SOMA (LGBT-scifi-romance)

Chapter Six: The Second Human

Sector 06: Cita Avis

Jan. 15, 462 AC

Soma stopped shaking. He searched the skies to make sure the black ship was gone, and then made the long, null-gravity leap from his tower to the corner store.

Ferals had ransacked the place since Christmas, leaving a steaming hole in the front window. Frost coated the shelves. Pulped meats rotted in open crates. Spilled chicken stock and wrinkled fruits floated. Soma snatched a wet potato sack and approached the back hatch. Mrs. S was huddled in the far corner of her staff room, knees drawn to her face and Soma's coat swathed around her.

She snapped her head up as Soma approached, and bared her teeth weakly.

"It's just Soma again," he said. Mrs. S pressed against her wall and shrieked at him. Her voice echoed. Soma hissed back, "Shh! The humans were looking for us."

He unscrewed the rest of the panel as she screamed. The sounds frayed his nerves, and he dropped the screwdriver twice. Near the end, however, the racket stopped. Soma looked up, hair standing along his neck and shoulders, and saw Mrs. S crouched, watching him. Her breathing came fast, and her eyes were filmed over like Cain's and Maria's. Half of her face had rotted away. Soma's fingers faltered. He unscrewed the last hinge, kicked the hatch open, and pushed off from the wall.

Mrs. S lunged and caught him by the arm, fingers digging into his red coat. A blow to Soma's temple stunned him. Red bled into his vision and space was suddenly too loud. The straps of his pack dug against his shoulder. Heat radiated in his side. Soma twisted against the feral's bulk. Mrs. S shook Soma. A fist closed around his elbow.

Snap!

Pain. Then an intense ache left Soma breathless, too stunned to even cry out. His arm seared. Hazily, he saw Mrs. S reach for his neck. Fingers pressed into his collarbone. From somewhere far off, Soma realized his arms were free, and he looped the potato sack over Mrs. S's head. He pulled the edges down over her eyes.

For a moment, Mrs. S seemed confused. She took a sharp breath, snarling and still muttering beneath fabric. Her limbs relaxed, and her wheezing breaths pulled longer and gentler.

Soma choked and gripped his arm above the swell of his elbow. Pain throbbed up his shoulders. He felt a moment of heat and resentment, but... Mrs. S looked awful. Her withered arms were covered with cold bruises and scratches from her own chipped nails. The cavity of her chest and stomach had caved in, and her legs were twisted roots, the flesh gone from them. A fresh wave of heartache pushed up his chest, and he embraced her—this woman who gave them chicken and ham for Christmas—hiding the red of his eyes against her struggling form.

He wanted to help Mrs. S. Just one person was fine. One person, so Soma's world wasn't completely destroyed. So he wasn't alone. "Mrs. S?" Soma whispered. "I'm sorry. Please, please be safe."

He pulled away—and froze.

There, by the exit, was the second human. His amber earring gleamed. "Hello," the human said.

When Soma reached for his screwdriver, the human put a hand casually on his hip, by the hilt of a green turing rifle. Soma swallowed pain and his eyes darted to the broken window. He couldn't see the lights of the black ship. If he could distract the human long enough, he could crawl and hide in the dark between lunaroids to lick his probably-broken arm.

Soma glanced at Mrs. S. No... he couldn't put her in danger for a distraction. Instead, he asked, "Did you see what happened?"

"I did." The human's gaze brushed over Mrs. S' floating fetal form, before returning to Soma. There was a languor to his movements that, after years of associating solely with synthetics, Soma found almost supernaturally graceful. "It was... sweet."

"If you shoot me, you'll wake her up."

"Which is a terrifying notion," the human drawled. "I'm not going to shoot you."

"What then?" Soma asked. "You were ordered to chat? Be friendly?" Bitterness steeped in his voice.

"I was only given orders about the synthetics." The human pushed off against the store hatch, drifting closer, until he floated just out of Soma's reach. Up close, he was even taller than he first seemed—but only looked a year or so older than Soma—with shoulders and legs like a hunting cat's beneath his slender thermal suit. Oriental heritage, with loose black hair and a lopsided grin beneath the plastic mask. In the starlight, his eyes were dark and quick. "You move like a syn, but you're not one, are you?"

If the human thought Soma would be intimidated, he was wrong. With a flare of red coat hems, Soma pressed up to the other youth. There was a little of Maria on his mind as he put his hand at the intruder's shoulders. "You're a smart human," he mocked. "But if you're not going to shoot me, I'm not afraid of you."

Soma shoved hard. Startled, the human spun away, reaching out to stall his momentum, but the angles were all wrong. By the time he righted himself, Soma had clambered half out of the window.

"Wait!"

Soma didn't wait. He scrambled down the side of the lunaroid, weaving through the loose stones at its base, and propelled himself into the shadows.

"Guppy!" the human called. "Stop him!"

From under the store, the juvenile sky fish darted forward, pearlescent fins spread and sucker extended. It moved impossibly fast, wrapping serpent coils around Soma's shoulder and face. Slime coated his mouth. The warm, wet rope of the fish pressed into his injured arm, and his shout was swallowed by folds of fish scales.

Teeth pinched into the back of Soma's neck. Out of the corner of his eyes, he saw the human climb down among the loose rock. Saw him raise his rifle in a trained, fluid aim. Like the arc of a swan. White lightning. Then nothing.

Soma dreamed he was a sky fish. He was shoaled alongside dozens of his kind—scale to scale—like sardines in their tins. The sky fish whispered into his ears, tried to warn Soma about something he couldn't quite hear over the echoed voices of gravity and moon streams.

"What?" Soma shouted.

"She's here," the fish said, "a queen."

Emycee's Note: Thank you, everyone!