She stared at him until he finally spoke.
“I would like to show you something,” he said. His words would have been instantly translated into her language by the Erasi translating device on her temple, but he had spoken in her language. She had been teaching him her language, just as he had been teaching her his.
Anessa tilted her head, then turned around and grabbed the clothes from her bed. She then proceeded to put them on slowly, all the while using all her senses to feel out his reaction. He had great control, but his mastery of the Sha was not perfect. She’d noticed a handful of instances when his control over his mental abilities slipped, just for a moment. Too short of a period for anyone to take advantage of; in fact, too short for most to even notice it. However, she was a Dai Sha, one of the most powerful Sha masters in the Shara Daim. She could take advantage of it, even crippled as she was. The most she could get was a snippet of his emotions, a stray thought here and there.
She knew that he found her attractive, which had surprised her the first time she’d felt it. Since then, she had paid a bit more attention to his reactions, and had found that he wasn’t unpleasant to look at, only different than what she was used to. But those things mattered little to Shara Daim; they looked for different qualities in mates. And Anessa only involved herself with those who were her equals.
“What is it that you want to show me?” she asked as she finished dressing.
“Come and see,” he said.
Anessa’s face twitched. Her captor seemed reliant on theatrics. That was to be expected, if she had been dealing with any other opponent. However, this Human had never been an ordinary opponent. He had given her information freely that had given her an edge over him; he had, in fact, tricked her into revealing things to him that under ordinary circumstances she would never have done. She gave herself a bit of a pass there; she had been injured, and for the first time since being a scared little child, had found herself restrained and without the access to most of her Sha abilities.
As they walked out of the room and through the long hallways of whatever construct they were in, Anessa reflected on her situation. She’d been a prisoner for some time. A well-treated prisoner, for sure, but a prisoner all the same. She had given her oath to not try and escape, and she had abided by it because she had been promised that she would be returned to her people. And because she was certain that she couldn’t escape or harm them enough for it to be a worthy death. To die a pointless death was the worst fate a Shara Daim could imagine. But as time passed and she was still imprisoned, she found herself growing more and more impatient. Adrian had assured her that she would be sent to her people in time.
And even if she wanted to escape, she wouldn’t be able to. She didn’t know where she was, she didn’t know how to operate their technology, and she had no access to the majority of her Sha—she didn’t want to try and remove the device on her own and risk crippling her own abilities. And without it, she doubted that she could get far. She was never allowed outside of her room without Adrian present, and without her Sha, he had the advantage. She was stronger and faster than him, but his fighting capability was superior despite that.
She had no choice but to trust that he would honor his promise. Four guards followed them with weapons held ready, but Anessa knew that they had no Sha. She had only encountered two who had it, Adrian and the female that she fought with on Tarabat. And she hadn’t seen the female since they had arrived here. Adrian had told her that they had awakened Sha only recently, and that they were not born with it. It was one more bit of evidence that they were not worthy of possessing the knowledge inside the device.
Adrian was trying to convince her that peace between the Shara Daim and the Empire was possible, but he did not understand. The Shara Daim’s goal was to rule the galaxy; they would not accept an outsider, someone inferior to them, as partners. Yet, as more and more time passed with her still imprisoned, she had started to wonder. The Shara Daim had never entertained the possibility of making alliances with other races simply because others were inferior. But the Humans and the Nel were descended from the same people as the Shara Daim. Or rather, created by the same person, as Anessa had recently learned.
The Elders of the Shara Daim kept much hidden. Once she had thought that that was their prerogative, that they knew what was best for their people. Now, she had seen how things were in this Empire, and found them similar to her own people. Were the Shara Daim truly better than their two sibling races? Or was that just the arrogance of the Elders and the rest of her people? The ordinary people of the Shara Daim knew nothing but what the Elders allowed to be known; the history the people learned was not the truth, and if they had lied about one thing, what else did they keep hidden?
Anessa was conflicted. She believed that her people were destined to rule the galaxy, just as their ancestors once did. She had been raised to know that Shara Daim were superior to all other, and to know that the Elders of her race always acted for the good of Shara Daim, but the more time she spent away from her people, the more she wondered whether the Elders truly had the good of all Shara Daim in mind. If they did, why keep secrets? The truth about their origins had not changed Anessa’s thinking; it would not change the thinking of the rest of her people.
They walked for a short time, passing other people walking about their business. One small group caught her eye. It was three people: a Nel man, a human woman, and a child. She hadn’t seen a child during her captivity, so she stared for a moment. The child had human eyes, without the secondary eyelids that both Shara Daim and the Nel had, but it also had a lighter skin tone of the Nel and a tail.
Adrian noticed her studying the child as they passed and looked at her strangely.
“We don’t usually have children here,” Adrian said. “Families usually choose to live deeper in our territory. This family is here only to visit relatives.”
Anessa looked at him, confused. “You mean, the two of them are the parents?” she asked in disbelief.
“Of course,” Adrian responded.
Anessa looked at him, not knowing whether to feel shock or disgust. It had never occurred to her before. She knew intellectually that their races were related to each other, but this was something more.
Adrian must’ve noticed her inner turmoil, as he explained, “It’s true that there are differences between our three races. But Axull Darr made sure that any of the three races can reproduce with the other two.”
Anessa tried to reconcile that knowledge with her belief; it was one thing to know that your race was engineered and that there were two others who had been created similarly, but to actually see proof… she didn’t know what that could mean.
Adrian turned and led them away, walking a short distance before they reached their destination. As they approached the door, they opened to let them in. Anessa wondered how her captor did that; she’d not felt any telepathic interfaces anywhere, and yet the technology operated by some unseen means, and she was sure that it didn’t respond to motion. It was another mystery she hoped to solve.
They entered a large room filled with people standing or sitting in front of holographic displays. They walked to the center of the room to a large round table, above which a hologram was showing a large fleet of ships. There were too many for her to count, but she could tell that they were greater in number than a single Shara Daim Legion, perhaps more than two.
“Is this supposed to scare me?” Anessa asked. “Do you think that this will somehow change my mind?”