No cure? Is that what she said? Sky looked around her, seeking assurance from others, but she found none. Sobs echoed throughout the hospital, sobs that had once been held back by hope. Sky gripped the rails of her mother’s stretcher.
‘I am also informed,’ the federator said, ‘that the virus is destroying its victims’ neurons as I speak. At current estimates, victims’ brains will progressively degrade beyond the point of repair within a week. Some of you may choose to end your loved one’s suffering before that time. I have authorized the Department of Health to provide you with that option.’
Chapter 4
Cure
4:1
One week to live?
The question bounced against the walls of Sky’s mind. She did not hear the rest of the federator’s address.
One week?
Families around her huddled and mourned. An older nurse—a tall woman with a commanding stride, wiping something from her cheek—caught Sky’s eye. The nurse approached, and before Sky knew what was happening, the woman embraced her. Sky’s first reaction was to retreat, but the nurse held her tight. Sky could not remember the last time she had been this close to anyone other than her own mother. The physical nature of the interaction triggered something in her, something so powerful that the dam of her emotions broke and she sobbed.
After a time, the nurse spoke some kind words and departed, like an angel who had other needy souls to tend.
Sky looked at her mother. There has to be a cure. Everything has a cure.
She trawled the net for information on the virus: Tellinii. Named after a hairworm whose larvae could infest grasshoppers. The larvae would release mind-controlling chemicals, forcing the insects to jump into water and drown, allowing the matured worm to enter its watery habitat and start the cycle all over again.
She held her mother’s hand. This kind woman, who had stood by Sky when no one else had. What had her mother done to deserve this? Nothing. She was the plaything of an implacable universe. Sky wished for a Creator just so she might have the chance to rip out its incompetent throat.
*
Sky woke in the middle of the night with her hand gripping the stretcher leg, and that ever-present weight on her chest.
Footsteps echoed along the corridor. They landed in perfect sync, like a metronome, in no hurry. The heavyset feet were clad in solid black shoes to match the suit. They stopped at her mother’s stretcher, waiting for something. The man placed his briefcase on the floor and, as he did, peered underneath the bed.
Sky could hardly believe her eyes.
Jeong-soo Tester. Her biological father.
‘It is good to see you outside,’ he said. His pitch-black hair was slicked back these days. A smile… it must be a special occasion if he was smiling. It brought back memories of visiting her great-grandma in Korea. He had smiled then too.
His voice was dry, but otherwise controlled, as if he had it on a leash. ‘I see your programming finally brought results.’ He seemed to have aged little since last they met.
She did not respond. He bridged the gap, ‘I had to come. To see your mother. And you.’
Rubbish. You want something. Same as always.
Sky stood and pulled her mother’s stretcher toward her. ‘You could have visited when she was still conscious.’
There was no reaction.
‘This is your fault,’ she said with barely concealed contempt.
He scratched at his stubble as he glanced at Winona, but said nothing. A nurse’s slippers padded in the distance.
‘The brainbender tried to use me as a human shield,’ Sky said. ‘He was trying to protect himself from you. He thought the NIA wouldn’t target him with a drone strike while I was around.’
Tester nodded. ‘We suspected as much.’
‘So? Why didn’t you?’
He raised an eyebrow. ‘Hit him with a missile? It is not our way. We do not harm civilians as they did in ’36. We are not like them.’ He paused. ‘Are you okay?’ It was an abrupt shift in tone, like a bad Artificial Intelligence program. ‘I understand that out of the thousands of freescanners searching for that brainbender, you were the one who first picked up his channel. That was no small achievement. As a result, we were able to close in on him. Who knows how many more he might have infected if you hadn’t found him?’
Sky tried to retreat further under her hood. If I hadn’t located the brainbender in the first place, he would never have come to the apartment. He would never have infected Ma.
Sky did not voice her remorse; she would never do that in front of Tester.
‘Your spooks were too late,’ she said, brushing a strand of hair from her mother’s face.
‘We had no idea until the virus hit.’
‘Aren’t you supposed to be protecting us?’
‘No system is perfectly safe.’
‘I thought ours was.’
He gave no response. He just stared at her.
‘Why’d they do it?’ she asked.
‘We are not sure, but it appears it began with a corporate data theft; a neurotech company alerted us to a breach of their network.’
‘But why release the virus?’
‘We don’t know. We are still working on that.’ He switched gears again, ‘I’ve thought about you both. Often.’ A virtual bank teller could have made that sound more genuine.
Thought is cheap.
‘You’ll need anti-trauma programming,’ he said.
‘I’d prefer a memory-wipe.’
‘I don’t think your mother would be happy about that. I recall she used to say—’
What you forget, you repeat. ‘Doesn’t matter what she’d say. I don’t need these memories.’
‘Very well. It will take a month to approve, but I will put in the application on your behalf.’
He shifted, as if about to leave. ‘The scanners showed you resisting the brainbender’s commands. It is a rare person who can ward off that sort of manipulation. You have impressive neurals, no doubt from the years of programming. If it weren’t for your ongoing condition, you would have made an excellent NIA agent.’
Sky lowered herself to crouch beside the stretcher, her head on her knees, the world dark once again. She hoped to hear those footsteps leave, but instead his voice returned. ‘We need to talk about what happened at the apartment today,’ it said.
There. The real reason he had come. It was about work, about him. Always about him.
A muffled scream came from the hospital entrance; two orderlies rolled in a new patient on a stretcher, his limbs bound and his lungs screaming. A nurse tried to inject him with sedative but the injector fizzed. ‘I’ll get another one,’ the nurse said and ran off.
The patient’s screams were like ice-picks in Sky’s heart—they may as well have been the screams of her mother. Sky was powerless to help her, to help anyone. All she could do was bear witness to the atrocity. It was all too much because she could do so little. Sky made for the exit at the other end of the hall and escaped into the cool night.
Tester followed her.
‘There’s nothing to discuss,’ she told him. ‘The scanners have my impressions. You have everything you need.’
‘Sky…’ She hated the sound of her name in that voice, ‘… there is a chance we may yet uncover a remedy.’
He had spoken a single sentence from afar—mere sounds—yet it had a profound effect on her. He had manipulated her mental state and she hated and loved him for it.
‘You’re developing a cure?’ she asked, cautious.
‘We have been aware of the Tellinii virus for over a decade, but our researchers have not been able to crack it, and neither have the offworlders. No, we are nowhere near developing a cure. However, we may yet find it. If we can track down whoever was responsible for today’s hack, they may lead us to the cure.’
His eyes were wide, earnest, hopeful. For a moment, she saw herself reflected in them.
‘I’ll help any way I can,’
she said. ‘But I don’t see how I’ll be useful; you’ve already got my impressions from the scanners.’
‘Not all of them. Not while the brainbender was in your mind.’
That did not make any sense to Sky. ‘I don’t understand.’
He sat down opposite her, placing his briefcase at his feet. ‘What I’m about to tell you is classified. You have sufficient security clearance to hear it, but none to share it, understood?’
Sky nodded.
Tester continued, ‘Sometimes scanner technology has difficulty reading minds which are linked brain-to-brain, like the brains of telepaths. There can be too much feedback, which makes it difficult to decipher the thoughts, or determine who is thinking what. I am not explaining it well, I know, but that is essentially what our techs tell us, and believe me when I say I’ve just given you the simple version.’
‘That’s why the scanners couldn’t track the telepath? Why you needed freescanners?’
‘That is correct. And that is why we do not have your impressions while you were linked with the telepath. I know it will not be easy, but we want you to try to recall everything you saw while he was in your mind.’
No.
That was her first reaction. She had no desire to revisit those memories. But her mother lay in her stretcher by the window and did not move and would not move.
Sky turned her mind back to the moment she had seen the telepath in her room. She felt nauseous.
‘I saw him. In my office. I saw a cave. There were homes there. Farms too.’ She looked for some other detail, but nothing came. ‘I can’t remember anything else. It’s like a dream; I can see pieces of it, and I know there’s more to it, but I can’t dig it up.’
‘I’m not surprised,’ Tester said with disappointment. ‘The telepath may have placed a lock or wipe on your memories.’
‘They’re in here,’ Sky said. ‘My memories are in here somewhere. I can feel them.’
Tester’s briefcase flicked open. He pulled out a dark headband and offered it to her. ‘This might help, but I guarantee it will not be comfortable.’
Sky took the band. It was heavier than the ones Okiro used. ‘Side effects?’
Tester pursed his lips. ‘Programming is like having a dentist give you a filling. This will be more like having your teeth pulled out with pliers, without sedative.’
Orderlies rolled the screaming patient down the corridor, past her mother.
Sky placed the band on her head. A few seconds later she felt as if her skull were attached to a drill.
‘Try to remember,’ Tester instructed. He might have been yelling, judging by the animated movement of his mouth.
She reached into the past; the telepath in her room, turning to her…
Her ears roared. A trickle of images began to appear… memories…
‘I see something… the cave is clearer now,’ she gasped, ‘… it’s enormous. Ceilings as high as buildings. Dwellings of some sort. People on the ground. I can almost make out a reflection in the window… it’s a man, I think… I’m in his mind…’
‘Where is he?’ Tester asked.
She scanned through the experience, back and forth. The pain hammered across the back of her head and down her neck. She felt like throwing up. ‘I don’t know,’ she said through gritted teeth.
‘The people; how are they moving about, what sort of gravity?’
‘I’m not sure… wait… they’re moving as if they’re underwater… I think… low gravity. Somewhere offworld. Maybe the Moon… yes, something’s telling me it’s the Moon. ’
‘Is there anyone else in the room? Can you see—?’
‘Dante.’ Her heart leapt. She heard the name come out of nowhere. ‘The man in the reflection—his name is Dante.’
The jackhammers pounded at her skull. She held on as long as she could, then ripped off the headband, gasping for air.
‘Geppetto,’ she said between breaths. ‘I heard him say it; Geppetto.’
The pounding had stopped but her head felt like lead. To Sky’s surprise, the feeling began to subside and then it disappeared entirely. The experience of having her memories trawled may have been worse than her usual therapy sessions, but at least there was no headache afterward. In fact, she experienced a mild euphoria; recovering her memories had been like opening a treasure chest, but instead of silver and gold there was hope and purpose.
Tester returned the headband to its case. His features were grave. ‘Thank you.’
‘Do those names mean anything?’ she asked, massaging the back of her neck.
‘Not yet. But I have forwarded the data to my department for analysis.’ He did not appear as hopeful as she had expected.
He accompanied her back inside. They stood beside her mother. He asked, ‘Will you be okay here, on your own?’
‘I’m not on my own,’ she said, holding her mother’s hand.
He nodded in understanding. ‘Thank you. I’ll be in touch.’
‘When?’
‘I’ll call you as soon as we have anything.’ Then he left.
4:2
Sky jolted awake.
Okiro was beside her. He smiled, ‘Morning.’
She leapt up to check on her mother. The medical maya indicated she was still stable.
Stable.
What a strange term to describe a fatal condition.
Her mother’s closed eyelids flitted from side to side, perhaps in a dream. Her forehead was warm to the touch. She muttered something, and a bead of sweat slid down the side of her face.
‘She’s heating up.’
‘They all are,’ Okiro said. ‘Nightmares, apparently. I think her fever’s come down a little since they put in the drip.’
His upright hair had fallen flat across his face and hung like bronze stalactites. His stubbled chin had bloodstains. He looked as if he had been to war, and lost. He was a beautiful mess. ‘Rough night?’ she said.
‘Not as rough as some,’ he looked around at the rows of infected.
She was glad he was here. She wished she had a way to express it.
Uncle Jesse, any calls from my father?
< None yet, ma’am. >
That wasn’t what she had hoped to hear.
Okiro offered her a packaged sandwich, probably from the hospital meal printers. ‘Breakfast?’
‘Would you like to see me throw up?’
‘You can’t throw it all up; some nutrients are bound to stay down.’
She shook her head. He shrugged and placed the sandwich on the stretcher’s tray.
Sky heard the measured medical baritone of a doctor, ‘Are you sure?’ The doctor stood beside a man with tattooed arms, hunched over a patient. The tattooed man spoke, barely audible, ‘I can’t let her suffer like this.’ The doctor nodded and the patient’s medical readout announced the decision. ‘Initializing euthanasia procedure. Proceed?’ The tattooed man gave his consent.
Sky realized that the corridor had fewer beds than the night before. Nearby, a nurse drew a bedsheet over a patient’s head.
< Ma’am, Mr. Tester wants to speak with you. >
‘I’ve got a call,’ Sky told Okiro as she raced past him. She went outside, into the gardens, where she could speak without being overheard. She answered the call in private mode. Tester appeared in full-body maya, so realistic he might as well have been there in person.
‘Did you find anything?’ she said. ‘Was I right? Did you find Dante?’
‘How are you?’ he asked with an air of concern.
‘Who cares? Did you find anything?’
‘We ran your memories against every intelligence source we have,’ he said, subdued, ‘but we came up blank.’
‘But Dante, that’s a name. There can’t be many hackers named Dante, right?’
‘Dante Bat-Uul was the first human to establish a telepath colony offworld. He is something of a legend among them. Telepaths don’t need names unless they have to deal with outsiders. Those that choose a name of
ten name themselves Dante. There are probably a hundred thousand Dantes on the Moon, let alone on the other VOL colonies.’
‘But the cave I saw, that can’t be common, right?’
‘More common than you would think. Also, we’ve analyzed your memories and it seems they are not so much memories as hallucinations.’
‘But I saw it.’
‘Just as you saw the telepath in your office, and just as you’re seeing me now. When that telepath took hold of your mind, your brain may have tried to escape into a hallucination. It can happen in cases of mental manipulation.’
‘It wasn’t a hallucination. It was more real than that. I sensed him—Dante. I was inside his mind.’
‘That’s not what our analysis suggests.’
Sky stared at Tester’s maya image, struggling to come to terms with this news. He seemed calm, detached, as if he didn’t care whether Winona lived or died.
‘We are not giving up, Sky. We are working day and night to find the terrorists who did this. But I do not wish to give you false hope. We have failed to find a cure for so many years, and we have little more than a week before…’ He paused. ‘Your mother’s mind is deteriorating like the others. She might be physically safe from herself, but not mentally. The victims dream, Sky, even under the sedative. They are dreaming of dying over and over at their own hands. It’s no way to live.’
‘What are you saying?’
But she knew what he was saying. She hung up on him. His image cut out.
She was alone in the empty playground.
Two children burst out of the hospital, screeching and squealing as they chased each other.
Okiro followed them out. He sat down next to her. He said nothing, which was exactly what she needed.
Sky stared past the children, past the playground. ‘When that brainbender had me—when he was in my mind—I saw something. I saw an underground Moon colony. I was sure they were the hackers responsible for all this.’
‘Have you told the NIA?’ he asked.
Neurotopia Page 6