Catalyst

by Fletcher DeLancey

  “But you know. Even when you’re not paying attention, you still pick up the details.”

  It was wonderful to have something to think about other than how much she hurt now and how much she was going to hurt soon. She let her mind go back to a far more pleasant time, when she had been directed to the wrong conference room and walked in on a Fleet captain giving a lecture. The captain had said…

  “Survive. The first rule is just to survive. You told them to do whatever they had to, that there was no shame in…” She trailed off and stared up at the loving eyes watching her. “In…submitting when the alternative is injury or death for themselves or another.”

  “There is no shame,” Ekatya repeated. “No shame in doing what you have to. You think you can’t admit to me what you’ve had to do? You’re doing exactly what I would do.”

  “But I’m not.” She began to cry. Ekatya’s presence had soothed her enough that she had sufficient air to let her tears go, and it was such a relief. “I’m not. You would never have gotten yourself into this mess in the first place. Even if you had, you would have escaped that very first morning. I can’t do what you would do.”

  “And if I had two broken ribs? And was being put through a carefully designed program of drugs, psychological manipulation, and a disrupted circadian rhythm? I’m not a machine, Lhyn. He’s torturing you. But you’re standing up to him. You’ve already withstood three separate times in that chair. For the love of flight, you’re an academic with no military training, and you’re making him work for what he wants.”

  Her tears slowed. It sounded so much better the way Ekatya was saying it.

  “If I survive this, and I tell you what happened, will you say this to me for real? Will you tell me I wasn’t a coward?”

  The tears seemed to have transferred to Ekatya, sliding silently down her cheeks. “I’ll tell you that you are the most courageous person I’ve ever known. You’re the person who was willing to die to save the Alseans. You’re still the person willing to die to save them.”

  “Then I’ll keep trying. I want to survive. I want to hear you say that.”

  “I will tell you again and again, tyrina.”

  Warmth flowed through her, easing the pain in her body. “You’ve never called me that before.”

  “Do you like it?”

  “I love it.”

  “Good. You’re so brave, tyrina. So brave. Sleep now. It won’t hurt as much.”

  “Will you still be here when I wake up?”

  “I’m always here.” Ekatya reached out and touched her chest. “Always. Nothing he can do will ever dislodge me.”

  “I love you,” Lhyn murmured sleepily. “I’m so glad you’re here.”

  “I love you too. Sleep now.”

  CHAPTER 45:

  Plan of action

  “Sleep now…”

  Ekatya woke up hearing the words coming out of her mouth. For a moment she didn’t know where she was. The dream had been so real.

  As the last vestiges of sleep cleared and she felt the dull ache in her stomach, fresh tears washed down her cheeks.

  “It was real,” she whispered. “It was real.”

  Lhyn was suffering. She could hardly even think about the ways in which Lhyn was suffering, but at least she was alive. And somehow, they had connected.

  She had to get back there.

  She wiped her cheeks, rolled over, and attempted to force herself to sleep.

  Ten minutes and six different positions later, she admitted the futility of that endeavor. She was not going to find Lhyn this way, not until she exhausted herself.

  Or…

  Until she drugged herself.

  She threw back the covers so forcefully that they ended up on the floor, but she hardly noticed as she pulled on her uniform and commed a sleepy-sounding Dr. Wells.

  Four minutes later she was in the medbay, pacing anxiously while she waited for the doctor, who had said she would be there in five. With her gaze fixed on the main doors, she was startled to hear Dr. Wells speak from behind her.

  “Captain Serrado?”

  Wells was walking toward her from the lift beside the stairs. The chief surgeon’s quarters were above the top deck of the medbay. Her closest path in was straight down the lift, a fact Ekatya should have remembered.

  “Dr. Wells, thank you for coming so quickly.”

  Wells covered a yawn with her hand. “Sorry. Of course I would come quickly, if only to find out what a ‘non-medical personal emergency’ is.”

  She still looked half asleep. Come to think of it, her quarters were much closer to the medbay than Ekatya’s. She should have gotten there before her.

  “I didn’t check your schedule. What time did you get to sleep last night?”

  “You mean this morning? About four hours ago. I’m all right, Captain. Tell me what’s wrong.”

  “Not here.” Ekatya tilted her head toward the nearest empty treatment room.

  Inside, with the door shut and the privacy screen activated, she said, “I’m invoking doctor-patient confidentiality.”

  Wells sat in one of the chairs and gestured at the other. “I’m listening.”

  “How much do you know about the Alseans and their empathy?” Ekatya asked as she sat down.

  “Ah…well, that’s not where I expected this to go. I’ve read everything Dr. Rivers has written on the topic, along with most everyone else I know. Spit in a roomful of medical staff and you’re guaranteed to hit someone who can quote her.”

  “So you know about tyrees.”

  “Who doesn’t?”

  “And how their connection is physiological as well as emotional.”

  “Yes, though I could argue that the emotional connection is physiological as well, since it’s enabled by—” She stopped and looked more closely. “Why are you asking?”

  Ekatya hesitated, then reminded herself that she had to trust or this would never work. “Lhyn and I are tyrees.”

  There was a moment of charged silence.

  “That is really not where I expected this to go.”

  “It’s the truth, Dr. Wells. I know it sounds impossible—”

  “You’re right, it does.”

  “I said the same thing when Lancer Tal told me we were tyrees. I didn’t believe her until she proved it. Mind to mind.”

  The tiny intake of air sounded loud in the closed treatment room. “You went through an Alsean Sharing. You’ve let everyone think Dr. Rivers was the only one. Why isn’t this in your medical record?”

  “I disobeyed orders for the sake of Alsea and barely escaped court-martial. It didn’t seem wise to volunteer that bit of information.”

  She saw that hit right where she had aimed it, reminding Wells of her own near miss with a court-martial.

  “Still, you should be checked—”

  “I’ll sit through any exam you want. Just not now. Right now, I need you to believe what I’m telling you. We’re not empaths and we don’t have the emotional connection, but we’re connected in other ways, ways that transcend distance. And we’ve recently learned that…that our bond can also include two-way communication.”

  Wells stared at her. “I’m going to take a wild scientific leap and guess that you don’t mean two-way communication while you’re in the same room.”

  “Do you remember when you changed out my High Alsean language chip?”

  “Of course.”

  “Did I say something out loud, right before I went under the anesthesia?”

  Her expression softened. “Yes, you did. It was…personal.”

  Ekatya’s hands clenched in her lap. This was about to get far more personal, but she would do anything she had to. “I saw Lhyn standing next to you. That’s why I said what I did. And when Lhyn came aboard after our shakedown cruise, she told me that she w
as really there. She thought it was a dream, but she knew I chose to keep my Terrahan chip.”

  After several long seconds of silence, Wells said, “All right. Let’s suppose, hypothetically, that what you’re saying is physically possible and—”

  “It’s not hypothetical!” Ekatya snapped. “He’s torturing her, and he’s going to kill her if we don’t get her out of there!” She saw Wells draw back, envisioned a swift diagnosis of mental incompetence for duty, and held up a placating hand. “I’m sorry, I’m just… Dr. Wells, Lhyn has been kidnapped.”

  “What?”

  “She’s been kidnapped, and Sholokhov thinks—”

  “Sholokhov is involved?”

  “Yes, because the man who has Lhyn is…” She stopped, realizing in that moment that she knew it was Kane Muir who had Lhyn. Sholokhov was working on a supposition, but she knew.

  She had to tell him.

  But how could she explain her source?

  “Who has Lhyn?” Wells asked urgently.

  She refocused. “His name is Kane Muir. He’s a fixer; he gets people to do whatever his employers need them to do. He’s in the process of breaking Lhyn right now, and she’s resisting with everything she has, but we’re running out of time. He’s ramping up the torture and if she breaks, if she gives him what he wants, he’ll kill her.”

  Wells looked horrified. Then she straightened and said, “Tell me what you need me to do.”

  “I need you to believe me. Please, just set aside your scientific practicality and accept what I’m telling you. I can connect with her. I’ve done it twice now. I saw her twenty minutes ago.”

  “How?”

  “The same way she saw me when you changed out my language chip. In a dream. But it was real, Dr. Wells. It was real. She was directing it, because I was saying things I couldn’t have said otherwise—I knew things that only she knows. But everything I said, I would have said anyway…” She trailed off, realizing how utterly impossible this sounded. Wells was looking at her with skepticism written all over her face. “I don’t know how it works. I just know that it does, and it’s the only connection I have to her. It’s the only thing that can possibly save her. No one knows where she is, and Kane Muir has escaped Sholokhov three times already. If he escapes again… Please, please believe me.”

  The skepticism did not fade, and the drive that had pushed Ekatya out of bed and out her door sputtered and died. She dropped her face into her hands. She was never going to convince Dr. Wells. She was probably going to be booted out of her bridge chair and that might be for the best anyway, because she couldn’t concentrate, and Lhyn was going to die because she was failing in the very first step of her action plan. She was failing.

  “Captain.”

  She shook her head. She did not want to hear these words.

  “I don’t know if I believe you. But two years ago I would never have believed empaths could exist, and here we are, with an entire planet of empathic aliens. So tell me what you need me to do.”

  Hope poured through her, giving her new strength. “I need you to drug me. Not enough to put me under, but enough to…I don’t know, break through whatever walls keep us apart when we’re conscious. Something enables us to connect when we’re both not fully on the conscious plane. Or the unconscious one. Lhyn was awake, but she was half out of her mind with pain and shock, and Kane’s been drugging her—” A sob crawled up her throat, but she pushed it back down with savage force. She had no time for that. “I need to control this somehow, so I’m really there. I can’t help her unless I can really be there.”

  “You need to uncouple the ascendancy mechanism,” Dr. Wells said.

  “What?”

  “Your brain trades off. The conscious side is ascendant when it needs to be, and when you sleep, the subconscious takes over. Each side accomplishes specific tasks, and neither one can accomplish those tasks if the other is still active. There’s a mechanism that regulates the tradeoff. What you need to do is temporarily uncouple that mechanism, so both sides can be active at the same time.”

  “Yes,” Ekatya breathed. “Yes, exactly. Can you do it?”

  “I can, but it’s tricky and I’ll have to monitor you constantly. And you—”

  “I’m ready.” She began to strip off her uniform jacket.

  “Wait. Captain, you might be ready, but I’m not. I need to calculate your dosage and think about contingencies and get everything set up before we start. I won’t do this until I’m certain I can make the procedure safe for you.”

  “I don’t care if it’s safe—”

  “But I do. I’ll help you, but your safety is paramount. Those are my terms.”

  “She could die!”

  Wells fixed her with a calm gaze and repeated, “Those are my terms.”

  “You’re a hard woman, Dr. Wells.” Ekatya was not calm at all.

  “I’m a chief surgeon, and that means I make hard decisions. You do the same thing. I’m sickened by what’s happening to Lhyn and I’ll do anything I can to help her, but she is not my patient right now. You are. And you’re asking me to take a leap of faith.”

  It took every bit of willpower Ekatya had to sit there, breathe deeply, and acknowledge that Wells was right. As much as she wanted to charge in and take action, this was a mission and missions had to be planned.

  “I understand,” she said at last. “When will you be ready?”

  Wells looked upward, apparently making mental estimates. “About an hour.”

  “An hour!” She stopped herself. “Fine, an hour. I’ll…I’ll figure out some way to not die of a stress-induced heart attack before then.”

  “That sounded like a joke, but I’m wondering if I need to give you a sedative before we start. Which would complicate my dosage calculations considerably—”

  “No, I’m fine. Don’t do anything that would make this take longer than it already will.” Ekatya stood up, then paused as an idea occurred. “I’ll program a translator and send it over. I’ll be speaking out loud, and I don’t want Lhyn to say anything Kane might be able to understand.”

  Dr. Wells nodded. “You’ll be speaking in Terrahan.”

  “No. If Kane is good enough to outwit Sholokhov, then he’s done his research and he’ll be ready for Lhyn to speak her native language under duress. But I doubt he’ll expect her to speak High Alsean.”

  CHAPTER 46:

  Through the door

  Dr. Wells met Ekatya in the medbay lobby an hour later and led her into the lift. At her look of surprise, she said, “You thought we’d be doing this in a treatment room?”

  “Why aren’t we?”

  “Because I’m not going to inject you once and then sit down to read a book. I don’t think you realize what you’ve asked for, Captain.”

  They stepped out on the third level and walked down the hall to an empty surgery bay. Ekatya stopped in the doorway, staring at all of the equipment that had been arranged around a bed. “What in all the purple planets is this?”

  “This is what I need to make sure I can balance both sides of your consciousness, monitor your brain waves and vital signs, record the data, and regulate the dosage required to keep you there. And I am pushing the limits of both my abilities and my ethics doing this alone. At the first sign of trouble, I’ll either yank you out or bring someone in to help. I need your permission for the latter.”

  “And if I don’t give it, this is over before it starts?”

  Wells nodded.

  “Then I give it. But it had better be someone you trust implicitly, because if word of this gets out—”

  “You have my personal guarantee it won’t.”

  Ekatya nodded and pulled off her jacket as she walked to the bed.

  Wells took it from her hand. “Your shirt, too. I need access to your inner elbow and your chest.” She traded a medshirt for the u
niform shirt and hung the clothes in a locker while Ekatya tried to get comfortable on the bed.

  Before long, Ekatya had a cannula in her arm and data recorders taped to her chest and head. She couldn’t remember the last time she had received medication through a cannula, but Dr. Wells explained that she would be titrating the combination of drugs necessary. “There’s a certain bit of trial and error,” she added, which did not fill Ekatya with confidence. But this was her only option. She had to trust.

  When her head began to swim and she felt as if she were falling backward through a tunnel, her hopes rose. She closed her eyes, waiting to connect, waiting to see Lhyn and tell her she was there to help.

  But she never found her. It was as though she hit a closed door and could not go through it.

  When Dr. Wells brought her back to full consciousness, she panicked.

  “No! I can’t give up!”

  “We’re not giving up. But you said you both had to be in that space between conscious and subconscious. If Lhyn is fully awake, or fully asleep, you won’t connect. We just need to wait and try again.”

  They tried every hour on the hour.

  On the fourth attempt, the door was open.

  Nothing Ekatya had imagined prepared her for what she saw when she went through it.

  CHAPTER 47:

  Teamwork

  Kane had sadistically targeted her stomach muscles three times now. On top of the torn and bruised tissues from the previous session, the pain was beyond excruciating. Lhyn had screamed herself hoarse. When the spasms finally stopped after the third time, her entire world had come down to a single goal: surviving the fourth assault. She only had to live through one more, and then she could rest.

  Gasping, she opened her eyes and thought that Kane had gone too far and she really was dying. Because Ekatya stood on the other side of the table, her hands over her mouth and tears streaming down her face.

  “I couldn’t stop him.” Ekatya could hardly get the words out, and she was speaking in High Alsean. “I’m so sorry. I tried, but my body isn’t here.”