Chapter 43: The Stick, the Sinner, and the Sovereign Bedrest
After hearing the full, grisly account of what Kimchi had endured to save what remained of my pelvic dignity, I extended my inner voice to her. "Come up here, you ridiculous clingy miracle," I relayed, gently guiding her to snuggle against my torso like some obsessive psionic body pillow. She obeyed with fervent reverence, burying her face into my chest with a deep, unashamed sniff that could probably be classified as illegal in several sectors.
I reached out with my free hand and stroked her hair slowly, my fingers weaving through the fibrous smoothness of her biostrands like a priest combing rosary beads.
"Thank you," I whispered aloud, letting the words wrap around her like a second skin. "Kimchi... If you hadn't intervened when you did, I wouldn't just be missing a pelvis — I'd be a twitching corpse marinated in psychic lust fluid."
Her shoulders trembled as that landed. Her eyes welled again, but not just with grief — with guilt, inherited through the hive's neural lattice. I could feel it: Crystal's guilt, her self-inflicted emotional flagellation, thrumming through Kimchi's link like thunder behind glass. She was too ashamed to manifest physically, so she did the coward's trick — she watched me through Kimchi, silently, pitifully, like a kicked dog behind a one-way mirror.
I scanned my surroundings with a casual sweep of telepathy, finding a crate full of those suspended hydration globules the drones had packaged for me — each one a bubble of tasteless fluid wrapped in a thin, synthetic membrane. I floated one to my mouth and bit down, savoring the sensation as relief washed over me like liquid silk.
Then Kimchi asked the question. The fucking question.
"Apollo-love… do you still love us? Even after what we did to you?"
I nearly choked on the next hydration sphere. "What the hell kind of brain-dead question is that?" I scoffed, sending waves of irritation and affection through the link simultaneously. "Of course I still love you. Crystal didn't attack me. She was... triggered."
Kimchi tilted her head, her expression puzzled. "What do you mean, love?"
I exhaled deeply. This was the tricky part — the part where I had to explain something the universe wouldn't let me talk about. Like my memories, my boon was bound by divine red tape. Anytime I tried to articulate it aloud, my voice just failed. Lips moving, brain howling, nothing escaping. So I did the next best thing: I talked around it.
"When we landed here, I passed out because my Psionic Origin — you know, the subconscious lizard part of my brain made of screaming eldritch light — decided to molt like a psychotic butterfly. During that process, the trait that makes me... attractive to the hive got dialed up to eleven."
Her pupils dilated with dawning horror.
I continued. "The same trait that first tripped your mating instincts back when you found me crying in that trash bin? The same thing that made that poor agitator blow a mental fuse just by brushing against my aura?"
Kimchi nodded, her throat bobbing.
"Well, now it's... stronger. Dumber. More dangerous. You and Crystal weren't prepared. And Crystal..."
"She was your mate now," Kimchi whispered, filling in the thought with a trembling voice. "She had no walls left."
"Exactly."
I reached up and tilted Kimchi's chin so she would meet my gaze. "Crystal," I said out loud, addressing the queen directly, "I know you're watching through her. I feel you. And I want you to listen carefully. There is nothing to forgive. You didn't fail me. You didn't betray me. You loved me too hard — that's the only crime, and that's not even illegal yet."
I managed a faint smile.
"Also," I added with mock gravity, "thank you for sparing the Honey Drizzlier. My meaty majesty remains intact, even if the rest of me got blendered."
My eyes stung, and I let the tears come. Kimchi cried too, and through her, Crystal did as well — not just in one body, but in all of them. A thousand forms weeping across the stars. The hive keened like a cosmic chorus of grief and release, a psychic rainstorm soaking the bond in collective catharsis.
After ten minutes of synchronized sobbing and my fifteenth hydration sphere, I finally groaned, "Okay. Despite my impeccable poise, I am in agonizing pain. Kimchi, sweetheart, please go fill one of the tanks with the good goo."
Her eyes lit up. Nothing made her happier than being needed. She gave me one last kiss on the forehead, then got to work.
I watched her move — efficient, strong, and absurdly beautiful in that biotechnological war-priestess way that only a hivemind's daughter-wife could manage. She was hauling crates and reprogramming medical enzyme routines like she was rearranging throw pillows. I admired her with quiet reverence, knowing full well she could throw me through a starship hull.
She noticed. She liked that I noticed.
Once the tank was ready, she picked me up — careful, reverent — and placed me inside like a fragile relic. I tweaked the formula slightly, adding a few extra ingredients for nerve repair and smooth anesthesia, then let the needles do their work. The pain disappeared so quickly it felt illegal. I floated in golden warmth, completely numb, and spent the next few hours whisper-talking to Kimchi through our link, about nothing and everything.
Two weeks passed.
My body was whole again — bones regrown, nerves repaired, meat refortified. I stayed an extra day just to make sure, lounging in warm nutrient soup like a psychic soup dumpling.
Kimchi had not left my side for a moment. She hadn't slept. She barely blinked. I don't think her eyes left my body for more than ten seconds in the entire two weeks. Crystal never came — not once. Not in person. She couldn't bear to see me. She still thought she didn't deserve forgiveness.
Onyx had also vanished — not fully, of course, not from my link. I could still feel her haunting my periphery, skulking in invisible form like a psionic voyeur. The silhouette of her old self flickered in my Mindspace occasionally, but she hadn't spoken.
I decided I was done sulking. It was time to rejoin the waking world.
I yanked the mask off my face and ejected the needles with a practiced flex. Then, with all the grace of a recovering newborn deer, I scooted to the edge of the tank, wobbled, and fell.
Right into Kimchi.
Somehow, despite her impossibly dense armored body, I knocked her backward and landed on top of her. My face was buried between her... tactical assets. She didn't even flinch.
I pushed myself up, locked eyes with her, and saw something raw — want, devotion, exhaustion. She looked like a battle-damned goddess too tired to fight but too stubborn to collapse.
I leaned down and kissed her gently. "Thank you," I whispered into her lips, letting every thread of my love and gratitude pour into the link.
Her eyes shimmered. For a moment, she brightened — but the exhaustion finally took over. She fell asleep in my arms.
I carried her to the bed she'd brought into the lab, lay her down, and curled around her. I whispered one final promise into her hair: "Soon. When it's right."
An hour passed in silence.
Then a presence crept closer — silent, subtle, smug.
I didn't even turn.
"Onyx," I said, "how nice of you to stop pretending you weren't here the whole time."
She appeared with a shimmer, her cloak of invisibility falling away like an afterthought.
"Very impressive, my love," she said, voice as cool as shadow. "To detect me through the bond now."
"Yeah," I said. "Which means I know when you arrive... and when you're planning to sneak away."
She blinked, confused. "Why would I—"
I didn't let her finish. My voice dropped into deadpan authority.
"Go get the stick."
She froze.
"...Oh no."