by Greg Logan
Sara Reid awoke and found Jeff had stepped out. Earlier in the evening, she and Jeff had sat with the other leaders of the survivors. Mother, Quentin, and Sammy. Sara hadn’t been sure if the Darkness was there or not. He seemed to have a way of slipping in and out without anyone being aware. Some sort of energy field connecting with darkness in a way that was a mystery to her.
She was no scientist, but she knew enough of basic science to know darkness was simply an absence of light. And yet, this Darkness being seemed to operate on the assumption that darkness was some sort of energy wave. He had somehow tapped into it and seemed to become living darkness.
Like she said, she was no scientist. Her people were more scientifically advanced than the Earthers, so her understanding of basic science was probably light years ahead of that of the average human, but she had little interest in science. Her mind didn’t work like that of a scientist. Her main concerns were Jeff and the situation she was currently caught in.
During the meeting, they had discussed battle plans. Jeff’s idea was to take the fight to the Machine itself. Bring in the meta-human Chloe to locate it and possibly reprogram it. A daring thing if it could be pulled off, and then the war between the invaders and the humans could move in an entirely new direction.
The thing was, the element of surprise would have to work in Jeff’s favor. And this was impossible because the enemy, those he referred to as squids, already knew of the plan. They knew this because Sara had been in the room.
She and Jeff had returned to the old supply room they used for their quarters. They had made love and then fallen asleep in each other’s arms. Then she had awoken to find herself alone. Jeff had probably gone for a walk. He often had trouble sleeping because of the responsibility he felt to this group of survivors.
Sara was lying on the floor atop a layer of blankets, and covered with another layer. She was clothing-deprived, usually the end result of love-making. She found she couldn’t sleep either. She often couldn’t sleep. Many a night, she would lay awake and simply stare into the darkness while silent tears streamed down to her pillow. She was caught between what she wanted and what she knew she had to do, and she saw no way out.
She felt a sudden buzzing in her head. No. Not now. They were calling her. They wanted a meeting.
There was a box in her head. A box the size of maybe a dime, but it contained nano-technology and microcircuitry. It was how they communicated with her. And it was how they controlled her.
She thought the words, I HEAR YOU.
She heard the reply. A man’s voice. COME TO THE OLD AIRTRAN GATE. WE WILL WAIT FOR YOU.
Though the voice sounded human, she knew it was not. It was simply that the being speaking had assumed a human form. He was actually a multi-tentacled invertebrate. She understood, because she was one, also. Not that the speaker, her controller, had to be in human form. He was not on an under-cover assignment. It was simply that this planet had a stronger gravitational field than their own, and they found it much easier to move around when in human primate form.
She climbed out from under the covers and reached for her clothes. She didn’t need a flashlight because the human form she had assumed had the ability to see in the dark.
Her people were shape-shifters, and they had the ability to potentially copy a being right down to the genetic coding. The child that had been Sara Reid had a genesis gene, and so now this Sara did, also.
She pulled on a tank top and a pair of cargo pants and military boots. She buckled on a holster that contained an ion pistol.
She then opened the door and using her meta-ability she looked up and down the dark hallway. No one was there. All were asleep. Except for Jeff, who was out there somewhere, walking around. Of course, the Darkness could be here. Even with her ability cranked up to full power, she couldn’t see him. If he was somewhere in the corridor, he would see her sneaking out the door. But this wouldn’t be a bad thing. If she were finally caught, then this whole charade could finally be over. And maybe it could end before anyone got hurt.
There had been a human Sara Reid once. A child born thirty-four years ago. The child had been replaced in the maternity ward. The child had a sister named Ashley, who was also replaced. The bodies of the children were simply disposed of.
The very thought of this sickened Sara. Even though she was not human, she had lived as one her entire life. She had no memories at all of being a tentacled monster. Of being what Jeff called a squid. She wouldn’t even know she was one if she hadn’t been told.
Her species had the ability to copy the shape of another, but to retain the shape required intense concentration, especially when copying right down to the genetic coding. As such, when it came to placing agents deeply undercover, they used a medical procedure to lock them into the shape of the being they were impersonating. This way she wouldn’t accidentally change her shoe size or the color of her eyes or move a freckle.
It’s hard to live as a human without becoming one. She had come to truly care about these people. Mother. Sondra. Quentin. Henry. And especially Jeff.
And yet, she couldn’t escape her own kind and the control they had over her. Such a thing would be impossible.
The box in her head was not simply a communication device. It was also a monitoring device, relaying everything she saw or heard to her superior and his team. And it also was capable of emitting intense, mind-numbing pain. Pain that was not real, so escaping it by passing out was not an option. But pain that was so intense it could warp your sanity. Pain that, when left to full power long enough, could leave you a drooling mental vegetable. Or stop your heart.
She made her way down the corridor. She walked as quietly as she could. The rubber soles of her boots made little sound on the hard tiles underfoot.
She stepped out into the night. This old airport had, for some reason, a separate gate for its Airtran flights. Not that a plane had taken off from here or landed in seventeen years, but the buildings still stood. Silent and empty.
She found the AirTran building. A side door was unlocked, so she pulled it open and stepped in.
It was pitch dark. She had thought briefly of calling out to the Darkness. She had no doubt he would hear her, wherever he was. But to do so would bring on a punishment that would send her on a pain-filled journey to insanity or death.
Her own controller box had never actually been used on her, but she and Ashley had been forced to watch while their mother’s box was turned on and left on. Their mother had made the mistake of allowing herself to become so human she was willing to betray her own kind, the squids. But it’s difficult to do this when they can monitor your movements through the controller box. There was no way she could get away with it. Her controller box was turned on to full pain mode, and Sara and Ashley had been forced to watch while their mother writhed and shrieked on the floor. They had been forced to watch until their mother simply stared at the ceiling, her mind gone.
This squid had actually been their mother. Not that reproduction was the same among their kind, but their mother had reproduced before taking the human shape of the Reid mother. And her children had been shaped into the images of the Reid children. Sara—the squid Sara—had been eleven when her mother was killed. Another squid had simply taken the shape of the Reid woman and the charade continued.
Sara climbed the stairs of a dead escalator and found herself at one of the gates. There, she found her superior. His name was a collection of swishing sounds the human tongue could never articulate, so Sara simply called him by his rank. Controller.
He looked like a human male. Maybe five-ten. Thirty years old. He was dressed in desert camouflage and an ion rifle was strapped over his shoulder.
Two others were with him. One also looked like a human male and one was a woman. Tall and willowy. Black hair pulled back into a tail. Both were also dressed in desert camo, and they each had an ion rifle in their hands as though they were expecting trouble.
Maybe the trouble they were expecting
was from Sara. After all, her feelings for Jeff were no secret. Her species normally had no feelings, not like the humans of this world. Here, even the animals had feelings. Emotions. Dogs danced around with happiness when their owners came home. Cats looked at you with disgust unless you were feeding them or scratching them between their ears. Such a thing was alien on Sara’s home planet, but since she had been given human form almost since birth, she had grown up with human emotion. She understood it as well as any human. Her superior, however, had not been raised human. He simply assumed human form when he was planetside because of the intense gravity. As such, to him things like love or happiness or sadness were merely academic concepts.
Her species was familiar with one aspect of the emotional spectrum, however. Impatience. And her superior seemed to have it coming out of his ears.
He gave no greeting. No niceties. No how are you doing? Or are you doing okay? Those sort of things required one to care. And her species didn’t understand that concept.
Instead, he said, “Agent Sara. Report.”
She was called Agent Sara. They couldn’t pronounce her actual name when they were in human form, because their mouths couldn’t make the sounds. It was all right. She didn’t like the sound of her own name, anyway, and she couldn’t pronounce it herself. She didn’t really like anything having to do with her species or anything reminding her she wasn’t human.
They could have called her Agent Reid, but the name could also apply to her sister. So she was Agent Sara and her sister was Agent Ashley.
“Nothing much to report,” she said. “You know everything I see or hear.”
“We need your judgment, though. You actually know these beings. You are in the same room with them. It’s not the same, watching the interactions on a view screen. Do you think the one known as Calder intends to carry out his plan?”
She hesitated. She didn’t want to betray Jeff. But she had, really, just by being in the room when battle plans were being discussed. The controller box in her head emitted a subspace signal her superior and his team were monitoring.
“Yes,” she said reluctantly. “I don’t know when. But he does.”
“Very well,” the Controller said. “Then the time to act is now. We have a small battalion in the Sector Twenty-eight. They can launch an attack on this facility within three hours.”
Sector Twenty-eight. Based on the way the squids had divided up this world and mapped it out, she knew this meant somewhere in the area humans called the southeast.
“I had best be getting back,” she said.
“You will be relieved to know your assignment is almost over. None of these humans will be alive come morning. Your mission here is done. You have served the Empire well. I understand you have done so a little reluctantly at times, but such are the hazards of working deeply undercover.”
Her assignment was over? Did this mean she wouldn’t see Jeff again?
“What will happen to me?” she said.
“We need you to remain in your role of infiltration for a few hours more. Then, once our battalion has attacked and finished off these metas, you will be returned home. There you will be given your original form and then you will be debriefed and reassigned.”
Her original form? She knew intellectually she was a squid, but she had no memories of actually being one. She had been transformed in infancy. She didn’t want to go to her home world. As far as she was concerned, this was her home world.
She had a sick feeling inside. To be taken to a planet of sentient invertebrates that had no concept of human emotion. To be transformed into one. To possibly become like them, losing her emotion. The thought of never seeing Jeff again was bad enough, but the thought of not loving him anymore was more than she could tolerate.
She was a good shot with an ion pistol. More than that, she could pull it quickly from its holster and fire faster than any other human she had seen. A quick-draw, Jeff called it, using terminology from human western videos called movies.
She had never stood against the Controller before. She had always been too afraid. The reason she and Ashley had been forced to watch their mother tortured into mindlessness was to frighten them into obeying. She knew this and yet could do nothing about the fear. And so she went along, year after year. Loving Jeff and yet spying on him.
But now her back was against the proverbial wall. She was still afraid, oh yeah, but she was more afraid of losing her love for Jeff.
She thought if maybe she was fast enough she could shoot the Controller before he could activate the box in her head.
She grabbed her ion pistol, pulling it out to fire.
But the woman standing beside the Controller beat her to it, blasting her with a jolt of ionic energy.
Sara let out a scream and fell to the floor to lie twitching. It felt like every nerve was on fire. She became aware that her pistol was no longer in her hand. She didn’t know where she had lost it. Somewhere between being shot and landing on the floor.
The Controller walked over to her. You would think he would be angered at her betrayal. Or smiling. Or doing something dastardly. Instead he just looked at her clinically. She was nothing more to him than a problem that had to be corrected.
He said to the woman with dark hair, “I want you to assume the role of Sara Reid.”
“I wouldn’t be able to convincing in the long term,” she said. “I don’t know these people intimately the way she does. And I don’t know how thoroughly I can retain the form.”
“It doesn’t have to be long-term. Only for a few hours more. Until the attack.”
The woman began to transform, decreasing in height until she matched Sara’s. Her hair became a strawberry blonde. Her features, a little harsh, softened until they matched Sara’s.
“My clothes are now a little loose,” the woman said, “because Agent Sara is smaller than I am. I’ll have to get to the room she shares with Jeff Calder and exchange them.”
“Go, then. And hurry. They could be back, soon.”
The woman left, running down the dead escalator.
“Should I kill her?” the man asked impassively, nodding his head toward Sara.
“No,” he said. To Sara’s surprise, he allowed himself a little smile, like a cat that had just caught a mouse. “Let’s first give her a dose of what her mother experienced, all those years ago.”
On his wrist was a control band. As she watched in terror, he reached to his wrist with his other hand to touch the button that would cause her controller box to flood her with searing pain.
TWO
2017
Jeff paced restlessly. He was in jeans and a t-shirt. His pacing brought him into Scott’s lab.
Scott was sitting in front of a computer monitor. He was in jeans and his white lab coat tails fell behind him like a split cape. He was studying readings he had taken from the memory disks they had brought with them from the past.
Sammy was in the computer alcove. In front of him was a wall on which were mounted fifteen monitors.
“Where’s Dad?” Jeff said.
“In the upper atmosphere. He’s lodging into orbit a telescopic satellite so we can better monitor anything moving out there.”
Jeff nodded. Of course, Scott was talking about the armada. The fleet of alien ships they knew to be on its way.
April stepped into the room. She had been in the hydroponics lab. Her hair was pulled back in a tail and an apron covered her from her chest to her knees.
“How’s Jake doing?” she said.
“He’s got the satellite in position,” Sammy said from the alcove. “Now we just have to activate it.”
Jeff knew it was a lot faster and easier to have Dad take a satellite out to the edge of space rather than trying to launch it themselves by more conventional methods.
April looked to Jeff. “You okay, Jeff?”
He shrugged. His hands were thrust into his hip pockets. “I guess.”
“Well, you don’t look so okay. It’s kind o
f hard, waiting like this, isn’t it?”
He let out a long sigh. “I’d just like to be doing something to help. That’s all.”
Scott said, without looking up, “Until I can get these memory disks figured out, there’s not much anyone can do except wait. And I can’t figure them out until I can learn their language.”
“You know,” April said to Jeff, “maybe when your dad gets back, you should both go out and do something. Maybe go to a ballgame, or something.”
This got Sammy’s attention. He was an android, but this didn’t stop him from being a baseball addict. He turned around in his chair to look at them through the doorway that connected the lab to the alcove. He said, “The Dodgers are playing the Giants in Los Angeles tonight at seven pacific time. One of the best rivalries in sports. I can grab some tickets online and you can zip us over.”
Jeff shrugged. “I guess.”
Sammy and April exchanged a glance. This was more than just being bored because of inactivity.
Jeff said, “I guess I’m also just a little freaked out by Dead Jeff.”
That was what they were calling the future version of himself who had suddenly shown up in Boston, and caught a bullet and died when Agent Kincaid and his SWAT team attacked a bunch of metas.
April said, “I’m sure it has to be a little freaky.”
“I just can’t get him out of my mind. Where he’s from. Why he felt he had to come back here.”
Scott said, “You said it would be impossible to track him back to where he came from.”
“Under normal circumstances, it would be difficult. But with that time storm in 1384, it would be next to impossible. Besides, Mother and Snake lectured me again and again about not going to the future.”
“They were wise. Anything you might learn in the future could affect decisions made now.”
April said, finishing it for him, “And pollute the time line.”
Jeff said, “We couldn’t have a polluted time line, now, could we.” It came out more bitter sounding than he had intended.