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Holden had managed to see more of the universe than most of humanity ever would. Through his work with the transport union, he had visited quite a few of the systems with colonies, usually briefly and usually without setting foot on any extrasolar planets. At some point he’d stop keeping count, though he was pretty sure Alex still did. It was sort of amazing to consider if he took the time to, but he often didn’t bother. Holden guessed it was just human nature for amazing things to become mundane. That was sort of a shame.
Walking down the well kept pathway that bisected the palatial grounds of the Laconian state building, Holden tried to appreciate how extraordinary it actually was to be standing on the surface of another planet thousands of lightyears away from where he’d been born, but appreciating it involved ignoring the fact that he was there as a prisoner. Recently, Holden’s treatment at the hands of the Laconian government had implied that he wasn’t being held against his will, but the way his body shook with every step told a different story.
The air on Laconia smelled familiar and foreign at the same time. It probably had something to do with all the earth foliage they’d painstakingly transplanted around the state building, but Holden thought there were probably only so many ways for his brain to interpret the particles that found their way to the receptors in his nose. He recognized a few of the flowers in the lush beds that bordered the walkway, but he couldn’t tell which of the unidentifiable ones might be locally sourced.
The capital city was much larger than Holden had assumed it would be, vast and mostly empty, like a resort hotel in the offseason. A city built with the grand future of the empire in mind. Still, the skyline was fairly short, and the light pollution low enough to see some stars. Other than the obvious milky way, thick and familiar, Holden couldn’t recognize any of the starfield above him. He’d given up trying to pick out constellations some time ago because every time he looked for a familiar pattern and failed it hurt his head. It was a clear, warm night, late enough that the usually busy state building, while not dead, had a sleepy feel to it. If he hadn’t known that two guards were following him, Holden might have felt a sort of content solitude.
This wasn’t the first time he’d been invited to have dinner with the high consul, but this was the first time he’d been invited at the last minute so late at night. “Invited” might not be the right word for it. There was no turning down Duarte. It didn’t matter that he’d already choked down a light dinner at the dining hall earlier in the day, he knew the main purpose of this exercise wasn’t to take in nutrients anyway. The truth of the matter was that Holden didn’t have much of an appetite at all anymore, only leaving his room to eat awkwardly with the Laconian higher ups because it alleviated the feeling of being trapped just a bit.
The uniform he’d been provided for formal affairs was the only outfit that seemed appropriate for a meeting with the Laconian emperor, but it only added to the feeling that he was one of those monkeys that dressed up in a vest and danced along to an organ grinder. Only Holden wasn’t begging for money, he was begging for his life. Every action had to be planned out to make it seem like killing him was more trouble than it was worth.
Even though the extra long Laconian day had been completely activity-free for Holden, he was exhausted. He was exhausted literally all of the time now. The excuse of his advancing age only held so much weight. Most of the day he’d laid in his bed on top of the crisp white sheets idly scrolling through some random feed that was a mix of carefully curated vids and straight-up Laconian propaganda, not daring to look up anything specific. Holden couldn’t even recall anything he’d watched. It had all washed over him and rolled away, like water droplets. Only the strange dread he had when he considered the fact that it was probably some poor Lanconian’s job to monitor everything he saw remained. Watching a small flock of what Elvi would have called bird-analogs flitter in strange patterns through the blue-tinted streetlights, Holden briefly debated who had it worse, him or the poor schmuck who had to sit and monitor his feeds.
The walk between what was generously called his room (but was in all actuality his cell) and Duarte’s quarters felt like the eerie calm before a battle. Holden had been in enough fights in his life to identify the specific feeling of pre-battle jitters.
There was a time after any and all preparations were finished, and before the actual violence had begun, when the body just didn’t know what to do with itself. Too full of adrenaline to relax even a little, but forced to sit motionless in a crash couch. Everything took on a sharp quality. Every noise from his radio became an alarm. Every time the air recycler made a strange vibration it was a torpedo coming through the hull.
Since being taken from Medina, Holden felt like he was strapped in on the ops deck in his vac suit after all the air had been taken from the ship. When all he could do was sit and hear his own heartbeat and wish the fight would happen already. It turned out that this feeling stretched into eternity was so incredibly debilitating that Holden could hardly think straight anymore.
Earlier, in his cell, Holden’s pre-battle preparations were much different than they would have been on the Roci. After showering, shaving and putting on his precisely tailored uniform, he’d given himself a once-over in the mirror and found the man staring back to be so much older than he’d remembered being. The ratio of black to gray hair skewed differently than he expected, and the lines around his eyes reminded him of Mother Elise’s after his family had fled from earth. He hadn’t remembered her being so old either.
When he’d left his room, Holden had actually held his breath as he reached for the door controls. Even though he’d been called on by Duarte himself, it still felt like a crapshoot every time he went to open the door. One day, it would be locked, and they would be coming for him again.
Footsteps echoing through the empty streets as he approached the high consul’s rooms, Holden almost wished that his own door had been locked. The way the man’s eyes shimmered faintly reminded Holden of the iridescent blue of the protomolecule as it pulled apart the human bodies of Eros to make them into something it liked better. At least the god-emperor had never personally submitted Holden to anything more painful than a stilted dinner party. Holden tried to look on the bright side. At least it isn’t literal torture.
There were two sleepy looking soldiers in their best Laconian blues outside the surprisingly unimpressive doors that led to the vast apartments inhabited by Duarte, his daughter and her dog. Holden flashed them a smile that he’d once considered boyish. His own guards lingered somewhere behind him.
“Hey guys,” Holden said in his friendliest tone, “How’s third shift treating you?” Even though he was met with blank stares, Holden continued to grin stupidly. It was better to be seen as a bemused idiot than a threat. The awkward silence stretched on longer than was comfortable, and Holden suddenly didn’t know what to do with his hands. Shoving them in his pockets, Holden bounced nervously on his toes and felt the Laconian gravity push him to its surface again and again.
“He’s waiting for you,” one of the soldiers told him with a flat affect. He had skin the color of Naomi’s and full lips that spoke with a hint of Alex’s Mariner Valley drawl. He turned and tapped at the door’s panel until it chimed happily. The door opened, and a flick of the soldier’s head towards the entrance urged Holden inside.
“Well, have a nice night, gentlemen,” Holden gave both soldiers a nod in turn before turning to acknowledge the guards that had followed him there. He was trying to carry himself like he was still a respected ship’s captain. He managed a more genuine smile as he thought about Naomi rolling her eyes at the term “respectable.”
No one joined him as he stepped inside, and being unescorted felt strange. Holden was too busy running through his safest, most entertaining stories in his head to be concerned. This wasn’t his first time here, and so he had some idea of what went down easiest with Laconians. Like most dinner parties, he just needed to avoid talking about politics and religion. Duarte enjoyed parading him out in front of various important people from across the galaxy at swanky, star-studded events. When he was called to Duarte’s own quarters, it usually meant he was in for a more intimate night with only a few guests.
Sometimes it was verbose scientists that would have been much happier poking and prodding Holden in a laboratory and who Holden had to pretend weren’t doing unspeakable things with Cotazar down in the pens. Sometimes it was governors from all over the empire barely hiding their bitterness at having been conquered, or maybe doing an eerily good job at seeming like they enjoyed it. The worst dinner guests were the military officials. They all seemed like babies to Holden now, even the higher-ranking ones, and when he looked into their cold eyes he often wondered how old they’d been when the gates opened.
Dining with the elite was something Holden had actually done surprisingly regularly. From sucking down bulbs of mediocre, yeasty beer and shoveling red kibble into his mouth with Fred Johnson on the Rocinante, to sipping wine older than he was and cutting into steaks that had actually been cows once next to Chrisjen Avasarala on Luna. Eventually, the novelty of it wore off, and the nervous butterflies in his stomach faded over time into a dull malaise.
Dining with Winston Duarte was different.
On top of the obvious fear for his life, there was the fact that Holden was utterly alone here. There was no one here to back him up. His family was either dead or so far away that they may as well be dead to him. Naomi couldn’t pull him out of an awkward conversation with a firm hand on his shoulder and a claim that there was important business he needed to attend to elsewhere. No Alex to cut the tension with some folksy saying. No Bobby to lean over and whisper something hilarious and vulgar in his ear about whoever they were with.
The entrance hall gave way quickly to a sort of reception area. There was plenty of seating and even a small kitchen that Holden imagined was really only used to store food already made by the main kitchen.
“Ah, there you are,” Duarte was dressed so casually that in the dim sitting room, Holden hadn’t recognized him. The shimmer of his eyes gave him away, and Holden shifted uncomfortably in his dress shoes. The emperor must have been in a suit and tie earlier, which was unusual and Holden wondered what sort of affair he’d already come from. His jacket was nowhere to be seen, the tie was so loose it was more of a scarf, and a well-fitted, pinstripe vest was partially unbuttoned.
The man was handsome. There was no denying that. It often made Holden wonder why his visage wasn’t etched and scrawled and broadcast on every available surface and screen in the empire. Holden guessed that his strong brow and jawline had at least a little to do with how Duarte got so many Martians to turn on the dream that had been their planet and follow him all the way out here.
Duarte’s residence was a perfect encapsulation of the capital. It wasn’t as large as it could have been, not a mansion by any means, but for one man and his daughter, it was much too cavernous. The architecture was a mess of borrowed and mixed together styles -exposed beams above, wainscoting around the walls and gaudy marble fireplace. The art on the walls came off as more curated, like it had been purposefully picked from every corner of the empire to exhibit the vastness of its territory and talent.
There was a certain understated opulence that reminded Holden of a Catholic church Father Caesar and Father Tom had taken him to a few times in Montana. He’d spent most of mass enjoying the colorful stained glass. It was all meant to inspire awe. He was sure every item and the way it was placed had a deeper meaning that was lost on him. Even the way Duarte perched on his overstuffed divan clutching a glass of wine seemed to be precisely prescribed, like he might get up and offer Holden communion any second.
The room somehow smelled more floral than it had outside, and the overwhelming scent was starting to hurt Holden’s head. It was quiet except for faint orchestral music playing over the precisely arranged speakers, something tasteful that Holden didn’t recognize but thought sounded vaguely Martian baroque.
“Am I early?” Holden glanced around as casually as he could to make sure he was seeing things correctly. There were no other guests. “Or I guess I could be super late?”
“No, you’re right on time. Come join me,” Duarte looked at him with those eyes, and Holden tried to hide a shudder. He could feel that he was frowning and wished he could stop. “I’ve opened a red, but I can grab a white if you’d like.”
The eyes followed Holden as he made his way to a wide leather sofa across a small cherrywood coffee table from where Duarte sat. It felt like the gaze was not looking at Holden but through him. No, not through. He was looking around Holden, taking in everything surrounding him, everything that wasn’t Holden, and then doing the subtraction to figure out where and what Holden must be.
The sofa made a small squeak as he sat, and Holden politely insisted, “Red is fine. You know I’m not picky.”
The high consul set his own glass down to pour an ample amount into a waiting glass and slid it in front of Holden. Out of politeness, he leaned forward to take the glass by the stem. He had no intention of drinking it.
It had been several months since Holden had been alone with Duarte. There was a time when his had been one of the only faces Holden saw at all, and a welcome one at that. While his status as a prisoner of war had been more solidified, Duarte’s questions had been easy –about the protomolecule and not about the people Holden was trying desperately to protect– and his fists had not been used against Holden at all. Instead of an interrogation, it had felt like a conversation. The blatant tactic to get him to open up hadn’t even bothered Holden. After the nonstop parade of bad cops from Medina to Laconia, the good cop was more than welcome.
Sometimes, Holden even found himself liking Duarte. It was a dangerous but compelling trap. One he knew many people had fallen into, but he reminded himself that being charming didn’t mean he wasn’t a dangerous sociopath.
“What’s the occasion?” Holden asked, mostly so his voice could fill the large room that felt strangely empty.
“Since when do I need an excuse to see my favorite underground member?” Duarte’s lips arced upwards in something resembling a smile. His eyes continued to search around Holden as if to map out the exact boundaries between him and the air.
So something had happened with the underground, not big enough to have made it onto any of the passive feeds Holden watched, but big enough to rattle Duarte. Ordinarily, the high consul was the last person who wanted to ask him about the insurrectionists that Holden had worked with on Medina. Maintaining eye contact suddenly became too difficult, and Holden looked away. His floundering eye line finally landed on his own fingers as they fidgeted with the stem of his wine glass.
The subject of his shipmates -his family- was a tender one for Holden. Some days, just to keep going, he told himself over and over that they were all alive and fine and coming to find him in the Roci. Some days, he needed to tell himself that they were all dead. Something about that made them feel safe, like he didn’t need to worry about them anymore. Or maybe it was just a bit of masochistic epistemology.
Of course he worried about them all, but Holden missed Naomi so much that it physically hurt him to think about her. Something under his sternum clenched and ached when he did. The easiest way to avoid the pain was to simply not think about her at all, but his jailors would never let that happen.
Recording messages to her that were broadcast through the entire empire pained him in ways he didn’t know that he could put into words. Even if it did manage to give him a sliver of hope because they wouldn’t bother with it unless she was out there somewhere, alive and listening, it was more injurious than some of the beatings he took. He’d started to address her as “Knuckles” when they forced him to make a video as a way to let her know that none of the following message was truly from him, but it had the added effect that he could pretend the message wasn’t for her either. It was so much easier to not imagine Naomi seeing his old, gaunt face on her screen.
Holden’s attempt at a smile failed on a variety of levels, but he couldn’t afford to break down in front of the god-emperor. It was time to put more distance between himself and the underground. He tried to keep his tone light, “I don’t think the underground would consider me as one of their own at this point. Do you?”
“I don’t hate them, you know,” Duarte told him and then took a sip of wine. The liquid looked almost black in the dim light. “The underground that is. I know it seems like I might, but I actually think it’s commendable to fight for freedom until your last breath, really I do. They are doing what they think is right despite what it costs them. It’s honestly one of humanity’s most admirable attributes.”
“Then why are you trying to kill them all?” Holden had meant it to sound more like he was just playing devil’s advocate in a friendly conversation, but the anger that crept into his voice was pointed and accusatory. He regretted it immediately.
The small laugh from Duarte was nothing more than an exhalation, something a parent might do when confronted with a naïve child’s ire, “Because I’m also trying to do what’s right despite what it’s costing me. You never had children, did you?”
Of course Duarte knew the answer to that, having torn into Holden’s past like a rat into the walls of a house, but Holden still looked down into his untouched glass of wine and shook his head, “No.”
“I know it's hard to understand, but from my perspective, you are all just children that need to be protected and taught. I look at you and the other members of the resistance and I think of my own daughter. You don’t punish a child because you enjoy causing them pain. You do it to impress a lesson. Sometimes, a very important, life-saving lesson. So, I don’t want to kill the members of the underground. But I do need to stop them from interfering with the beautiful future of the human race that I have planned out. ”
Holden was tired of being patronized by Duarte and his calm, friendly voice. Fascism always mistook a boot on the neck for a gentle guiding hand. He attempted to change the subject before he lashed out again, “So where is everyone else?” He made a show of looking around even though it was abundantly clear that they were alone. Leaning forward and placing his glass on the table in front of him, he peered into all the corners of the room. There had to be someone around to take some of the attention off of Holden.
“It’s just us tonight, so feel free to speak openly. You know, I don’t think you’ve ever told me about your time in the underground.”
“Haven’t I?” Holden’s voice cracked in a way that was not dignified for a man of his age. He was sure all the pertinent information about the underground had poured out of his bleeding lips back when whatever he had to say might matter. It hurt to think about how many times someone’s knuckles had bashed against all the breakable bones and cartilage and skin of his face, but it hurt more to remember the feeling of the names of the people he loved forming on his tongue.
“Why is it that you can’t seem to look into my eyes today, James? I’m starting to take it personally.”
Fear crept up Holden’s spine, making him squirm awkwardly against the leather of the couch. If something major had happened with the underground, it might mean that the interrogators would be back for him. His abdominal muscles clenched as if anticipating the blow that would surely come.
There was no escaping Duarte’s intense gaze. His irises, trimmed in just a hint of opalescent blue, remained focused on Holden every time he let his own eyes pass over him. Memories of the protomolecule curling and digging and ripping into human flesh while radiating the same faint blue intensified Holden’s growing discomfort. The tingling in his fingers and forearms heralded an incoming breakdown. Wiping his hands on the soft, blue fabric covering his thighs didn’t bring the feeling back into his numb digits. He couldn’t afford to panic now, sitting in the high consul’s room. Just last long enough to get back to your own room.
“James, are you listening?”
His continued existence depended on this one man. This one man, who was trying his best to kill everyone Holden cared about, could decide on a whim to throw him in the pen. Being an entertaining babble was the reason he was alive, and here he was unable to even carry on a conversation. Pushing his panic down deep enough to function used to be easier. Maybe he was just too old to rely on his adrenal gland anymore. Or maybe the layers of trauma had just grown too thick.
Duarte stood, honest concern on his face, and walked around the coffee table to stand next to Holden. Sometimes, Holden debated whether Duarte believed everything he said, or if his acting was just that convincing. When Holden lifted his gaze to see the face peering down at him, there was sincere worry, but also a glint of enjoyment.
There was a lump in Holden’s throat, but he didn't try to clear it for fear that the noise it would make would only further broadcast his unease. His voice was tight as it came out, “I’m sorry. It’s just late, and I’m tired today. I can’t seem to get used to these long Laconian days.” He hoped the smile looked more sincere than it felt. It was time to try to move the topic to something else again. “And if I’m being honest,” his mouth felt so dry, “your eyes remind me of the protomolecule.”
It was a calculated move. The protomolecule and the extinct alien race that had created it were some of Duarte’s favorite subjects to talk about, and if anything could distract him, it would be a discussion of Holden’s encounters with them. He also knew the truth and vulnerability in his admission would make it seem less like he was avoiding the subject of the underground. The high consul liked him vulnerable, and Holden wished it was something he was better at faking. As it was, sitting on that couch with his lips trembling, he felt naked.
Duarte lowered himself to sit on the couch next to him, so close their legs were touching. He smelled strange, like being in a ship where the air recycler was starting to go. Holden’s collar rubbed the back of his neck as he looked away. More than anything, he wanted to get up and run.
Holden’s mind brought him back to the ops deck of the Roci, a tiny dot racing through the emptiness of space trying to destroy another dot thousands of kilometers away. Because they were dealing with such vast distances, there were moments during a battle when Holden had done everything he possibly could to survive and just had to wait and see what the outcome would be. He’d either be dead, or he wouldn't. The missiles coming towards him, bent on separating his body into its composite atoms, would either be destroyed by the PDC or they wouldn’t. Either the course Alex set would save them or it wouldn’t.
The human mind had been crafted through countless generations of natural selection to keep itself alive, fighting tooth and nail until the moment of death. The agonizing time he spent doing nothing while the missiles tried to kill him was like pulling teeth out of his own head. His whole body ached to do something when there was nothing to be done. Sometimes Holden found his eyes trying and failing to move the arcs of the little dots on his display in ways more advantageous to staying alive, willing the Roci’s drive to move them just a little bit faster.
Holden knew that either his attempt to distract Duarte from questioning him about the underground would work, or it wouldn’t. Their own small arcs were already set. There was no point in confusing things with more words or excuses. Several muscle groups began to shake with the effort of staying still. The gentle, unobtrusive music in the background reached a swelling crescendo but failed to cover the sound of Holden’s harsh breathing. A hand landed gently on his knee, and Holden flinched.
“My eyes look like the protomolecule?”
Holden’s face was turned away from Duarte, his eyes tracing the faint brushwork of a large, abstract painting hanging above the fireplace on the wall across from him. Bristle marks hinted at a painter who would remain forever unseen by Holden. He nodded.
“I’m sorry, that must be very hard for you. I know that not all your experiences with the protomolecule have been pleasant,” Duarte lifted his hand from Holden’s knee to under his chin and pulled so they were facing each other. It was too intimate. Here on Laconia, no one touched Holden except to control him. The fight or flight portion of his brain lit up, but Holden didn’t dare pull away, opting instead to freeze. “I think you and Cortazar are the only two who noticed that particular change. Not even Teresa has said anything.”
Those uncanny eyes buzzed about Holden’s face, and it felt like he was really being seen for the first time since he came in. With his fingers keeping Holden’s chin in place, Duarte studied the face in front of him like it was a math equation he couldn’t quite solve.
Being lumped together with Cotazar never felt good. Neither did the hand on his chin. Duarte’s fingers felt colder than they should, clammy and clenched tight on Holden’s flushed skin.
“How fortunate was I to find you when I did?” Duarte mused. Something about him seemed a little drunk, maybe not on the wine, but on the providence of the universe. “The one man in the whole empire that could shed light on the secret war I’ve been waging, and he falls right into my lap. You and I are the only living beings that have been truly touched by the ring builders. Isn’t it extraordinary to think about? How is it that you’ve been at the center of so many galaxy-changing events, James Holden?”
Duarte paused after that final question as if waiting for an answer to his unanswerable question, so Holden, who had been content enough to let the high consul ramble on, finally said, “Just lucky I guess.”
“Tell me,” Duarte said, “what is it about my eyes that reminds you of the protomolecule? I’m so interested.” He finally let go of Holden’s chin, but his hand landed once again on Holden’s knee.
Shifting uncomfortably in an attempt to make space between the two of them only pushed Holden’s leg further against Duarte’s, so after a few quick attempts to scoot away, Holden decided it would be better to just remain as he was, no matter how awkward. His gambit had worked. They weren’t talking about the underground anymore.
Finally swallowing down the lump in his throat, Holden tried to continue on as if this was just a regular conversation -just two people enjoying a glass of wine and a chat, not a prisoner and a would-be god. “It’s subtle really, and hard to put into words. I think we’ve discussed the sort of sheen the protomolecule has, like the inside of a seashell. And it almost radiates a faint blue. I guess that’s what I’m seeing.” Of course he was downplaying how very unsettling he found those eyes. It was time to get Duarte talking again. “Do you see it? When you look in the mirror?”
“Perhaps a bit, but my vision doesn’t work the same way it once did,” Duarte’s face contorted in thought. “When you first saw it, it was in Jules-Pierre’s girl wasn’t it?”
“Her name was Julie,” Holden snapped. Without realizing why, he’d felt very protective of Juliet Mao, a woman he’d never met. Maybe it was because Miller had spent so much time in his head, maybe some of Claire’s familial affection for her had worn off on him, or maybe he was sick of the cold way Duarte viewed humanity.
“That’s right. I remember now. She was the sister of one of your shipmates. Mao’s other daughter.”
Holden had stumbled right back into a mistake. He was imagining Claire now, her chapped, dry lips pulling too tight as she smiled, and her thin, yellowing skin showing every vein and bone and sinew. By the time Holden had been taken from Medina, Clarissa Mao had been nothing more than a bag of bones, fragile and gruesome in equal parts. When he wondered which of his family was alive or dead, Claire was the only obvious answer. It pained Holden to think of how Claire’s inevitable death had affected Amos. There was already so little holding the mechanic back.
“God, you’re so beautiful right now,” Duarte’s voice was dark, tinged with vocal fry. He leaned forward. Reacting too slowly, Holden didn’t tilt back in time to avoid the kiss. His mind went blank for a moment. Of all the possible outcomes of this dinner, Holden hadn’t even considered this one, so he had no ready strategy to combat it. The lips on his were desperate but also strangely cold.
Making his hands flat, like the cold blades of a mech suit Holden pushed against Duarte’s chest with a firm but, he hoped, polite amount of pressure and turned away. “Please, sir-”
“When you think about them, you’re beautiful. The light around you changes. It dances.”
“The light?”
Duarte didn’t answer. He leaned in to kiss Holden again, catching the side of mouth first and then grabbing the back of his head to position him more straight on. The grip on the back of his head was so tight he couldn’t pull away. Hands still on Duarte’s chest, Holden pushed again, harder this time. The calculations for the appropriate use of force in this situation were too difficult to compute while someone was shoving a tongue in his mouth. Even if Holden decided it was worth the possible consequences to violently struggle, there was the open question of Duarte’s altered physiology. It might not even be possible for Holden to fight him off. His fingers sank into the smooth fabric of Duarte’s vest. If he ran, there was nowhere to go.
It had to be one of the worst kisses Holden ever had, even when considered against his first few awful attempts with girls back in Montana. On top of the strange, unpleasant coldness of Duarte’s mouth, there was the hint of rough stubble. If the tongue in his mouth had been less animated, Holden might have confused it for a corpse’s.
When Duarte laid him on the sofa, and his back hit the cushion, it felt as abrupt and violent as a crash couch bucking up to meet him during a hard burn. Duarte’s hands were on his shoulders, pinning him while his legs were still bent and his feet still planted on the ground. The odd angle hurt his back.
“I’m really a very patient and loving man. I just need humanity to understand that I’ve transcended above them. They just need to know how to submit. You know how to submit, don’t you, James?”
That was when the tears started. The terror was just too much. Holden felt helpless. He squirmed. Duarte’s hands pulled downwards, and Holden’s Laconian jumpsuit slid down his shoulders, trapping his arms to his sides. The uniform became a cocoon that Holden was desperately trying to wriggle his way out of, the tight confinement of his former self. He was a butterfly caught halfway in the final step of its metamorphosis. The collar of his undershirt stretched with the downward motion, exposing his clavicles, and Duarte’s cold lips found them.
“Stop,” Holden growled, channeling his most authoritative tone. When Duarte did not even pause, Holden’s voice became less forceful, more desperate, “Please stop.” His legs kicked and pushed against the ground. “I don’t want this.”
“The lights around you are so different. Perhaps because you’ve had the protomolecule around you so much,” Duarte spoke between licks and bites, ignoring Holden’s words completely. The man wasn’t making sense at all anymore.
His attempts to sit up or roll away devolved into frantic wriggling. Duarte was too heavy, his strong fingers pushing into Holden’s clothing and flesh. While he struggled, Holden was reminded of something Mother Elise had told him when he was a boy in Montana. He’d probably been around twelve, just old enough to start paying attention to the world around him. The local newsfeeds had been inundated with a story of young girl around his own age who’d been raped and left for dead by the side of an old logging road. She’d survived but needed to have one of her arms regrown. It was the right mixture of horrifying and uplifting that journalists ate up. Constant updates were pushed out.
“Remember James,” she’d told him over the table, her round features as serious as they ever got, “rape isn’t a crime of passion, it’s a crime of power.”
Mother Sophie had quickly changed the subject, “Honestly El, that isn’t dinner talk.” Holden, red in the face and staring at the peas left on his plate, had been grateful. Sex was not a subject he wanted to be discussing in front of his family, but her words had stuck in his mind, and he’d laid awake at night on the Roci sometimes thinking about them. And thinking about Amos.
They’d never spoken about it directly, but Holden knew about Amos’s past life on earth. Knowing made the large man a little easier to understand, but knowing also kept Holden awake at night sometimes. The knowledge that children were probably being treated like that everywhere people had set down roots haunted him. Amos once told him that he didn’t feel fear anymore, and more than once, Holden sort of wished he didn’t either, especially as the emperor’s weight pressed down on him. The fear was debilitating, sweeping rational thought from his mind.
Mother Elise was right. This wasn’t the outcome of any affection Duarte had for Holden. This was about power. Duarte had it. An unregistered little boy in Baltimore didn’t. A political prisoner on an isolated planet didn’t. Earlier in the night, Holden would have sworn that he already understood how powerless he was, but pinned under Duarte, he felt it down to his bones. It was as clear to him as the stars had been over his head as he walked over.
Without warning, Duarte’s grip tightened around Holden’s arms, and he threw him onto the floor. His knees hit first, and then his torso crashed across the coffee table, spilling the two glasses of wine perched there. Without his hands to cushion the fall, Holden’s chest and face knocked against the sturdy surface, and for a moment, it felt like he couldn't see or breathe. The red liquid splashing over the red wood of the table spread itself out. It was absorbed by the paper of the ostentatious books spread across the coffee table and eventually trickled its way to Holden’s shirt where it began dyeing the white fabric the color of dark grapes.
It felt like his skin was being peeled off as Duarte pulled Holden's jumpsuit down towards his hips. It stuck to his sweaty skin the whole way down. After the confining clothing reached a low enough point, Holden frantically freed his arms. His hands groped around for a moment, splashing in the spilled wine, before finding the edge of the table and grabbing on tightly, like he was trying to stop from falling off a cliff. He didn’t even try to pull himself away.
When the jumpsuit had made its way to his thighs, the air of the cool room made Holden start to shiver. Duarte used his knee to stomp the rest of the fabric, pulled tight between Holden’s legs, down to the floor and then urged Holden’s own knees further apart. The sound of heavy breathing and a zipper opening behind him caused Holden to squeeze his eyes shut. His cheek began to throb, causing him to turn his head and rest his forehead against the table. Cold hands on his bare hips guided him into position. There was no stopping this.
The act itself was so brief and so painful that it took on an almost dreamlike quality, like his brain couldn’t actually process that it had happened at all.
Collapsed on top of him, spent, Duarte babbled on about light and submission and beauty. Holden’s fingers still gripped the edge of the table, numb and trembling. He yelped as Duarte pulled out of him and fell backwards, landing on the floor with his back against the sofa. They stayed like that for a long while, both breathing hard. Air came into Holden’s lungs in deep, shaky gasps. Slowly, Holden turned to look over his shoulder at the man who had just raped him.
Head thrown back onto the seat of the sofa, Duarte’s chest rose and fell quickly. His pants were caught around his thighs, belt hanging open. His penis looked wet and angry, softening into the coarse, gray hair between his legs. For the first time, Duarte looked utterly human.
“You may go now, James,” Duarte said to the ceiling between panting breaths. It was phrased like he was being magnanimous, but Holden understood it for what it was: an order to get the fuck out.
The gravity felt too harsh, the air too thin, as Holden struggled to push himself up from the table. On his knees between Duarte’s spread legs, he wrestled his jumpsuit and boxers back on over his wet undershirt. Every time he inhaled, it hitched several times, and Holden was afraid he’d start to bawl at any moment. His shaky legs almost gave out as he stood. His whole body felt disgusting, wet and sticky and used.
Sheer stubbornness got Holden to the door, and relief flooded through him when it opened with a swipe at the controls. Stumbling out into the cool Laconian night, Holden didn’t bother to acknowledge the four soldiers waiting outside. The thought that they might know what had just happened to him was too painful to consider.
In Holden's experience, there was often a brief moment between the injury and the pain, like when he would slip and nick his finger with some tool. Instantly, he would grasp and cradle the injured digit before any of the pain receptors in his brain even had time to react. The hardest part was usually peeling his fingers from the cut to examine and treat it.
Walking back to his own room, Holden was determined not to examine his wounds yet. If he did, he would break down and collapse in the middle of the Laconian state building grounds. He wouldn’t let that happen. The throbbing in his cheek intensified, but Holden refused to interrupt the blood flow as pain. Each step was difficult, especially when the emperor’s semen started to ooze down his legs.
What had just happened had changed him. Holden had metamorphosed, but into something much more hollow than he’d been before. His guards followed him, disinterested as they ever were, and a cool breeze chilled the wine soaked fabric of his shirt.
Holden looked up once more at the stars.