by Claudia Gray
“Are you certain her functions will normalize?” he asks.
Shearer nods. “As certain as it’s possible to be. She is, after all, the first of her kind. My innovation. My creation.”
The thought of belonging to Shearer in any way is too grotesque to bear. Noemi looks up at Abel and says the only thing she knows for sure: “We have to get out of here.” She tries to reach toward him and to her relief finds that she can—but he pulls back. That’s when she recognizes the gold-tinged shimmer around Abel’s body—a portable force field.
But that’s meant to shield you from the cold vacuum of deep space. In-atmosphere, a field like that would deflect blasters and physical force, though it would also disorient anyone wearing it. Anyone human, anyway. Not Abel. But why would he be wearing it in a laboratory?
For protection.
Noemi looks over at Shearer again. They must be on Haven. Abel came here—risked his life—to save her. Whatever the hell has been done to her, he was trying to save her.
Abel says, “I want to see Noemi fully functional before we complete the deal.”
Shearer folds her arms, and her voice is like ice. “That’s going to take days. This has gone on long enough.”
“That wasn’t our agreement,” he says flatly. “Noemi must be safe and well.”
Why would Gillian Shearer be willing to save me? It’s not like she’s our friend. She’d only help me if Abel had something she wanted, and there’s nothing she wants more than…
Abel himself.
At last Noemi understands why they’re on Haven. She knows the bargain Abel has made.
“No,” she whispers. She shakes her head, or tries to, but it lolls to one side. Why does she have to be so weak and helpless? Why doesn’t she have her own body? Why is any of this happening? “You can’t do this, Abel. Come on—we’ll get out of this, together—”
Neither he nor Shearer listens to her. Shearer says, “She is well. The rest is just healing and adjustment. As for safe—how do you suggest we arrange that?”
Abel never looks away from Shearer’s face. “Permit me to load Noemi onto my ship and program a course for the Haven Gate. Then you allow me to monitor sensors until I can tell she’s safely out of range.”
Shearer purses her lips thoughtfully, then nods. “That’s fair.”
Noemi finds her full voice. “Abel, stop! Don’t do this.”
“It’s already done.” He looks back at her at last, his expression so tender, so sad, that tears prickle in her eyes. “I tried to die for you once before. You declined. This time, I must insist.”
They’re about to have the argument of all arguments. If he thought she was mad when she nearly jettisoned him out an air lock—
The cold silvery mist snakes through her body again, wreathing around her skull. It doesn’t hurt, but it muddies her mind again, until she’s only able to hold on to a few basic thoughts.
She can’t stop them. This is going to happen. Has already happened.
Noemi is nothing God ever made, and Abel is dying.
6
SHE’S ALIVE.
Abel keeps coming back to this thought every few seconds. That reaction makes little sense; technically speaking, Noemi has been alive this entire time, and has only shifted to a new form of being. Still, he aimed for the impossible, and it has been achieved.
Granted, his probability of surviving this trip to Haven is currently at a discouragingly low 3.3 percent. That’s irrelevant. Noemi’s probabilities are shifting, but at minimum she has a 94 percent chance.
Gillian finally bows her head in assent. “You can take Vidal to your ship. But you’re going under guard, and if you make one move, they won’t aim for you. They’ll aim for her.” Her blue eyes turn toward Noemi.
“I won’t attempt to escape,” Abel says.
She snaps, “Your promises are meaningless.”
“It isn’t a promise. It’s a necessity. I couldn’t attempt to take off without risking the destruction of my ship, and Noemi along with it. I wouldn’t have gone to so much trouble to save her if I were going to immediately endanger her again.”
Noemi groans in discomfort, or maybe in protest. He can’t tell, because her eyes have become unfocused, her body limp. The cybernetic nervous system must have just deepened its penetration into her brain. Adjustment will take time; he wishes he could help her through it.
But she’s strong, resourceful, adaptable. She’ll triumph in her new body. His assistance is not required.
Gillian’s blue eyes narrow, like laser pinpoints in the stark white laboratory. “We could take her to the ship for you.”
“And trust you to see her safely offworld?” Abel raises an eyebrow. “Our past encounters suggest that trusting you would be highly unwise.”
“You’ve developed an attitude, haven’t you?”
“You can call it an attitude if you wish,” he says. “I call it self-respect.”
Gillian Shearer has no answer for that. She allows Abel to load Noemi back onto the biobed; the warrior mechs that align around him are the only additional show of force Gillian needs. The mech who first captured Abel is still moving a little too slowly, but it is operating well within acceptable parameters. If Gillian notices the mech’s flaws, she doesn’t show it. She just watches as Abel eases Noemi’s biobed out the door, mechs marching behind him.
The biobed’s antigravity casters keep it hovering; even a human could push it with ease. As a precaution, Abel flips on energy bands that glow around Noemi’s wrists and legs. The bands are normally meant to keep unconscious patients secure. They should prevent her from hurting herself before she gains some control.
Seventy-eight seconds later, Noemi stirs, awake again. She blinks up into the light as he pushes the biobed down a long white corridor with gleaming walls. “It’s just a bad dream,” she murmurs. “A bad dream. That’s all. This isn’t real.”
Humans sometimes say such things rhetorically, as an expression of dismay. Abel believes Noemi is being literal. She doesn’t yet trust the new information from her transformed body. Her still-growing cybernetic nervous system can’t make sense of her unfamiliar surroundings. It will be a long time before she can marvel at her new capacities, abilities, strength. Instead, in this moment, she’s… confused and afraid. He’d hoped to guide her through more of the transition, but he probably won’t get the chance.
It’s uncomfortable to see her that way, but it’s for the best. If she can’t fully process what’s happening to either of them, maybe his fate will hurt her less.
“Stay calm,” he says to Noemi. “Everything will be all right.”
Behind him march the six warrior mechs—three Charlies and three Queens—who have been assigned to make sure that everything will definitely not be all right, at least not for Abel. They’ll force Abel to leave the ship and take him back to Gillian Shearer and his imminent death.
Still, he hasn’t given up. Shearer has a 96.7 percent chance of successfully completing the consciousness transfer. Yet she might realize the task to be impossible, or discover that Mansfield’s soul has degraded in storage. Three point three percent isn’t a promising chance, but it isn’t nothing. Any value above zero equals hope.
Though it’s hard to concentrate on such things when Noemi lies so close to him, breathing and blinking and almost entirely awake—her brown eyes open and searching for him—
Analyze, he tells himself, and gets back to it.
Gillian’s laboratory seems to have been located near the heart of the Winter Castle. It would be logical for residences and important scientific facilities to be centralized, and therefore offer the most protection from intruders and the sharp Haven cold. However, his exit doesn’t take him through the rest of the castle. Instead, the warrior mechs lead him through empty underground passageways. Abel would assume them to be service corridors, were it not for the elaborate iridescent patterns painted along every wall. Perhaps the opulence of the Winter Castle extends even to its
most basic areas.
Their group passes through a type of insulating lock into a kind of gear room stocked with hyperwarm coats, thick gloves, and insulating coveralls. Neither Abel nor the mechs behind him take any of the cold-weather gear; he can do without it for the limited time they’ll be in the snow. Behind the gear racks in the distance, he sees another kind of man-shaped machine—not mechs but enormous Smashers, robots designed for deep-earth mining. They’re two and a half meters high, more than half a meter wide, all in dark colors like navy, brown, and black. The rounded plates of their torsos and limbs make them look benign, but they can punch through sheer rock. Smashers created the tunnels of Cray and are carving out iron ore on Stronghold. There’s little they can’t overpower. But Abel can think of no way to turn the Smashers against the mechs guarding him.
Could I seal off the air lock? Trap them inside while I return to the Persephone? But he can’t leave the Persephone here on Haven while he attempts to escape and return to it. He has to get Noemi safely away from this place as fast as he can.
Nor can he fight six warrior mechs hand to hand. He would risk the fight if it didn’t mean risking Noemi’s life, too. That is unacceptable.
Saving her means letting her go and accepting his fate.
Noemi remains too dazed to object until they board the Persephone. At first her eyes light up; familiar surroundings must comfort her. But Abel sees her watching the mechs behind him.
“Did I dream Gillian?” she whispers. Her memory has not yet achieved normal functionality. “This isn’t real, is it? This voice in my head keeps saying it is, but the voice can’t be real either.” Despite her confusion, she sounds so alert that he’s encouraged—until she tries to sit up. The snap of the energy bands shouldn’t hurt, but it stuns her again. Her new brain functions and nerve endings don’t know how to process the input yet.
Noemi’s adaptation will be a fascinating process to witness. Abel wishes he were going to get the chance to witness it.
“I preprogrammed a course back to the verge of the Haven Gate,” he tells her. Right now it won’t make much sense to her, but her additional brain components should be able to replay it all. “You don’t have to do a thing. Just rest.”
“Don’t do it,” she pleads. “Kill me—deactivate me, whatever it would be now. Tell Gillian the deal’s off.”
“If you should see Harriet and Zayan again, please apologize for my abrupt departure. I would’ve liked to tell them good-bye.” He thinks of his Vagabond crew members, remembers the ready way they both smiled. “If you decide to pilot the Persephone as your own ship from now on, you could offer them places on your crew, though I suspect they’ll choose to settle on Genesis. Give my regards to Ephraim as well, and as for Virginia—” Abel pauses. “If you get in touch with her, even send her a prerecorded message, that will be enough. She’ll know what’s happened.”
“I don’t understand—” Noemi writhes in the grip of the energy bands. “Let me up!”
He snaps off the energy beams, freeing her. She rises immediately, only to wobble off balance and fall from the biobed. Abel had already lowered it, so she only rolls a few centimeters to the docking bay door. From the doorway, the mechs stand rigidly at attention. Probably they’re counting down a set number of minutes before they will force him to leave the ship or simply kill Noemi.
“Why can’t I move normally?” Noemi’s fear is turning into panic. “What is this voice in my head telling me about the other mechs? Make this stop, please—”
“I can’t do that.” He smiles at her, hoping to be reassuring. “Noemi, you can do only one thing for me—lead a long and happy life.”
She doesn’t reply at first, just stares at him with eyes that are welling with tears. Finally she chokes out, “You’re going to do this, aren’t you? No matter what I say. Because I can’t stop you.”
Abel nods. “I’m sorry.”
Noemi rakes her hands over her close-shorn scalp. The skin regenerators have almost finished sealing over the incisions from her surgery. Few human women shave their heads, for various sociological reasons, but Abel finds Noemi even more beautiful this way. Nothing distracts attention away from her large, dark eyes. Her voice is raspy as she says, “I wouldn’t have wanted this.”
“You had no chance to determine your own fate. I had to decide for us both. I chose you.”
She shakes her head. “You keep giving yourself away for me—like your life doesn’t even belong to you—”
“It does,” he says. “Or it did. It’s worth it.”
Noemi wipes at her cheeks as she says, “We were just starting.”
She means them, he realizes, as a romantic couple. They were going to travel through the stars together, on the adventure she’d dreamed of always. He wishes he could’ve had that time with her. Even a day of it. That would be more joyful than most human lifetimes.
Abel reaches toward her, then stops. The shimmer of the force field around him means he can’t touch her. It would have meant so much to him to kiss her farewell, or even hold her hand. But Gillian’s mechs remain behind him, ready to pounce, and apparently programmed to give him no more time.
The mechs step forward in unison. Two strong hands seize Abel by the shoulders and pull him to his feet. Noemi cries out in dismay, “No. Abel, don’t!”
He pushes one control on the nearest panel, activating the time-delayed autotakeoff. Soon she’ll leave this planet and take her place among the stars.
“Good-bye,” he says as they pull him back off the ship, into the snow. Abel watches her face until the last moment when the door pinwheels shut, separating them forever.
7
Metal floor, alloy composed primarily of steel with a significant amount of aluminum, precise percentages undetermined. Metallurgical analysis advised.
So says the unwelcome intruder in Noemi’s brain.
All she wants is to be able to get herself off the floor, to the bridge, and back to Abel. Instead, she’s lying there, heavier than she ought to be, an outsider within her own skin.
At first she thinks of the heaviness as exhaustion, but when she tries to turn over, she becomes sharply aware that the new weight is literal. The devices Gillian Shearer put in her gut are heavier than her organs, heavier than her bones. Her own body seems impossible to lift. Noemi might as well be shackled to the floor.
The eerie mist reaching through her entire body blooms cold at the very base of her neck. The sensation makes her shudder in horror—but her focus improves. Her thoughts order themselves. She’s rational again. Awake again.
I must be able to walk and move normally, she tells herself. At least eventually. Abel traded himself for this… whatever this is. He wouldn’t have done that for nothing. He wouldn’t let Shearer destroy me. And if Shearer wanted me dead, she could just have shot me.
Instead, she made me a… hybrid.
Noemi has no idea what that might mean, really. Every time her dazed mind tries to turn to it, her thoughts go blank. The knowledge is like a light too bright to be looked at directly.
However, she’s still a soldier. Her military training taught her that when her life is on the line, there’s only thing to do: attack. Fight to kill, and you might survive. Fighting with no other goal than not dying? That’s how you wind up dead. Learning to walk and move again is her next fight.
Don’t think about it, Noemi tells herself. Just do it.
There’s no other way for her to get back to Abel, and she knows she must get back to Abel. She feels like she knows almost nothing else.
This time, when she rolls over, she makes it. Pushing herself up onto her hands and knees takes long seconds—maybe minutes—but it seems to Noemi that the more she moves, the easier it gets. Which isn’t the same thing as being easy, but it’s progress.
The weight inside isn’t that heavy—it just feels different—you can do it.
Finally she rises to her feet, probably wobblier than she could’ve been since she was a toddler.
Noemi holds her arms out wide to improve her balance as she half walks, half stumbles to the door.
When it slides open for her, admitting her to the Persephone, tears come to her eyes. She can’t say whether that’s out of physical pain, or the joy of being someplace sort of like home again, or the terror that she’ll never again feel really at home anywhere.
What happens to her is irrelevant compared to what happens to Abel.
She forces her way up the long spiral corridor, left shoulder pressed against the walls. Every one of the arched struts forces her to stop and shuffle her way around it, but each goes slightly faster than the one before. She tries to make herself happy with the progress, but happiness is a long way away.
When Noemi reaches the bridge doors, she breathes a sigh of relief. She stumbles toward them—and collides with the solid metal. Normally the doors would’ve slid open for her automatically. Are they malfunctioning? Maybe this ship’s as broken as she is. She puts her hand to the control panel nearby to open the doors manually, but they still don’t budge.
“Hello, Noemi,” says Abel’s voice. She startles, jolted by the sudden hope that somehow he’s here, that he’s saved himself. But it’s only a recording. “Given your well-documented history of refusing to follow instructions, as well as your general disregard for your safety, there was a ninety-three point zero seven percent chance that you’d try to return to Haven. I therefore hardwired the bridge and other navigational controls not to respond to you until at least thirty-five hours after leaving the planet. I appreciate your desire to rescue me, but I can’t allow you to endanger yourself.”
“So I’m supposed to let you die for me?” Noemi’s hoarse voice echoes in the empty corridor, reminding her that she’s alone—more alone than she’s ever been. She feels tiny. Useless. Even if she could return to Haven, what could she do, one girl against dozens of mechs and an entire winter fortress?