by Anna Gaffey
“… Speaking of cracking up, you’ll love this. I was working the cargo bay yesterday and we got some overdue pallets from Science, so I commed Dr. Jeong to come pick them up. He showed up so quick you’d think he figured out how to teleport. The cargo tough who was unloading the boxes, he saw Jake and he lost his nerve and fumbled, did something to the controls, and dropped. The load. The whole load. The boxes crashed into a container, and the whole place went dead silent. It was so quiet, you could hear all the little tinkles and crashes and shatterings going on inside the boxes.
“Jake lost it. He was purple, honestly. The tough was this big beefy guy, but he hightailed it into the console area and locked himself in and, I swear, Jake screamed himself hoarse in about ten seconds. And then he came running over and started flipping out on me, hollering about ‘delicate lab equipment’ and ‘half a year on back order’ and ‘worth more than your contract’ and ‘stupid waste of oxygen’ and so on. And I said something doddery like, ‘I guess you’ll want some sealant, huh?’ And he swelled. I’ve never seen anyone swell with rage. It was hysterical. And I started laughing. I couldn’t help it, Remy, he just looked so funny.
“And then, Blessed Buddha, he started laughing, too. He kind of collapsed onto the floor and we giggled for about five minutes. I didn’t think it was possible, but the guy might be human after all. Anyway, Mick’s hosting a swap meet tonight…”
Excerpt: personal commvid to Remy Haron
03 October 2240
Dr. Mei Chen, Ph.D.
Astrophysics/Astromechanics;
Cargo Supervisor, grade 10
United Worlds DS 2075-5 [Selas Station]
Satellite 1H-24HM, 24HM System [updated: Eos]
[Archived: United Governance Board tri-system mission records, Earth]
1 November 2242 AEC
06:53
As they entered the lab, Kai Murakami made an abortive series of movements that Jake interpreted as pulling a large antique briefcase out of containment and shoving it under the storage cabinets. The lab smelled less caustic than usual: instead the air was heavy, thick with damp greens and mosses and woodsy places.
“Sorry, didn’t mean to catch you in the act.”
“Obviously I’m scanning it.” Kai banged the Warringer back on the table. “Not even a misdemeanor, O Felonious One.”
“Lindy would have done that, if you’d done as she so nicely asked and left it in the infirmary. Piss her off, and she’ll have you out of here on your ass.”
“Maybe you. She likes me.”
“Anything’s possible,” Jake conceded. “Didn’t get it open, huh?”
“Gloat about it, why don’t you? He’s going to gloat about it now,” Kai told Con.
“Kai. Buddy boy. Would I come all the way up here just for that?”
“Yes,” chorused Kai and Con.
Jake considered. “Right, I guess I would. Although I was perfectly content where I was.”
Kai made a slight choking sound. “Anyway. The scanner won’t function properly, I assume because there’s some sort of internal cloak or blocking device as part of the security. So, well done, Jake, you win. I don’t get how you did it. Show me.”
“Show you what?”
“Fine.” Kai heaved a huge sigh. “Fine, hells and all dead atheists. Pretty please show me.”
“What are you talking about?”
“How you got it open,” Kai snapped. “I’ve been running a linked surveillance program on the damned interface for an hour now, and it still won’t give it up. The thing’s supposed to chime open on command, but it keeps giving me the finger instead.”
Jake snorted.
“Oh, come on! You can’t be proprietary about this, it’s a Warringer.”
“When exactly did I open it, Kai? In my sleep? Or wait, wait, I know, this morning in the shower I had a hand free—”
Con chortled and Kai scowled him into silence. “If you didn’t leave it here, who did?”
“Here?”
“In the lab. Like it was waiting for me.”
Jake narrowed his eyes. “Look, stop me when I miss something. I left the case with Lindy and went to bed. You sneaked back and brought it to the lab. You’ve been working on it since last night because you couldn’t keep your sticky fingers…”
He lost the thread of what he was saying as he finally identified the source of the deep mossy green fragrance, there on the table next to Kai. Jake’s table, Jake’s containment field, Jake’s samples from Selas.
Under the blue cast of the humming containment field, rampant leafy greenery had exploded from the sample dish nearest Kai’s workspace. The other dishes were covered with what appeared to be brownish-green fur. The furry mold exuded such a strong woodsy pong that Jake could almost feel the waves of it hitting his nostrils. Contaminated. But by what? And regardless of contamination, how the hell were the samples growing anything? The damn thing had been sterile, lifeless rock, no microbes, nothing but alien planet stone.
Jake opened his mouth, croaked, and snapped it shut again. For a few long moments, he paid close attention to the edge of the table and the way it turned his knuckles white as he pressed into it. He wasn’t going crazy. People went stir-crazy on space stations, it was documented. But he wasn’t. He needed to stop, think, and put the blame where it belonged. He looked at Kai. Simpering, sneering Kai. “What. Did. You. Do?”
“Do? I just told you.”
“To my samples.” All those hours of collecting. The testing. The containment encryption. “What did you do to them?”
“Oh, that mess. I told you about that, too.” Kai folded his arms across his chest. “I told you last night. Or wait, I started to tell you, but then you ordered me to snap to and sent the former space ape to get me—”
“You took the Warringer and hightailed down here to crack it,” Jake snapped. Kai retreated, his face paling, and Jake realized that he’d circled the table, arms outstretched, fists clenched. Some complete bastard was holding him back from pummeling the arrogance right out of Kai’s DNA. He shrugged his arms hard, and Con—it had to be Con, damn it—gripped him more securely. “Admit it.”
Kai slowly began to regain some of his normal color. “No, I didn’t. I came up to the infirmary after Santos manhandled me. Wait, wait, are you accusing me of stealing the case? Because I didn’t, and if you check the infirmary security cameras, but that doesn’t matter, my contract protects me against any unnecessary physical assault, you aggressive freak, or—or any false accusation!”
“Um,” Con said, still all iron hands and somewhere behind Jake.
Jake writhed to free himself. “And you screwed with my samples because I wouldn’t let you hijack them. I’ll have to collect new ones. That’s almost a year wasted, thanks to your idiocy—”
“False accusations, plural!” Kai yelped. “I didn’t touch your damn samples. I tried to get in, sure, but your encryption log will tell you that. I didn’t touch them. I couldn’t. You must have screwed them up yourself.”
“Jake,” Con murmured.
“I must have? You self-serving, self-obsessed, crusty little prick wart—”
“Jake,” Con growled. He dropped his hands, and Jake whirled on him. But Con wasn’t looking at him. “It’s Mei.”
Jake followed his gaze. Mei Chen stood in the doorway to the lab.
“Ookay.” Jake blinked. She still wore white hospital pajamas, her bare feet bluish-pale against the floor. Maybe he should have read Lindy’s comms more thoroughly, though barring a miraculous recovery, Lindy letting Mei out of her sight was unlikely. “Mei? What are you doing down here?”
Mei did not answer.
“Did Dr. Lindy release you?”
She did not stir from the doorway. Her black hair haloed her face, and that was all very nice, but the overall ethereal effect was ruined by the bright twin filaments of blood sliding out of her nostrils. They wandered over her mouth and teeth and chin and spattered her shirtfront with red streaks.
/>
Not a miraculous recovery, then. Jake rubbed his palms down the front of his shirt. “Kai?”
Kai gave a strangled squeak.
“Kai. Call the infirmary?”
“Yes, right, right, you’re right.” Kai retreated behind the lab table again and began muttering into his comm piece.
“I wanted to watch for it. But they put me to sleep.” Mei’s voice sounded harsh and hoarse. The silver cross-sickle-stars still hung around her neck, and she reached up to clutch it. “I didn’t want to sleep. Behold, she who keepeth the Earth shall neither slumber nor sleep.”
Con inched toward Mei. “You needed to sleep,” he said. “We watched for you.” Annoyingly, he didn’t sound at all nervous, but clipped, like he was barely able to suppress some intense emotion. For Con, that was worked up. Jake tried to insinuate stellarcore into his own spine.
Mei looked confused for a moment. Then she grinned. Her pearly, childish teeth showed a smear of bright ruby. “Liar, liar, liars. You’re a dark one, aren’t you, Connor Griffin? Strange, strange. I couldn’t watch, so now I don’t need to sleep anymore. No one’s watching us.”
They don’t shut. They stare and stare and you can’t go to sleep, Con’s sleepy voice murmured in his head. Jake tapped at his own commbud and whispered, “Carmichael. You read?”
“Yes?” Carmichael’s voice rumbled over the comm. “Not quite oh-seven hundred, but I can meet you sooner.”
“Are there any alerts or lockdowns reported? Stationwide? Or specifically, the infirmary?”
Silence as Carmichael presumably clicked up the alert screens on a console or tablet. “No. We’re all quiet.”
“Sir, we need you to report to the main labs right now. Mei’s here, and something’s wrong with her. Have someone check in with Lindy, too.”
“On my way.” Carmichael’s breath sped faster over the commlink. “Can you talk?”
“Jake,” Kai hissed, and Jake turned to see him huddled against the lab counter. “Lindy didn’t even know she’d gone. But Doc’s fine, everything’s fine there—”
“Jake, are you still there? Can you talk?”
“I don’t know, Toby.” Thump went something behind Jake, and he turned back to see Con prone on the floor. “Con. Con?” What had she done to him? Mei smiled and took two quick steps, quicker than he could see, and then she pressed up against him, so close that Jake felt the heat of her breath against his cheek.
He heard Carmichael saying something in his ear, but the sounds didn’t stitch into meaning. Mei’s fingernails dug into Jake’s chin (when had she reached up?) as she twisted his face to hers. Her eyes widened, and she wiggled her shoulders with palpable delight. Behind him, Kai said, “Holy flipshitted Buddha—”
“Let us in,” Mei murmured.
The lab shifted out of focus. The world greyed. The lights went out.
Rebecca collapses again, convulses again. He feels for her pulse again, feels it shuddering and fading again. She gasps at him. He leans closer. But sharp teeth skitter against his face, attended by the stench of fetid, coppery breath. Mei smiles up at him and she’s not supposed to be there she’s not in this time she’s not Mei, not Mei alone, Mei plus one, plus many, not Mei
Her hand was warm and sticky against Jake’s cheek. Someone was howling behind him. He wished they would shut up–they were hurting his ears. Shivering with revulsion, he leaned into her touch. He wanted to get away from her, didn’t he? But he couldn’t move.
“No, no,” Mei said, petting his face, her hands spread like starfish. She was the only thing he saw, a pale heart in a tunnel of darkness. Her fingertips scalded his skin. “And you don’t want to.”
Then the white-hot streaks fled. The lab rushed back in around Jake. A dark arm slung around Mei’s neck, and the floor rose up and pressed against his face.
Lying down was nice. He should have done it sooner. From there he heard Con’s groan, saw Con’s boot soles stir slowly against the immaculate flooring. Ice, like the floor in his quarters—so cold, it fairly burned his cheek. Above Jake, two blobs swayed in a jittery two-step. He supposed they were people. Not Con, though, Con was with him on the floor. Con twitched and rolled over.
“—get up and help me, Jake! Jake?”
The twirling, jumping blobs swam into focus and became Carmichael struggling to subdue Mei, struggling even though she came up to his bicep and was probably less than half his weight. She coughed, and a gout of blood sprayed over his arm.
“Stand down, Mei. Mei?” Carmichael sounded placid, as though he were directing a recalcitrant child. It should’ve made Jake feel better. “Stand down now. You’re done. It’s me, Mei.” He wound a tight arm around her neck and jerked her hands up behind her back. Mei snarled.
“There’s something really wrong with her,” Jake managed. He got his feet under himself and tried, with a dizzying lurch, to stand. He failed. Where had Kai gone? He heard keening somewhere behind him.
“Are you okay, Jake—damn it! Ow, shit.” With his free hand, Carmichael yanked Mei’s head back, but his forearm was already marred by a half-moon of bloody tooth marks. Carmichael dropped the reasonable tone. “That’s it, my dear, we are done. If you don’t come quietly, I will break…your…”
Mei swiveled eel-quick in his arms. For a moment, they grappled in silence, and then, then against all physical logic, she escaped Carmichael’s grip and spread her hands against his face.
He recoiled, but they were tangled together, stumbling back and forth like clumsy dancers. Mei’s legs twined with Carmichael’s, and they crashed backwards against an equipment cabinet and onto the floor. Jake watched the mess of their legs until they stopped their thrashing. His vision fuzzed over, and he rested his eyes for a moment.
He heard Carmichael say, “What are you doing?”
A whisper. Was that Mei? It sounded like Mei, and yet it didn’t. It sounded fuller, deeper, plural somehow. A chorus of whispers slid out from the shadows, from all the corners of the room. It twisted and sidled past Jake, past his ears and into the scuffling bodies on the floor, on and on and on, and somewhere someone began to exhale hoarsely. The gasping, hoarse breaths turned into jerky, animal, embarrassingly weak noises.
Then Toby Carmichael began to scream.
It didn’t sound anything like him. The screams were high-pitched, agonized sounds, something from the throat of a child, not a man. Jake tried to cover his ears, but he couldn’t raise his hands. He could only gasp at the anguish of it.
“They’re coming.” Kai’s voice, whispering in Jake’s ear. Hands clutched Jake hard under his armpits and yanked at him, but he still couldn’t get up. The lab wavered before his eyes. “For the love of…a little help here? Help me, Jake! Stand up, stand up, we need to get out of here!”
“Con. Carmichael.” Jake’s legs were so heavy.
“We can get past them without her noticing, don’t worry. Get up, get up!”
Con groaned and rolled over again. His arms flopped against the floor.
“Con?” Jake ducked Kai’s hands and tried to crawl. He was so tired, fear and confusion and exhaustion weighing him down. The shrieking made it very hard to think. He collapsed facedown again and dragged at the slippery cool tile. He could not get up.
It was difficult to see now, as if someone had tossed a veil over his head. A strange cloudy cloak seemed to cover Carmichael, Mei, and Con, and Jake couldn’t see through it. A frygun sat on the floor in front of him, its barrel black and greasy with charge. Jake reached for it. As he did so, he looked up into the miasma that covered Carmichael and Mei.
A gaze, one without face or eyes or any recognizable feature, met his. It made no sense—there was nothing looking at him that could look, but still it pierced him. The sensation was as transparent and implacable as glass. Jake tried to turn away, but he was pinned like a bug on a tray. It hurt. It flattened him. The ragged remnants of his strength drained out of him.
He was going to die right here on the lab floor. With Car
michael. With Con, with Kai. And from what? Screams. Hands. Mei. And a strange mist-cloud-thing. This was certainly some unexpected bullshit. But he could feel the watcher siphoning the life out of him. He was going to die.
No, he wasn’t. He still had the frygun. He could still feel his arms and his hands, and he groped for the gun handle, the floor burning cold under his fingers.
“Pleee.” Carmichael’s screams had dwindled into hoarse entreaty. He sounded wrong, off somehow, tongueless. “Pleeee. Pleeee no. Hellll. Hell me.”
The frygun handle was warm in his palm. Jake heaved himself up with his other hand. It felt as if he was pushing the floor away. Give me a lever large enough…
He lifted the gun. He aimed. His aim was horrible. He had to focus. He had to—Jake willed his arm to steady, and his will wasn’t good enough so he pulled his knee up and rested the gun on it. Fuck the contact burns, just point and shoot, point, point or he’ll die, he’s dying, you can hear him, my gods that’s the sound of someone dying, again—
“Hell me pleeee—”
He depressed the trigger. A blue streak of electricity sizzled into Mei and Carmichael, into the murk surrounding them. Mei writhed, and the air around Jake shivered with a frenzy of muttering groans.
Mei staggered up against the door, leaving streaks of red with her hands. Then she was through it and gone. Jake found himself staring at the ceiling again. A white face ghosted over him, its mouth an empty blot opening and closing soundlessly. For a moment, Jake thought he was back in his quarters, looking in the bathroom mirror. He closed his eyes.
CHAPTER TWELVE
“…it should be illegal for a convict, a convicted felon to flout ethical decisions. I am at my wits’ end. He’s just the same in session, too. Doesn’t respect me, talks over me, constantly frustrates my attempts to talk about the implant, how it affects his life here. I know that Science is counting on psychs in my position for valuable feedback on successful implanteds, and Jake’s obstinacy is a slap in the face. In everyone’s face!
[Natalia Ticonti stretches her arms over her head, breathes four deep pulls.]