One Heartbeat

The Reclaimed Zone is where you put things you want to forget. It repulses everything. Even the river switched its course to skirt along the area’s boundary. During the Occupation, I suppose, is when people finally settled there. Only aliens would have funded the colossal penitentiaries and factories staffed entirely by sharp-fingered robots. Its human touches—the mechanical trees that whirred open every morning to shade the sidewalks—must have come much later.

Management had placed Sehutannyi in a cell of her own. Shock glass lined the walls. She sat on a small floor pallet with no blankets. Criminals must remain uncomfortable or their punishment means nothing, but seeing her like this made my heartbeat flounder. An untouched bowl of protein porridge rested on the tile floor beside her squatting toilet.

I traced the curve of her back with my mind and watched her muscles ripple as she turned to face me, but she didn’t stand. According to the digital reader in front of her cell, her heart rate increased. The hormone-based emotional index turned white and violet, indicators for anger and lust. I pressed the communication button. Mësahelepui, Sehutannyi.

You came. She stood and walked towards the glass, holding her hands close enough that she must have felt the crackling electricity surging within. So, are you a heroine?

For a brief instant, I pictured myself as Kakedi in the canyons after the Chrysalis Interlude, building my flying machine in the forest treetops. It seemed absurd; when had Kakedi called herself a coward? Deimo Akaiannyi died.

She laughed and moved her arms to her hips. Listen to you, calling her Deimo. No one who respects the monarchy could use that word.

I felt the smooth panel beneath my fingertips and wondered if I should end the call. What I call her has no bearing on whether or not I consider her fit to rule and everything to do with where I would prefer to have the nation’s capital city. Saying more on the subject would have required me to voice opinions that didn’t belong on a recording device; then again, someone—probably Likua—could have hacked the stream from my concealed audio recorder at any moment. She was only nineteen, younger than both of us. A shadow—

I don’t regret what I did. Tell me, Salus … do you regret what you did?

Don’t call me Salus.

Our new Khadeimo must have rewarded you … a position in the government? Did Akah Kara give you a promotion? What does a royal bitch do for celebrated girls who loathe themselves? She sat down and looked up at me, licking her lips. I felt heat between my legs and despised myself for it.

As I watched her, I tried to make her that woman in the elevator who removed my gyena without asking—the despicable opportunist who brought me back to her apartment when I was too drunk or drugged to know right from left—but I still wanted her. She had become my gateway to misery instead of my antidote to sorrow, and she hated me. I couldn’t walk away from her.

The communication channel closed itself after a while. I tried not to think about her naked body behind the glass because it made me think terrible things. Instead, I watched her heartbeat.