“Dad,” I managed to say. “You saved me.”
Trenton quietly exited the room. On this broken ship, they weren’t leaving me, just giving me the illusion of space. If he wanted to, Anders could hear and repeat all that was said.
“Sienna.” He walked to me and stopped at the shield. I still read nine on my arm, but who knew what that meant. The way I worried about Diana’s toddler, I was going to be concerned about him. He was older. I owed the people around me at least as much care as they gave me. Maybe more, considering all the things that were done and manipulated just to see to my well-being.
He took a long breath. “I was hoping they’d have fixed you. Are you okay?” He put his hand over the screen.
I sighed. “I think that depends on your definition of the word. In some ways, yes, I’ve never been better. In others, I’m living in a constant borderline state of upheaval that I don’t know what to do about. And then there is the daily question of what my number will be on my wrist. That tells me how sick I am that day. It changes. Up and down. That determines a lot.” I realized I might not be making a lot of sense. “I’m okay, Dad. They’re trying to fix me.”
We were going to cross the galaxy to try to fix me. Lie to some very good people to get that done. The thought bothered me more and more. All of these strangers who’d stepped up for me deserved better than us plowing open the black hole and risking everyone’s safety. Even if in the process we were able to take down Evander.
Or maybe it was the right thing to do. It wasn’t like I’d ever had a huge amount of parental lessons in morality and ethical behavior from the man who stood in front of me.
Sometimes it really sucked being able to see things from all sides of an issue.
“They took you, and I couldn’t let them have you. I had to try to do something. Your mother… she’s in Sandler space, hidden, so that they can’t use her against you. Not that they can do that anymore. All of Evander seems to be stopped.”
I touched the glass between us as though some of my warmth might penetrate into him. He’d had a hard time. It must have been lonely and miserable. “Thank you, Dad.”
“I… I feel like we let you down.” He looked at his feet and then back up at me. “You were so special, so talented. Tradition dictated we give you to the temple for a destiny that was bigger than working in a shop with us. But truthfully, my love, it never sat right with us. Were you very unhappy?”
I blinked, my good intentions of not crying fleeing. Okay. I was going to cry, and there wasn’t a thing I was able to do about it. I wiped them away but more came. “No, Dad. I wasn’t happy. I’m not made for what I had to do. The truth is that despite all the circumstances that I keep finding myself in, I am just a woman who would have done very well with a simple life. Even if I never used my abilities at all. I don’t really understand why I have them. Human beings can’t do what I do. What any of us could do. It’s not normal.”
He nodded, and his throat muscles constricted as he visibly swallowed. “That’s what I thought. About your happiness, not about your abilities. Surely they explained that to you?”
I pushed through the haze. He had said something very important. “Who would have explained what to me?”
“The people who ran the temple. They were supposed to explain.”
I’d still been considered a novice when my uncle turned me over to Evander. If something was going to be explained, it had not yet been done. “No one told me anything.”
“Listen, I’m not a scientist. You must have seen from being out here that people are a lot more educated than we were in other parts of the universe.”
I tapped on the glass. “Dad, you somehow managed to inspire groups of people to fight for some idea of me. I think you have proven to be very smart if not formally educated. On our planet, you weren’t a dummy. Give yourself a break. You need to tell me how you did that, by the way.”
He smiled, his first real one since he’d come in the room. “I had a lot of help from some people who first rescued me from Evander. They used to be pirates. One of them has a famous last name, Sandler. Anyway, they helped. They’re very persuasive, and one of them, Bo, he’s from our planet originally. Worked in the mining division, so to him you really were some kind of important figure. It wasn’t all on me.”
Were there Sandlers everywhere? That was a question for another time. “Go on, Dad. Tell me why I can do these things.”
“The women on our planet, when they’ve been studied by smarter people than me, they are shown to have—I might get these words wrong—lower levels of activity in their brains in some parts. I think it’s called the left hippocampus.”
It was like he was speaking gobbledygook to me. I had no idea what in the universe he meant by that. The door opened and closed. This time it was Kellan who stepped in. He didn’t say a word but approached fast.
“Keep speaking.” He addressed my father. “This is interesting.”
I smirked. “They can hear and see and just generally do anything a lot better than we can. There really isn’t privacy with Super Soldiers around. You get used to it.”
My dad looked between us. “Is he your… boyfriend? I thought maybe the one who walked me in was but then you were in here with the one with the long hair and…” Realization swept over my father’s face fast. “All of them. Like the former pirates who helped me. You have one of those multiple relationships going on. So unusual where we are from, and so common here. Seems everyone I run into has one of those. The people who own this place, they’re in a plural sort of relationship.”
I didn’t know the first thing about how Diana’s multiple marriage worked outside of the fact that it did. He wasn’t wrong. Love was love here, and it came in many forms.
“That’s right. I am with more than one man.” I smiled. “Seven of them, actually.”
He paled. “Seven? Are you constantly exhausted?”
“Dad,” I practically shouted. “I’m not… getting into that with you. Please go on. Kellan might actually understand what you’re saying to me. The left… what was it?”
Kellan pulled over a chair and motioned for my father to sit in it while he answered me instead of my father. “Hippocampus. He means the limbic system. It’s where the subcortical structures meet the cerebral cortex. Thought to be responsible for motivation, learning, memory, that kind of thing. Go on. Lower level of activity. That’s interesting. So she lowers the use of her left hippocampus to take on other people’s shit.” He winced. “Sorry, I curse. A lot. I didn’t have parents. They made me in a lab, so I have no idea how to talk to you.”
My father stared at Kellan for a long moment. “I like you.”
I might never understand male relationships. Not even if I lived to be three hundred years old. “Please. Can we continue?”
“You also decrease activity in your superior temporal gyrus.”
Kellan sighed. “Language. Sounds.” He answered my unasked question as to what that did. “Anything else?”
“The front lobe—I think that’s what it’s called—it also showed less activity. I’ve never really understood any of that.”