I tried another avenue of searching, hoping for clearer responses. What was her goal? She would find… Sharon—I fished out the name—and they would…
I hit a wall.
It was a blank, a nothing. I tried to circle around it, but I couldn’t find the edges of the void. It was as if the information I sought had been erased.
As if this brain had been damaged.
Anger flashed through me, hot and wild. I gasped in surprise at the unexpected reaction. I’d heard of the emotional instability of these human bodies, but this was beyond my ability to anticipate. In eight full lives, I’d never had an emotion touch me with such force.
I felt the blood pulse through my neck, pounding behind my ears. My hands tightened into fists.
The machines beside me reported the acceleration of my heartbeats. There was a reaction in the room: the sharp tap of the Seeker’s shoes approached me, mingled with a quieter shuffle that must have been the Healer.
“Welcome to Earth, Wanderer,” the female voice said.
CHAPTER 3
Resisted
She won’t recognize the new name,” the Healer murmured.
A new sensation distracted me. Something pleasant, a change in the air as the Seeker stood at my side. A scent, I realized. Something different than the sterile, odorless room. Perfume, my new mind told me. Floral, lush…
“Can you hear me?” the Seeker asked, interrupting my analysis. “Are you aware?”
“Take your time,” the Healer urged in a softer voice than the one he had used before.
I did not open my eyes. I didn’t want to be distracted. My mind gave me the words I needed, and the tone that would convey what I couldn’t say without using many words.
“Have I been placed in a damaged host in order to gain the information you need, Seeker?”
There was a gasp—surprise and outrage mingled—and something warm touched my skin, covered my hand.
“Of course not, Wanderer,” the man said reassuringly. “Even a Seeker would stop at some things.”
The Seeker gasped again. Hissed, my memory corrected.
“Then why doesn’t this mind function correctly?”
There was a pause.
“The scans were perfect,” the Seeker said. Her words not reassuring but argumentative. Did she mean to quarrel with me? “The body was entirely healed.”
“From a suicide attempt that was perilously close to succeeding.” My tone was stiff, still angry. I wasn’t used to anger. It was hard to contain it.
“Everything was in perfect order —”
The Healer cut her off. “What is missing?” he asked. “Clearly, you’ve accessed speech.”
“Memory. I was trying to find what the Seeker wants.”
Though there was no sound, there was a change. The atmosphere, which had gone tense at my accusation, relaxed. I wondered how I knew this. I had a strange sensation that I was somehow receiving more than my five senses were giving me—almost a feeling that there was another sense, on the fringes, not quite harnessed. Intuition? That was almost the right word. As if any creature needed more than five senses.
The Seeker cleared her throat, but it was the Healer who answered.
“Ah,” he said. “Don’t make yourself anxious about some partial memory… difficulties. That’s, well, not to be expected, exactly, but not surprising, considering.”
“I don’t understand your meaning.”
“This host was part of the human resistance.” There was a hint of excitement in the Seeker’s voice now. “Those humans who were aware of us before insertion are more difficult to subdue. This one still resists.”
There was a moment of silence while they waited for my response.
Resisting? The host was blocking my access? Again, the heat of my anger surprised me.
“Am I correctly bound?” I asked, my voice distorted because it came through my teeth.
“Yes,” the Healer said. “All eight hundred twenty-seven points are latched securely in the optimum positions.”
This mind used more of my faculties than any host before, leaving me only one hundred eighty-one spare attachments. Perhaps the numerous bindings were the reason the emotions were so vivid.
I decided to open my eyes. I felt the need to double-check the Healer’s promises and make sure the rest of me worked.
Light. Bright, painful. I closed my eyes again. The last light I had seen had been filtered through a hundred ocean fathoms. But these eyes had seen brighter and could handle it. I opened them narrowly, keeping my eyelashes feathered over the breach.
“Would you like me to turn down the lights?”
“No, Healer. My eyes will adjust.”
“Very good,” he said, and I understood that his approval was meant for my casual use of the possessive.
Both waited quietly while my eyes slowly widened.
My mind recognized this as an average room in a medical facility. A hospital. The ceiling tiles were white with darker speckles. The lights were rectangular and the same size as the tiles, replacing them at regular intervals. The walls were light green—a calming color, but also the color of sickness. A poor choice, in my quickly formed opinion.
The people facing me were more interesting than the room. The word doctor sounded in my mind as soon as my eyes fastened on the Healer. He wore loose-fitting blue green clothes that left his arms bare. Scrubs. He had hair on his face, a strange color that my memory called red.
Red! It had been three worlds since I had seen the color or any of its relatives. Even this gingery gold filled me with nostalgia.
His face was generically human to me, but the knowledge in my memory applied the word kind.
An impatient breath pulled my attention to the Seeker.
She was very small. If she had remained still, it would have taken me longer to notice her there beside the Healer. She didn’t draw the eye, a darkness in the bright room. She wore black from chin to wrists—a conservative suit with a silk turtleneck underneath. Her hair was black, too. It grew to her chin and was pushed back behind her ears. Her skin was darker than the Healer’s. Olive toned.
The tiny changes in humans’ expressions were so minimal they were very hard to read. My memory could name the look on this woman’s face, though. The black brows, slanted down over the slightly bulging eyes, created a familiar design. Not quite anger. Intensity. Irritation.
“How often does this happen?” I asked, looking at the Healer again.
“Not often,” the Healer admitted. “We have so few full-grown hosts available anymore. The immature hosts are entirely pliable. But you indicated that you preferred to begin as an adult.…”
“Yes.”
“Most requests are the opposite. The human life span is much shorter than you’re used to.”
“I’m well versed in all the facts, Healer. Have you dealt with this… resistance before yourself?”
“Only once, myself.”
“Tell me the facts of the case.” I paused. “Please,” I added, feeling a lack of courtesy in my command.
The Healer sighed.
The Seeker began tapping her fingers against her arm. A sign of impatience. She did not care to wait for what she wanted.
“This occurred four years ago,” the Healer began. “The soul involved had requested an adult male host. The first one to be available was a human who had been living in a pocket of resistance since the early years of the occupation. The human… knew what would happen when he was caught.”
“Just as my host did.”
“Um, yes.” He cleared his throat. “This was only the soul’s second life. He came from Blind World.”
“Blind World?” I asked, cocking my head to the side reflexively.
“Oh, sorry, you wouldn’t know our nicknames. This was one of yours, though, was it not?” He pulled a device from his pocket, a computer, and scanned quickly. “Yes, your seventh planet. In the eighty-first sector.”
“Blind World?” I said again, my voice now disapproving.
“Yes, well, some who have lived there prefer to call it the Singing World.”
I nodded slowly. I liked that better.
“And some who’ve never been there call it Planet of the Bats,” the Seeker muttered.
I turned my eyes to her, feeling them narrow as my mind dredged up the appropriate image of the ugly flying rodent she referred to.
“I assume you are one who has never lived there, Seeker,” the Healer said lightly. “We called this soul Racing Song at first—it was a loose translation of his name on… the Singing World. But he soon opted to take the name of his host, Kevin. Though he was slated for a Calling in Musical Performance, given his background, he said he felt more comfortable continuing in the host’s previous line of work, which was mechanical.
“These signs were somewhat worrisome to his assigned Comforter, but they were well within normal bounds.
“Then Kevin started to complain that he was blacking out for periods of time. They brought him back to me, and we ran extensive tests to make sure there was no hidden flaw in the host’s brain. During the testing, several Healers noted marked differences in his behavior and personality. When we questioned him about this, he claimed to have no memory of certain statements and actions. We continued to observe him, along with his Comforter, and eventually discovered that the host was periodically taking control of Kevin’s body.”