” Kemon said.

“Yeah, that’s me.” The right thing to keep from raising attention would be to apologize. Right? But the words stuck in my throat.

Everything about this meeting was throwing me off balance.

“I understand you were not found in the same place as Jordan,” he said. “From what information was passed to us, I don’t think it would be appropriate for me to ask you questions with an audience, but would you be willing to tell me more about what happened to you in the future?”

More alarm bells went off in my head. He was being too damn considerate. But of course he would. Why wouldn’t he?

Trading barbs with Tox was infinitely easier than making sense of the sympathy Kemon was lathering on.

Jordan elbowed my. I hadn’t actually answered the question.

“Y-yeah,” I mumbled.

What the hell was wrong with me?

Somewhere behind me there was a whisper, but when I looked I couldn’t tell who’d said anything. Too many eyes were still glancing at me to narrow it down either.

Dammit, I was back in high school again. Making an idiot of myself in front of the class, complete with gossip, and me wanting to die in a corner.

“Well, we have plenty to talk about,” Kemon said. “That goes for everyone here. First matters…how were things in my absence? Win tells me there were some more small conflicts, but nothing too alarming. Is this correct?”

“Nothing violent, but it’s hard to keep some of the younger kids from holding grudges,” Donnie said.

“Distracting them works pretty well,” the girl sitting next to Madeline said—Aarti, if I recalled correctly. She’d been in Win’s group of Adepts.

“It’s regrettable, but I must depend on you all for resolving conflicts like those,” Kemon said. “I could not begin to guess the basic points of Human child psychology. We don’t exactly have the resources to study approaches either.”

Come on Caleb, get your head in the game.

“How hard would it be to get some?” I asked.

“Some…resources?”

“Sure,” I said. “Aliens have kids too. Books must have been written on the subject.”

“Alien kids,” Johnny said. “Alien psychology.”

“So?” I asked. “Can’t hurt to learn about.”

“We’re out in the middle of nowhere,” another abductee said. I didn’t recognize him. “There’s no Amazon deliveries out here. No internet even—not even the alien kind. We can’t just order whatever we want.”

That…was true. But only if you squinted and ignored who Kemon could contact. Books might take months to arrive, but they could be delivered, even to a warfront system like Askior. Scozha, specifically, was pretty far from any of the fighting.

“From what I understand, Ted,” Kemon said, “you were found in…which system?”

“The Vorak called it ‘Helco’,” I lied.

Jordan and Knox were the only people in the room who knew the truth, her more than him. But even then, Jordan had agreed with Sturgin and Serral when they contended she ought not to know my cover.

It was most believable if we were two humans rescued from different spots around the same time, and that we’d only known each other a few days instead of weeks. Since we didn’t want anyone prying into my history, it worked better if everyone thought Jordan didn’t know the history either.

The price of that was mystery. Humans loved mystery, and no one would be satisfied until they learned at least something about what happened to me. We’d figured we could actually exploit Kemon to handle that. I could tell Kemon a vague, mostly accurate version of my past full of emotional turmoil that he wouldn’t press too much on. Then that story could be wheedled out of him or his crew…I would be another traumatized abductee among the dozens he already cared for. It was a whole strategy we’d come up with to keep me as unremarkable as we could, given what we were working with.

My second mistake: saying the word ‘Vorak’.

You’d think I would have drawn on my face in big letters ‘pay attention to me’. I’d screwed up big time because half the room exploded into questions.

“You’ve seen Vorak?”

“What are they like?”

“Did they probe your ass?”

Suddenly barraged on all sides with ridiculous questions, my saving grace was Madeline. She managed to get almost everyone to back off and quiet down with just a single word.

“” she shouted.

In unison, twenty heads turned from me toward her and back. No one had gotten up from their seats, but everyone had leaned closer to me upon hearing I’d met Vorak.

I locked eyes with Madeline long enough to give her a grateful expression. In one second, she’d managed to realize why it might be bad to let people crowd around me and thought of way to remind every single one of them of that with just one word.

She saved me from having to confront any claustrophobia, but she could do nothing to stop the eager faces all staring at me for the details about the Vorak.

“Helco— Helco is a system with more traffic,” Kemon explained, dragging the attention in the room away from me. “I understand you were likely found in a significantly safer area than we are now. Mister Aberdeen is correct: acquiring any item is less convenient out here.”

“We can figure out how to babysit later,” a girl said. “Talk about the Vorak!”

In the oddest moment so far, I found myself momentarily collaborating with Kemon. With a single glance he told me to stay silent: it would further derail the conversation, and I couldn’t trust myself to speak right now.

I needed to regroup my thoughts.

“I… have plenty to tell about the Vorak,” Kemon said. “Give Ted more time to settle in before you bother him too much.”

I knew he’d been told a vague version of my cover, but we’d made sure to imply it was grim. But Kemon didn’t hint at any of that. If anything, it seemed like he was genuinely trying to spare a traumatized abductee a difficult story.

“My contacts on Hexiam have agreed to supply most of what we need,” Kemon said. “The cargo should stay out of any Vorak controlled space, but there are still concerns. I don’t want to get your hopes up, but I also thought you should know; we should have what we need to refit the A-ships in a few weeks.”

Refit? Were the ships not operational?

“Yes!”

“Told you!”

Just like before, ripples of exclamation went through my peers. But a few voices stayed focused on other things.

“What about the Vorak?”

“Our allies in the Coalition confirmed that the previous threat failed,” he said. “They still don’t know where we are.”

He paused to let the information sink in. They were hanging on his every word. Why? There were no explanations. No evidence. No context. What the hell was this?

I almost opened my mouth, but Johnny spoke up first.

“This is too much good news,” he said. “What else is there?”

“…The bad news is one of the enemy was captured. We didn’t stay for the whole interrogation process, but we did learn that the Vorak did gain access to this system’s ship tracing data.”

I frowned. Did he mean system ship traffic? He was speaking English, but ‘ship tracing data’ was not the way I would have translated that.

Hesitantly, I raised a hand.

“Sorry for talking so much in my first meeting, but…I’m totally lost,” I said.

“Yeah, what are you talking about?” Jordan agreed.

“The Vorak have been trying to hunt us down since they lost us,” Donnie explained. “Mister Kemon originally found us when he was hunting them.”

“I really don’t follow,” I said.

“What do you mean?” he replied, equally confused.

“I can clarify,” Kemon said. “Young Ted here had something of a different experience than the rest of you. Even Miss Jordan. Some of you were found in a star system called Mummar. More of you were found here in Askior. These two systems are overwhelmingly Casti, but Helco, the system where Young Ted was found…”

“Is a Vorak system,” Donnie breathed, almost in awe. “What did they do to you?”

Looking back, I should have answered the question right then. The truth, however bent to disguise me, would have been perfect: ‘they tried to save my life’.

But instead, more questions followed too quickly, and I missed my chance.

“What did they look like?” Aarti asked.

“Did you have to fight them?” Johnny asked.

“Why are you alone?”

I flashed an irritated glare at the girl who’d blurted out that particular question.

“Make a deduction,” Johnny supplied.

“That’s not…right…” I tried.

“There was a reason I wanted to give him the chance to speak to me alone first,” Kemon sighed. “Mister Johnny is correct however. I understand that there is a reason Young Ted is the only one from Helco to make his way here.”

“Do you know what happened to the rest of the abductees in your ships?” Madeline asked.

“…Yes,” I said.

“Nothing good?”

I didn’t answer that one.

“Young Ted,” Kemon said, “to give you proper context, we have been concerned about the prospects of a Vorak attack on this camp. For several months we’ve been doing our best to isolate ourselves and keep a low profile.”

“You’ve still lost me,” I said. And I made my third mistake, asking: “Why would the Vorak attack here?”

Jordan was the only person who didn’t look at me quizzically—no, Kemon didn’t either. But every other person in the room had the exact same reaction.

Madeline was the one to break the silence.

“…Ted…they abducted us…”

“…No, they didn’t?” I asked.

“Yes, they did,” Johnny said. “If the Vorak killed everyone else on your ship…”

“They didn’t,” I said sharply.

“We had to have been abducted by someone,” he said exasperatedly.

“And you think ‘the Vorak’ is as specific as that someone gets?”

“Oh for fuck’s sake…” Johnny sighed. “Not ‘the’ Vorak then. Just ‘Vorak’ abducted us. Is that good enough for you?”

“No,” I said.

Jordan elbowed me subtly. She’d noticed what I hadn’t. Everyone in the room was looking at me like I was crazy.

Unfortunately, that didn’t help me adjust. The opposite, if anything.

“Back up for a minute,” I said. “Ignoring the long list of reasons for why the Vorak didn’t abduct us…why would they attack here, even if they did abduct us?”

“Because they already did once,” Johnny said.

That made me pause, if only because it was one-hundred percent impossible.

“Waitwaitwait,” I said, “I thought they didn’t know where this camp was.”

“That was what ultimately prompted us to resort lethal measures,” Kemon said. “We have a ship in orbit that shot down the Vorak craft before it could reach a position to broadcast its information.”

“We saw it,” Madeline said. “Big fireball and everything.”

“That’s not…evidence…” I said.

“Just shut up,” someone muttered.

“It’s the Vorak,” another abductee huffed, like that somehow explained everything.

The nicest thing I heard was “You’re new,” from one of the older girls.

I was looking myself right in the eye. I didn’t like Vorak, but seeing the same thing in others bothered me like an itch. I couldn’t leave it alone.

“You’re all being stupid!” I cried. “Do you have any actual proof? Evidence?”

“Wreckage from their ship, extensive radio transmissions,” Kemon said, “as well as financial documents showing the Casti pirates that attacked the ships in Mummar—Miss Jordan’s ship included—were funded and directed by high-ranking officers in the Vorak military.”

“I’ll believe it when I see it…” I lied. Nothing about this added up. “…But even if you showed the evidence, I wouldn’t have any idea what I’m looking at, would I?”

“…Probably not,” Kemon said, “but if you’d like to look at what we have anyway, I could arrange such.”

“Drop it,” Sidney sighed, one of the few people staying calm. “Either what we know convinces him, or he just moves to goalposts. Either way, whining back and forth about it doesn’t do anything but give people headaches.”

“You have got to be kidding me…” I said.

Knox signaled.

He wasn’t the only one to think of trying to ease me with the secret psionic bands. Jordan also chimed in,

I was so angry that I took her advice with barely a thought. Confused and angry, I stomped out of the meeting.

·····

I’d needed to blow off steam before. Adeptry was great for that. It didn’t matter how upset you were. Making bombs with your mind was more catharsis than any human being would ever need.

But I didn’t know exactly how much Kemon knew about Caleb Hane’s Adeptry. And kinetic bombs were something I’d used prominently.

I thought about using some of the boulders lancing up from the hillside as punching bags. My hands were durable enough for it. But when I actually tried slugging one, it just threw me off balance. I found myself muddy and wet.

Why?

Why were they just accepting what they’d been told? What the hell was wrong with them? Why did I think it would be that easy?

God, I felt stupid.

I had one job. Hang back. Observe. Keep a low profile. I didn’t need to say anything about the Vorak. I didn’t need to explain any of what had happened to me or even ‘Ted’.

I wanted to cry. I wanted to scream. I wanted to be back on the Jack with Tasser and Nai.

Idiot, I thought to myself. What you really want is to be back home. On Earth. How could I have thought anything else first?

…No.

That thought finally gave me some clarity back. I was missing all my friends and family. It wasn’t ‘bad’ for me to think of any of them first or last. I was upset. Moody. If I took every ill-tempered thought seriously, I’d just keep twisting myself into knots.

Nai would tell me to breathe, compartmentalize, and establish priorities. Nerin would probably tell me something about heartrate and homeostasis. Tasser would just listen.

It wasn’t hard to imagine their support, even as upset as I was.

Still, calming myself brought clarity, and with it dejection. I’d screwed up. Majorly. And I didn’t have any idea how to fix it.

Going through my gloomy thought process threatened to make me angry again, only this time with myself.

I really needed to blow off steam.

A few hours later, I was wailing on baseballs. I’d materialized a batting tee atop one of the camp’s boulders. Every swing blasted another baseball over the valley, only to dematerialize after a few seconds and for me to replace it on the batting tee.

Swing. New ball. Swing. New ball.

Nothing like a mind-numbing repetitive action to get your mind off something.

Jordan found me like that a few hours later. She climbed up on top of the rock with me but said nothing at first.

Not unlike Tasser would, she just sat and watched each ball sail out of sight.

“…No one’s nearby,” she said. “I checked.”

“Good. I don’t know if I could get through a conversation and worry about giving anything away.”

“…Sorry,” she said. “I should have said something to stick up for you.”

“I appreciate the concern,” I said, “but you were right to keep quiet. It’s what I should have done too. ‘Make a scene…’ God, what was I thinking?”

“…Do you mind if I ask you a harsh question?” she asked.

“Go for it.”

“Do you know why you got flustered in there?”

“…Frankly? Yes,” I said.

She stared at me expectantly.

“…But I don’t know if I’m in the right space to share,” I said. “It’s personal, and it goes back before I even got abducted.”

“…I’m a big believer in equanimity,” she said. “So I’ll share something hard first: please don’t ever call me a heartless bitch.”

I blinked.

“I…wasn’t planning to?”

“Probably not,” she agreed, “but a lot of people think I’m really cold or emotionless.”

“Really? Why? You’re—” I faltered though. Because I had tools most people didn’t. My psionics couldn’t tell me what people were thinking. Or even what they were feeling. But they could tell me when people’s feelings changed. And Jordan’s did just like everyone else’s.

“I’m inexpressive, not unemotional,” she said. “But a lot of girls back home thought I was gloomy or even autistic. Drew’s my younger sister, but I’ve always looked up to her because she never treated me like I feel nothing. It’s not something that’s easy to talk about for me, but I thought you should know.”

That was it?

I’d expected more of an explanation. But…that actually made sense. Only going by the intensity of the psionic vibe she gave of, this was a hard topic for her.

Equanimity indeed.

“That’s just playing dirty,” I grumbled. “You really want to know? It’s dumb.”

“It’s important to you,” she said. “It can’t be dumb.”

“Dang, when you put it like that…Alright, here’s the short version. Once upon a time, I was a really quiet, shy kid. I barely said anything in elementary school, and you know third grade bullies, they pick on the weak kids who won’t fight back.”

“And that was you?” Jordan seemed truly surprised.

“Yup. And I hated it. Everyone and everything told me I should hate it too. So when my parents and teachers talked about middle school like a big opportunity to change who you are, I believed them. I wanted to be someone who could say a complete sentence to more than two or three people without clamming up. So when I went to a school play, I thought about how the kids in theater had to learn how to talk to entire crowds without breaking a sweat. So I threw myself in the deep end, joined theater club, and forced myself to grow.

“It was amazing,” I breathed. “Because I didn’t do it for my teachers, family, friends, a grade—I did it for me. The first time I got over stage fright is something I’ll never forget. I was so scared just talking to a bunch of classmates. I couldn’t see their faces, but I imagined what was going through every one of their heads. I was so damn scared, I thought my heart was going to explode. But I’d practiced so much, I didn’t have to think. Even though I was scared the whole time, I got through it without falling apart, and when it was over and I got offstage, I let out the most embarrassing scream. Everyone heard me just lose my head hollering, because I was so happy.”

“…Sounds like a good memory,” she said.

“It is,” I told her. “But it also taught me that you don’t always solve your problems one and done. I succeeded then, but I still froze up the next night. I learned I have to keep at it. Talking with people is still hard for me. Even after that being in a classroom bothered me, because I always worry the teacher will call my name and I’ll have to talk in front of everyone. Every time I did have to talk, I had to take three breaths and remind myself that I know my answers, or that people didn’t think the things I worried they do. And it worked. I got a lot better about talking when I needed to. I got better at talking when I didn’t need too! I kept at it because, even if I hated situations that called for social skills, I knew it was better to have those skills and not need them than vice versa. My point is…I worked at this. For a long time.”

“…And it feels like it’s all come undone,” she realized.

“I’m… rusty,” I said. “Rescuing you and the others, that was my first time around more than one human since getting abducted. And everyone back there…looking at me like I was crazy…Talking with aliens is completely different. I didn’t have to worry about not knowing about how to react to things, because of course I wouldn’t know! It took all the stress out of it. I got to learn all the interactions from the ground up. All aliens react a little bit the same to us weird humans. The alien stuff is easy…but human stuff is hard.”

“You hate that,” Jordan observed. “You don’t like that it’s easier for you to interact with aliens—even hostile ones—than it is to interact with kids your own age.”

“Well it’s not a comfort.”

“…You weren’t kidding. You really know why you got flustered,” she said. “I just wanted to see if there was any way I could help.”

“Time heals all,” I said. “I’ll get over it.”

“Time does not heal all wounds,” Jordan scoffed. “But if you’re feeling better now, I won’t push it. So what now?”

“Now? I think I take up Kemon on his offer,” I said. “I doubt he’d show us any evidence I could pick apart, but it’ll clarify exactly where everyone stands at least.”

“That’s objective one,” Jordan said. “Learn about Kemon, right? So…I think I should focus on objective two.”

“Why?” I asked. “You’re good with psionics, but—no offense—I’m better.”

“None taken,” she said, “but that’s actually our problem. We have the two of us, but you’re trying to accomplish both our goals on your own.”

“Divide and conquer?” I asked. “That could work especially well considering most of the abductees won’t like me much going forward.”

“You did more or less call them stupid,” Jordan nodded. “But it was actually that superconnector of yours that got me thinking about this.”

“Yeah?”

“You said Nora made a superconstruct too, right? So it’s not just you capable of them.”

I nodded.

“I think ultra-long-range communication might require something similar,” she said. “I want to run with the theory and try to make my own superconstruct while you focus on what exactly Kemon’s up to.”

“…Yeah. That’s a good plan,” I said. “…Thanks. For all this. I—”

She cracked the barest of smiles.

“I couldn’t do this alone either,” she said, reading my mind. “So, thank you too.”