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“Did you know that humans are slightly bioluminescent?”
The question came out of the blue, but then again, many of Tech’s comments did. Omega liked that about him; she never knew when she would learn something. It was just the two of them, plus Echo, waiting in the Marauder’s cockpit in amicable silence while Hunter and Wrecker dealt with a concerningly curious spaceport employee outside.
Echo raised his eyebrows. “You’re kidding.”
“Actually, I am not. It’s too faint for our eyes to detect, but as a byproduct of cellular respiration, we emit biophotons that can be perceived as light. So, technically, even in the darkest place we could possibly go, we’re never entirely without light, whether we can see it or not. We carry it with us as long as we are alive.”
Echo snorted. “Are we supposed to take that as a metaphor?”
Tech frowned. “It’s not poetry. It’s science.”
“Could they be the same thing, sometimes?” Omega asked.
“Practically speaking, definitely not.” He adjusted his goggles and regarded her curious expression, then conceded, “Philosophically, however, I suppose one could argue that they are so.”
Omega wiggled her fingers, trying to imagine them shimmering gold.
Omega shouldn’t have tried to run.
It had seemed like a good idea at the time; the ship had escape pods, and they were supposedly only one level down. She could use them, just like how she’d escaped that old Kaminoan facility. All she had to do was run when nobody was looking.
She hadn’t gotten far. Of course she hadn’t.
The doctor himself had dragged her to the brig, his gloved hand tight on her arm even as his steps were measured and unhurried.
“Escape is impossible here, and it will be even more so once we reach Tantiss,” he warned in a soft voice that made the hairs on the back of her neck prickle. He tipped her chin up, studying her like a specimen under glass. “I have a very special purpose for you, so you must behave.”
Omega bit his finger hard enough to leave a mark even through the glove.
He winced, but the expression turned calm and hard in an instant. “Very well. Let’s have a lesson.” He tossed her into the brig and shut the door.
She barely had time to get her bearings in the cramped cell before the light shut off, plunging her into total darkness.
If she hadn’t felt trapped before, she was now. She wasn’t used to this sort of inky dark; even at night on the Marauder , the cabin was dully illuminated by a myriad of buttons and tiny lights from the ship’s various computer systems. Even in space or on unpopulated planets, pinprick stars blinked back at her from the sky. Even in that cavern with Tech, there had been light underground.
This darkness was total, unnatural. It wrapped around her like tentacles. Like creatures crawling all over her, smothering her, dark and silent.
The gravity of it all stifled her breath. Tech was dead. Her family was gone. And she was trapped, trapped in a box in the depths of a ship hurtling to parts unknown through hyperspace. Her brothers would not find her.
There was no light, no light, no light.
Not like the Marauder , not like the night sky, not like the cavern.
The darkness would eat her alive.
The cavern. Tech.
Did you know that humans are slightly bioluminescent? Even in the darkest place we could possibly go, we’re never entirely without light.
I’m glowing, she told herself. I can't see it, but I'm emitting biophotons. I'm making light. And then aloud, shouting to pierce the suffocating silence of her cell, “Hey! I’m glowing! It’s not all dark in here! I’m glowing!”
Her voice echoed in the tiny cell, and she wondered if the doctor could hear her screaming words that didn’t make any sense. She hoped he did. He wanted her to be hopeless, but he couldn’t take her light.
We carry it with us as long as we are alive.
Omega didn’t know where she was going or what would become of her. She was drowning in pitch black, all alone. But as long as she was breathing, the shadows could never consume her, not completely.
Even the faintest glimmer of light is the opposite of total darkness.