GREEN [complete]

CHAPTER 36: Sekam

The bright white didn't fade, it only got brighter. It pierced through Sekam's eyelids and yanked her awake. Out of her dream; her future. The broken world disappeared and the carcass of the bear god splayed atop the mountain with it, but it would be burned into the back of her mind until she took her last breath.

Sekam squinting into the bulb hovering over her head, lashes blotting out some of the light, but not enough to ease the pain. A blur of movement passed on the edge of her vision. When she blinked, it was gone. Her head rolled to the side, vision swimming momentarily before the room came into focus.

A woman stood a few feet away with her back to Sekam. Hunched over a piece of lab equipment, she murmured to herself, "Incredible, simply incredible."

Sekam tried to sit up, but she couldn't move. Her arms and legs were immobilized. Tied down. A low whimper rose into her throat and she closed her eyes. She'd made it into the facility, but the heavy stone in her gut told her that she wouldn't be making it out so easily. She couldn't move, she couldn't fight. She didn't even know where Bek was.

"Let me go," she tried, her voice sounding rough and weak and foreign to her own ears.

The woman was slow to respond, and when she did, it wasn't the response Sekam dared to let herself hope for. "No," she said. "No, I don't think I can do that. Not yet, anyway." She turned around, her expression carefully open. "I would at least like to ask you a few questions first." Jones. This was the one Mars and Dylan called Jones.

"What do you want to know?"

Jones wandered closer, hands loose at her sides. Everything about her was precise, measured. Sterile. Sekam didn't like it. "Who made you?" She thought Sekam was a mongrel.

"No one made me," she snapped. "I'm not a mongrel."

"Hm." Jones folded her arms, looking down at Sekam. "What do you think you are, then?"

"My mother was a goddess."

Jones's expression didn't change. "A goddess?" Her fingers tapped against her arm. "There are no such things as gods and goddesses."

"You asked me what I was," Sekam said. She wasn't surprised that Jones didn't believe her—few humans had the capacity to understand what they believed to be impossible. She doubted that Dylan believed her either.

"I asked you what you thought you were, and I'm disappointed. I'd hoped ..." Jones sighed and looked back at her lab bench. "I'd hoped you would give me an explanation for your immunity to the green."

"We can't be hurt by our kin's blood."

Jones let her guard slip. "What does that mean? Your kin's blood?"

"The green is the blood of the first creator god." Sekam tried to pull against her restraints. They didn't give. "Let me go," she said again. "I answered your questions." Jones didn't believe her, but she didn't need to—all Sekam could do was tell the truth.

"No. If you can't give me the answers I need ... well, I have no choice but to take them."

"I told you the truth," Sekam said. Her heart thumped in the base of her throat and she threw herself against her restraints. "I told you the truth! You have to let me go now. You have to let me go." What semblance of calm she'd been clinging to abandoned her. "Let me go! Let me go!"

Jones turned her back on Sekam and returned to what she was doing. She didn't care—but why would she? She was the one who had been experimenting on Mars, the one who had nearly killed him. She was the one who had killed Bek's daughters.

Sekam fought until she couldn't fight anymore, and Jones never gave her a second glance. She'd failed. She knew she'd failed but she didn't want to accept it. Mars was going to die because of her—waiting for her to come save him—because she wasn't strong enough to get out. Her last shreds of hope were beginning to slip out of her grasp when the door opened.

"Help me!" she shrieked. This wasn't right. Whoever they were, they would have to understand. "I don't belong here—help me, please help me, just let me go! I'm not a mongrel, I swear I'm not a mongrel."

The newcomer didn't ignore her as seamlessly as Jones managed to, but he didn't make a move in her direction. He moved to stand next to Jones, purposefully putting his back to Sekam. "We just heard back from Barnes," he said. "Her team located C9M."

Mars. The tracker in his neck. How could she have forgotten about that? She left him there, defenseless. "You can't have him," Sekam snarled.

"Don't worry," Jones said, finally looking back at her. "We don't need him anymore, not now that we have you." Her sweet smile didn't feel very sweet to Sekam.

"Why do you want him, then?"

"He belongs to us. We can't let our code get into the wrong hands."

The tone of her voice prompted the newcomer to add, "Don't worry, ma'am, Barnes sent her team in after the dust settled to make sure no one made it out."

Jones nodded. "Good."

"What are you going to do with him?" Sekam demanded. Her hands writhed in their bindings. She needed to get out. She needed to get back to Mars, to make sure he was safe.

"We're going to have to get rid of him. It's a shame, really. We didn't want it to have to come to this, but we simply don't have the resources to support him anymore. Not when we have a far more viable specimen."