Immunity

by Erin Bowman

  They’d landed on a rocky outcropping that rose several meters out of the desert. The parachute lay tangled on the rocks, billowing like a dying jellyfish as a hot breeze teased at the fabric. The sun was high overhead.

  Nova scrambled off the pod and onto the rocks, climbing the stout structure. Turning slowly at the highest point with a hand held to shield her eyes, she searched the horizon. Sand, dunes, and more sand. It had to be at least forty degrees Celsius. A bead of sweat trailed down her back.

  The only sign of civilization appeared far in the distance and low in the sky. A giant cloud of smoke and fumes—all that remained of Halo.

  Every centimeter of his body ached, and when he regained consciousness, Coen’s eyes flew open. The first thing he saw was the buckled shape of the pod overhead and then Amber, crouched before him.

  “Are you—?” she began, but he held a hand up to cut her off, pain exploding through his muscles. When she tried to help him sit, he pushed her away.

  “Fine. I’ll meet you outside,” she grumbled as she turned away.

  He didn’t even feel bad about his rudeness. He could explain it later. In that moment, all he could focus on was the sensation in his chest, the connection buzzing in his mind. It was still there. Her existence, her essence, her every thought crashing into him. She was restless. Pacing, if Coen had to guess. She thought she’d sensed him, and then everything had gone silent, but now . . . Thea paused. She could feel him, too.

  Coen?

  I’m here.

  Oh my god. I thought I imagined it all. She was crying. There was a wetness on his own cheeks. Her voice was beautiful.

  I heard you just before our escape pod crashed. I got knocked out for a bit.

  You, knocked out? Mr. Invincible?

  I wasn’t buckled in and hit my head pretty hard. I can’t believe I can hear you. I’m not hallucinating, am I?

  No, she said. This is real. The connection was gone, though. I’ve been trying to reach you for weeks. I thought the ship was just out of range, but maybe it was because of the distance and because you were in cryo. Remember how foggy it felt on Paramount, in cryo, even when we were right next to each other?

  Yeah, but that doesn’t explain why I couldn’t hear you when I came out.

  I just got back from medical. They were taking more blood. They do it every week, and they knock me out during transit.

  He worked the words over in his mind—delirious with glee, barely able to believe they were talking. Then furious that she wasn’t with him. Angry that those bastards were still drawing her blood. Racked with guilt that she was still in their hands.

  I never should have left you.

  It was the only way.

  Still . . . He choked on a sob. How could he explain it to her? That he’d never felt more alone or terrified than when their connection had severed. That he’d been a shadow of himself, how he’d felt as though a critical part of him had gone missing. She’d created an abscess in his side, one that throbbed with every beat and never seemed any closer to healing. She both fueled and destroyed him.

  I understand, she said, hearing every last thought. He’d forgotten how annoying it was to have nothing be private. How annoying and wondrous. I cried almost nonstop the first week, she admitted.

  And recently?

  I stopped crying, but I never stopped trying to reach you.

  The words made his chest ache, but not in the way it had when they’d been separated. Instead, he felt giddy, as though his heart was beating too fast. It was intoxicating. He wanted to replay this moment for hours, to hear her voice forever. He wondered if he loved her, or if this feeling was just a product of their bond. She wondered the same back, and he found himself puzzled at how they could know everything they were each thinking—how they could be bound so deeply—and still not be able to concretely know how they felt about each other.

  Coen, a lot has happened since you left, Thea said hurriedly, her tone turning serious. Aldric Vasteneur is here. He’s partnered with the Radicals. A shipment of teens arrived after you guys got away. They’ve injected them all. A few were too old and were killed once they changed. The others are all hosts now, a dozen or so bonded like you and me according to Dr. Farraday.

  Farraday’s giving you information? Coen could barely process this turn of events.

  He loves his daughter more than the Radicals. Don’t get me wrong, he’s not exactly helping me, just passing along info. But the info is valuable, especially seeing that you and I can talk.

  Are you hurt? Are they testing you still?

  I’m fine. But she wasn’t. He could feel it in his bones. She hadn’t been tested in the same way as when he’d been with her on Kanna7, but her time there was slowly breaking her. Coen wondered how much more she could withstand.

  They’ve developed a way to control the hosts, she went on. A cerebral implant that blocks certain impulses, keeps them loyal. It can shock, too, like the hot caps, but now it’s literally inside their brains.

  A cold shiver ran down Coen’s spine. His ability to think freely had been all that kept him hopeful during his time on Kanna7.

  So if a host tries to fight back . . . ?

  They can’t, according to Farraday. Or at least, none have tried. Regardless, the shocking capability is there as a backup.

  Have they given you one?

  No. Something about me being their source host now and wanting to keep me unaltered. But the other hosts . . . He’s going to use them soon. To force the Union’s hand at—

  “Coen, you better come see this!” Nova called from outside the pod. The pilot’s pulse was kicking up. Amber’s, too.

  What’s wrong? Thea asked. I thought you were safe.

  We’re in the Inansi Desert, but Casey’s security agency didn’t want us to land. I’m gonna go join the others, see what’s up. He pushed to his feet. Already, the aches were receding, his body healing. His muscles were stiff, but not useless. Stay with me? he asked Thea.

  We’re bonded, she said with a smile. It’s not like I have a choice.

  The convoy drove across the desert, drawing steadily nearer. Amber could make out six white vehicles with raised chassis and solar panels mounted to the roofs. “Should we hide?” she asked.

  “Hide where? They’ve already seen the pod and are heading right for us.” Nova squinted at the vehicles. “Think it’s the GSA?”

  Coen shook his head. “There’s a logo on the side doors. Looks like a P, but its broken. Like an optical illusion.”

  Amber strained her eyesight. She could see it now, too. The logo was designed to appear three-dimensional, and the beams and cross-sections connected in a physically impossible manner. “Maybe it’s local citizens,” she offered.

  “Citizens in a convoy that has a matching logo on all the doors?” Coen scoffed. “My money’s on a private company.”

  “That’s better than law enforcement,” Nova said.

  The vehicles hummed nearer, and soon they were sliding to a stop in the sand. A long tread connected front and rear tires. The doors cracked open, and the barrels of several guns appeared—and not stun guns, but models that shot bullets.

  “You were saying?” Coen gritted out. He raised his palms, and Amber hurried to do the same.

  The faces came into view next, eyes hidden behind sunglasses. From what Amber could see through the windows, the personnel wore gray uniforms, that same impossibly shaped P stitched into their breastplates.

  “On your knees,” someone barked from behind the door. “Put your hands behind your head.”

  “Can I ask what this is about?” Nova called.

  “On your knees now!”

  A tiny red dot touched Nova’s shoulder, then twitched, settling over her heart. A red dot appeared on Coen’s next. Amber didn’t need to look to know there was one over her own heart as well.

  She slumped to her knees. Laced her fingers behind her head. Coen dropped like a weight into the sand, too. It was Nova who remained stoi
c, chin raised.

  “Nova, get down,” Amber pleaded. “Do what they say.”

  “What if they’re the company we’re looking for?” she gritted out. The odds of that seemed impossibly slim to Amber, like finding a single needle among the grains of the desert, but Nova called out to the newcomers. “Can you at least tell us who you are?”

  “A company that’s worked hard to keep their tech out of the hands of Radicals,” the apparent leader said. Hope spiked in Amber’s chest. Maybe this really was the company Burke feared. It seemed too easy, but the mere fact that this company opposed Radicals was good news.

  “You’ve landed a little too close to our base for comfort,” the man went on. “We’re bringing you in for questioning. Now, on your knees.”

  When Nova hesitated, a warning shot was fired into the sky, and any hope Amber had been feeling vanished. “Nova,” she snarled. “Just do what they say.”

  The pilot reluctantly slumped into the sand.

  The convoy’s leader smiled, then jerked his head, giving his team a silent order. Four personnel peeled off from the vehicles, weapons still trained as they crept forward.

  The sun beat down on the back of Amber’s neck. Sweat stung as she tried to blink it from her eyes. The nearest man reached Nova, grabbing the pilot’s hands and forcing them down behind her back. Cuffs clinked shut. Then the people were bearing down on her and Coen.

  Someone stepped to Amber’s side, casting a shadow on her. It offered a momentary break from the sun. Coen was weak beside her, still healing from the crash, but maybe they could take these strangers. She knew how fast he was, what he was capable of. There was a good chance she was just as skilled, too.

  No way, Coen snapped in her mind.

  Amber had been leaking her thoughts again. Sloppy. Unguarded.

  But this close we could get the element of surprise.

  I said no! Coen repeated firmly.

  So we just let them take us? We could beat them, and then the vehicles are ours.

  Ours to go where? We have no clue where the nearest city is, or if the people there will be friendly. We have no food or water, and definitely no citizenship IDs. These guys aren’t military or GSA. They’re the perfect cover. Let them take us to safety before the Casey officials who shot us from the damn sky show up.

  And then? Amber asked. The cuffs clicked shut over her wrists. The man hauled her to her feet.

  And then we do what I did on Achlys. Manipulate. Lie. Use others as a means to an end. Get what we’re after at all costs, but we have to stay alive first. We have to ally ourselves to someone. So right now, we cooperate.

  The weapons stayed trained on Coen, even once he was in a vehicle.

  At the mental mention of the red laser on his chest, Thea bristled in his mind. She was thinking of Dr. Tarlow—the woman’s skin, healed after a gunshot wound to the abdomen, but her eyes lifeless and her pulse gone.

  I’m not going to give them a reason to shoot me, Coen assured her.

  It didn’t matter. Thea was still on edge, practically breathless.

  The vehicles glided over the sand. Nova and Amber were together in the rover behind Coen’s. He rested his head on the window, relaying everything he saw to Thea. The ride was smooth until the sand gave way to parched mud cracks. Dust blew across the windshield. They were moving south based on a compass on the dash, heading toward low mesas that broke the flat horizon in the distance.

  The company personnel talked about security and a drilling operation on Bev and a man named Solomon Weet. When the clock on the dash informed Coen that he’d been in the car roughly twenty minutes, a barricade appeared ahead. Standard fencing with barbed wire along the top, he told Thea.

  Security checkpoint?

  Not sure.

  Fear rippled through him, and Thea sensed it. Had he trusted the wrong people? Maybe they weren’t a private company but a contractor working for the GSA, gathering up Coen and his friends on the agency’s behalf. When they reached the checkpoint, the driver flashed an ID at the guard, and the vehicle slipped through the fencing, entering the gaping expanse of desert beyond.

  Five minutes later, the convoy came upon a sprawling, single-story compound. Solar arrays lined every inch of the roof. The garage to the side was taller, likely holding ships in addition to ground transportation, and it, too, was covered in dark panels.

  Coen scanned every surface for a name, a logo. There was none. It was only once they’d parked in the garage and been dragged from the vehicles that he got his first glimpse of the impossible P he’d seen on the uniforms. A giant version of the logo marked the floor they were ushered across. It was plastered again on the door they pushed through to enter the rest of the compound, only this time a name was spelled out beneath it in neat, narrow letters.

  Paradox Technologies, he relayed to Thea.

  It made sense now, the way the logo was illustrated, how the beams and cross-sections of the P appeared logical at first but failed to add up on closer observation. It was a purposeful contradiction. A paradox.

  Who are you? Nova had asked near the drop pod.

  A company that’s worked hard to keep their tech out of the hands of Radicals, the man had replied.

  What the hell were they making here?

  Nova was beginning to wonder if she wasn’t the pilot she’d thought she was.

  She’d landed on Achlys only to watch half her crew die.

  She’d flown Exodus and ended up a hostage of the Radicals.

  She’d escaped on Halo, only to crash-land on Casey and be taken hostage again—this time by a private company whose end game she couldn’t even begin to fathom.

  A better pilot might have out-navigated that missile. A smarter pilot would have anticipated pushback from planet security and launched drop pods earlier. At this rate, Nova was beginning to consider that she might be cursed.

  “Miss Singh?” the officer in front of her barked. “Are you listening?”

  She was sitting in a chair, arms tied behind her back. Her shoulder sockets ached. The edge of the backrest dug into her biceps.

  “Not really,” she admitted.

  The officer slammed a Tab on the table. The legs rattled against the cement floor. Nova had been struck twice already—once in the gut, another blow to the face—and had expected a third just now. Maybe they were starting to buy her story, see that she wasn’t lying.

  “We’ve been telling you the truth,” Coen snarled beside her. He was also secured to a chair, though Nova knew he could bust the metal cuffs holding his hands together if he wanted. She knew how strong he was. Amber too now, who was secured to her own chair beside Coen, though maybe the medic still doubted her own abilities. Still, the only reason Nova could figure that Coen hadn’t acted yet was fear. Not of the Paradox guards, but of what might happen in a scuffle. The handcuffs would certainly injure Coen in the act of breaking them. If the guard was cut trying to restrain Coen, if Coen’s blood entered his bloodstream . . .

  “We have no reason to lie,” Coen went on. “We were being held against our will by Radicals. We’re not working with them.”

  The officer sucked his bottom lip, thinking. He glanced between Nova and Coen and Amber.

  It was true that they hadn’t lied. They’d withheld details, certainly. For starters, they hadn’t mentioned how Coen and Amber hosted Psychrobacter achli in their blood. There was no saying how Paradox might react to that knowledge. Chances were Coen and Amber were communicating right now, discussing the odds.

  It stung in a way Nova hadn’t been prepared for—to know they could talk and she was unable to hear a damn thing. That even if she wanted to join the conversation, she couldn’t.

  Then again, she could sit here having these thoughts and no one could hear them. To think that Coen and Thea had shared everything, that they had no private moments . . .

  Nova had once longed to know what Dylan Lowe thought—about their friendship that never had a chance to become more, about everything.
Now she wondered if it had been a blessing to not know. A person needed privacy or they’d suffocate.

  “Let me get this straight,” the officer said. “You were working a Hevetz job on Achlys, and on the way home, a Trios military ship manned completely by Radicals picked you up, brought you to a remote space station, and held you there against your will until you escaped. Everyone but this Althea Sadik you mentioned.”

  “That about sums it up.”

  “Do you realize how far-fetched that sounds? Why the hell would the Radicals do that? And why would Hevetz not fight to get their employees back?”

  “They’re working together,” Nova said. “I’ve explained this already.”

  “It still doesn’t make sense. What could three teens possibly know that would make the Radicals do such a thing? And why would a random medic”—he glanced at Amber—“risk helping you escape? You’re not telling me something.”

  Nova looked to Coen. Maybe we should just tell him, Nova thought, praying he registered the idea in her expression, furious she couldn’t send the thought to him so simply.

  His brows dipped slightly. His eyes narrowed. “Who knows why the Radicals do anything,” he said. “Rational goals have never really been their forte.”

  The officer scowled.

  “Why are you so scared of them?” Nova asked. “I mean, you must be scared if the GSA shot down our shuttle, but you guys rushed to retrieve us. You’re breaking laws just to secure this interrogation.”

  “I’m not the one being interrogated, Miss Singh,” the officer snapped. “I’ll ask the questions.”

  Nova slumped into her seat, spent. They’d been at this for nearly an hour. She was tired and grumpy and thirsty. Her throat scratched. She was thinking about how a warm shower would feel, how amazing it would be to kick off her clothes and wash the sand and grit from her body, when the door burst open.

  A woman stood in the frame, face flushed as though she’d been running.

  Coen shot to his feet.

  He stood so quickly that the cuffs snapped. Blood pooled at his wrists. The officer trained the gun on him. A red radar dot appeared on Coen’s chest.