by Anna Gaffey
“See, informality is key to our operation here,” Jake said to Quinn, who had retreated behind Lashti. “Also, I can’t fire him because no one on Earth or anywhere else in the universe will take him.”
“So it’s true?” Quinn ventured. “You—”
“Yes. It’s all true. My wit is both ruthless and derivative. Fair warning.” Jake stroked the keypad and touched the shiny clasps where, in a standard briefcase from the 2130s, he’d find thumbplates.
Something fizzed under his thumb. A bell sound chimed, filling the lab with a clear reverberating ring. The case shivered and rolled in upon itself, secreting its leather exterior…somewhere, as it revealed its innards. Which was curious: camouflaged thumbplates or not, it should have been keyed to one print only: presumably Dr. Silverman’s. Even if they had known each other. Especially since they’d known each other, according to his vid-self. And yet it responded to Jake. Discomfort warred with possessiveness within him.
“Wow,” breathed Kai. “Sexy. But it must change state somehow—”
“No, no, I see, it’s just a parlor trick device,” Lashti broke in excitedly. “Inside out. Wow.”
She reached out to stroke the case, and possessiveness squashed discomfort. “Don’t,” Jake whispered, blocking her. “It’s still working.”
With a soft fwump, a square of black velvety shock cushion puffed out and settled on the table. Jake poked at it, and the surface of velvet sank and scattered, revealing a sleek, tiny tablet. A bright golden gem sat snugly in the memory well. “Oh, Silverman.” The open, inviting ease of it sent a creeping shiver up his neck, as if something unseen and long-hidden looked out at him from inside, something waiting to see what he would do. He ignored the sensation as best he could.
“You just touched it,” Kai said. “I’ve been working on that thing nonstop since Mei—since you all—and you just touch it and it spreads its legs? Are you kidding me?”
“Maybe if you weren’t so naturally abrasive, the universe would like you better.” Jake popped the tablet out of the cushion. It was smaller than their most current station tech, smaller than Con’s tablet, and he was willing to bet speedier, too. He ran his hands over the casing and thumbed the tiny power button, half-expecting a dead charge. But the screen brightened instantly. The diminutive tablet vibrated in his hands. “The bell sound?”
“That’s a standard Warringer tone,” Quinn offered. “I read about the creator. Apparently he really liked the bob minor the ringers did at old-time Liverpool, long pre-Leech, of course, and I can look up more info. Just say the word.”
“I can’t fire you on your first day, you know,” Jake told her. “I’m sure that’s in the contract, page nineteen, paragraph three.”
The tablet was packed nearly to bursting with data. The collections appeared as a sliding screen, and Jake could see general labels such as Log and Research among the assorted documents and layered flash-bangs and string links. For a moment he felt as light and expectant as his flippant, uncomplicated younger self. He tapped up Log and swatted at Kai, who was breathing heavily over his shoulder. “Or maybe it says I can’t fire you before your first day. Not in these enlightened times. Not that it matters, what with you all recalled and reassigned, so—”
“Recalled?” the women chorused.
Whoops. Clearly his brain could only handle so much before it overflowed. “Oh. Ha. No one said anything?” It would have fallen to Carmichael, who was now too busy being comatose to say anything. Oh, well. “Science is supposed to notify you officially when they swap your assignments. I think.”
“I’ve been waiting for a station contract for three whole years!” Lashti’s eyes flashed. “And now just like that, I’m recalled and—”
“REASSIGNED?” Kai squawked. “We need them, you figment of an asshole! On whose authority—”
“Hey, more on that later!” Jake said brightly, clutching the tablet to his chest. “Kai, you’ll take care of the Warringer, won’t you?”
“Screw the Warringer!” Lashti snapped.
“Take care of it how?” Kai advanced on him, and Jake retreated, holding the tablet above his head. “I’ve already spent forty hours on the damn thing, and it didn’t so much as whimper. First, since I’ve already put in so much time, I’d like to see what’s in that tablet. Second, you can tell me exactly what the virulent and communicable hells recalled and reassigned means, and then—”
“Sounds like a standard day in the labs,” came Santos’ voice over the general comm. “Kai. Jake. If you guys are finished scaring the newts with your test tube wars, we’ve got a real situation. Meet me in the infirmary, and—”
With a punctuating click of finality, the lab lights snapped off, sinking them into blue darkness.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“I’ve been giving ample thought to the process after we go public. I think we need to bring in someone from the psych and marketing departments, perhaps in our prelim test phases. We need people to show us how to spread this thing…superstition will be the hardest prejudice to overcome. Might be good to tie it into the Combined Belief System, if at all possible.”
Excerpt: personal ship’s log
22 September 2242
Dr. Alice Silverman
Clinical pathologist
Personnel Carrier Leah Harmon
United Worlds DS 2150-1
En route Selas Station, Satellite, Eos System
[Data recovered 02 Dec 2242, Gunaji rights per salvage]
1 November 2242 AEC
20:20
The auxiliary power buzzed. The lights came back on. There was a flicker of darkness in the corner, but it flittered into nothingness before Jake could examine it more closely. Perhaps there was nothing to examine—perhaps it was just spots of light in his eyes. The sinister sensation he’d felt as he and Kai and the newts had looked upon the tablet returned. Jake turned to the nearest lab console and found Kai already there.
“Power blinked across the level. Enviro, Heart access, everything. We’re only up on limited auxiliary because of the lab containment safeguards.”
“Those don’t include the lifts. Let’s get up to the infirmary.” Jake thumbed the door. Behind him, Quinn shrilled, “Wait, what should we do?”
“Dig out the pressure suits,” Kai said.
“Portside cabinets,” Jake threw over his shoulder. They hurried down the corridor to the lift column, and Kai mashed the call button. The access panel remained dark.
“Access tunnels?”
Jake poked in his command sequences. The touch-sensitive emergency access entry panels might have been carved from stone for all they responded. He ran back to the lift access and tried there. “Nothing. What happened to the alarms? Santos said she and Mick hooked ‘em up, but there’s nothing. Do we still have the mag overrides in the lab?”
“Yes, but—”
Dull thumping rang out from the panel closest to the lifts. Jake turned just in time to catch the hatch panel as it popped off.
Grey-clad legs swung through the access hatch with a whuff of air, narrowly missing Kai’s head, and Santos banged down into the corridor. She brushed dust from her shoulders. “Thanks. All the vertical and internal columns below this level are locked down. External hatches might still be accessible. We’ll need those magnetic overrides you’ve been squirreling away. Oh, don’t look so shocked, you think I just ignore req discrepancies?”
So much for that stash. “What were you waiting for?” Jake said sourly. “A station-wide emergency?”
Santos didn’t even crack a smile. “Just get them, please?”
Could there be some other news from the infirmary, something they’d missed with the sudden surge in fritzes? Jake touched her arm. “He’s still okay, isn’t he?”
Santos gave a curt nod. “Still holding stable. But Mei’s gone.” She strode toward the lab entrance, tapping her commbud.
“Dead?” A knot twisted in Jake’s gut. It was becoming difficult to think clearly about Me
i. He kept waffling back and forth between the distraught, addled woman curled on the mess floor and the demon that had sucked away his energy. But she couldn’t be dead. Not before they had a chance to mend her.
“No, not dead. As far as I know. She’s disappeared. Again.”
“What?” Kai yelped. “Put a leash on her, for plague’s sake!”
Jake slammed the hatch door. The shock vibrated through his hands, but he barely felt it. Mei, missing again. Which Mei now prowled the station? Steady, now. He controlled the urge to look over his shoulder. “What happened?”
“We don’t know. Lindy was checking Carmichael, and I was checking with Mick, which is really why I’m here. Mick? You back now?” She motioned at Jake to listen in, and he shook his head at her.
“No commbud. I’m not sure where—”
Kai suddenly cocked his head. Santos held up a quelling hand and tapped up the general comm system on the wall monitor. The speaker hummed into life.
“—no. N-no way. I’m sorry, dude. I mean, Santos, sir. Ma’am.” Mick’s voice shook over the comm. “I can’t do that. And if you were really you, you’d know that.”
“Boxhill? Mick is locking down the crawlspaces?” Jake muttered. He leaned over Santo’s shoulder as she tapped at the screen. “How did he of all people manage to lock anyone out of Heart?”
“Not sure yet.” Santos wiped her forehead, leaving a smear of grime. “He’s not an idiot, Jake. Looks like he put in some kind of emergency command…yeah, the log entry’s dated last night. While you were knocked out.”
“It’s not that I think he’s an idiot—well, no more than normal. But Mick doesn’t have enough access to do any permanent damage.”
“Automatic shutdown overriding all security codes except his own, which shouldn’t be possible.” She pointed at a jumbled line on the screen:
Protocol no. 55924
c.f. protocols, classifications: in event of destructive threat to the station
“Oh.” Jake inspected the code. “The source of our fritzing?”
“As far as I can tell, no. It’s a systemic shutdown option, built into Heart with all the other emergency functions.”
“It’s legit,” Kai interjected. He stood at the console opposite them on the other side of the corridor. “Anyone serving on-call has temporary use of the codes for certain emergency protocols.”
“Such as, say, possible outbreak of infectious disease. Yeah. But temporary codes should end with his shift,” Jake said. “Unless someone overrode the login timeouts.” He looked at Santos.
She scowled, and crimson spots appeared on her cheeks. “I had to. There was no one to replace him until we got the new Control replacements back from the Harmon, and someone had to run diagnostics on Heart’s system without getting locked out.”
“So you pick the guy who cracks up?”
“He was fine.” Santos bulled into his space and gripped Jake’s collar, backing him up against the corridor wall. “In any case, who else was there? I’d like to see you do as well with everyone passed out around you—”
“Get off me.” Jake struggled. Her knuckles dug into his neck, and for a wild moment her eyes held no reason. “Rachel, stop it.”
“Whoa, what are you doing? Both of you calm down,” Kai said, bug-eyed at Santos’ shoulder.
Santos hesitated only a second, and then she released Jake. Kai heaved a shaky sigh. “Okay. Christs and mahatmas. Okay. Is Mick still down in Control, Santos? What’s he doing?”
“He was. He was still in Control, yes.” Santos rubbed her forehead. “I—don’t know why I did that.”
Jake remembered that he’d been planning, at some distant point in time less than half an hour ago, to return to the infirmary. Why, again? It was hard to concentrate when he was being throttled. “It’s all right. Damn, Rachel.” Maybe Mick was right—maybe they had all gone nuts.
She backed off, straightening the cuffs of her sleeves with sharp jerks, her focus scarily intent on the fabric. When she lifted her gaze, her eyes were normal and expressive again, and dark with worry. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know this would happen. How could I have known? What would you have done?”
“Oh. Well—I…that’s not very fair.”
“No, it isn’t. Why don’t you try talking to him?”
“All right, fine.” Jake leaned closer and tapped the console’s pickup microphone to live. “Mick. It’s Jake. If you can hear me, just, please. I don’t know what’s going wrong here, but—”
“That’s just it, Jake,” Mick said, and instantly his voice altered from freaked to pleading. “You’re supposed to know. I came to see you, remember? Remember?”
“Yes, I remember.” He was surprised Carmichael’s memory gem—or Con’s—didn’t burn an incriminating hole through his pocket. And he was still clutching the new tablet, Silverman’s shiny tablet and gem with all the untold goodies. If this kept up, he was going to need deeper pockets or risk looking like a walking techie.
Santos mouthed, what the fuck?
Jake shook his head, and she glared at him. Later, he mouthed back. He would tell her, he had to. Of course, it would help if she’d stop being so righteous, snotty, and…right about stuff like extra reqs. “Look, Mick. I could probably get a better handle on it if you would just talk to me. Us, I mean. Santos and I are okay, we’ll come get you, and then we’ll all go up and see Dr. Lindy.”
“N-no, no. I thought I could trust you. But if you don’t know, then you’re an imposter like the rest of them.”
“The rest of who?” Jake asked.
Apparently that was the wrong question. Silence stretched over the comm. “Mick?”
Kai whispered, “I’ve got visual. Redirected the security feed shutdown.” He waited a beat. When they didn’t react, he sighed, scrunched his face, and thumbed the monitor’s plate. “Please hold your applause.”
The screen faded slowly into a familiar view: a wide expanse of the Control level. The viewscreen curtains were dimmed, the consoles empty. The shifting black beyond the glass and containment was completely still and serene.
“Do you see him?” Santos leaned in until her nose brushed the screen and left a tiny smear. “I don’t.”
Protocol no. 55924. It was a version of the quarantine lockdown, but which one? Jake ran through the station manual in his mind. The codes were in alphanumerical order, and the implant had several algorithms specifically designed to—ah. Page 131, there it was, and—right, of course. It was the manual lockdown. The one with the lowest security requirements. “55924 is the version we’re supposed to use when unimpaired people are available on a majority of station levels,” he reported. “Despite infection. People able to observe quarantine. Which is probably why we’re all still here and breathing. The way that particular lockdown works, he has to shut down all the levels by hand.”
“But that would take forever,” Santos said. “What kind of roundabout coup is he trying?”
“Well, it’s not really for all-out emergencies. It’s a multiple crewman operation.” Jake reached across Kai and tapped up the security feeds for Levels 4 through 7.
“Hey,” Kai protested. “I’m driving here.”
Santos nodded. “But Mick’s the lone wolf. He’s already said he can’t trust any of us. This isn’t exactly the protocol you choose when you think the rest of your crew is compromised, you know? Too much running around required.”
Jake frowned. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s the only one he knows?”
“He doesn’t have a ton of clearance,” Kai agreed. “And he’s no hacker. I don’t think. I mean, if he was, we’d probably be better friends. Hackers are like that.”
Jake snorted.
“We’re also totally unaffected by the disdain of outsiders, so shut up already.”
“The point?” Santos snapped her fingers at Kai, and Jake was uncomfortably reminded of Carmichael.
“Oh. I don’t really know his hobbies.” Kai subsided. “But it’s doubtful.”
Santos shook her head, her brow furrowed, and turned back to the screen. “We need more visibility. We need to see him. What’s this now?”
“Multishot of the station levels, four through seven.” Kai gestured, and the screen slid neatly into four square divisions: the Astrometrics lab, the dull deserted brightness of the central crew quarters’ corridor on Level 5, the corridors outside the mess hall and cargo bay on Level 6, and Level 7, the furthest down, which alternated between shots of the empty common area and the main cargo bay.
The Level 4 screen buzzed, and then their view of the Astrometrics lab’s consoles fizzled slowly out of sight as a thick, chalky cloud billowed over them. Jake’s heart skipped.
Her jaw set, Santos leaned forward. “Is that halodine decon?”
“Looks like. But with about two hundred times the normal safe particle spread.” Jake swallowed. “I suppose it could be a cleanser malfunction. I didn’t think that protocol was linked to the halodine system array.”
Santos’ mouth thinned further. “Was…is there anyone on that level?”
“It’s crew quarters, but you said for any new crew to stay in the cargo bay till you could check them in. We only got two and they’re up here already—what about the people in the mess? You assigned people there, didn’t you?”
“Yes. Okay.” Santos jabbed her comm. “Emergency. Any crew on levels five through seven, please respond via this channel.”
The Level 4 screen dissolved into a square of snow. Kai huffed and typed complex commands into the screen’s entry keys.
“We’ve still got limited sensors in there,” he reported. “No, no, wait—they’re gone. But my readout confirmed halodine before it cut out. And he’s going down level by level.”
“Please respond! Heart, open the general comm system for levels five through seven—attention all hands on levels five through seven, if you can hear me, this is Quartermaster Santos. Please follow emergency evacuation procedures.”
“Level by level. He really must not know any other protocols.” Jake scowled. “Hells, how can he access the halodine? And why doesn’t he kill us now? He’s already locked us out. Why make us wait while he dicks around on every floor in the most inefficient knock-off since World War Two—”