Chapter Text
The meeting room table stopped being a viable place to hide under after Keli reached her eighth birthday. She was still small enough to squeeze under before anyone came in but not so small that she didn’t end up jostling someone’s boot as she moved and squirmed to get comfortable. There wasn’t much comfortable about the hard wood at her back and the tile she sat on. Then, inevitably, Keli would be sent outside and her mission would end in failure.
Since then, a whole four years had passed, and Keli had found other places to hide.
There was the ugly vase in the corner. It wasn’t a vase meant to be filled with anything and existed solely to add a little colour to a very boring room even if the colour was a gaudy coral that clashed awfully with toxic green. The vase was also very, very expensive and very, very old. But hiding in it seemed like the best option and she was a good fit once she got through the narrower neck.
When Guy peeked in after Keli accidentally hit the inside wall with her hand for the third time in five minutes, she heard him curse so loudly and colourfully at the sight of a ten-year-old crammed inside that it sent everyone else running. That got her lectured by five separate people and banned from anymore contortionist tricks.
After that, she made it a game.
The rafters were good for a couple of months. This part of the fort was so old that it was mostly stone anyway, with some metal structural support up high where Keli could clamber onto and perch on precariously. But then Jess happened to look up mid-meeting one time, probably bored, and swore aloud in the middle of the briefing which nearly sent Keli toppling ten feet to the ground.
There were another handful of lectures. Jess’s fists kept clenching as she spoke, like she wanted to shake Keli just a little bit. Unbeknownst to her, Keli was already planning for next time.
So it went on. Keli hid inside of bins and cabinets and drawers she had no business fitting into. She found crawlspaces in parts of the ceiling. One time, she’d walked in with her feet in big boots, wearing a coat so big it trailed behind her and sunglasses with a confidence like she was meant to be at the meeting. John saw through every single attempt and sent her out anyway.
Right now, Keli was in her best hidey hole yet. It was an accidental discovery she’d made with Somar months prior when they were trying to map the parts of the fort that were supposed to be off limits to them both. In a place that might’ve been a bedroom, with imprints of furniture still etched into the stone floor, Somar found a tunnel in the walls that went much farther into the fort than either of them expected it to, expanding into a network of corridors hidden within the thick walls.
Somar’s theory was that these were meant for servants to do their work unseen when kings used to rule this planet, that someone had decided along the line to not include them anymore when they expanded the fort. This could only mean that a tunnel existed leading through every old room, including the coveted meeting room and Keli was proven right when she went looking. The entrance was outside, in a broom closet concealed with a little wooden door that creaked awfully when she pried it open but upon slipping inside, Keli was met with darkness, cobwebs and quiet as she crept along.
The stone was cold to the touch wherever the exposed bits of skin along her shoulders caught it. The fibres in her gloves and wraps caught in tiny indents, dragging them loose around her fingers which forced Keli to slow down and fix them before she could continue. There were deep slits carved along the walls. They let in light and visibility and Keli knew they were nearly invisible from the outside unless you looked very closely which she knew no one would do while the meeting went on. All that she had to do now was sit and be patient.
Jess was already seated at the oval table. Each chair had its little symbol on the back, which towered over Jess. She, the chief ecologist, got a tree, Simon had a cog, Hal a little plane and so on. All of it seemed terribly formal to Keli, who’d never understood why they couldn’t just sit wherever they wanted.
Jo and Simon walked in together before she could get bored. You were always supposed to get there before the Warden and the Lady because those were the rules but only these three actually cared about doing that. Sometimes Kyle but that wasn’t always guaranteed. Today it was, it seemed, because Kyle ran in like a weirdo, gasping like he’d sprinted across the whole of the Inner Citadel to get there in time for a meeting that hadn’t even begun. Jo even jumped a little when he slammed the door open with his chest heaving.
“Rayner!” she hissed, clutching at her heart. “Calm down!”
“Oh—oh my God, Hal lied,” Kyle groaned, slumping into his own chair as sweat dripped down his face. “He called me telling me you’d already started half an hour ago. I was still asleep.”
“Why were you still asleep half an hour ago?” Jess demanded. “You know you’ve got things to do all day!”
“I was busy last night!”
“Guys,” Simon cut in, sounding pained, “can we not be fighting when John gets here?”
“United front,” Jo muttered, kneading her temples with an exasperated sigh. “We are a team.”
“You love me,” Kyle grumbled in response. Jo twitched at that but didn’t deny anything. Keli had pressed her whole body a little further forward so she could better see out of the little crack she was crouched in front of and almost immediately regretted it when Guy walked in.
“Mornin’!” he boomed, making Keli jump so hard she nearly smashed her head against the stone. She caught herself just in time, averting disaster by scrambling for purchase. “Good day for ridin’, ain’t it?”
“Good day for anything,” Jess mused. “You have plans afterwards?”
“Rookies,” Guy grinned. “Kilowog’s whippin’ ‘em into shape just fine but I gotta make my rounds. You feel like joinin’ me, Cruz?”
“To watch you yell at some poor guy for not marching in formation properly? I’ll pass.”
He shrugged in response. “To each their own. Where’s Jordan?”
“Who knows? Probably bothering some poor technician.” Simon sighed and leaned forward to put his head in his hands. To Keli, it was a familiar sigh. He got like that a lot when she managed to get herself into a spot she had been forbidden to even look at. “Probably messing with the jets.”
“Love that for you,” Jess said airily. “If it were up to me, I’d tell John to arrest him every time he touches something he shouldn’t have.”
“Can’t. Guards’d be working full time around him. It’s a waste of resou—”
Three big taps warned everyone who was coming. The conversation stopped completely and they all stood to face the door. Keli, unwilling to be found out, stayed exactly where she was and watched the Warden and the First Lady walk in, arm in arm as they always walked.
There was a right way to do things, and it had been explained to Keli about a billion times so it would really stick. The etiquette rules never seemed to otherwise, but when the Warden came in, you stood. Sometimes, if it was really serious, you’d kiss his hand which felt unnecessary for everyone because Keli was absolutely sure he hated it too. You sat when the Warden sat or when he directed you to and you weren’t really supposed to call him by his name. No one cared about that last part all that much.
“Morning,” John said pleasantly, taking his own seat at the head of the oval. Katma sat in the chair beside him and everyone else followed suit. “Where’s Hal?”
“Not imprisoned, hopefully,” Guy muttered. “Haven’t seen him all week.”
John raised an eyebrow. “You wouldn’t have. He only came back from the Leonin system last night.”
“’Course he did.”
“Last night?” Simon huffed in disbelief. His face was fixed down to his tablet which he tapped at a little harsher than necessary. “Nope. The hangar’s logging his arrival to about three hours ago. He got held up, I guess.”
“Why in the world would he choose today to be late?” Katma murmured. “He’s usually better about that.”
“Jordan can’t be consistent to save his damn life. Not that he’d want to, anyway.”
The door crashed open so loudly that Keli jumped again and actually hit her cheek against the stone with a muffled little thump. She scrambled away from the crack as Hal’s voice, gravelly and warm, filled the ensuing silence with, “Stop talking shit about me from where I can hear you, Gardner.”
“I was starting to think you’d gotten lost, Hal,” John said. He was never mad about them being late, even if protocol said he should be. Keli supposed, as she slowly pushed herself back up against the wall to see, he had a billion other things to be mad about anyway.
Hal, still standing, bowed shallowly to John and Katma in turn. “My lady. John. Nice morning, isn’t it?”
Jo snorted. “Sure. Now sit down, Jordan. Some of us have places to be.”
“I got stuck in decompression!”
“Is decompression the reason why you look like that? Could’ve mistaken you for a corpse, Jordan.”
“Get off my ass, Mullein. What’s on the agenda today then?”
John looked to Katma. She was the list-bearer in these, somehow knowing exactly what needed to be done before it became a problem. “I’d like to remind you all that Queen Iolande of Betrassus and her consort visit in a month. I’ve been managing the minutiae for now so her accommodations don’t bankrupt us but we need to be on the same page.”
“Same page?”
Jess chimed in with, “She’s asking you chuckleheads to please not flirt with either Her Majesty or her consort.”
Katma pointed with a tight smile. “That and also I want all of you to brush up on the etiquette. While Iolande might be familiar to us, her retainers and staff aren’t. They’ll react if they perceive a slight towards their monarch. We don’t want an incident.”
“Okay.” Hal leaned back in his chair all the way, so far that the front legs lifted clear off the ground leaving him balanced precariously. “How long’s she expected to stay?”
“Barely a week. She’s on tour throughout the Alliance.” Katma hummed thoughtfully, tapping her pencil to her cheek with a sideways glance to John. “Her father was a great man. I wonder how she’ll handle filling such shoes. Especially given the drama preceding her ascension.”
“She’s from Betrassus,” Guy said, waving a hand. “Queen or commoner, they’re made of steel over there.”
“Steel can still buckle,” Jo pointed out. “Her consort interests me, though. The match was only recently made and so hasty. I suppose we’ll see how they fare in the coming years.”
John conceded with a sharp nod and a grim sort of smile, like he didn’t find any of this funny at all. “The House of Betra hasn’t made a bad match or a bad heir in hundreds of years, but Iolande was an accident. Whether she was ready for this responsibility isn’t our concern, but I am concerned regardless. Still, you’re all to give her the same respect you gave her father.”
“Of course, John,” Kyle breathed. “I haven’t been working my ass off coordinating with them for you to ruin it all, Guy.”
“Don’t you dare, Rayner.”
Kyle went on loudly enough to make a point and for his voice to bounce off the old stone walls. “You’re sitting on the far end of the table at every dinner or so help me Oa, I’ll have you arrested.”
Guy’s lips picked up in a snarl that looked half-baked. Keli was familiar: he gave her the same one when he charged at her with the malignant intent of dragging her away to the infirmary again. “You’ll have a better time eatin’ my boot than you will turnin’ my own men against me.”
“Guys,” Simon cut in tiredly which made them both shut up. Keli was almost disappointed. “Where are the guests staying, Katma?”
“Eastern tower,” she replied immediately.
“What?” Sitting up with a frown, the front legs of his chair snapping when they made rough contact with the ground again, Hal leaned forward this time. “We can’t keep them in the old fort?”
“Too cold. And it’s too old fashioned.” Jo tapped her foot on the floor for emphasis. “It’s all stone and stained glass which is nice to look at but not at all fun to stay in. Don’t give me those eyes Hal. You’re not the one with a room in here.”
“The newer part,” John continued, “has more modern facilities, direct access to the garden and the city, and the eastern tower has its own kitchen. Iolande’s staff will be right at home.”
“Damn.”
Kyle groaned so loud it echoed. “Hal’s mad ‘cos he’ll have to sneak past them to get to the hangar all of that week. We’re not letting you escape to the stratosphere every time you get bored. We’re in this together, Admiral.”
“Okay, that was the other thing.” John turned to Hal who was already shrinking back in sheer displeasure, flinching away from words that hadn’t even left his mouth. “You’re not leaving planetside until Iolande is a speck on our horizon. Am I understood?”
It seemed to take a great deal of effort for Hal to choke out, in a warbly sort of tone, “Yes, Warden.”
“Thank you. Anything else, dear?”
“Individual check ins, I suppose.” She nodded to Guy first. “General?”
He shrugged in response. “Everybody’s in good shape. Got wind of a new batch a continent over but it’s nothin’ special. I got a force all ready for Hal when he’s ready to go hunt Sinestro down.” Guy rolled his eyes again. “He’s been up my ass talkin’ about scoutin’ and spyin’ like he’s any good at it.”
“Guy,” Hal groaned.
“You’re stallin’ you goddamn idiot! Get it over an’ done with, for the love of all that’s good.”
“Okay.” John held up a hand and turned to Hal. “Admiral. How’d your mission go?”
“Eh.” Hal made a very neutral sound. “Space was space. Didn’t find much in Leonin. Most of it’s dead planets anyway. Nowhere near habitable enough for Sinestro.”
There was a silence. Even Keli leaned in to listen to more, which never came. Jess gave a very pointed cough. “Anything else you want to add?”
“Don’t worry, John,” Jo said dryly, “his mission report was just as vague. What’s the point of having a protocol if you’re not gonna follow it?”
“Protocol is for nerds,” Hal said eloquently.
“Please do not attack each other here,” Katma called out before Jo could fling back another remark. “The table is old and I don’t want it getting scratched or damaged for whoever’s next.”
“Simon!” John’s grin was a little frayed around the edges but still friendly, if tired. “Tell me everything’s in order.”
“All fine.” He grinned. “Drew up some new schematics for a warp stabiliser I want to start testing. This one might not explode immediately.” At the blank looks he received, he threw his hands up in exasperation. “Engineering is a process. I don’t know what goddamn magic you think I do but it’s not real or instantaneous.”
When John went on and asked Simon, “How’s your apprentice?” Keli sat up a little straighter.
Simon took his sweet, annoying time answering. “She helped design the new stabiliser,” he said eventually. “She’s too much trouble for her own good, and I swear John, she likes blowing things up more than she likes building them.”
That’s not true, Keli thought indignantly. She loved building things. It’s just that if the process of prototyping and testing and refining included a couple of minor explosions, she wasn’t exactly opposed.
“Interesting. Jo, I’ll talk to you later. Jess?”
When Jess spoke, she tapped her fingers against the table. Keli didn’t know why she did it but it made the bangles around her wrists jangle with the motion. “I’m already cleared for the expedition to the south pole later in the year. Weather patterns are stable, orbit is stable and Oa seems stable. Kyle and I’ll swing by the main battery later this week. We needed to talk to the Guardians soon anyway.”
“Great. The garden?”
“Functioning.” The corner of her lips lifted into a warm grin. “I heard there are a couple new arrivals. I’ll talk to the keepers about the barn cats though. We might have too many now.”
“We could give a couple to Her Majesty,” Kyle said, scribbling something in his notebook. “And they don’t all have to be barn cats. We could use some mousers in here.”
“No self-respecting cat would wanna live in this draughty old place,” Jo scoffed.
“We’ll just bribe them,” Katma said airily. “Anything else that we need to talk about urgently?”
“Plenty,” John sighed. “But we have places to be so I’ll dismiss this meeting. I’ll see you here again in two days, though. We still need to talk through security during Iolande’s visit and I promise you I won’t let anyone half-ass it.”
With muttering and groaning, they all stood and stretched with fleeting grins towards each other. Jo hung back while the others ambled towards the door at such a leisurely place that Keli was almost certain at least half of them were going to go back to sleep. Simon would be lying if he said he didn’t spend several hours a week napping at his desk.
Keli kept her lips sealed for this part. She very rarely got to hear Jo talk to John and Katma privately. It was always too important, too grown-up, too secret for her ears and hearing that for six years was tiresome now. Keli was completely sure she’d gotten it right this time anyway. There was no way, no chance in hell, that she could be found out.
And then John held up a hand with a soft chuckle before the conversation could start, said, “Excuse me for a second,” turned and looked directly at the part of the wall Keli was hiding behind. “Keli, you can leave for this part.”
Jo blinked and Katma sighed like she was resigned. Keli was too dumbfounded to even deny it. “How’d you know I was here?” she demanded.
“I caught you flinching when Hal walked in. I’ve got very good eyesight, Keli.”
“Keli,” Jo called, sounding like she was being strangled, “why are you in the walls?”
“I’m not in the walls,” she responded hotly. “Somar thinks it’s a servant’s passage the old kings might’ve left behind. There are a ton all over the place.”
“Of course there are,” Jo muttered. “Kid, if you got hurt and stuck in one of those, we wouldn’t have any way of knowing. It’s dangerous to be poking around in places like this.”
“Well clearly, John doesn’t have a problem finding me.”
John tilted his head, eyes alight with a look Keli found herself dreading week by week. “How long since you had a checkup, kid?”
“I went yesterday,” she lied.
“No you didn’t. And I think you missed last week’s too.”
“John—”
“Infirmary,” he said with no room for an argument. “You’re going to get yourself checked up and then you’re free to do anything you want.”
“You heard that, didn’t you?” Katma chimed in. “You’re going to the infirmary. Not the stables.”
“Fine,” Keli grumbled, already hunched over and slinking out the way she came. “Going straight to the infirmary. No detours. None at all. Doing exactly what I’m ordered to do, Warden.”
John’s sigh followed her the rest of the way out.
Keli went to the stables.
The fort, both the old and the new parts, was a sprawling structure of stone and glass and metal. Inside of it lived the Warden, his advisors and the staff that ran the entire place. Keli lived there too, one of two children in the entire building despite everyone’s best efforts.
However, the fort wasn’t everything in the Inner Citadel. Ringing it was a strip of lush green that had been tamed and tended into docility, so obedient now to the workers that it had become the garden. Garden was a bit of a stretch of a name because it was much bigger than most gardens Keli had ever seen. It went all the way around the fort and acted as a place to grow whatever produce wasn’t immediately available and to house the many animals that lent their milk, meat and fat to the kitchens.
At the edge of the garden was the wall separating the inner citadel with the rest of the capital city, accessed only through gates positioned at every cardinal direction. Keli always took the most direct route down to the stables which meant she had to race down to the southern side and burst through the main kitchen, which was always active in a flurry of constant motion, to run out amidst the cabbage patches. From there, the beaten path was clear, having long been trampled into the ground by many hooves.
The stables were nothing grand to look at and Keli avoided going in if only to avoid the horses. They’d never liked her no matter how many treats she plied them with or how many carrots she stole to try and bribe some kindness from them. Something about her was off and while Keli couldn’t exactly blame them for not trusting her, it made finding Somar that much harder.
“Hello?” she called, peeking in. She made brief eye contact with Sock, a towering, red-brown stallion, bigger than anything Keli had seen in her life and one of the greatest banes of her existence, before ducking out. Better she left early before he could reach down into his bucket of feed just to spit a mouthful directly into her face. “Somar! Sock’s plotting murder!”
“I’m coming!” Then, quietly, “C’mon, you’re meant to be a good boy. You can’t keep bullying her like this.”
Keli scowled. “He’d rather die than listen so stop trying and get over here already.”
“I’m here!” Somar said through a laugh, apparently unbothered by the waves of tension coming off her ugly beast. She was wiping her hands clean on her dungarees, which were always perpetually stained no matter how many times she tried to wash them clean. Still, she refused to throw them out and probably wouldn’t need to for a long time; they were far too big for her even now. Big enough that she needed to tuck the extra length into her boots. “How was the meeting?”
“Boring.” Keli rolled her shoulders and then straightened after a second. “A queen’s coming here in a month.”
“A month?” Somar’s eyes glittered at the idea, already pulling Keli away from the stables and further towards the wall where they were much less likely to be overheard. “Which one?”
“From Betrassus,” Keli said, because she was blanking on the name. “The new one? And her consort too.”
“And the household,” Somar finished. She had that dreamy look in her eye which, on anyone else, might’ve made Keli roll her own. “What do you think we’ll be doing when they come?”
“You’ll be in the stables. And I’ll be…I dunno? Down here with you.” She huffed and bumped their shoulders together teasingly. “We’re not princesses or anything, Somar. We don’t need to be meeting any queens.”
“I wish I were a princess,” Somar murmured.
“No, you don’t.”
“I do!”
“You don’t,” Keli pushed, though they were both giggling. “Princesses don’t get to be vets or work with animals or do whatever they want. They sit on their thrones, brush their hair and talk about marrying princes.”
“The queen of Betrassus was a princess and she didn’t marry a prince at all,” Somar argued. “And I heard rumours that she’s better with a sword than most of the men who tried to marry her anyway.”
“She married someone noble so same difference,” Keli muttered, slightly exasperated. “Either way, my point still stands. We’re better off not being princesses.”
She sighed. “Probably. I can dream though.” Then, “I wish we had real kings and queens here.”
“We have John!”
“Not a king,” Somar shot back breezily. “Wardens don’t count. I checked.”
“Well I’m glad we don’t have a king. Could you imagine all of the extra rules?” Keli puffed her chest out and bowed at Somar exaggeratedly, going so far down that she nearly overbalanced and fell right over. “Yes, your majesty, I went to the doctor today. No, your majesty, I wasn’t the one who hit Sal with the ball. Well maybe he shouldn’t have been standing so close to the game.” She paused amidst Somar’s giggling. “What? You want to chop my head off?”
“John wouldn’t chop your head off!”
“Power corrupts people, Somar,” she said sagely. “Who knows? He’s nice for now but that could change. He’s been trying to force me into that infirmary every week. That’s what tyrants do.”
“You’re being silly now.” Somar paused and tilted her head. “Did he send you to the infirmary again today?”
“…don’t tell anyone.” Before she could open her mouth, Keli hurried along to say, “I have something to show you!”
“Oh! Me too!”
“You first then,” Keli said, digging through her pockets for her creation.
Somar, strangely, did the same. Usually when Somar had something to show her, it was elsewhere. A bird’s nest, the new piglets, a cluster of beetles under a rock. This time, she pulled something small, furry and slightly scraggly out of one of the many pockets in her dungarees and held it up to Keli’s face proudly.
Keli did a double take when the furball meowed.
“Lady had her kittens last night,” Somar said proudly. “This is Cottonball and he’s the smallest and he’s mine.”
Cottonball was a bright white with fur so luminous and long that it made him look more like his namesake than an actual animal. He meowed again, kinda pitifully, shivering slightly in the open air which was Somar’s cue to carefully stuff him back inside her pocket. “He’s…he’s really cute but shouldn’t he be with Lady?” Keli asked.
Somar shook her head a little wistfully. “Lady didn’t want him, so Master Cirrus said I could keep him if I took care of him. I need to feed him again soon.”
“Oh.” She couldn’t help but blink at the little thing in Somar’s pocket, partly in pity and partly in something else. “Why?”
“They do that sometimes. And Cottonball’s got a twisted paw.” Somar didn’t look much happy about it either, though her displeasure seemed muted. “If the kitten comes out…wrong, the mama sometimes won’t want to keep it. But it’s okay,” she said quickly. “If I’m careful, Cottonball can live a long life anyway. He can be ours.”
“Oh. That’s good.”
Somar reached out to touch Keli’s arm gently. “What did you want to show me?”
“Oh!” The parts were already in Keli’s hands anyway so she set the little machine down in the grass, crouching with the controller in her other hand when she turned it on. It wasn’t much; just a rudimentary box balanced on top of two spheres with claws on either sides to act as grabbers. The whole thing was the size of her hand and practically the same size as the controller she used to wake it up.
The little thing jerked and sprung into action the moment Keli urged it along on the tiny interface. Somar’s gasp of surprise turned into a startled squeal as she hurriedly took a few steps backwards when Keli’s machine followed her. “Did you make this?”
“I got bored,” Keli said through a grin. With a flourish and a little jerk of the controls, Keli even had it pluck a flower off the ground so it could spin and present it to Somar. “See? Fully functional.”
Somar knelt and accepted the flower, pinching it delicately by the stem with a giggle that made the soft fins on either side of her face fan out. “Did Simon teach you how to do this?”
“Nope,” Keli said proudly. “I figured it out myself.”
“Can it do anything you want it to do?”
“It’s only the first model, Somar!” Keli exclaimed. “When I give it eyes and proper hands, it’ll do a lot more. Maybe I can give it a voice.”
“Maybe when Cottonball’s a little older, he can play with it.”
Keli considered this with a frown. “I don’t make cat toys,” she grumbled, knowing exactly what modification she wanted to make to it so it’d be kitten-safe. “And anyway, I still need to finish working on it.”
“You can come by the clinic with me then. I have some work to do for Master Cirrus anyway.”
She didn’t really need to think about this because the answer was yes, obviously. Keli liked to work amidst noise and company and the clinic always had people bustling in and out but all thoughts of a peaceful afternoon fled her mind with Somar’s quiet gasp and her own startled yelp as Keli’s feet left the floor all at once.
One moment, she was mid-air and the next, she’d been tossed over a broad shoulder like an indignant sack of potatoes. By the time she had breath to complain, Kilowog was already standing to his full height and preparing to move. “Let me go!” she hissed furiously, beating her fists against his back to no avail. He was huge and built like a tank, his skin acting like plate armour against her blows. She was sure he felt nothing. “Kilowog!”
“Sorry, kid. Got direct orders to escort you to the infirmary. Squeal all you want. You ain’t missin’ this checkup on my watch.”
“Kilowog!” she yelled, louder.
“I ain’t paid enough for this.”
Somar ran to keep up with his steps. “Hi Mister Wog!” she said breathlessly.
“Hey Somar.”
“Can I come?”
Kilowog grunted. Keli was sure that it was his displeased grunt as opposed to his neutral grunt. “You know you can’t.”
Somar let it go to Keli’s further dismay as she wriggled for purchase. “That’s okay! I’ll see you later Keli,” she said and winked, jerking her head pointedly to the side.
Keli blinked at her, a grin spreading wide over her features despite the indignity of her position. “Fine,” she groaned, letting her head flop uselessly against Kilowog’s broad back. “Take me away if you have to. But I maintain my innocence!”
All she got in response to that was, “Damn dramatic kids.”
The doctor wasn’t all that mad. He’d struck Keli as tired and in desperate need of a nap these days, giving her a weary smile as he ruffled her hair and said, “Your gloves, dear. I’ll get it set up.” So Keli got about peeling off her gloves and then slowly undoing the wraps underneath them.
Keli was a human. She knew this and so did the doctors who examined her every week. They’d even sequenced her back when she was a baby, just to confirm that nothing out of the ordinary had snuck into her DNA unawares. But Keli was a human with only bare traces of other species in her lineage which didn’t quite explain why the squalling infant they pulled from her half dead mother had glowing hands.
To Keli, to John, to the doctors and to Somar, all of this was as normal as breathing. Her skin had always been dark, was meant to be dark but her hands were even richer in colour, a deep brown that turned to ash grey at the tips of her fingers. Her palms were of smudged soot and earth while bright, toxic green veins lay prominently just underneath her skin. Those lines started at her elbow and crept unevenly to the tips of her fingers where they clustered into pools of bright emerald where the veins and arteries were at their densest. Her skin was warm perpetually, her nailbeds a dark jade and hard like stone and no matter what anyone thought, it had never hurt her.
Still, the doctor ran his hands over her, pressing and poking at her elbows, wrists and each of her phalanges. “No pain? No discomfort?”
Keli sighed and shook her head before surrendering her other hand. “All the same.”
He gave her a wan smile. Keli might’ve known his name once but there were so many doctors that rotated around her that she had stopped trying to keep track of them a long time ago. “I know you don’t understand the point of these appointments and I’m sure you’ve got much more interesting things to do but we must study the unexplainable. If anything went wrong…” He trailed off, suddenly fixated on Keli’s pinkie nail. “You don’t feel any sensation along your nail beds, do you?”
“No. Everything else feels fine. Same as normal.”
“That’s good.” Then, dreadfully, “How long has it been since we’ve looked at your blood?”
The temptation to lie if only to get out of a blood draw was grand and crushing but the doctor had always been good at seeing through absolutely everything Keli said. He shook his head with a soft laugh. “I’ll get on it now. Just a vial, dear. It’s nothing we haven’t done before.”
She watched him prepare the needle. Apparently, twelve years ago, he’d been an apprentice himself watching his master work on Keli’s mother. She was a medical miracle: blasted with a ray of Oan radiation full in the face whilst on a ship leaving home for someplace else while seven months pregnant. Keli’s father and the fifteen other passengers died either instantly or over the course of the next few weeks but her mother hung on long enough to give birth, riddled with radiation sickness. She’d lived just long enough to name Keli.
The life Keli could’ve had, with living parents on a planet far away from this one, haunted her every waking step. She only needed to look down at her hands to be reminded of it at all.
“Ready?” the doctor asked with his needle prepared. Keli frowned at him in answer which he took for consent. When she’d been little, it took four separate people to take her blood and even that was a struggle. Now she was old enough to be brave in the face of needles, old enough to wonder if she’d maybe been a little dramatic in the past.
The motions were familiar. There was the cuff, tightened until her fingers flexed weirdly, the antiseptic and the prick of the needle. The blood that came out was yet another thing wrong with Keli. Normal humans, and Keli had confirmed this before given how accident prone Kyle was, bore red blood. It was rich in colour and smelled like the workshop during the height of the warm season.
Keli’s blood was milk-white in comparison, so pale it practically glowed in the vial. The doctor didn’t flinch. He’d been drawing blood from her so long that it hardly phased either of them anymore. She watched the vial get sealed and tucked away as she pressed a cotton ball to the junction of her elbow and waited for the bleeding to stop.
“Thank you, dear. And you haven’t told anyone else?” he asked, gesturing vaguely at her hands.
“No,” Keli lied, the same lie she’d told for six years. Outside of the doctors and John’s most trusted personnel, Keli was meant to be a secret. She didn’t exist as she was, the medical miracle, the radioactive girl, the kid who refused to die. Entrusting a secret like this to a six-year-old was a stupid decision though—the moment she and Somar-le had exchanged names and declared themselves friends, Keli had torn off her little gloves and told her everything.
The doctor paused then with a hum, and looked her over, chewing the inside of his cheek. Finally, instead of proceeding with the rest of the checkup, he reached for his desk to the jar of candy he kept specially for her and popped off the lid. “Why don’t you run along, now? It’s too nice a day to be stuck in here with me anyway.”
Keli pursed her lips with a furrowed brow. “But you—”
“You’re done here,” he went on, bulldozing over her words and shaking the jar. “Go on. A handful to buy your silence and then you can leave. My lips are sealed.”
And Keli wasn’t one to turn down a blessing. She shoved her fingers into the jar and pulled out a fistful of gummies, lollipops and chocolates to shove into both pockets before hopping off the table. She grabbed her wraps and gloves as if they were a second thought and bolted to the exit before he could change her mind, closing the door behind her with a grin flashed in the doctor’s direction.
Outside was Kilowog.
Keli didn’t know much about him. Only that he was the famed drill sergeant that trained Hal, an adult Bolovaxian, the last of his kind, scarred to hell and built like a brick wall with no give. He glared down at her with his ruby eyes, tusks gnashing against his jaw when he asked, “You’re out early.”
“I’m just such a great patient,” Keli said sweetly.
Kilowog snorted, gesturing down the empty hall. “Get those gloves on quick.”
She sighed but acquiesced, beginning to roll her wraps around her fingers and wrists as she walked. “I have the day free now. Can I come train with you yet?”
He didn’t even look down at her to answer, much to Keli’s chagrin. “Eat your damn vegetables first. You’ll train with me when you don’t look like a string bean.”
“I don’t look like a—”
“Argue all you want, poozer. You ain’t fightin’ anyone ‘til you’re of age. Warden’s orders.”
Keli chewed her lip and jogged to keep up with his wide steps. “But John would never know if I just did a little training. Just the basics.”
“To fight who?” He sounded like he was about to laugh which meant Keli was losing badly. “We’re in peacetime kid, and, if I have it my way, we’ll stay in peacetime.” But Kilowog’s expression softened as much as it could when he glanced down to stare her dejection in the face. “We need scientists more’an we need soldiers right now. Ain’t we lucky to live in times like these?”
“I guess.”
“Young people,” he groaned. “Jus’ wait a couple years for your brain to develop. Honestly, you humans and your drama.”
“I’m not dramatic!”
Laughing, a full-bodied laugh that shook the walls themselves, Kilowog tapped her back. It still sent her shooting forwards despite how deliberately gentle he was being. “Argue with the wall. C’mon now.”
Sprawled against the northern side of the garden was the great, possibly haunted banyan that was absolutely off limits without questions because of the ghosts that still resided there. The stories Keli managed to pry from the old cook and Kyle clashed with one another: the cook insisted lovers went there to die while Kyle insisted lovers went there to wed and then die tragically elsewhere. Keli didn’t care about the stories all that much. She only cared for the pockets and crannies that the great roots and trunk of the banyan provided as hiding spaces.
Nighttime fell quickly. Dusk was barely a flash of orange-pink before Oa set and their sun came out to shine its weak light. Keli knew of planets that resided further in their solar system, practically snug against their star’s corona but their home was so far away that their sun was practically just a blip among the sea of other stars. No, their daylight came from Oa: the lone satellite that orbited its host planet dutifully every twenty standard hours.
To call it a moon felt wrong. Oa wasn’t made of rock or ice or even gas but rather something more liquid and bright, blasting everything around it with so much radiation that it killed upon first contact, that their ships were inlaid with shields and protectors to make sure its inhabitants don’t get contaminated upon leaving the ozone layer. Even then, most launches occurred at night, under the thready sun while Oa was tucked away elsewhere.
The fort was a different place at night. Long shadows stained the ground underfoot, making the stone steps appear even more treacherous. It was a path Keli was long used to, a way down into the garden through a back door in the eastern kitchen that was seldom ever guarded. Every adult at every stage of her life had tried their hardest to stop her and Somar from conducting their little escapades with zero success of any measure.
Tonight was no different. The guard rotation was weaker in parts and to be caught would mean a lecture so the stakes could not have been higher. Down the steps she went, across the corridor, ducking behind statues and pillars the moment she heard a voice raise in conversation.
When she passed the eastern kitchens, she paused and ducked behind the open door at the roiling chatter within. Whoever it was sounded hushed, like they didn’t want to be heard, like they were pacing around in circles.
“—five hours and nothing to show for it. Five fucking hours unaccounted for and he just expects me to wave it off.” The voice was sharp, female. When Keli wedged her face against the seam between the door and the wall, she caught the glint of golden beads dripping off the ends of dark braids. Jo then, pacing and talking and swearing like something was wrong.
The second voice, also a woman, answered softly with none of the ire. “What could’ve happened in those five hours?”
“Anything! And Oa forbid I question him.”
“Talk to John,” the second speaker–Jess, Keli was sure of it–murmured. “If nothing, he’ll talk to John.”
“See, you’d think he would but apparently he just gets…”
“Gets…?”
A sighed. Jo had paced back to a position where Keli could watch her run her hands over the top of her braids. “Spacy. Confused.” She chewed her bottom lip. “I feel like I’m going insane.”
“Don’t. You’re not.” Jess walked forward, within sight now, to hold Jo’s shoulder. “I’ll keep an eye on him too.”
“You’re getting a vibe?”
“I don’t know.” She sighed. “Look at the hour. Let’s go.”
Jo grunted in agreement and that was that. Keli didn’t even dare to breathe, squatting down in the door wedge, cloaked in shadow, as the two women wordlessly left the kitchen. She didn’t even stand until they’d turned a corner in the corridor. Then, still barely breathing, Keli got up and slipped into the kitchen and out to freedom.
The trek was short and Somar was already there. The banyan tree was a big one, one of the old plants not native to their home, and it had been in this spot for so long that no one could agree on who planted it: whether it was the last king or the first warden was up for a lot of debate.
She took the path she knew, hopping over its roots and the protrusions of its trunk to find Somar huddled in one of the cradles the wood naturally made. For two twelve-year-olds, it was the perfect place to squeeze into if only to talk. The only thing that greeted her as she arrived was the wind, whistling through the hanging branches as if it were a song.
“There are whispers,” Somar breathed the moment Keli got comfortable, which was how she knew this would be good. Somar only got dramatic for the interesting things. “Apparently,” and she leaned in, savouring it, “there’s a mole.”
Keli blinked. “We don’t get moles here. Did you talk to the gardeners?”
“No,” came the outraged hiss. “A mole like a spy. Like someone’s here from somewhere else to spy on John.”
“Oh. What would they need to spy on, anyway? John tells everyone in the Alliance everything.”
Somar rolled her eyes and shoved Keli’s arm, though it barely even moved her. “Well obviously the spy isn’t from the Alliance.”
“Oh.”
Keli could see how that would be a problem. “Well is anyone trying to find the spy?”
“Probably. It’s all very top-secret so that the spy doesn’t know they’re being hunted down.”
“But you know,” Keli pointed out.
Somar trilled a soft giggle. “I know because I overheard a couple of kitchenhands talking.”
“But kitchenhands aren’t the ones who hunt spies down.”
“But they heard it from someone else!”
“Who? The cook, who also doesn’t hunt spies?”
“Keli!” Somar whined. “This was meant to be fun!”
“It is,” she insisted, squashing the laughter in her chest all the way down. “It is, but why would there even be a spy here? It’s not like we do anything interesting.”
“We make the batteries,” Somar muttered. “That’s interesting.”
“Oa makes the batteries. Do you think the spies are gonna try and steal all of Oa?”
“They could!” Keli laughed there but Somar went on hastily, her own explanation punctuated by her cackles, muffled into her palms while she tried to keep quiet. “They could—listen! They could shrink it down real small and—Keli!”
Somar slapped her hand over Keli’s mouth to stop her from drawing attention, almost so hard that she started to suffocate before she batted it away to scrub at her face. “That’s great Somar. Wishing them luck on that.”
“Hmph. How was the doctor?”
“Boring. How was the clinic?”
A sigh. “Boring. Everyone was fine. No one needed emergency surgery and Master Cirrus wouldn’t let me leave ‘til I finished all of the forms for the new kittens.”
Keli made a face in sympathy. “Simon never lets me do paperwork.”
“That’s ‘cos he knows you’ll mess it up.”
“Well, when you replace Cirrus, you can just get rid of the forms.”
“Not how it works,” Somar sighed. “But thanks for the suggestion.”
Sitting up slightly, Keli held out her hands. The wraps were still on and firm but her gloves were off, giving her enough movement to warm her hands up by stretching her fingers. The warmth she felt came from somewhere behind her eyes and it travelled down her face, shoulders and ended pressed against her nails.
The first time Keli created light from nothing but her hands, it shocked one doctor straight into a heart attack. The first time Keli made something properly with her light, John gave her the strangest look she’d ever seen in her life.
Now, after years of practise, the light was easy to recall and easy to shape. So she did, sculpting it into Cirrus who bloomed like a brilliant, green flower behind Somar. The ancient head vet was human, stern with only a little hair and tall enough to look Kilowog in the chest. “No, young Somar-le,” Keli growled, mimicking Cirrus’s scratchy tone, “once I’m gone, you’ll be able to do whatever you want with the place. Paint the whole damn place pink for all I care.”
Somar laughed then, ducking her head to muffle it. “Thank you, Master Cirrus. Do I have your blessing to add sparkles to the surgery equipment?”
“I’ll be dead,” Keli declared, still in the gravelly growl that made her throat hurt, “so it doesn’t matter!” She made the hard light Cirrus smile, which was unsettling, and then bow so deeply that his forehead smacked into his knees. “Be sure to give the animals lots of cuddles for me.”
“But Master Cirrus,” Somar started, scratching her chin thoughtfully, “you’ve never liked cuddles.”
“Well how the hell am I gonna stop you six feet in the ground?” Keli grumbled. The fake Cirrus jerked around like a puppet on strings before Keli’s strength gave out and he dissipated with a final, pathetic twitch. “I’m getting better,” she said breathlessly, folding to press her forehead to her knees. “Simon’s gonna love this.”
Somar scooted over to curl against her. She was oven-warm in the cool night, hot enough to stop Keli’s teeth chattering immediately. “What do you think you’ll do when you get really good?”
“I dunno.” Keli’s head dipped sideways to rest on Somar’s shoulder. “Help people, I think.”
“Mm. That’s good. It’s cold,” Somar added after a short pause. “Bed?”
“Yours or mine?”
“Mine. It’s closer.”
They weren’t technically meant to do this because Keli took off her wraps to sleep and Somar wasn’t supposed to have seen her hands, like ninety-five percent of the rest of the staff. None of that really mattered to either of them, however. Besides, the old fort was a draughty, lonely place. Sleepovers were a solution to two problems. It was efficient so no one could complain.
Somar took Keli’s hand to lead her up that way, that well-worn path from the safety of the banyan to the safety of her room. If anyone found out, that would be tomorrow's problem, as it had been for six years now.