Return. Морган Райс

images spread over the walls, but these seemed more abstract, and Kevin could see the patterns in them. Somehow he knew that this was the AIs communicating with one another.

      Ro stood on a blank circle of floor raised above the rest of it. Kevin hurried over to the alien, wanting to make sure he was all right, while Chloe was even faster, throwing her arms around him. The people there stared at them. Kevin could see so many of them, both Ilari and other aliens who had taken refuge among them, that it was hard to pick out individual faces. Even so, he knew that they were staring at the three of them without looking away, trying to make up their minds.

      “Ro, are you all right?” he asked. His friend didn’t look hurt, but even so, he seemed shaken.

      “I don’t know,” the alien admitted. “I am feeling so many emotions. Guilt, and fear, and… how do people cope?”

      Kevin put a hand on the alien’s shoulder. Chloe put an arm around him.

      “We do,” Chloe promised him. “And we keep doing it.”

      “These three were salvaged from a floating ship,” General s’Lara said, obviously addressing the assembly. “You can see that one of them is one of the Hive’s ‘Purest.’ Of the others, one is the boy who helped to let them into our world, while the last has been changed into one of their creations.”

      Kevin hated hearing him and his friends described like that. The worst part, though, was that he couldn’t deny what they were saying about him.

      “We are on our way to another outpost,” General s’Lara said. “The ship tells me that our fleet is being stalked, and so we must decide what we are to do with our new guests. Can we risk having them aboard? Are we in more danger by having them here? Are they all that they appear? Are there any who wish to speak regarding the first of them? The girl?”

      There was a swirl of images and letters on the walls as the AIs communicated with one another. If he concentrated, Kevin felt as though he could get the gist of their conversations, the signals that made them up transformed for him through the same talent that had let him translate all of their other signals…

      …not guilty in all of this…

      …a victim, not a foe…

      …the device on her arm though…

      Two individuals stood up.

      “It has been decided that I will speak for her,” a man said. “It seems obvious to us that she was a captive of the Hive, their victim, and not one of them. We should give her safety as one seeking refuge.”

      A woman stood up. “It has been decided that I will speak against,” she said. “Although we have sympathy for her plight, we do not know what the aliens have done to her. The item on her arm could be a risk, because the Hive do not design anything safe. We should contain her, or destroy her, for the safety of others.”

      General s’Lara nodded to Chloe. “Do you have anything to say?”

      “What do you want me to say?” Chloe snapped back. Kevin could see that she was close to losing her temper now, and that probably had a lot to do with how scared she was.

      “Then I will say it,” the general said. “We are not a people who kill because there might be a threat. Chloe here is as much one of us as any of the others who have come to the Ilari in search of help. I believe that she should be welcome among us, and perhaps in time, we will be able to reverse what was done to her. Do any others wish to speak? No? Then we will talk of the others.”

      Kevin felt the general’s gaze rest on him, then on Ro.

      “The arguments around the others are more complex,” she said. “One warned us of the attack, and helped us, but was also the one who brought down our shields. The other is one of the Hive’s Purest, and so our foe. I know that our people are peaceful, but I find it hard to feel anything but anger when faced with this.”

      Kevin looked at the walls, and now the writing buzzed around less like fireflies and more like angry bees. The arguments seemed far more complex, and his talent for translation only gave him snippets of it this time, so that it was impossible to follow along completely.

      …where does responsibility begin…

      …where does it end…

      …If he is one of them, he is one of them…

      …Destroyed a whole world!

      Kevin was so busy letting the arguments wash over him that he almost didn’t hear the moment when the first person stood up.

      “I speak for the boy,” a woman said, in a gentle tone. “I feel that although he has done great wrong, he only did it when controlled by the Hive. When free, he sought to help us. He warned us. He broke free, and we should not reward that with harm. We should take him in as we did his friend.”

      “I speak against,” a man said. “Whatever else is true, he was one of the Hive. They slaughtered more than we could count without our AIs, and he helped them. Am I supposed to watch him walk around freely, when those we love cannot, because they are dead? Are we supposed to forgive the unforgivable now?”

      “I speak for the Purest,” an older man said. “They are part of a whole, and he has broken from that whole. He was twisted by who he was, but he is not that creature anymore. If he has had the courage to break free from them, we should celebrate that, not denounce it.”

      “No one breaks free,” another of the Ilari snapped, and the anger there was palpable. “It’s obvious that this is some kind of trick. They tried to trick us before. They broke through our shields. They murdered our people. They destroyed our world. This thing was a part of that, they both were! We should destroy it before it harms us further.”

      Kevin could hear the emotion coming through there, completely different from the way the Hive had been. They would have made decisions purely rationally, while this… this felt more real somehow.

      “Do you wish to speak for yourselves?” General s’Lara said, looking over to him and Ro.

      Kevin knew that he ought to, but he wasn’t sure what to say. The guilt he felt still seemed as though it flowed over everything, burying any words. He knew he had to try, but the truth was that he didn’t want to try right then.

      “I don’t want to speak for myself,” he said, shaking his head. “I don’t deserve it, and the truth… I’m dying anyway. It doesn’t matter what you do to me, so long as the others are safe.” It almost came as a shock to hear himself saying it, but it was the truth. It was more important that Ro and Chloe were safe than that he was. “I helped to destroy a world. I don’t deserve… I don’t deserve anything, but Ro broke free from the Hive. That should count for something.”

      Ro shook his head. “I am… I am scared, I admit that, but I will not run from what I have done. I have committed horror upon horror. I have done evil things. Once I was Purest, but now, I am not even that. I am impure. It is Kevin you should save. We made him one of us against his will. He had no choice.”

      “There is always a choice!” the man who had spoken against Ro called out from somewhere in the back of the room.

      Kevin didn’t know what to say to that. It seemed that Chloe did, though, because she shouted above the rest of it, looking straight at the man who had spoken.

      “You think Kevin chose to be taken over by aliens?” she demanded, in a tone that would have been enough to make most people take a step back. “You think he was in control? They made him say yes to hurting me in all kinds of ways, and even so, I don’t blame him, because it wasn’t him. It was him without any emotions, without any compassion. And if you don’t have compassion, you’re no better than the Hive!”

      She took a moment to look around at the aliens, and for a moment Kevin thought she might be done, but then she kept going, jabbing her finger at the people around them.

      “You’re all standing there making decisions about us, but you haven’t even tried