Purity (Pure and Tainted) (13 page)

“We weren’t children—not really.” K watched him pace. “We were
soldiers in training.
Paladins.
And only those that
deserved to make rank survived.”

Boone stopped pacing and turned to face her. “You can’t tell me
you think what was done to you is right. That it didn’t hurt you.”

“It was necessary.” K lifted her chin. “I became a better, more
controlled warrior because of it.”

“How can you defend what those Purist bastards did to you? They
fucking
traumatized
you, K.”

“They trained us,” she said stubbornly.
“Trained
us to endure, to feel nothing.
And don’t forget, Boone, I am one of
those
Purist bastards
myself, even if
you
have
taken my suit.” She closed
her eyes, trying to drive away the memory but it wouldn’t go.

She could still hear the howls of the other children who had not
yet learned to master their emotions as the freezing, burning water peppered
their unprotected skin like bullets. Her jaw still ached from keeping it clenched
tight, enduring in silence. But though she didn’t cry or beg she still hated
it. One of the best things about being fitted for her suit had
been never having
to visit the shower room again…

“K, honey…” Boone knelt in front of her and took her by the
shoulders. “I know it’s how you were raised but it isn’t right. Children aren’t
meant to be brought up in a barracks by machines with no one to hold them or
love them. They shouldn’t be denied the right to touch, the right to feel or
fear or love. And they
sure
as hell
shouldn’t be
tortured
.”

K opened her eyes and looked at him. “It is the Purist way. It’s
the only way I know, Boone.”

“And you think you’re a better person for it?”

“I…I know I am.” She lifted her chin. “I am a Paladin. I fear
nothing. I feel nothing.”

“Nothing at all?
Then what’s this?” Boone touched
her cheek lightly. When he pulled his hand away K saw moisture glistening on
his fingertips.

“What…?” She stared at the droplets in confusion.

“You’re crying, K,” Boone said in a low voice. “You have been
since you started telling me this little slice of hell from your past.”

“I’m not—I can’t be!” She felt a stab of panic. Feeling emotions
was one thing but to actually manifest them outwardly…

“Look in the viewer.” Boone nodded at the silvery reflective
screen across the room.

K stood stiffly and walked over to it, looking at her image in the
viewer’s surface. Sure enough, there were tear tracks streaking down her
cheeks. But as she looked closer, she saw that something else was wrong—
very
wrong.

“My eyes!”
She looked at Boone and then back
at the viewer. “What’s happening to my eyes?”

Boone came to stand behind her, looking down at her reflection.
“Well, you can see a lot more of the white around the outer edges now.”

“Exactly.”
K leaned closer, her gut twisting
like a clenched fist. “The black of Purity, it’s fading, leaving me. My eyes
haven’t been this white since I was a second level Paladin.” She shoved away
from the viewer in a sudden frantic movement. “I’m losing it—losing everything
I worked so hard to achieve.”

She wanted to run, wanted to get away from herself and everything
else, from this whole frightening situation. But Boone wouldn’t let her. When
she tried to leave he caught her and held her tight.

“Let me go!
Let me go!” K
beat
against his broad chest with her fists but it was like beating against a stone
wall—he refused to release her. Finally she stopped, too tired to continue,
too
confused to know what to do next.

“Take it easy, darlin’.” Boone pulled her close and held her. “Let
it out. Just let it all out.”

“Let
what
all out?” K tried
to say but she found she couldn’t talk—her throat was too tight. She was crying
again—she could feel the wetness on her cheeks—but she didn’t allow herself to
sob. She could cry quietly, could retain that much of her dignity, at least.

It was the best she could do but it wasn’t enough. Even as Boone
held her, murmuring soothing nothings, K could feel the waves of shame and pain
rolling over her. She was losing her hold on the person she had always been—was
becoming a stranger, even to herself.

“It’s all right.” Boone stroked her hair which fell like a heavy, damp
curtain around her face. “It’s all right, baby.”

K wiped angrily at her eyes. “Don’t call me that—it’s worse than
your other nicknames for me. I am
not
your
baby.”

“No, and maybe that’s the problem.” He brushed a strand of hair
away from her face and looked at her seriously. “You were never anybody’s baby.
Maybe it’s time you had some babying—some tenderness in your life.”

K stiffened. “Why, so I can become softer than I already am? Look
at me—having emotions and then
expressing
them. I’m
crying
for Purity’s
sake.”

“They hurt you, K.” Boone’s voice was quiet and his eyes were
bright with unshed tears. “It’s natural to cry when you’re in pain.”

“I’m
not
in pain,” K protested
but there was a feeling in her chest,
a tightness
like
someone was gripping her heart and twisting it until she thought it might
burst.

“Your tears say differently.” Tilting her chin up, he pressed his
lips gently to her wet eyelids—a touch so soft K could barely feel it. And yet,
her heart skittered in her chest.

“What…what are you doing?” she asked, her voice coming out soft
and breathless.

“Comforting you,” Boone murmured.

“You don’t have to do that—I’m fine,” she insisted. “You
can…can
let me go now.”

He gave her a long, appraising look. “Is that really what you
want?”

“Of
course
it is.” K glared
at him.

“All right.
If you promise
not to hurt yourself.”

“I have already given you my word I won’t purge myself until I get
my suit,” K said, sniffing. “I shouldn’t have to swear it again.”

“Fine.”
Finally Boone relaxed his grip on
her and she was free. But for a moment—only a moment—she didn’t want to move.
She wished she could stay there and take the comfort he was offering, could let
her tears dissolve the bad memories and make new ones to take their place. The
feel of his lips on her cheeks and eyelids had been so soft and yet they made
her heart pound…

That was her weakness talking.
The growing
Impurity that was eating her from the inside out.
I must fight it, K
told herself fiercely.
I must hold out until I can find my suit!

But how much longer could she wait? How much longer did she have
before the balance inside her shifted and her emotions ate her ability to
reason completely?

How much longer would her eyes remain black?

Chapter Eight

After the shower incident, as Boone began to call it in his mind,
things shifted subtly between himself and K and not for the better. Now she was
colder and even more withdrawn than she had been to begin with. Boone feared
that the emotional break-down she’d suffered after recounting her traumatic
past for him might have pushed her too far.
Shouldn’t
have made her tell you,
he told himself.
Shouldn’t have pushed.
But he couldn’t quite believe that.

Bullshit—she needed to talk.
Needed to get it out.

Sure and that’s why she’s back to
being as cold as a cadaver. Not that she ever got that warm in the first place.

He argued with himself back and forth but eventually decided that
what was done was done and he would have to let it go. He didn’t push K or try
to get her to tell him any more about her life on Athena. She would open up or
not when she was ready. And he shouldn’t care anyway. K was the enemy—she’d
promised to clean his clock in the near future and he didn’t doubt for a second
that she was capable of doing it. So why did it bother him so much that she had
withdrawn? Why did he ache for her when he thought of what she’d endured, when
he remembered the tears in her strange, lovely half-black eyes?

Forget it,
he told himself.
Concentrate on getting Shayla back. That’s
what matters.
And it did—he missed his little sister as much as he ever had
and was just as determined to get her back. But almost as often as Shayla, his
thoughts turned to K. Who was she really under the cold exterior she tried so
hard to project? Would he ever know? Did she even know herself?

They continued to be close physically, at least—there was no way
she could avoid that. Despite Loki’s veiled hints that the touch-cravings would
lessen in frequency at some point, Boone continued to take “time-outs” with her
on a regular basis. And since K didn’t object—or no more than she had before
anyway—he assumed that she still
needed
them.

She was also still reading her way through Shayla’s collection of
Old Earth literature. Boone often thought the best parts of his day were when
she gave him her “book reports” on the various things she’d read. He found that
K tended to have a unique perspective on almost everything from
Wuthering
Heights
to
Oliver
Twist.
Some of the reading seemed to disturb her—she wouldn’t discuss
Brave New World
or
1984
with him at all—probably because both books hit a little too
close to home. The High Sentinel, from what little she’d told Boone of him,
sounded like he could be Big Brother’s twin. But it was the children’s books
she seemed to find the most absorbing.

Boone suspected she had started reading that particular section in
the reader because the books were shorter and she was looking to gain more
work-out time as per their bargain. She continued to read them, however,
because she liked them—or so it seemed to him. He wondered if maybe they spoke
to something inside her, nourished the famished child that had never been
allowed to grow. K had never had a childhood of her own, not really—perhaps
reading was allowing her to experience what she had lost.

She had been Boone’s prisoner for almost two weeks and they were
within hours of a shallow orbit around Minotaur when she gave him her take on
The Jungle Book.

“It’s about a boy who is raised by animals—wolves,” she said,
while sitting in Boone’s lap during their mid morning time-out.

“Go on,” Boone urged, intrigued as always to hear her views on
classic literature. “So he’s raised by wolves—anybody would know that just from
reading the synopsis.”

“It’s more than that,” K said thoughtfully. “The boy—Mowgli—he actually
thinks of himself as one of the wolves. He knows he’s different but he doesn’t
really internalize it until the wolves reject him. That’s when he realizes that
he doesn’t belong with the pack anymore.”

“What happens then?” Boone had read the book as a boy but it had
been years since he’d picked it up.

“Well, the book is broken up into several different adventures but
after he realizes he can’t stay with the wolves, he leaves the pack behind and
tries to go back to his own kind.” She shook her head. “It doesn’t work
though—he has too much of the jungle in his blood. So he goes back—but on his
own terms. He—”

“Boone if you’re not too busy cuddling with Princess Paladin I
have a mechanic on the viewscreen for you,” Loki’s nasal voice came over the
com, interrupting K’s report.

“Do they have the part we need?” Boone asked.

“The mechanic says they might…for the right price.”

Boone cursed under his breath. “I don’t know how much more credit
I can pull this far from Colossus. I guess I can try, but—”

“I don’t think that’s the kind of payment the mechanic has in
mind. Look, you’d better
come
talk about it in person.
If you can tear yourself away from the lovely K for a moment
that is.”
Loki’s voice dripped sarcasm, making Boone grit his teeth.

“Yeah, I’m coming,” he growled. “And can the nasty remarks, Loki.
I’ve had about enough of your lip.”

“You say the sweetest things.” Loki signed off with a loud,
smacking kiss and the com went silent.

Boone sighed. “I guess I’d better get out there and see what’s
going on.”

“What will you do if you can’t pay the mechanic’s price?” K asked,
getting off his lap and rearranging her clothing. Today she was wearing another
one of his dress shirts, this one dark blue with a red tie cinched around her
narrow waist. Boone reminded himself that no matter what else they did on
Minotaur, they had to get her some more clothes.

“I’ll find a way to pay it,” he said, snagging the red short
sleeved shirt he’d been wearing before their time-out and pulling it over his
head. “I have to. If it takes a little longer—”

“You’ll have that much more time to convince me to help you,” K finished
for him.

Boone gave her a searching look. This was an area of conversation
he had strictly avoided, deciding it was better not to push. After all, he
couldn’t
force K
to help him get past
the security field at Midas and rescue Shayla. He could only hope she would see
it his way by the time they got where they were going. “I suppose so,” he said
at last.

“You do still have my suit,” K pointed out. “I suppose it’s your
only bargaining chip.
That and my life.
But since I’m
going to purge myself anyway, it’s not much.”

“Do you really still want to kill yourself so badly?” Boone asked
quietly.

A look of uncertainty flitted across her face. “I
should
want to,” she murmured. “It is my
duty to die since I have been contaminated. You’ve been touching me so much and
so long that nothing but the deep blackness of Purity can cleanse me now.”

“Death before dishonor, huh?”
Boone frowned at her. “Well I don’t
buy it, darlin’—where there’s life there’s hope. What would killing yourself
get you anyway?”

“Nothing.”

“Exactly.”
Boone nodded.

“No, you don’t understand. Purity is pure, unadulterated
nothingness. When it takes you in, you become nothing too.”

“Sounds lonely.”

She frowned. “How can you be lonely if you are nothing?”

“How can you want to give up everything to become nothing in the
first place?”

“It’s what I’ve trained for all my life.” K frowned.
“It’s…expected of me.”

Boone gave her a long look. “I don’t think that’s a good enough
reason to kill yourself—maybe it’s time you made some expectations of your own.
Come on, I have to go talk to this guy before he gets tired of waiting and
breaks the connection.
Or else doubles his price.”

He led the way to the main viewscreen which was located,
unfortunately, in Loki’s domain—flight control. K trailed after him silently
and he hoped she was thinking about what he’d said. They would have to revisit
this conversation later—if he was ever going to get Shayla back he needed her
to be on board one hundred percent.

Loki was lounging in the flight chair wearing a tight fitting
green leather vest and some loose harem-style silver trousers. The ship’s
controls were arranged on a semi-circular panel in front of him in a
complicated array. Even to Boone’s untrained eyes they looked clunky and
inefficient—like most of the ship. But Loki flew it with the ease of long
practice, though Boone knew he would much rather be aboard his own custom-built
ship, still in dry dock on Eros.

“I’m here,” he said when Loki failed to look up from the
apparently engrossing task of filing his nails with a mini-sander. “Where’s the
mechanic?” he asked, nodding at the darkened viewscreen.

“I put the image on hold while I waited for you.” Loki’s
gold-ringed eyes flicked over Boone and K standing behind him. “You sure you
want Miss Purity to hear what you have to say?”

Boone frowned. “K knows what’s going on. It won’t hurt to let her
hear the call.”

Loki shrugged laconically. “Suit yourself.” He flicked a switch
and the large rectangular screen buzzed to life showing a most surprising
sight.

He’d been expecting the mechanic to be your garden variety grease
monkey with black grime under his nails, probably wearing coveralls with his
name stitched on the pocket. It was a stereotype, sure, but often a reality as
well in Boone’s experience. Instead, the screen showed and image of a
stunningly beautiful woman with full breasts and long blonde hair. She was
wearing an immaculate crimson blouse that showed a fair amount of cleavage and a
thick gold choker around her slender neck. In fact, the only thing that kept
her from being perfectly vid-star gorgeous was her whiskers.

Boone tried not to stare at them but he couldn’t help it. The
long, silky hairs protruded from either corner of her lush mouth, making her
look extremely cat-like. Large, tilted eyes so green they made Loki’s look dull
in comparison added to the feline illusion, as did her vertical pupils.

“Doctor Richard Boone I presume?” Her voice had a soft, purring
quality that made Boone wonder if she had a tail swishing out of sight of the
viewscreen. He cleared his throat, trying not to let his surprise show on his
face.

“Yes, that’s me.”

“
The
Richard Boone?
The famous geneticist?
Winner of the
Double Helix grant and author of
What
Lies Within,
Genetic Manipulation and its Consequences?
” she pressed.

“Uh…I suppose.” Her emphasis on his other profession was
surprising and a little worrisome. “May I ask why you want to know? I thought
you were a mechanic.”

Her whiskers twitched in apparent amusement. “Oh, I
am,
Doctor Boone. But I’m also a fan. My
father talks about you constantly and we follow all your work. Just imagine,
actually getting to meet you like this. It’s
very
exciting.”

“Uh, well, Miss…”

“Illlessssca.”
The name came out
in a throaty purr. “Please, call me Ilesca.” She smiled charmingly, her
whiskers twitching.

“Miss Ilesca,” Boone said. “Thank you for your interest in my work
but right now I’m afraid I’m more interested in yours. Do you have the part we
need to fix our hyperdrive in stock?”

“I believe we do.” She nodded, her large eyes half closed in
satisfaction. “But there
is
the
little matter of payment.”

Boone cleared his throat. “Ah yes.
Of course.”

“You’d think such an avid fan would offer a discount,” Loki
muttered, too low for the viewscreen to pick up.
“So much for
your celebrity status,
doctor.
”

“I heard that.” Ilesca’s eyes narrowed as she studied Loki. “Of
course Doctor Boone’s credit is no good here. But we have a unique problem that
only he may be able to solve.”

Boone frowned. “And what might that be?”

“I can’t discus it on an open link.” Her large green eyes flicked
rapidly from side to side, as though looking for eavesdroppers. “You’ll have to
come down to the surface anyway so I can have a look at your ship. We can talk
then and of course, my father will want to meet you.”

“Who is your father if you don’t mind me asking?” Boone said.

Ilesca smiled again, showing sharp white teeth.
“Why
John James Abrahams, of course.
Don’t you see the family resemblance?”

Before Boone could answer the viewscreen blinked and went
black—Ilesca was gone.

“What in the seven hells was
that
all about? And who is John James Abrahams?” Loki demanded, sitting up
straighter in his chair.

“John Abrahams is a cautionary tale.” Boone frowned, more troubled
than ever. “We studied him in med school—in Ethics of Advanced Genetic Manipulation.”