by T. L Smith
“But they’re all right here, the same circumstances, the same eras.” I wanted to point it out to him, page for page, but he blocked my arm from reaching for my notes. “It’s true. Just read them, please.” I knew he thought I bordered on a dangerous edge, if I hadn’t already slipped over that fragile precipice. “I’m not crazy!”
“Sweetheart, whatever story you can dream up, someone, somewhere either has or will live through it. Whatever’s possible in our imaginations is probably possible in the real world. If not today, then tomorrow. We just happened to be the ones living through this woman’s far-flung imagination, hundreds of years later.” Carl leaned closer. He knew I’d start to argue again and spoke slowly, calmly. “I’ll pack this up and take it back to the ship. I’ll read every page.”
I grabbed at his suit, straining the limits of his legs. “Please. Let’s take a job back in the old sector, too far away for them to find me. I don’t care about commissions, the new routes, none of that.”
“Let me read these, then we’ll talk about it.” He used the servos to force himself upright, breaking my hold on him. Carl hurried to pack all the printouts. “You must have paid a fortune to print all these into hard copies.”
“I needed to see them together. Feel them in my hands. They’re all here…” I helped gather the pages, barely listening to anything but my own thoughts. He’d agreed to look at my research. He’d help me escape this fate. My eyes blurred with tears. “…but… I think there’s things we’re never supposed to know. I wasn’t supposed to know this.”
“I’ll read everything. I promise. Now let’s go.” He threw my pack over his shoulder and wrapped his other arm around me to guide me out of the stacks, out of the library.
I didn’t protest his support. After hours caught up in this emotional frenzy, it took a toll on me. I could barely drag myself from the library.
* * * * *
A hand gripped my face, turning it to stare out into the void, the darkness. “Eyes clear to duty. Open them! The darkness returns.”
The voice I knew. It was Huracid. I’d tried to run, but he pulled me back and forced me to gaze into the black, empty void. It shouldn’t be so black. There should be the distant light of far-away galaxies. “The light is gone.” In its place was the coldness of absolute death. Even the echoes of silenced screams were gone. “You must stop the dark.”
“How?” His thoughts clearly expected me to do something. “I don’t know how to stop it.” I struggled, but Huracid wouldn’t let me turn away from the growing sensation of death. It reached out towards me. Absolute terror hid in that dark. It terrified me, but deep down I also felt anger. I couldn’t let this spread. I had to stop it before all life was engulfed.
“Yes. Feel the truth. See true within you.”
The hold on me let go and I woke to a dark figure looming over me. I screamed, but with a blink of my eyes the shadow disappeared. The room was dimly lit. “Computer, lights!” A blinding glare wiped away all the shadows, but the room still felt eerie.
I clutched at my chest, feeling my heart beat a thousand wild thumps. Since the real encounter with Huracid, I’d felt watched, but this felt so much more real. Even my face still felt as if it had been gripped in those strong fingers. But another glance around the room proved it was empty.
Blurry, but empty. I was alone. I closed my eyes, leaning my head against the back wall of my bunk. I felt exhausted. Probably needed more sleep, but that dream had effectively scared the shit out of me. I tried to take a deep breath to clear out the panic, but the more I woke up, the worse I felt.
My stomach rumbled and I could taste acid. What had I eaten? Something from a street vendor? No! I hadn’t eaten anything until Carl forced me to eat some soup. He’d insisted. The taste now struck me, making my stomach roll over hard. I quickly twisted my sluggish body out of the bunk, staggering to the tiny bath.
Though there was virtually nothing in my stomach to begin with, it took far too many minutes for my brain to acknowledge the wasted effort and stop retching. I tried washing the rest of the queasiness away in the sonic shower, standing under nutrient enhanced mists as they soaked into my starving flesh. Cool and refreshing, accompanied by cold air blowing on my face.
Why had Carl drugged me so heavily? Something must have happened.
The haze dwindled away, finally opening my senses. Leaning on the shower walls, I could feel the ship’s engines. We weren’t in port anymore and from the feel, we were at a full L4 Sync. Why? We didn’t have a job, so where were we going?
My worst fears took form. Was Huracid really back and taking me somewhere? To fight this darkness from my dreams? Where was Carl? Had they hurt him again? I dressed and quietly eased out of my room. Did I smell coffee? Huracid wouldn’t drink our coffee. If there was coffee, Carl made it. That was a good sign. I hoped.
In the dayroom, Carl sat and read. Perfectly healthy, perfectly at ease. No guards, but… again the sense there was someone else here. It almost filled the room. Strongest around Carl. Almost as if it emanated from him. There was another feel in the air. Almost like an… an emotion. A sense of satisfaction…approval? For doing what?
With the flicker of Carl’s eyes towards where I stood, that sensation completely disappeared. As quickly as flipping a switch. Was it just an effect of the drugs and the dream? I headed for the portal, keeping one eye on Carl. For that instant before he saw me he felt all wrong. Not the person I knew at all.
At the portal a quick glance confirmed our Sync was fully engaged. He’d brought me back, then drugged me, and now we were heading… where? Anger surged through me. “Tell me why I shouldn’t shoot you right now.”
Carl frowned. “Because there’s only one way to get rid of my body and there’d be a lot of explaining to do when you reached port.” Carl glanced at the time. “I didn’t expect you awake for another hour or two.” He stood and headed for the galley. “Maybe some food will make you feel better.”
“Right, so you can drug me again? How long have you had me out and where are you taking us?” Anger and pain drove me across the room and I shoved him. “I trusted you and now you’re going to betray me?”
“What the hell…?” Carl backed away, holding his hands up.
“You knocked me out and took my ship. Where are you taking me?” He didn’t back any further as I shouted at him, or duck as my hand struck his face. The sting burned deep into my fingers, but didn’t assuage the rage bursting out from deep inside. He blocked as I struck at him over and over, more and more viciously as training kicked in. “Where are you taking me?”
“Enough!” Carl grabbed my arm and jerked me off-balance, then spun me around and used my own arms to trap me. “Snap out of it. I didn’t kidnap you. I’m not taking you anywhere.” His arms tightened as I tried to back-kick him. I threw my head back and connected with his cheekbone.
“Damn it!” I hurt him, but not enough to break free. Instead the servos of his suit whined as his arms crushed around me. He picked me up and threw me down on the counter. His enhanced body strength made him far stronger. His legs pinned mine to the cabinet and his arm pressed into the back of my neck.
The harder I fought, the heavier his body pressed me against the counter. “Why are you doing this? What do you want?” A sharp stab in my hip drove me past rage and straight into panic as numbness spread through my body. “Why are you drugging me?”
He let the pressure off my neck. “Because, you’re out of control!”
CHAPTER NINE
“You drugged me and took my ship.” I gasped as he yanked me off the counter, his arms locked around my chest. The lower half of my body was already dead weight. I dug my fingers into his arms, trying to pry them loose. “Don’t do this. Please. Where are you taking me?”
His arms shook as he carried me a few steps, then released me. I could do little to help myself as I fell… into a chair. Carl glared down at me for a second before he turned away. “We’re on our usual route, which you’d
know if you’d asked the damn computer.”
Two steps away from me his hand slapped the wall. A wall covered with pages of paper. “This is what I’ve been doing. Reading your research. Trying to see what you see. To understand, so maybe I can keep you from driving yourself insane.”
The pages were lined up and he’d written the fictional characters’ names over pictures of real-life matchups. More papers littered the table. It was all the files I’d had printed at the library. It was all here.
Carl walked to the lounger he’d been relaxing on before I arrived. With my screaming and fighting silenced, I heard the servos of his suit as he lowered himself down. He never wore his full suit aboard. For the first time I felt the heavier gravity.
He dug into his pocket and removed a palm-hypo of pain blocker. Something else he only used in full gravity. It was probably what he used on me. He stabbed his thigh and the muscles of his jaw flexed. Gravity always caused him pain and I made it worse fighting him. I covered my face with my hands.
There was nothing going on, except my own insanity, just as he accused. “I’m sorry. What’s wrong with me?” I dared to look at him again, seeing his pain, able to feel it too. “Computer, reduce gravity.”
The computer responded softly. “I can’t complete the order. Live cargo.”
“What cargo?”
Carl sighed. “The meeting you missed. I accepted in your place. You’ve been doing business with them for years and we’d lose our route.” His hand covered his face, the shot not as effective as he needed or taking too long to kick in. “I didn’t know you wanted to go back to mail runs. Now it’ll have to wait until we finish the circuit. If you want to call it quits then...”
He took a deep breath, stood again and slowly swung his body away from me. “You’ll be down for an hour. Don’t call me unless it’s an emergency.” For the first time he sounded sincerely bitter.
He left before I could think of what I really needed to say. If there were words to take back all the crazy. He left and in his place was an ominous quiet. I stretched to reach the papers he’d tossed on the table and recognized the names, the file of real military bios from the days of the EH Rebellion.
The cover page displayed pictures two hundred years old. Both colonels, one a human woman, the other an Enhanced Hybrid man. An EH. A being created by normal humans to replace them in battle. Derived from human cells, DNA manipulated to select the traits they wanted in these beings, but refused the basic rights of humans, since they were manufactured.
She’d given up everything she’d been raised to believe, taught to believe, ordered to believe. She gave up everything for the truth, and the man she loved. A man the law said didn’t exist, except as a tool of war. She defied all convention to give him and his brothers the freedom they deserved. She fought his war because it was the right thing to do.
She was a real person, mirrored by a character whose story had been written when space travel was restricted to little more than throwing rocks at the moon. A period when humanity launched unmanned probes to Earth’s sister planets. An era when the best they constructed was a shabby, leaky skeleton of a space station. For the author, real space travel, colonies and EH were only science fiction. Yet she had predicted the future and these people so well.
I looked from these two pictures to other histories on the wall, including our own profiles. He’d arranged them in chronological order. Each fulfilled the writer’s imagination, but were real people whose actions and sacrifices defined their souls, carving themselves a sometimes quiet obscure place in history.
Beneath those sacrifices ran another common thread. They all shared something I habitually rejected, or sabotaged. I had to stop.
I fought my numb legs until I had them under me and forced myself forward, step by step. It took long excruciating minutes to reach Carl’s door. When he refused to answer, I overrode the security code.
Carl met me at the door. The imprint of my hand on his face darkened with anger. I could feel resentment fill the air.
When I reached out to touch his cheek, he flinched and knocked my hand away. “You don’t have a right to enter without my permission. Oh, wait. It’s your ship!”
“I’m sorry.” I reached out again as I took a step towards him. “I was out of my mind. I know you’d never hurt me.” I heard the servos again and looked down out of reflex. The full suit was gone, replaced by neuro-braces, held to his legs magnetically. Allowing him nearly the same mobility as the full suit, just not the full strength.
He followed my glance downward, before his eyes narrowed hard. “Why, because of this? Poor crippled Carl, he couldn’t do such terrible things.” He didn’t bat my hand away again. Instead he grabbed it tight and jerked me into the room, hard enough I couldn’t keep my balance on numb legs.
He did nothing to keep me from falling, but stalked after me as I slid across the floor. “I’m certainly capable of being the bastard you thought of me.” Before I could push myself to my feet, he yanked me up and tossed me against the wall. His hand around my throat kept me from slipping to the floor again. “I might really be the monster you thought.”
I clung to his arm, but he didn’t squeeze so hard I couldn’t breathe. With my other hand I pressed against his chest. I felt his heart racing. I felt him struggling with his own demons. He wanted to scare me, at the same time it hurt him. I didn’t fight him, only stared into his eyes. “No, you’re not.”
“I am! Don’t forget how we met!” He slammed me against the wall and my head bounced painfully. I closed my eyes, but his free hand grabbed my face. “No, look at me. I’m not a good man. Do you need proof?” He grabbed my shirt, the warmth of his fingers against my skin lingered for a second, before the fabric cut at the back of my neck and ripped.
“I don’t need proof.” I resisted the building urge to fight back. Instead I forced myself to listen to my heart. “I need you.”
“Don’t.” His fingers tightened. “Don’t trust me.”
“I know you won’t hurt me. I know you can’t.”
His face contorted, his teeth grinding as he tried to force anger out through his hands. Suddenly he slammed his fist into the wall beside my head. He let me go completely and turned away as I slid to the floor, my legs still too weak to hold me up.
The tension and emotions left me shaking. I closed my eyes and laid my head against the wall. I could hear his steps as he paced the floor, as far across the small room as he could get.
When he stopped I opened my eyes. I couldn’t read the confusing mix of emotions running through him now, but I heard his defeatism. “I can’t do this. I can’t wake up every day to the constant doubt and fear in your eyes.”
I pulled my useless legs up and wrapped my arms around them. “It’s not just the book that makes me this way. There’s always been something wrong… with me.” It was a hard admission to think about, let alone say out loud. “I never fit in. Not as a kid. Not even in my own family. Not in the military. Not even with other freighters.” I held my arm out to the ship around us. “Until I came out here on my own. I belong out here, and I was happy. Finally.”
My arms fell back to wrap around me, defensively. “So I never let anyone get too close. Anyone who could ruin this. That’s why no one ever stayed on too long. Until you. You…fit. You didn’t make me feel… you didn’t try to force anything.”
This was coming out so wrong. “When this stuff started to happen, when you got hurt, that scared me. I thought I’d lose you. Then the book… all the people who were with m… her. They all got hurt or worse. I couldn’t let that happen to you. So I pushed you away.”
I stared back at him. “It wasn’t doubt you saw in my eyes.” I reached out my hand one more time. “I don’t know what we are, or what will happen next, but I never doubted you.”
Carl hesitated, and after a moment he came to me, but stayed at an arm’s distance. “You don’t know me. I have secrets too. Dark secrets you won’t understand. Secrets I don’t
want to understand.”
“I don’t care.” I held my hand higher. “I need you. I can’t be alone in this anymore.”
He took a step closer and reached for my hand. His fingers circled my palm softly before wrapping around my wrist. He let his eyes shift to mine. “If we do this, you have to promise, no going back, no matter what happens.” He pulled me up and caught me.
In his arms all the ugliness and doubts dissolved. A sense of safety engulfed me. Nothing he could tell me would change my feelings. “No going back, just don’t ever let go.”
“Never! No matter what.”
Carl’s arms tightened, his eyes glared down at me. Anger and doubt suddenly surged into hunger. With my legs still weak, Carl easily carried me to his bunk. Laying me down as he kissed me.
As many times as we’d been together, I could feel the difference in his lips, in his touch. Hungry, but taking his time. The glide of his fingers down my body excited me. His lips left mine to nibble down my neck, to that spot right at the curve of my neck. His body shifted as I tugged to free one of my legs, then wrapped it around him as his hips ground against mine.
His hand slipped into the small of my back as I arched my body against his, his other hand caught my shirt, pulling it up my body. I twisted out of it as he pulled it over my head. With several more twists of his body and mine, together in the same hunger, I got both my legs around him, feeling his bare flesh against mine.
I thrust my whole body against his as he pushed deep into me. He held me there, glaring down at me. “No going back. No matter what.” He didn’t wait for an answer, kissing me hard. If I had any doubts left in my mind and body, he exorcised them with a passion I’d never let myself feel. Ever.
CHAPTER TEN