by Erin Bowman
Kanna7 Station
Orbiting Sol 2 from beyond the Lethe Asteroid Belt, Trios System
SHE WOKE TO BLINDING LIGHT and a silence that echoed in her ears.
“Where are they?” a voice said, murky at first, then clearer when Thea focused her senses.
She blinked, tried to sit. Straps held her in place. She was on a table again, in isolation. Lieutenant Burke stood before her, fully suited as an extra precaution. It was like her first interaction with him all over again, only in a different room.
“Where are they?” he repeated.
Terror raced through her when the quiet in her mind persisted. She reached, called out, shouted mentally, and the silence echoed back. Coen was gone. Out of reach. As good as vanished.
It was nearly enough to bring her to tears. Even now, water welled in her eyes. She blinked rapidly, refusing to let them fall. Don’t let them see you hurt. Don’t let them know you’re scared.
Burke nodded to a man in the corner of the room, and something jabbed into Thea’s side, delivering a blow of electricity. Her EVA suit had been removed to allow for more effective shock strikes, and she gasped. Tears streamed down her face. So much for not crying.
“Where?”
“I don’t know.”
“Ask him!”
“I can’t!”
Another blast of electricity. She writhed.
“I can’t—he’s gone. It’s broken.” Speaking the words was torture. She didn’t want to accept this truth. He’d be in her mind any moment. If she just tried harder . . .
Thea clenched her eyes together, strained with every fiber of her being, calling out, begging, praying for his voice in her mind—a whisper, even. The silence was deafening.
“I can’t reach him,” she gasped between tears. “He’s dead or they’ve gone too far.”
“He’s not dead, he escaped!”
“Then he’s too far. I’ve got nothing. He’s gone!” She was blubbering now, choking on snot that had slid down her face and into her mouth. She was a disgrace.
Burke nodded to his man, and Thea’s side again flared with pain. In a stronger state, she’d be able to slip from the cuffs, use her abilities to break free. But her wrists were slick with sweat and she was tired and beaten. Where would she run, even if she managed to get free? How could she ever escape again without an ally?
“This will continue until you talk,” Burke warned.
“Sir, I don’t think she’s lying.” Dr. Farraday held out a Tab. Thea registered the strap beneath her chin for the first time. She was back in a hot cap, and yet they were using old-fashioned shock rods to strike her. Maybe torture didn’t feel like torture to Radicals unless they got their hands dirty.
“See?” Dr. Farraday continued. “There’s no spike in brain activity. She’s not hiding anything.”
Burke turned on Thea, leveling his gaze with hers. “Where will they go?”
“You tell me. Don’t your ships all have track—”
Agony roared. Her vision went white. When the pain passed, her head fell onto her chest and she gasped wildly.
“They disabled the tracking system, the comms—anything we could use to find them has been cut.”
Thea smiled despite the pain. Nova had made the ship disappear. She hadn’t expected anything less.
“Where. Will. They. Go?”
She refused to speak.
“You didn’t have a plan besides steal a ship? I doubt that.”
Oh, Thea had formed a plan. She just hadn’t noticed its weakness until it was already in motion. When she’d stepped aboard Halo, it had hit her. They’d never be able to fly home. It would be suicide, a dead end, a prison cell waiting once they landed. Her mind had flown through alternatives, settling on an independent rock where people often fled for freedom and a chance at a new life. In the excitement of the escape, Coen hadn’t sensed this change. They’d been too focused on the ship and the air lock, and the thought had been barely a blip in Thea’s consciousness. Even when it occurred to her, she’d considered that maybe she was wrong. Once on Halo, once traveling away from Kanna7 with the threat behind her, perhaps she’d see another route. Maybe there’d be a way to go home after all.
Now she knew how foolhardy that hope had been. There were only two habitable destinations outside of UPC jurisdiction where the crew of Halo could land: Casey or Achlys. And she knew they’d never set foot on Achlys again.
Burke nodded to his man. The pain scorched Thea’s body.
“Go easy on her, please,” Farraday said. “She’s our only host and you’ve already pushed her beyond what the average human could withstand.”
Thea’s heart beat savagely. It was going to burst from her chest. She kept waiting for it to simply stop, for the pain to vanish, for everything to just . . . end. Her vision danced, the room showing in doubles, everything blurry.
“Where do you think they’ll go?” Burke asked.
“Eutheria?” Thea croaked out. “Coen just wanted to go home.”
“There. Now, that wasn’t so hard. Was it?” Burke smiled wickedly and flicked a finger at his fellow Radical.
The shock tore through Thea’s side and she clamped her teeth together, writhing as she counted in her head to keep from passing out. At twelve, the pain stopped, and her head sagged forward. Thea vomited down her front.
“Take her to her cell. Keep a half dozen guards posted outside around the clock.”
Thea felt a mask being slipped over her face. Her eyes fell shut.
Amid the pain and as she fell unconscious, she reached out to her other half, desperate, delirious. Coen, Coen, are you there? Please say you can hear me.
No one came for her the next day, and she spent the better half of the morning crying.
She felt weak and pitiful. She was lying in bed, lamenting her fate instead of plotting and planning, but she couldn’t muster the resolve to get up. She wanted nothing more than to feel sorry for herself for a change. She’d earned it.
She spilled tears into her pillow until her eyes were swollen. She screamed until her throat was hoarse. She dug her fingers into her hair, squeezing, scratching, wishing her cursed brain would work properly.
She said his name over and over.
Coen.
Coen.
Are you there?
Please say you can hear me.
The silence was too much. It filled the entire room. It weighed on her shoulders. It blotted out hope.
He was gone. Back to Eutheria if the crew was foolish, where they would be caught upon approach or landing; or to Casey, if they’d been smart about things. And with Nova at the yoke, they’d likely been smart.
There would be Radical spies on that independent rock. Thea wasn’t so naive as to believe that the Radicals hadn’t infiltrated every fold of the universe by now. She prayed Coen’s crew would evade them and land safely. Maybe even devise a way to get Thea help. She’d never know if it was coming for her, not without being able to contact Coen. To hope that blindly, to have such unfaltering faith . . . Thea didn’t know if she could do it. She believed in facts and science and reason. What she’d had with Coen had seemed impossible, but she’d lived it, breathed it, felt and heard him in her head. And now he was gone, his absence a gaping hole in her mind, an infection that festered with despair.
Finally, she summoned the strength to clean at the room’s small wash station. Her shirt still smelled of vomit. She left it hanging over the sink and paced the quarters in her bra.
She caught her reflection in the glass wall that separated her cell from the empty one that used to be Coen’s. Dark moons sagged beneath her eyes. Her hair hung wild and greasy.
Thea put her palm to the glass and closed her eyes, imagining Coen on the other side and how it would feel for his hand to meet hers now.
When she opened her eyes, his cell was still empty.
Her hand was still alone.
And the quiet was endless.
The following mor
ning, she awoke to find a stranger in Coen’s room. A middle-aged man, short but wiry, with ghostly pale skin and eyes that glowed like dark embers. He adjusted the cuff of his jacket, observing her with interest. Burke stood behind the stranger, and Farraday lingered by the far wall.
The men whispered, keeping their voices low, but Thea could hear everything.
The stranger was Aldric Vasteneur, owner of Hevetz Industries. He’d come as quickly as he could. He wanted to see her in the flesh—cameras alone wouldn’t suffice.
The shipment was arriving next week, whatever that meant. Vasteneur had brought the implants, whatever those were. Production would begin as soon as possible. Thea was to remain out of it. With Coen gone, she had become Patient Zero in their eyes. They needed her pure, unaltered. Achlys was too far away to be considered their lifeline, and too dangerous given what they’d learned. Thea was their source. Her blood was their future.
Perhaps they didn’t think she could hear them, or maybe they figured it didn’t matter even if she could. She was trapped. There was nothing she could do with this information.
She remained in the bed like a statue, not wanting to give them a show. It was obvious Burke and his crew were Radicals, but she’d always harbored some hope that Hevetz wasn’t also tied up in the mess, that Vasteneur had loaned scientists to Burke with honorable goals. But watching them now, it was obvious that Vasteneur was as deeply involved as Burke. He wasn’t trying to cure a disease or save humanity. He was a Radical, anxious to see the Trios gain its independence, and when it hadn’t happened naturally or in a lawful manner, he’d sacrificed Black Quarry to get his hands on Psychrobacter achli.
Burke and Farraday eventually left, but Vasteneur lingered. He took meals in Coen’s room, watching Thea like a hawk. His eyes on her felt like a second skin, a claw dragging down her body.
“You’ve taken everything,” she finally screamed. “What more do you want?”
Sitting on Coen’s cot, one leg folded over his other knee and a cup of tea held centimeters from his lips, Aldric Vasteneur paused. He set the drink aside, adjusted the cuffs of his fitted jacket, then pulled a kerchief from his breast pocket and dabbed at his mouth.
“I want what the Radicals want,” he said calmly. “For the greatest find of our generation—an unparalleled resource—to set the Trios free. Hevetz will help bring forth this new resource, but unlike corrarium, the Cradle won’t crave it. They’ll fear it, fear us. They’ll surrender. Everyone—even the pro-Union rabble—will submit to Radical ideals.”
“If you’re talking about biological warfare, you don’t understand how fast this spreads. It will wipe out billions.”
“I thought you were smart, Miss Sadik. It was why we approved your internship.” Vasteneur stood and walked toward the glass. Thea was nearly his height and yet he made her feel small. It was his posture, rigid and confident, combined with the glib way his limbs swayed at his sides. “The contagion is not the weapon. You are the weapon. Hosts. So long as we can control the hosts, we have an autonomous army. We will no longer be pawns moved by the Union’s whims.”
Thea’s thoughts moved to the implants he’d mentioned. Production. He was going to create more hosts and try to control them. There was no twitch to his gaze, no frenzy to his pulse. His heart beat steadily. His voice was sure. He wasn’t bluffing.
“People will look for me. For us,” she said desperately. “They’ll dig, find the truth before you can make your move.”
“What is truth, I wonder? Is it an idea? Documented history? Public record?” He smiled crookedly. “The truth is only as good as the information supporting it. Control the information, and you control the truth. You are dead, Miss Sadik, and you have been since that arctic storm hit Northwood Point. No one is coming for you.” He leaned in, nose nearly touching the glass. “No one.”
The days began to blend together. She kept track of them by counting dinners, the tally growing in her mind.
At the end of the week, she was brought to the locker rooms and allowed to shower. Like before, the place was emptied for her visit and she was threatened with shocks if she tried to run. The mirror fogged, taunting her. The air vent she’d crawled into was now welded shut.
After the shower, she was transported to the labs, secured to a reclined chair, and left with nothing but the operating light overhead. When she was beginning to wonder if they’d forgotten about her, the door slid open and Dr. Farraday strode into view.
“Nothing but blood work today, Thea. No need to fret.” He pulled on a set of gloves and positioned a paper mask over his mouth and nose. Lowering himself into a seat beside her, the doctor readied the needle and leaned closer than seemed necessary.
Thea contemplated yanking her limbs free of the restraints and snapping his neck just for the fun of it. It would get her nothing in the end. There were guards stationed outside the room. She could hear their pulses even now. But the fantasy of revenge, of seeing just one of these men suffer, was tempting. She was thinking about how Farraday’s slowing pulse would feel beneath her clenched fingers when he whispered, “Is Amber okay?”
The surveillance camera was behind Thea, mounted above the door. She’d seen it when she’d been dragged into the room. Currently, it would capture nothing but her back, and with Dr. Farraday’s mask obscuring his mouth, it was unlikely the camera would capture much from him.
“She was fine when I last saw her on Halo,” Thea said quietly.
Something glinted in the doctor’s eyes. “So no damning symptoms? Hemorrhaged eyes or bloody nose?”
“Nope. She’s probably just like me now.”
The glint disappeared.
“What’s that, doctor? You’re concerned for her safety, but only if she’s not a host? You’re the one who put her in this situation to begin with.”
“Watch your tone. It’s showing in your shoulders, and they’ll see it on the footage.” Thea went still, trying to read his expression, but he’d lowered his gaze to her arm and was now focused on inserting the needle into her vein. Blood zipped through the tubing and began filling the bag.
“Do you know where they’ll go, truly?” he asked.
“If I did, I wouldn’t tell you.”
The doctor glanced up, eyes pleading.
“What’s the shipment that arrives today?” Thea challenged him. “Or maybe it already arrived a few days ago. I’m getting fuzzy on time.”
“I can’t tell you that.”
“What about the stuff Vasteneur brought? I heard something about implants.”
“Thea.” It was said with impatience. He could ask questions, but not her.
“The shipment is a bunch of hosts, isn’t it? You’re going to infect a bunch of kids and try to turn them into an army. The implants must be some means to control them, snuff out their free will.”
Dr. Farraday turned away, drumming the blood bag with his index and middle fingers. “Why ask questions if you’ve already figured out the answers?”
“And my blood? You don’t need this much to infect someone.”
“Research.”
“Are they trying to find a cure?”
“A treatment of some sort. Maybe a vaccine. You’ve shown resistance to the negative side effects of Psychrobacter achli, so it’s reasonable to assume that you hold the key to immunization as well.”
“Let me help,” Thea pleaded.
The doctor shook his head.
“It would be a better use of my time than sitting in that cell. I’m going crazy in there with nothing to do.”
Farraday tested the blood bag again. It was nearly full.
“So this is it? I’ll shower once a week, give blood once a week, and sit locked in my room otherwise?”
“That seems to be the gist of it.” He withdrew the needle from Thea’s arm and didn’t even bother putting pressure on the injection site. Thea’s blood clotted instantly. “You can’t talk to Coen, right? I was correct when I told Burke that the other day? I really want
to confirm that my daughter is okay.”
“Whose side are you on, Doctor?” Thea growled.
A small pause. “Until recently, I thought I knew.”
“Well, that’s not good enough. You don’t get to pick both. You have to choose.”
“It’s not that easy.”
“Actually, it is. The fact that this is hard for you tells me exactly where you stand.”
He stood abruptly and rapped on the door, calling, “We’re done in here.”
The guards entered, hooking their metal leads back into Thea’s collar, unlatching her from the chair. Dr. Farraday was putting her blood on ice when she was tugged into the hall.
The pattern repeated. Daily meals and weekly showers followed by blood draw sessions, but no experiments in between. Not on Thea, at least.
The hosts were a different story.
The first time she heard them—their thoughts loud and wild and confused—it brought her to tears. She was in the shower, close to the room where she and Coen had endured so much testing. She wanted it to be his voice in her head, and instead it was a sea of voices, lost and hopeless. She tried to reach out to them, to tell them it would be okay, to hang in there; but they’d already been infected and weren’t listening for Thea. They weren’t even listening for each other. They were almost feral, their thoughts propelled through the space station, muddling together, creating a wave of noise. She couldn’t break through.
She never saw them, and they never saw her.
Three weeks in, Thea almost found herself wishing to be tested again. Not the torturous type, but the tests where her strength had been measured, where she was allowed to spar in the ring. She wanted to meet the other teens, or even just one of them. The desire to speak with someone of her kind was overwhelming. Being alone had become her torture.
She started working out in her room. Push-ups and sit-ups and jumping jacks. The lip above her doorway allowed for fingertip pull-ups. She did knee-highs until sweat ran into her eyes. It was about remaining sane as much as it was about staying strong.
Thea couldn’t envision an end to the nightmare, but she took it one day at a time.
Dr. Farraday appeared to be slipping. He wasn’t on the fence so much as he was in the process of climbing over it. He loved his daughter more than the Radicals. During each weekly blood session, he told Thea a little more, until the entire plan was laid bare and Thea was gaping in shock—helpless, hopeless, scared.