But the chime buzzed again. Kieran snorted, rolling over. Sarrin held herself perfectly still, not daring to breathe until his body had relaxed again. Then she leapt to the door, opening it before they could ring again.
Three sets of Augment-blue eyes blinked at her. Two males and one female.
Sarrin blinked back.
Thomas, whom she knew in the war and from their escape on Junk, was the tallest and stood at the back. “Can we come in?” He glanced up and down the corridor, worried.
“No.” She stood in the door, toes curling back at the line between corridor and room. “You should go.”
“Please,” said Thomas. The rest looked at her with pleading eyes.
Sarrin glanced at Kieran’s sleeping frame, and stepped into the corridor, the doors sealing behind her. She cast a wary look first at the group huddled together, warring between whether to lean forward or away from her, and then to the empty hall. The edges of her vision darkened — it was not safe for her to be out of the room, the events of her last excursion fresh in her memory. But Thomas had been a friend. And beside him was the boy she had found cowering in the simulated war game so many years ago when they were all children.
Their eyes met, time dilating and folding in its strange way so that Sarrin was simultaneously in the corridor and in the jungle and slaughtering researchers in the hidden tower. The monster clawed at her, asking to come out.
The girl coughed, and stepped forwards. “Twenty-seven?”
Sarrin started at the nick-name.
The boy she had saved smiled quickly.
“I- I saw your marks,” the girl blurted.
Sarrin stared. The girl looked the same as her: dark hair, blue eyes, the same sunken cheeks, tired eyes, and haggard frame that had greeted Sarrin the latrine mirror. Another Augment, another experiment.
“We’ve come to ask you to be the alpha,” said Thomas.
It took a minute for his words to register through the encroaching fog. She had always hid the marks, letting others with fewer marks take the position. Sarrin stepped back, shoulder bouncing into the now-closed doors. “No.” She wasn’t fit to lead.
“Why not?”
She fumbled for the door controls embedded into the wall beside her. “It’s not a good idea.” She knew how to kill, not save. She was, after all, mostly monster.
“Please,” said the boy. “You saved us before.”
“And Adrienne” — the other boy pointed to the girl — “said she saw all your marks when your shirt ripped in the hall.”
“We” — Thomas stepped forward, gesturing in a circle around to the four of them — “don’t like what’s happening. Rami is rallying others around him. At first it was a just a couple, now it’s nearly half.”
Sarrin frowned.
“He’s trying to put himself in charge,” said the girl. “I heard him talking in Engineering. How it doesn’t make sense to have a common chief engineer, how nothing he does makes any sense, and he’s trying to sabotage us.”
“We like Kieran,” Thomas interjected. “We’re worried.”
“Rami said he’ll space all the commons,” the girl said.
Sarrin’s head swam, acutely aware of the serene, sleeping figure on the bed just on the other side of the wall.
“We’re tired of all the fighting,” said the boy she had saved. “Rami’s convinced the commons can’t be trusted, but if you say they’re helping us, then we’ll believe that.”
Her hand found the controls, and the doors opened behind her. Sarrin stepped back into the room.
“Wait.” They all lurched forward, hands on the frame blocking the door from closing.
“I can’t,” she said.
The boy leaned forward. “I saw Rami grab you. I know you wouldn’t hurt him normally, that you saved me.”
The dark edges of her vision clouded in tighter and Sarrin was suddenly dizzy.
“Sarrin,” Thomas said, his voice clear. “Rami is right about one thing. Whatever happened to you” — he gestured loosely at her back — “they did all that because they thought you were special, that you were stronger and smarter and quicker than the rest of us. None of us want to go back, we don’t want to live in cages or wonder what they’ll do to us next. You already killed Guitteriez. You could be our answer. Promise me you’ll think about it.”
They pulled their hands back, touching their five fingertips to their chests, saluting her as the doors sealed between them.
Kieran breathed softly on the bed beside her. Her head swam. Kieran spaced. Rami in charge. One thing was right though: she had attacked Rami.
Guitteriez too had called her the answer — to a problem she didn’t know or understand — and she had killed him, ripped him molecule from molecule. What was to stop her from doing the same to everyone else? Her arms tingled with the remembered heat of the facility on Junk imploding around her, because of her.
A particularly sharp snore cut into her consciousness, breaking the whirlpool of thought that threatened to drown her. She stared at the sleeping form, her feet digging into the grey carpet of the old freightship. Kieran had shared his quarters, his bed, even his secrets — Gods knew why — and all she could offer was danger. Her vision still swam murky at the edges. The monster was close. Too close.
She stepped to the nearest wall, quickly removing a section of paneling, and slipped into the space. She squeezed between the structural supports, crawling on her elbows and pushing with her toes, wedging herself into ever tinier spaces, until she was scarcely able to move her chest. The space suffocated her. It was good, it was right. The place where a monster should be. All her focus was needed for her breathing, each inspiration and expiration marked by a ragged effort. Just like the puzzle cube, it made it easier to remember where she was.
Not perfect. The memories of Guitteriez surfaced, Junk burning in her minds eye. She pushed it away, but not to be silenced, her mind pulled up a fresh memory: An image of the boy, terrified and dirty, as he crouched, hoping to hide himself from his hunters. A flash of his pale blue eyes in the instant he saw her, saw her for what she truly was: a monster. A child hunting another child.
She gripped a metal beam in her hand, bending it. Her body drooped and she fought to suck in air, the cramped space suddenly too big. She pushed herself forward, squeezing into the increasingly narrow space. She pushed until she had to wedge herself, her shoulders firmly pressed into the metal.
She stopped, the pressure crushing her chest enough that it forced her body to focus on being alive, instead of everything else.
Her mind calmed, and there was the vision of the boy again. Half-standing in front of her, awe in his adult eyes. Half crouched on the ground, screaming.
No, no, no. She tugged on the mats of her hair. It triggered another memory, calm washing over her. A girl brushed her hair, humming softly — a variation on the latest aria from the Musician Laureate. The same girl muttered in her ear, then ran skittering fingers up her ribs, causing young-Sarrin to shriek with laughter until the girl snatched her close and whispered in her ear to be quiet.
Sarrin gasped. Definitely no.
The memory shifted: the same girl, years later, attacking full force while Sarrin scrambled to stay alive and not hurt the girl she had long considered a friend. And young-Sarrin wailed for what had been lost between them.
She forced herself to breathe. What would it have been like if she had never heard of the Red Fever?
She drew an image of the orchards by her house, one of the few memories before everything had changed. The breeze gently dropping the lavender blossoms to the ground. Spring was always her favourite time of year, when the trees started afresh.
One of the branches rustled heavily, sending a swarm of petals swirling in the air. Halud grinned back at her from inside the tree.
No, she couldn’t think of her brother.
But he had always been there, permeated her childhood until the disease had ripped them apart.
Som
eone else’s childhood, what would that have been like?
The copper bulkheads designed themselves easily, taking her by surprise. A green-eyed girl chased by a green-eyed boy ran past. They giggled, and when he caught her at the end of the hall, he hugged her tight as they both shrieked with laughter. No one told them to be quiet, there was no reason to.
She slammed back into the space between the walls, unable to breathe. What was happening? Was she pulling memories from people now? The copper bulkheads were the same as the ones in the photo on Kieran’s nightstand. The green eyes were his too.
Kieran, marked an enemy, even though he hadn’t been anywhere near during the war. He was an Observer, a simple historian who came for exploration. Nothing more.
Her vision swam again, the black tendrils reaching across.
Suddenly the deep of space on the other side of the hull was crushing. The hull had an irregularity to it, the telltale mark of an auto-seal. Another mark to the left and, a little farther away, to the right, the pockmarks were everywhere. The ship was held together by patches. Small miracle it hadn’t been torn apart like everything else.
A small slit between the bulkhead and sheet of interior panelling let in light. In it she could see her hands — the normal, pink flesh surprised her. It hid — but didn’t prevent from being — the glittering monster skeleton underneath. No matter what happened here, there would always be that. She would never be free. Never be normal. Never be trusted to touch another without bleeding them of their life-force, of being out in the open without a chance of attacking innocents around her.
She was not the answer.
NINE
GAL NODDED SOLEMNLY AT AARON.
The other man nodded back and they slipped unseen into the night. Stop the destruction at all costs. They had agreed. From the bunker on Earth they had come, sneaking through the ship corridors and grey city streets. This was the mission where they had discovered it, the secret the Speakers tried to hard to protect.
Gal braced his hand on a clammy con-pals wall in the dark alley as he tripped over a piece of engine. The demons crowded around, tittering in their horrible high-pitched voices. He was not okay, he reminded himself. This was not the central city, not the Speakers’ compound. This was a ship. But it was getting harder to tell the difference.
A ship that was about to destroy something g — another piece of the secret — if he didn’t put a stop to it. Something else the Speakers would do anything to suppress.
Aaron pulled a panel from a wall and they slipped inside, squeezing themselves into the Speakers’ compound. Gal vaguely pushed aside the thick wires and ropey conduits that belonged more in a starship than a building. The demons clung to them, giggling as they swung back and forth.
Gal stopped them. “This is the spot.”
“Why are we in the walls, Gal?”
“We’re finding the Speakers’ database. Remember?”
“Yes. But why the bomb?”
Gal stared down at his hands and the device he was patching into the ship’s main power supply. “No.” He blinked twice to ground himself. “I’m hallucinating again, Aaron.” But now, at least, he could be certain they were on the warship.
“I know.”
“We have to stop them from getting to the planet. It wasn’t enough last time.”
“You’re still hallucinating, Gal.”
“This is important, we can’t fail. Not again.”
“Because of Cornelius?”
“Yes. I never understood it, I could never see the reason why the Speakers’ did what they did, not until I met Cornelius.” He bit his lip. “It’s too dangerous. I can’t lead them there. I never should have.”
Quietly, they moved to the next location, and Aaron handed him another laz-rifle. Gal pulled off the casing, redirecting the connections.
“You almost beat them, you know,” said Aaron. “You could do it, if you wanted to.”
“Someone else will have to carry on the fight.”
“You’re the only one who can finish it, Gal.”
Gal shook his head. “Not anymore.” He paused, taking a deep breath as he studied the connections his fingers had made thousands of times before. “I miss you.”
“I’m right here.”
“No. I miss the real you.”
“What are you getting at?”
“I couldn’t stop the warship last time. I couldn’t get our voices out. The truth…. I didn’t do enough. I have to make this bigger.”
“Bigger?”
Aaron helped him push a wall panel out, catching it before it fell, and climbing onto the floor below. The room was small and narrow, engine pieces dangling from the ceiling, the floor was littered with scraps in the places it wasn’t ripped open all together, but in his mind it was the pristine engine room aboard the Valkas.
“I can’t make the same mistake as last time,” said Gal. “All costs, remember?”
“Are you sure?”
He fought the torrent that threatened to bring him down, and nodded. “I can’t watch it again, I can’t see the same pattern over and over. You died for this. I’ll die for this.”
Aaron dropped the bag he had been carrying. Out of it spilled a laz-rifle and a magnified spanner. Gal set his face in a scowl. He picked up the rifle and the spanner, approaching the engine. Aaron watched as he worked. The grotesque little demons perched right on his head.
“Don’t forget your mission, Johnny.”
Gal twisted wires around each other. He connected his tablet to the circuitry, reading the hacked passcodes as if from a newsfeed. His fingers flew easily, the same as the day they’d accessed the restricted database, learned things they could never unlearn.
“You’re meant to save people. Don’t do this.”
“What do you know about it, you weren’t there.”
“I know what we found in the Speakers’ Compound. What we learned about the Augments. I was there with you.”
“You’re dead.”
“And you will be too.”
Gal grunted. “What does it matter? We all are, just varying degrees.”
Aaron sat quietly, the silence hanging in the air so long that Gal turned to see if he was still there.
“You’re important, Gal.”
“I’m a cracked old fool. In all the years, we never helped anybody. We never saved one person. I only made it worse. And somehow I’m still stuck here. I’m only half alive, Aaron. You get to be all the way dead, but I’m still living this.”
He turned to Gal, voice harsh. “I didn’t go with you all those years just so you could blow yourself up. There’s more you have to do.”
“My life is forfeit. It has been since the day my shuttle crashed on Indaer, the minute I saw things and understood things I could never un-see.”
“What about Cornelius?”
The demons jumped up and down, screaming in his ear.
He clamped his hands over his ears as though not hearing it would ease the searing ache across his gut. “I’m doing the best that I can.”
Cornelius had trusted him, and Cordelia. Cornelius was dead and Cordelia was stranded without her binary companion.
Aaron grabbed him. “Think about what you’re doing.”
“Don’t you see? They’ll never stop.”
“Will you ever stop?” Aaron pushed him, so he slammed against the wall, breath knocked from his lungs. “You go on and on about it happening again, but it doesn’t have to be like this. I realized something, all of it is the same, it is happening over and over. Remember how I died? Remember when Earth was lost? It’s the same. Good intentions, always, with unrealized side effects. You have to stop this. Stop protecting them from the secrets.”
Gal gasped, the tickle of truth bothering at the back of his brain. “I can’t let them find the planet.” This was bigger than him, bigger than all of them. “No matter the cost.”
“You don’t know who you are anymore,” Aaron screamed. “This isn’t the Valka
s! It’s not the restricted database! And your friends are not Hap Lansford!”
Another voice surprised him, deep and booming: “Gal!”
He blinked, standing in the engine room of the tiny freightship, debris strewn across the floor. Among the debris, a spanner and a laz-rifle casing. How had he gotten here? Hands grabbed him, lifted him up to his feet. He stared at a tall, hook-nosed man, an identical man behind him — the Augment doctors.
Aaron spoke from the corner, “Gal, you don’t know anymore. Think about what you’re doing.”
“I know what I’m doing!”
The doctors grabbed him and pulled, shouting.
Gal struggled in their grip.
“Galiant,” Hoepe grunted as he tried to hold him.
The cold sting of an auto-syringe pressed into his neck.
“The withdrawal effects are worse than we thought,” said one of the doctors, talking to the other.
But Gal knew better, this was something deeper. His head swam as the drugs spread through his system. “Don’t you see, they made you.” He looked deep into the crystal blue eyes, eyes that haunted him every night. “They made you.”
The doctor shook his head and turned to the other. “We’ll have to secure him.”
Gal felt himself slipping away, disappearing into oblivion. The past was trying to eat him alive. It was succeeding.
* * *
“What did you do, Gal?” Aaron sat on the chair in Gal’s quarters, head hung in his arms.
Gal rolled over in the bed, head groggy. Demons jumped all around him, across the bed sheets and on the floor. He lifted his hand to the memory of the cold syringe, the hiss that pressed into his neck.
Behind Aaron was the bar. The other side of the room was the bunker, destroyed. Gal’s hands settled on a set of old shuttle controls. He blinked. “Where am I?”
“You’re here with me,” smiled Hap.
Gal did a double take. Yes, it was Hap. Much younger, years ago. Tall and lithe. “What’s going on?” Gal asked.
“Strength guides us,” Hap answered.
Gal shut his eyes tightly, willing away the cascading memories that threatened to drown him. Hap had never understood.
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