The palm trees bend under the wind. Lee isn’t trying to project the harsh weather, and she thinks for a while that it’s an unconscious decision that she doesn’t have the time or concentration to remedy. The weather, though, is actually acting up and soon she feels scorching hot raindrops falling on the back of her hands, landing in her hair and seeping down to the sensitive skin of her scalp. She flinches when a burning drop lands on her cheek. She curses the limited ability of their projections to disguise the feel of rain or the feel of wind.

The trees creak and the air howls and way out in the distance, past the struggling bodies and fighting forms, there’s a horizon of water so beautiful she pretends she can smell the salt that should be in the air. In reality, what’s in the air is smoke and dust and the burnt odor of a firefight and wet ground.

In reality, she’s standing near the outer wall of the caves, engaged in a small battle with the others. For all their supposed weakness and fragility, her people are putting up a pretty good fight. Very few of either side have fallen and Lee already knows this little skirmish will end with both sides simply slinking back off to their respective territories. It seems almost rote at this point - a mere feint. A pretense. But she keeps fighting anyway, pushing aside one woman in the small band, and turning to face two others. Both the women look young. Though Lee knows that concept’s pretty relative on a planet where roughly half the population lives hundreds and hundreds of years - and facing those girls, looking barely 16 or 17 from her perspective, takes her by surprise.

She pauses and one of the girls is sidetracked helping another

soldier. But the other one is coming at her, determined and intent.

 And then there’s a fullmouthed bang and the girl lurches forward. The next instant, her entire body is in flames, set to sparking by a fire-laced bullet. The entire battle stops. A collective breath taken in and held. Everyone looks on in shocked fascination, some of the enemy probably wondering if it’s a trick like the old days. There’s nothing anyone could do for her, not to save her. She doesn’t scream, doesn’t run, but her hands flail, her body twirls and the flames flutter around her like a bright skirt. Through the glow and scorched clothes, Lee sees flashes of the woman’s pale thighs, burning to a crisp like paper set aflame.

Lee stands, arms hanging at her side, for a long time, just watching. The smell, sulphuric and acrid and coppery, finally catches her out of her daze, and without thinking, she pulls out her sidearm and aims for the heart of the fire. The report of the large gun shakes her arm, straining the muscle, but she keeps her hand steady. She doesn’t see the impact - she can’t with the fire dancing around - but the flailing stops abruptly and the woman goes down with a thud, body still burning, the flames flickering and jumping under the beats of the rain that can’t be imagined away or changed.  

There’s nothing she can do about the smell.

Once the girl’s on the ground, once she’s stopped moving, the battle starts up again. Lee is already on to the next enemy bounding towards her, but in her mind, in the very back, buried under everything that’s happening - the glint of the enemy’s guns, the sounds of grunts and feet pounding against the hardpacked mud - the moment is replaying over and over, and the smell of melting fat is still scratching at her nostrils, clawing its way down her lungs and she knows, she knows without a bit of doubt or hope, that she will see it - that girl burning alive - in her dreams until the day she dies.

Her clothes are sticking to her. Even her thin shirt tucked under and protected by two layers of coats is clinging to her back and her ribs uncomfortably. She sidesteps a few more men, taking down one with a wound that will probably heal in a few hours. She leaves him writhing at her feet, her mind elsewhere. On what, she isn’t sure. She just suddenly feels unstable, like she’s taken a blind stepped off a small hill and is barely keeping herself from tumbling the rest of the way down. She isn’t sure what it is - though she suspects it has something to do with that girl. How easy it was to take her down. There’s a change in the power balance, and she’s not the only one to feel it. The enemy’s retreating, slowly, as if trying desperately not to draw attention to their haste to get away. Lee knows she should feel happy about this moment, about this second of upper hand, but she doesn’t. She just feels out-of-place, off center.

As the other moves back, disappearing over the hill and off into the forest, she looks back at the remnants of the battle. There are surprisingly few causalities. A few wounded on her side, one wounded on theirs still squirming around on the ground and clutching his stomach.

And the girl.

The flames are still flickering, fighting against the near-scalding rain. The smell of her burnt flesh comes out in waves, pushed here and there by the wind. She stares for a moment at the unrecognizable lump and wonders who the girl was. How old she really was. Suddenly, inexplicably, wonders if that one - the one she met by the river - knew her. Would care that she’s gone.

Probably not. She has to remember that. They never care. They aren’t capable of caring.

Laurant comes striding out of the crowd, shoulders thrown back, frown firmly in place. He eyes the ground, looking for the wounded that can be saved (and those that can not). She turns her head away when he puts a few of the more serious cases out of their misery and busies herself leaning over the one enemy left alive on the ground. He’s no threat, not now, and she holsters her weapon and pulls at his arms to see the damage. The knife cut is deep and long, slashing from his ribs right down his stomach. Given some care, and considering his genetic healing ability, he’d probably be fine. A meager offering to the enemy, this one soldier left dead at their doorstep, but custom is custom and she starts to pull out her gun and finish him off but Laurant stops her.

He grabs her arm, pulling her back roughly.

She jerks away from him, “What?”

“Keep him alive. We could use him.”

She glances at the man on the ground. He’s caked in mud, his face is tight with pain. Her hand itches to shoot him, not out of bloodlust, but just because he’s hurt and it would give them someone to send back to the others.

“Use him for what?” she asks. Laurant givse her a strange look but doesn’t respond. He shifts and leans down, hefting the smaller man up over his shoulders.

Lee has no choice but to follow, and the other fighters fall in line.

“Tell me what you meant by that, Laurant.”

He glances over his shoulder at her. “I don’t know what your clearance is.”

“Clearance? I don’t care about clearance. Tell me.”

He sighs. “Basile and the medlab have been doing some work on prisoners.”

“Work? Prisoners?”

“Yes.”

She waits for more, but obviously nothing’s forthcoming. She isn’t surprised. She can hardly expect Laurant to be that cooperative with her. But both pieces of information are revelations. She doesn’t know about prisoners, so it goes without saying that she doesn’t know about any work that they may or may not be subjected to.

She tries to follow Laurant all the way to the medical facilities but she’s barred before she can reach the inner labs. Laurant throws her a self-satisfied grin as he disappears through the double doors with the now unconscious man still slung over his shoulder.  

 She stands in front of the door for a moment, debating how far to push her authority, and then turns and threads through the catacombs towards Basile’s room. She’s so confused - no, annoyed - at the idea that something is happening behind her back that her projection breaks a bit and the damp cave walls peek through the imagined sandstone.

 By the time she reaches the councilor’s door, the projection has dropped away completely. She takes a moment to breathe, shoring up her feelings, and reassembles the colors and textures in her mind to something more pleasing.

She knocks briskly.  She hears feet shuffling on the other side of the door and then she’s looking at Basile’s fleshy and lined face.

He doesn’t even have time to say hello before she’s brushing past him, trying to keep up an appearance of confidence even though she always feels so small and young next to him.  

“We need to talk, councilor.” She turns and faces him once she’s settled in the middle of the room, next to his desk. She forces down a moment of almost debilitating self-doubt when she sees how levelly he’s staring at her, still standing by the open door. He has never been a small man and even in his old age, he hasn’t shrunk any.  It’s at times like these, times when she has to be assertive, that she becomes even more aware of how he crowds the tiny room with his broad frame.

“I haven’t spoken to you in days, Lee, and I don’t even get a hello?” he sounds dryly amused.

She flashes him a tight smile. “I’m sorry, councilor. But this is important.”

“Of course it is.” He closes the door but doesn’t move further into the room.

“Laurant just brought a wounded one from the camp to the medical facility. Are we in the habit of treating our enemies now?”

He gazes at her for a long, long time. Then a tiny smirk pulls at his mouth. “Obviously the answer to that is no,” he answers. He moves away from the door and sits at his chair. “And you know it, so what do you really want to ask?”

She inhales quickly. Exhales slowly. “What are you doing with them?”

“Doctor Lackme and Aslar think they can isolate the genes in them that account for their strength and healing. If they can, with some work, we may be able to find some way to copy them within ourselves.”

“Genetic manipulation for future generations?”

“Perhaps. Even better, a synthetic agent that we could take now.”

She takes this in. She’s not sure what she thinks. But she knows for sure that he should have told her. “Is that why the medical center has been cordoned off?” she asks.

The councilor’s shock of white hair shimmers beneath the illusion of light sprinkling from the corners of the ceiling as he moves his head to stare at the door behind her, eyes distant.

“You disapprove?” he asks softly.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“You aren’t a doctor. You aren’t a scientist.”

“No. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to know. I thought…” Thought what? That he should rush to tell her something she has nothing to do with? That she’s special somehow?

“You want to know what’s going on down there?” His voice is sharper than usual, suddenly impatient with her. “You want to know about the needles and scalpels and the diseases waiting in syringes? You what to know-”

She tries not to flinch, not to turn away, but she can’t help it. Her movement cuts him off.

“No,” she tells him after a strained silence has passed.

“There are other things, Lee, that you may not want to burden yourself with. Tests. Experiments. Some less humane than others. While we have them here at our mercy, the medical staff has agreed to learn everything they can from them. Including pain thresholds, regeneration ability - it’s not pretty down there. I didn’t want you to have to contemplate these things or make decisions about them.”

He puts his hands on her shoulders. There must be some emotion on her face - some emotion she’s not even aware of - because he enfolds her in comforting arms and rubs her back. She tenses but allows the gesture without comment.

“But I could help,” she says, trying to sound unaffected, “Why am I discarding the wounded if you could use them in the labs?”

“Don’t worry yourself. The severely wounded are of no use to us.” He releases her and moves away. “We need them healthy for any experiments to work.”

“Healthy? They heal from bullet holes like they’re scratches.”

“Not in the labs.” He shakes his head. “It’s as if they merely give up down there. They usually die within a week, and that’s without the injections to make them sick.”

Lee falls into her own thoughts, analyzing this new revelation. Finally, “Has it ever been considered that maybe their ability is due to their environment?”

“Or course it has. That’s why we need to clear them out of that forest so that we can come out of these cursed caves without worrying about being shot in the back. It’s hard to experience all the effects of the planet when we’re cut off from half of it.”

He circles back around to his chair and lowers himself into it with a soft, drawn out grunt. He’s silent for a moment before murmuring, a little sadly, “There is one thing we have been able to learn from having a few of them here as prisoners – the seers’ ability doesn’t work on them anymore.”

She sucks in a breath, still taken off guard despite how often she’s heard that very thing whispered.

There didn’t seem to be anything to say. Without the seers, the power balance is truly off. They’re desperate now. The camp could never know this. Ever.

Lee tucks her hands into her pockets. “So what do you need?”

“What do you mean?”

“Do you need whole specimens?”

Silence. He stares at her for awhile. She tries not to squirm under that penetrating gaze. Finally, he sighs. “We don’t know what we need, Lee. Right now, we’ll take any and everything we can get until we hit a breakthrough.”

“And if we do find what we’re looking for, if we’re able to copy their strength and healing ability, will the war be over then?”

He stares off into a distant corner of the room for so long she wonders if he heard her at all.

“I’m afraid I don’t understand you.” Something in his voice tells her that he understands perfectly well.

“Will we stop fighting?” she pushes on.

“I don’t know. It’s not completely up to us, now is it?”

 That’s true, she supposes. They could call a truce, raise the white flag, and go about their lives with everything that they want, but the other side would have to respect that, and that’s not a certainty. She knows that this war is about more than just power and wanted resources and all those practical things. She knows there’s a lot of bitterness and hate and scorn propelling the conflict forward. It’s sad to her that those are the only emotions the camp really still seems capable of indulging in. What kind of life is that? With no love? No gentleness?

A small voice in the back of her mind, so far down that she doesn’t really hear it even as its words snake quickly through her mind, pushes forward with a treacherous how do you know what they feel or don’t feel? but she disregards it so quickly that she would be hard-pressed to even remember what it was trying to tell her. What was it trying to tell her?

“It just seems strange,” she says at last, “All this talk about finally getting what we’re after.”

“We’re a long way off. Don’t worry, Lee. The fighting’s not going to end any time soon.”

 She stares at him for a little while longer, thrown off by his answer. Confused as to how she’s supposed to feel about it.

She remembers when this man in front of her used to pick her up and carry her around on his shoulders. Remembers when his skin was smoother, his frame leaner, his gait quicker. Remembers looking up at him as he spoke to her father, never hearing any of the words. She used to stand between them and shift through projections, watching their faces light up in the sun, sharpen in the shadows, used to be fascinated at how unaware they were of her game. No reaction from them even as the sky darkened, lightened, filled with shimmer or dust or a mist that she could never really reach out and touch or smell. Used to bite her tongue to keep herself from asking why they couldn’t see what she could. To ask what they were seeing. But something about it always seemed too private to her, too intimate. Their realities were their own, as hers was her own. They were never meant to exist together.

She wondered - still wonders - if anyone else is as lonely as her. Walking around in a world only tenuously connected to those around her. Even now, she sees Basile in a room bricked with gold stone and brightened by a high, earth sun. But he doesn’t see it. And for all her ability, she can never let him see it. Never give him a glimpse of her reality. Never get a glimpse of his. She isn’t a seer. She is nobody.

She leaves his cold work chamber and winds her way through the honeycombed caves back towards the center of the enormous cavern, past the hastily hewn doors with small sleeping quarters dug out behind them. Each with a bed and some sheets. A table for some who have earned it. None of those amenities really matter, not for them. A few choice people, usually decorated soldiers or very respected families, are placed around the outer shell of the cave and granted roughly cut out windows. There isn’t much of a view – just a large guarding wall with gray dust and hard mountains and a sickly forest beyond it – but the window makes it easier to project landscape. Lee and her brother lived in one of those rooms. Sometimes, when something – something inside her – broke her from her sleep unexpectedly during the night and there was no projection to guard her, the distant guarding wall staring back at her shocked her. There was a sense of finality to it all that weighed too much.

She passes by the armory, covering her nose and ducking a bit to avoid the smoke escaping the door. The odor of melted metal and fire and sweat chokes her for a moment and the vision she’s holding of marble and glass twitches and disappears. She conjures up another one. The cool stone all around her doesn’t disappear completely, but now it’s sandaled in marsh-grass and thistledown. A lighter vision.

She hurries past the armory with less distraction. Even after passing the doors, she holds onto that simple dream so that the cafeteria is garlanded with it. She stands in line for her porridge – a polite term for cave sludge – and a portion of wild game with a small smile and a quick thank you. She never eats with the others. Her lack of marriage and her inability to give and accept profuse emotional tokens of affection and love keeps her painfully separate from everyone else. Most of her people are nice and kind and …. cloying. Even now, as she tries to quietly make her way back to her own room to eat in solitude, she’s waylaid by hugs and idle chit-chat and women trying to force their children into her arms. She sidesteps most of it, holding her bowl up as explanation, and finally manages to slip out of the large hall and back into the byways of the cave.

By the time she gets to her room, pushing the heavy stone door inward with her shoulder, her food’s cold. She doesn’t really care. She puts the bowl on the small table next to her bunk bed and removes her jacket. Sits on the edge of the bottom mattress and pulls off her boots slowly.

Her brother is dead. The top bunk – too short for her to sit comfortably below it without hitting her head – is a constant reminder of his absence. She never projects anything else there. No matter what dream or fancy she decides to decorate the room with, his bed is always the same. A place apart. Something real.  

Next Chapter: Chapter 6