Time seems to crawl. Everyone jumps when even a slight noise is heard. I remain huddled on the floor, and Grandy is obviously confined to his bed, but Merrick and Lowasha are restless. They continue to stand. I think Lowasha would bolt if she could find an opening. Merrick probably just wants the whole thing resolved.

Finally, after what seems an eternity but is probably more on the order of 15 minutes, there is a tapping at the door. Everyone jumps, startled, and Lowasha stifles a shriek. I feel the adrenaline surge in my veins and the migraine responds with a blinding spike where my skull joins my spine. My jaw aches as I clench my teeth against it. 

“Open it,” I grind out, before anyone can ask, and the mechanism whirs. Light pours in yet again. Goggled, with my eyes clenched shut, I still double over and try to crawl further into the nearest corner. There is a lot of noise, shuffling of feet, creaking of simple machinery, hushed voices. I am hugging myself, on the verge of losing control in the face of everything.

“Do not let him come on shift until the migraine is resolved,” I hear Merrick say. “ I will take care of things here and make sure Tolen is entertained until everything is settled.”

“Thank you.”

Oh, Blessed Darkness. Finally. He is here.

I try to call out for him, but only manage a hoarse, wordless sound.

“Take your time,” I hear Grandy whisper. “And I thank you for the sweets.”

“Of course, Grandy Zar.” His voice is closer. “Enjoy your meal.”

I whimper.

His hand falls soft upon my head, and he strokes my hair. Everything begins to fall apart.

He pulls me into his lap, and I can offer no resistance. “Go,” he tells the others. “This is a bad one. Merrick, can you override the display? He needs a completely dark environ right now.” I pay no attention to the rest of the discussion. But Merrick must have come through, for I hear the reply. “Thank you.”

The bed creaks, and Grandy wheezes. I cannot think clearly to understand more of why this should be. My whole world narrows to the sensation of my hair being smoothed away from my forehead and my fingers clutching fabric. 

I know when the room goes completely black, though I cannot explain how. “It hurts, Meshani,” I mewl.

“I am going to remove your goggles,” he replies softly. “Then you can let everything out. Cry, rage, destroy, whatever you need. I am here, my heart.” I can only whimper again.

He cradles me to his chest with one strong arm, and with the other hand, deftly and gently works the goggles off my head. As though the band holding them on had been a tourniquet to my emotions, everything breaks loose. And I am left helpless before the onslaught. I break down in great heaving sobs, clinging to Meshani lest I be swept off by the flood of it. He rocks me gently, my shelter in the storm. 

It took years of trust to get here. When first I met Meshani, he was the only one that did not shrink away from my otherness. Perhaps because he is viewed by the general populace as somewhat other himself, with his ebony skin. But I never felt from him the stares that are standard fare from most. He spoke to me instead of cowering, inquired about the goggles instead of teasing about them, and embraced acceptance when I told him of my heritage instead of pushing me away. Even still, I did not permit him to see me at my worst and lowest for a year once our relationship had started to develop. He let me decide my own level of trust.

But I will never forget the first time he saw. It was an episode much like this one in severity. He had walked with me to IO Station Two, for the start of my shift. I knew I had to work on the power systems that evening while the night cycle was deepest. We had just finished farewells, and he was turning to leave. Which was when a regulator failed in the affected power system, sending a surge to the transformer. The overhead lights flared in an instant, searing through even the darkened lenses of my goggles, before throwing sparks in a pyrotechnic fountain and plunging the southeast sector into darkness. 

I started to drop in ocular overload, but heard Meshani cry out in fear as the sparks erupted. Before I could consider otherwise, my autonomic defenses erupted and I threw myself to cover him, bearing him to the ground and shielding him as best I could. I knew my armor would be unaffected by the unexpected fireworks. But Meshani is fully human; his skin is frail by comparison. 

The incident lasted but a moment. But I was overloaded and fragile. 

I tried to run, to escape as I had previously done so I could recover. My teams all knew to stay out of my way. To leave me alone when there was an incident. 

Because I did not want to hurt them. 

Because I was a monster.

At that moment, Meshani showed me the truth of himself.

He never flinched from my visage. Never fled screaming from my rage and pain. Instead, he was my strength when I was weakest. Though he had never before seen my worst, he embraced it as though it were my best. Meshani held me as I released all the pent up emotion. All the isolation, and rage, and fear.

And in that instant, in the pitch black, I could clearly see my own future for the first time.

I have never forgotten it.

Now, as I sob brokenly, he holds me as he did then. The tightness in my chest begins to lessen. Emotion rages out of control, but I know I am safe. He whispers to me softly, encouraging me to let it out lest it fester. 

On the heels of this pain comes rage, and soon I begin to vent it. The things I say are atrocious. I scream and curse, vile words curling my lips into a snarl. Imprecations and invectives that would curdle goat’s milk pour forth. I say things I would regret immediately if anyone else overheard, things I absolutely mean to say in the moment but would never speak under any other circumstances. 

Meshani continues to comfort me as the flood winds down. I sniffle and cough mildly, and he strokes my back. His shirt will be stained and likely torn when I am finished; my tears and mucous fluoresce pale blue under a blacklight, while the edges of my scales are relentless. He compares it to petting a hedgehog: smooth when stroked front to back, but thorny in reverse.

I can feel the emotions begin to settle, my stability beginning to return. Which leaves the migraine to deal with. But the pressure behind it, the emotions pressing like water behind a dam, has receded. 

It is also the secret behind Denzai technology that I cannot explain adequately. It is why no one else can see the repairs as I can. 

To the Denzai, emotion is physical. 

In order to craft, one must also feel. The sight of it is worked into their technology. A simple spigot may have a wealth of feeling interwoven into its structure. The emotion the crafter feels can be used to enhance this structure, creating something that is potentially far stronger or more durable than outward appearances would suggest. A weapon may be built on anger or hate or vengeance, which would enhance its lethality. Tools for survival may harbor desperation or creativity and each serves a different purpose. Peace has a different shape than mere contentment.

But how does one adequately explain that to fix a part, the technician must feel frustration and infuse it helically into the ceramic in the instant it cures? How do I explain that rage can be encapsulated by sorrow and used to reinforce a drive axle inside a turbine?

And that light degrades the demarcations between all emotions, turning it into a whirling hurricane of mindless sensation?

I have tried to explain it. But words are too simplistic. There is simply no basis of comparison for humanity. And that, fundamentally, is why I am irreplaceable. There are no others like me, who can stand with one foot on each side of existence between two distinct races. In all of existence, there are no other hybrids between humanity and Denzai. It is a very lonely existence that no others have ever tried to understand. 

Except for Meshani. He rides the waves of my emotional instability as I walk that razor edge, straddling two worlds yet belonging to neither. His patience and love weave a soothing lifeline, a beacon in the storm within my own head. Somehow, though he does not have the capacity to truly understand, he still embodies everything I need to stabilize the imbalances that light brings. I cling to that lifeline and use it to drag myself slowly back to rationality. 

“Better?” he asks at long length. He runs fingers through my hair, and I shiver. My protective scaling has retracted once more, though I did not notice the egress, and my skin is left naked and sensitive. There is no bleeding associated with the scaling process, though trying to describe how it functions is nearly as complicated as trying to describe how I see emotion.

I disentangle my fingers from his shirt, nodding gently. “Yes. I will still have this raging migraine for some time. But I am calm once more.” 

“What do you need of me?” Meshani continues to caress my skin. His fingers trace the sharp planes of my face, and I sigh.

“Sleep. Release. Food. Then, probably more sleep. Comfort. Home. Darkness. You.” I cup his cheek in my palm, trusting the strength of his arms as I lie cradled to his chest, and I let my eyes flutter open. 

In the utter dark, I still see. There are minimal words for it, and the perception quickly exceeds them. Lines, ropes, waves, sheets, cubes, cones, tori, even shapes that have no name because they do not exist outside of the Denzai cognizance. Each is woven together, into a greater construct. They shift bizarrely, glowing softly like an aurora. Tendrils run like thread, one end joining, the other slithering loose to allow the shapes to reorganize. There is a flow to it, unpredictable, ever changing.

Living.

“I wish you could see the beauty I perceive in you,” I whisper. Tears well into my eyes and run freely down my cheeks. “I have no words for it in our tongue.”

“Then speak them in Denzani.”

Liquid syllables burble forth at his request. They tickle my nose as I sing, and in answer, emotions sway as though a soft breeze blows. I see the effect of the words upon his being, though he cannot be aware of it. But I know it strengthens his shape. Ribbons of emotion climb a trellis of doubt, binding it with comfort into resolve. Something that could easily harden into anger is plied with compassion and shatters apart, the pieces melding and reforming with other shapes. I hear him sigh as a sharp thorn of something ugly is softened and reshaped, easing a place where it encroached upon happiness. I describe him and in doing so, give reinforcement to his structure.

I see what is happening. How my emotions allow him to rebuild himself. It changes him in minor ways. 

I hope to save his life with it.

The life support systems are failing. The sub-city will be uninhabitable within ten years. I am trying to prevent it, but there is only one of me. And once the machinery fails, humanity will fail with it. Only the Denzai will remain.

The Denzai, and one Darkwalker.

But there is a secret I hold closer than any other. I have not told anyone; not Grandy, and not even Meshani.

Every week, I stand upon the surface. I see the sun rise, brown and red, deeply occluded by the soupy orange skies. Each time, I stand without a respirator and remove my goggles to behold the sky as the Denzai see it. I watch it dance. Within the dim haze, I read the shapes of life. I study them. 

And every evening, I whisper them to Meshani. I reshape him with my words, a little bit at a time. He does not know that his form has been reshaped, woven with emotion I have given him. That his lungs will soon be able to breathe the murk of aboveground and his eyes adjusted to soon function equally as well in lower levels of light. That if I chose, I could utterly reshape him.

To do this is, of course, forbidden. But I do not care. I would do anything to keep Meshani by my side, even if it means committing the most heinous crime imaginable to a Denzai: negating the free will of an individual.

Grandy was wrong. There are monsters. Well, one at least. But it is not a Denzai. They are peaceful and pacifistic in the same way that humans are not. Hybrid that I am, I possess the worst qualities of both: the innate weaponry and armor of the Denzai, paired with the warlike mentality of humanity. And the willingness to use both if needed in order to save just one person. The only person I give a damn about.

And I walk freely among both Denzai and humanity.