by Anna Gaffey
From so far? Were they reaching to the station? Beyond, to Earth? Jake tried to replay the nonsense in his head. They were here and then, they were in between. Dimensions? Time? What would those be for such creatures?
“Denys…sent you back. Back to where? Back when?”
“Where, when, dead. It does not matter. We persist. We continue.” Mick’s haunted eyes. Lindy’s mouth, firm and cross. “We live in time, we move through time, we find moments, and we enter. Chubaryan found us a moment for your Earth. But he did not come back to us. Why?”
“Maybe he came to his senses.” A moment for your Earth. A swell of horror overwhelmed Jake. That date in the legacy comm files. 1 November 2130. 22:45:08. We find moments, and we enter. Mere weeks before the first outbreak…
“Leech,” he whispered, his shoulders dropping. The word seethed in the air around him. “You’re Leech.”
“As you like.” Mei shrugged, her chin stained red. “This correlation is crude. Imprecise. Why must we talk? Why must you name? Too much definition is constant stagnation. A futile attempt to hold something ever-fluid in place.”
The quicksilver slid over Jake’s legs, dampening them until he could no longer kick against its weight. Shrunken, pitted hearts. The quickening shadows, the creep of things just out of the corner of the eye. The strange doubles he’d seen all over the station. He flashed again on the shrieking silence of light. Was that responsible for those occasional moments of clarity, for the ghost-sightings aboard the station? The proximity to the rift had allowed them to see their parasites, but as shadows? Nat’s terror. Santos and her sorrowful eyes. The grey veils Con had seen. Leech, Con had said. I see it on everyone. Everyone who hasn’t had the serum. They had been on Earth, these things. Leech. They had gone to Earth. Somehow Chubaryan had sent them to Earth and they had fed—the plague—their feeding?
“The plague. Leech. The deaths, the plague, that was you?”
“Ah, the frenzy.” Nat’s face lit with a gleeful, demonic smile. “Most gratifying.”
It wasn’t a disease, nor an outbreak. It was feeding. These things, their feeding, a feeding frenzy. “And when we stopped you,” he stuttered. “When we got the vaccine—”
Nat waved a hand. “By then we had settled into the sharing stage. You stopped nothing. Your enhancement allowed us to settle firmly.”
“Sharing.” The silver-grey cloud over everyone, invisible to everyone but Con. Con, burdened with an unexpected clarity of vision. “Our bodies.”
“It is not as glorious as the frenzy.” Nat looked regretful. “But it is necessary for propagation. And it is not unsatisfying. A thin but long meal, and morally pleasing.”
Parasites. Ever feeding, ever present, unseen. Crushing human immune systems into nothing. Grey and choking and completely unknown, unnoticed. Though that wasn’t completely correct. He’d seen some of it on Mick. He’d seen strange things aboard the station. Ghosts. Ghouls. Possessed. Will you speak to us? We will hear you. Hear us.
“It is the way of things, when you and your people come this close to our between-amid-during. It is a leak. It is a corruption. It causes tremors to be dimensional so close to the interdimensional.”
Interdimensional. Jake’s brain rattled through a variety of nonsense theories, but the quicksilver commanded his attention as it climbed up his chest, digging with sinuous invisible talons, and reached for his face. It was sickly sweet against his mouth, like buried earth. Jake batted at it, and it parted at his touch, insubstantial as smoke, and continued.
“No more of that. You should be grateful,” Rebecca said in his ear. She stroked his cheek. “You are here, shared with us. You’ll be us soon. And then you will take us up and fetch the others. We want all. We need all.”
“I won’t.”
“You will. We will. We will fetch all the others, all times.”
“All times—”
“Yes, we will continue. Through all your times.”
He could not tell if continue meant what he thought it did, or if the thing meant something closer to endure. And between-amid-during. Between the lines, come on, Jake, between things, what could it mean? Between…everything? Living in time, moving in dimensions? Vaulting to Earth. The mysterious scan flicked into his head, the one with black emptiness and stars where Selas should’ve been. The engine. They had vaulted to Earth in their engine, using the rift, somehow, followed Chubaryan’s message—or, perhaps, had traveled within it, ridden it back. Though “back” was relative.
And here he was flat on his back, conversing with a face-trading monster from outer space in something, an engine, which was, possibly, shifting dimensions as he lay on the impossible floor. He might as well ask questions, while he still could. “Why?”
Rebecca’s face drifted into Con’s. The thing did a spot-on studiously blank Con mock-up, Jake had to give it that. “What is why?”
“Why are you doing this to us, to humans? What do you want from us?”
“Want?” Con inhaled heavily, supremely unconcerned. “We are hungry. We feed. We propagate. We continue.”
It was impossible to fight. There was nothing to fight, to grapple with physically, and mentally there was no connection. Jake couldn’t outsmart something that didn’t understand him, something that didn’t care or know to care, something that only feasted. Nor could he fight something that he could barely fathom, despite its attempts to communicate using human brains and words.
“And now we will feed.”
The smothering tipped again into pain, and Jake fell back in a haze of red, kicking convulsively. On some level, he was still aware of his surroundings. He could sense his body, that he’d pissed himself. On every other level, his skin was being flayed off in needle-sized strips, a handful at a time. His lungs were ablaze. His throat was torn out, his legs taken bit by bit until they were a small twinge of nothing, a splinter in the waves shuddering through him. His eyes blazed, but he could still see. That was good, he supposed. He’d want to see death when it came.
Then the pain ebbed away. Jake opened his eyes to see the quicksilver rising in a fluttering, queasy net above him. The Nat-thing hovered over him, her eyes wide with surprise, her insubstantial fingers cupping his cheek.
“You taste…wrong.”
Its grip sunk deep into him, then loosened and recoiled.
“What is wrong with you? You did not taste so before.” Nat blurred into silvery smoke. “It is cannibalistic. Wrong.”
Wrong. Before. He needed to think now, before it started hurting him again. It had to be the Restore protecting him somehow, making him…unpalatable. Was he safe? Was Con safe? And Santos, and everyone who’d taken Restore?
A hand pressed his forehead, his cheek, his shoulder.
“Jake.”
With the touch came a familiar flood of memory. Silverman, Jake, Con’s memory.
I told you to stay up there. Jake opened his eyes and Con, the real Con, lurched against him, tangible and tense. He held Jake steady with one hand. Trails of light drifted over his fingers.
A swell of relief swamped Jake. That was it, he was hopeless, he wanted Con—the murderer, Leech had named him—to save him, to mesh into one sensing being until the welter and gaps of their memories became one. The murderer. He didn’t care. It was Con or oblivion, Con or the Leech and their sharing, their feast. I told you to stay up top, damn it.
“Sorry,” Con muttered. “But I couldn’t.”
“Oh.” Jake hadn’t known he’d spoken aloud. The trails of light from Con’s hands mesmerized him. Something here around them, reacting to the serum? Or just his brain imploding, finally. “Well, that’s fine then. Since you couldn’t.”
Con rolled his eyes, and the whites of them lit with a faint bluish glow. “What is it? The thing, the pull?”
“Leech. Like you said.”
“Leech? I didn’t say—I don’t understand.”
“Are you real?” Jake asked him. He couldn’t remember. Was Con going to save them, o
r what? “You look like a ghost.”
“Yes, I’m real, you fool. But you say this is Leech—”
“Not convincing enough. It’s in my head, like you.” Jake pushed weakly at Con’s hand, and saw his own fingers giving off trails of light now. “No more, I said.”
“Jake, I’m here. I’m not in your head, I’m here talking to you.”
“Here in the engine.”
“Okay, in the engine. Whatever this is, it’s not completely here. You’re dropping in and out. Between dimensions, I think—”
“Yeah, yeah, whatever, go find a physicist. It doesn’t matter. It won’t let us leave.”
Con started to say something, then he grunted and collapsed next to Jake.
—Jake—
Con’s voice rushed through Jake’s mind as the Nat-thing flickered back. She crawled backwards and away from them, looking perplexed. “You are both food. You should be amenable to our sharing. Are you amenable?”
“Of course not,” Jake snapped.
“You must be amenable. You must allow us. It is your nature as food.” The Nat-thing clutched its head. It appeared to be having a difficult time controlling its pretend human form; dark cracks wrinkled up underneath the flesh of Nat’s face. “When we try to feed on you, it is wrong. Feedback. Cannibalism. Strong and filling, but out of reach. No sharing. Protected. You are somewhat amenable, Jacopo Jeong. Mostly. We can reach you through the door.” She tapped her head.
“The door.” It was like talking to a thesaurus run through a randomizer.
“Door. Hole. Patch. Dark spot.” The Nat-thing tapped her head harder.
Dark spot… “The chip? The chip.” They could get in through the ERPIC.
“We do not know the chip. He is like you. Humans, Earth. So he must be amenable, too, like you.”
“That’s a no.”
Con squeezed Jake’s hand, and it was claustrophobic, as though he were clenched in Con’s fist. His thoughts flowed into Jake’s head, dodging the intruding creep of silvering miasma.
—Wave pack. Where is it?—
Jake squeezed back. Floor. There. Right in front of us, too close. But we can’t activate it. Machines won’t work in here. It said. I think it can hear my thoughts. I don’t know why it isn’t stopping me now. I think we hurt it somehow.
—I’ll try something—Con’s mental tone sounded almost droll—organic, then. But I’ll need to concentrate, and I can’t if that thing is trying to nnngh goddamn—
Con writhed, and Jake gripped his hand helplessly. He turned on the Nat-thing. “Leave him alone. Please. Don’t—”
Nat-thing staggered up. “You want him. We will not feed from him. He is unpalatable anyway. Profane. Antithetical. These words of yours, we do not have them. We cannot have him. But we can hurt him. We must feed soon. Let us feed on you and we will leave him.”
“I thought I was inedible, too.”
“We must try.” The thing turned crafty. “Let us feast, and you may have the memories.”
“What memories?”
“Your sister. Rebecca Jeong. You have lost her, but we can find her.” The thing tapped its brow again. “Inside the dark spot.”
“Liar. Those are the chip’s memories, they’re not real. You can’t give me anything I haven’t seen before.”
“Your technology is fallible. It will let us in if you do, and it cannot hide thoughts forever. If you want her,” the thing purred, “you must be amenable. Welcome us in. Open. Pull down the veil and let us feed.”
“You’ll kill me.” But the curl of hope had already started in his belly. He could save Con. Combined with the possibility of seeing Rebecca again, even if he died here in this cavern, he couldn’t withstand the temptation. Con would go on
between-amid-during
and he would survive. Jake would save him and see her. No, it was too good to be true. “You’ll kill me, and him.”
“Yes. No. You will be us. We you.” The Nat-thing scoffed, her teeth speckled with blood. Her hair was changing slowly, lengthening, streaking into a lighter brown. “Welcome us, and we will give you him, and her. We will give you you. Us.”
And Con needed time to do something, something Jake wasn’t going to think about. He focused on Rebecca, on his memories with the books and maps and rations and hair-pulling. As he descended, he heard Con shout from across the room, then fleetingly, inside his head.
—Jake, wait, no—
Then he was alone again on the wide cold floor.
No, not quite. Con had gone, but not-quite-Rebecca knelt before him. She smirked and rolled her eyes, one of her oldest, most irritating gestures, the last one he was certain had actually belonged to her, in the long-haunted, faded catalog of his tainted memory. But her eyes were wrong. They were green, like Con’s.
“Well?” said the thing that was not his sister.
Jake swallowed. He felt weighed down by an uncomfortable righteousness. Bravery, he supposed. It was wholly unfamiliar. Did bravery feel as spiny as a pile of stellarcore and twice as heavy? He didn’t know how much time Con needed. “Come on, then.”
It crawled toward him, flittering in and out of human form with squirming unfixed limbs, a muddled approximation of Con’s eyes in Rebecca’s face. Already he felt the threat of pain ratcheting up again in his head, a hot point like a liquid needle. But Con had wanted a distraction, and Jake had wanted him safe. He had to command its full attention.
Come ON, he told it. I welcome you. Come in out of the cold, jump on in, enjoy yourself. He saw the arching concavity of the ceiling high above him, the thing crouched over him, wearing his own face. It grinned Jake’s own smile, and waved a slicing, nicking motion over Jake’s belly. A tendril of silvery fog opened, a rip in the air, and the Jake-thing slipped inside the fog, inside his belly, and disappeared.
Fog. Warmth. It scrabbled through his clothing, his neck and hair and in between his fingers. It gagged him, made his skin crawl and stretch and wither. Jake tried to push himself up and backward, anywhere, away, but his hands skidded against the floor. A small lump crushed beneath him: the small satchel, his mother’s chemistry set. The vials broke under his weight. The scrabbling grew worse, more invasive, as if he was caught in a vise and being pressed to pulp. He tried to scream. It sopped his mouth with an obscene kiss.
Then it gorged. It stained him all over with bloody agony. A white-hot lance ripped through him—plaguing gods and earthen hells, he couldn’t, it was too much, just let it stop—and—please—
He thought he could hear Con shouting somewhere, but he sounded very far away.
You promised me my sister, Jake thought, his mind dwindling. The heavy heat drowned him, and his vision dimmed. His body slipped away, no longer solid, no longer his. Was this what Silverman had felt on the Harmon? Paralyzed by her own drug, and eaten off an altar to a race of beings she would never see.
The Harmon. What was that? Jake couldn’t remember. It was a strange word, really, not quite harmony, nothing he’d known.
They are eating my mind. Savoring it in little bits and snaps, but they’ll take it all, everything, names, thoughts, feelings. I gave it to them. Right.
He forgot the name of the planet inside of which he lay, the name of the man who had lain beside him, the man who was doing whatever organic thing he was meant to be doing. He forgot the ships, the spread of stars, the meaning of their far-off tints of color. He felt the cold touch of metal under his hands, looked down—
Then he is back there.
Back in the familiar confines of Icebreaker Labs, his home away from home. His real home. The room unfurls around him as if it has been waiting, folded up in a drawer. It shakes out its creases and solidifies into the testing room walls, and the smooth metal of the lab table warms under his palms. A row of vials waits on the table, filled with bright golden liquid. Twenty-four glass vials all lined up. A double dozen. He looks down the row of reclining white cots, and each one is occupied. Thirteen Defense grunts, ten scientists.
At first he thinks the thing—Leech—has merely activated the chip and left him to drown in the nightmare as it, as they feed. But he walks down the row, and he recognizes each face. Each name springs to his lips, names he didn’t care about back then, but they are there and ready now as the Leech plumbs his grey cells for data.
Bartlett-Park, Hani, Coupe, Dartmoor. Doshi.
Meskimen. Vang. Prado. Abdi. Arias. Fripp. Keegan.
Wilander. Batsuda. Levy-Piccarilo. Lord. Pernot. Vartanian. Smith.
Jeong. Jeong. Jeong. Jeong. Rebecca.
He stops at the end of the row, at the last cot. Rebecca smiles up at him. His sister, her features so sharp and clear that he knows, finally, that this is the real her. This is Rebecca, his imperfect memory of her, yes, but it’s true and so tangible, without the hard efficiency of the ERPIC nightmare. His mouth wants to form the words he spoke then, but he twists out of it. For once, he can say what he wants right now instead of then. And he says it.
“I miss you.”
“I miss you, too,” she says. She too speaks out of sync with the past. “I’m sorry to die.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You should be. You should have waited. Done more tests. Told me your studies. The greater good cost you and me and all of us.”
“Not Con,” Jake counters. “It worked on him.”
She smiles gently at him. “Because he bore the pain. Like you did. If humans are to be saved, they must pay.”
“That’s simplistic. And Con helped me.” Look at him. He’s talking to his sister—granted, to a new memory of her—for the first time in years, and he’s arguing. All systems normal.
“Change is hard.”
“It doesn’t have to be,” Jake says. “Not always. It’s not cowardly to try to take away pain.”
“Not cowardly,” she agrees. “But wrong here. The pain had purpose, was part of the change. Removing it cut a transitional step, a small one you didn’t see. Your pain had purpose. It still does.”