can also be toxic in high doses. You need to be more careful with her, unless you want to kill her.”
“I don’t want to kill her. I don’t want to hurt her.”
“Well, you’ve definitely hurt her,” he says, sort of absent-mindedly. I don’t think he realizes what he's saying. Hermes has a habit of telling the truth and not noticing the effect it has on those who are hearing it.
“Is she going to get better?”
“I’m going to treat her with fluids and some other bits and pieces, and she should feel better in a few hours.”
“I’m going to stay by her side.”
“It won’t make any medical difference, but sure, if it pleases you. You can sit by her bed and watch the treatment diffuse into her system.”
I sit and I wait. Two days she’s been on this ship, and we’re already in chaos. The IHPZ warned me about this. They told me that things simply start to unravel around Silver, like she’s some kind of one woman anomaly. Maybe they were right. Even lying in bed more or less comatose, she has an incredible power over me. I would never admit it to her, or anyone else. I can barely admit it to myself in the privacy of my thoughts — but that does not stop it from being truth.
Eight hours after Hermes’ treatment, her eyes open again.
“Ella,” she says. “Ella…”
She blinks, confused, and looks at me with eyes which do not really see me, so much as they see into some distant past or other place.
“Where’s Ella?”
“Who is Ella?”
“My daughter, of course,” she mumbles, messing with the sheets as if something is lost in them. “Where is she? I saw her a moment ago.”
“She’s still coming out of the sedation I put her under,” Hermes explains, appearing on the scene at just the right moment. “She’ll say all sorts of things.”
Silver lets out a wail of what I can only describe as despair. It is a sound which hits me in the very pit of my belly and makes my stomach churn. That is the sound of pain, of anguish.
“Ella, my baby!”
“What is she talking about?”
“Her baby, it would seem,” Hermes mutters, injecting her with something which makes her go quiet. The screaming has stopped, probably temporarily, but the anguish has gone nowhere. Silver is stuck in some memory of a time we never shared, looking for someone she must have loved very much.
“You think she has a baby?”
“She could have had a baby some time ago. There’s no evidence of a recent pregnancy, but she could quite easily have had a baby a decade or two ago. She would have been sufficiently fertile and old enough for that time.”
“She’s never mentioned a baby,” I murmur to myself.
“Have you asked?”
“There hasn’t been a lot of talking.”
“No. I don’t imagine her mouth has been free to do much in the way of talking,” Hermes smirks.
“Don’t talk about her like that.” There is an edge to my voice. I do not like her distress, and I do not like his disrespect. But I am the one I am really angry at. It is my fault she is in this state. I did this to her. I made her miserable, and I let her overdose on my seed, and now I am seeing the pain she has been hiding.
Humans do not go rogue the way Silver has without having a reason for it. This baby she’s whimpering for. I have a feeling that must be a clue.
“Can you give her something to settle her?”
“A baby?”
“No. Some kind of medicine to stop her from panicking.”
She’s crying in her sleep. There are tears running down her cheeks, rivulets of misery which speak to the intensity of her loss. Her shoulder shake and her cries grow louder.
“A gag?” Hermes suggests.
It is all I can do to stop myself from putting his head through his shiny medical terminal.
The Missing
Warden
Silver recovers over a period of days. Three, to be precise. Three days in which I try to get more information on her and come up empty handed. The IHPZ only have the details of her arrest, and a brief record of associated rumors. The Q’Ren did not keep records of their operatives, so she is a mystery — one I intend to solve now that Hermes has cleared her to return to incarceration.
When I see her again, I want to wrap her in my arms and hold her close. I want to apologize for hurting her, and