The Broken Third (Digitesque Book 4)

by Guerric Haché

  Ada leaned back on the cushioned seat and shook her head, laughing. Was she really hearing this? What the hell kind of world had she walked into, where people made these kinds of decisions? This was a civilization descended from the ancients, ancients who touched the stars and bent space and time itself, and this was the petty kind of games they played?

  “I - sorry, Elsa, but -” She tried to stop herself from laughing, but Elsa was laughing as well. Maybe this wasn’t so bad. “Just, no, don’t worry.”

  Elsa slapped her on the shoulder. “Shut up, I don’t need to hear it. You’re not my target audience.” She pointed to one of the doors. “Go shower, and if you’re not tired we can drink some more, or you can tell me stories about mammoth hunting or whatever you do on that wasteland of a planet you call home.”

  Ada blinked at the thought - those were rare on Earth. Showers - not mammoths, which were common enough if you went far north. Few places maintained the kind of plumbing needed for a shower. In some ways it was a wasteland. “Shower? Do you have baths too?”

  “Sure, I don’t care, just clean up.” Elsa frowned, and pointed towards what must be the shower. “You smell like some weird mix of dirt and citrus and it’s making me uncomfortable. How hot was it on that ship?”

  Ada chuckled. “Fine, fine.” She reached for her suit and took it off right there, prompting Elsa to curse and turn away. More colonial foibles; when she had to call Elsa to help getting the water running and Elsa studiously avoided looking at her, she couldn’t help but laugh.

  But when she was alone again, under the pouring hot shower, she wasn’t laughing. Water ran down her skin, down her face, and with nothing else to distract her she realized she hadn’t actually bathed since she had laid with Isavel. If there was anything left on her, any salts of dried sweat or tears, any faintly clinging scents, they were washing down the drain flowing gods-knew-where.

  Or not. Her gods knew nothing about this world.

  She was so far from home.

  The cavernous distance swelled in her ribcage the more she thought about it, pressing up against her heart. She leaned against the wall for a second, then sat down in the shower, pulling her legs to her chest, resting her head on her knees, and tried to remember what Isavel had felt like. This time, the only tears on her cheeks were hers, quickly rushed away by relentless alien water.

  Chapter 4

  Lips, hair, skin, muscle. Dreams. Only dreams anymore.

  A shrill buzz tore her back into the alien waking world, into the dark room she had slept in. She jumped out of the bed, scrabbled across the floor for a second, and slowed time to a crawl. Her barely-waking mind was already spreading through dark tendrils into the common area, looking for the source of the wail. What the hell was going on?

  Her seeing eyes of code flickered in front of her fleshy ones, quickly finding the wailing device up on the wall of the central room. A disorientation device, perhaps? Whatever it was, she coded a broken sigil onto it that crashed as soon as she let time slip back to its normal pace. The explosion blasted dust throughout the living room, and Elsa started shouting.

  “What the hell?!”

  Ada snapped her suit on, hopping out before it was quite done melding to her. She grabbed Elsa’s shoulder. “Are you okay? What was that thing?”

  Elsa stared at her. “ The doorbell. ”

  “The what?”

  Elsa shoved past her impatiently. “Shit, somebody’s going to have to pay for that. I’ll get the door.”

  Ada looked at the scattered debris lying on the living room floor, and the small, sparking hole she had left in the wall. Doorbell? She’d never heard the word. Some kind of alarm?

  “Ada?”

  She turned around to find Sanako walking into the room. The ensign looked tense, perhaps because Ada had just exploded something and left the evidence strewn around the room. “Sanako! I - um - I blew up a doorbell.”

  Sanako managed a faint smile. “Oh. Um, well.” She glanced nervously at Elsa, who had closed the door to watch Sanako cautiously. Sanako looked around the room somewhat warily, as though searching for something, but Ada had already blown up the most suspicious object.

  “Are you going to stay this time?”

  “No, Ada, I just, um, wanted to see… To check on your safety.”The ensign took a deep breath and addressed Elsa. “Lieutenant, you’ve remained on stream with your handler, right?”

  Elsa shook her head. “Not live.” Her eyes narrowed. “Not that I know of.”

  “Oh, that’s odd.” Sanako’s vigorous nodding didn’t seem to make sense with what she was saying. “I’ll have to ask the admiralty about that.”

  Elsa glanced at Ada. “As I understand it from the report, the admiralty is aware Ada is a bit… sensitive. I assumed they wanted to avoid provoking her.”

  Ada had no idea what was going on, but tension had descended onto the other two, and that couldn’t be a good thing. “Explain. Who’s provoking me?”

  “Well.” Elsa blinked. Ada could tell she was starting to sweat. “You know, you don’t like people seeing you undressed or anything, so we didn’t put any bugs in the room that might upset you.”

  She looked between the other two, wondering why in the thousand hells they were talking about bugs.

  Sanako bounced a little on her heels. “I agree. I’m glad we decided not to hide cameras the room.” She was making enormous eyes straight at Ada.

  Hidden cameras? What did bugs have to do with cameras, or…? Oh.

  She let time slow and reached out crawling, seething black tendrils every which way. She didn’t know what she was looking for, but code spindles had no minimum size and few apparent limits. She scoured walls and furniture, sneaking eyes under the couch and into cracks in the walls. She found electrical components here and there, and though she didn’t know what they were, she disintegrated them with code until the gentle hum of their electricity tingling across her code spindles dimmed. The lights in the room flickered off, sounds stopped. She also saw small animals in the walls, even a remarkably mundane-looking mouse, and left them well enough alone.

  She breathed deep and let the code fall silently to ash, vanishing into the air. Sanako trembled a bit, and took a step back. “Did you…?”

  “I don’t know what I’m looking for.” Ada scowled. “I basically destroyed everything I found.”

  Elsa was looking at something on the wall. “Lights and thermostat included.”

  “Look - Sanako, what -”

  “I’ll tell you what.” Elsa stepped forward. “Ensign, what the hell do they teach about subterfuge in the navy? That was the most awkward -”

  Sanako suddenly snapped her hands in the air. “Quiet, both of you!” They shut up. “Listen, we don’t have a lot of time. Ada - Ada, I don’t know how to tell you this, but your life is in danger.”

  Ada scrunched her face. “Gods, what this time?”

  “You - er.” Sanako swallowed hard. “Well, you’re not human.”

  Ada blinked. She glanced between these two colonials, short and prone to sickness and not nearly as strong as she was, and almost wanted to laugh. If anything, she was more human than them. “What do you mean?”

  “Somebody I know, and trust, was sent audio leaked from the navy. It was a conversation between Admiral Ashur and a biomedical scientist at the Academy of Military Sciences. About the medical tests you did on the ship.”

  The tests? She wasn’t sick, though. Was she? Elsa also frowned, then her eyes widened. “Wait, she’s not a fucking robot is she?”

  “No, no, she’s...” Sanako fumbled with something in her hands and sat down on the couch. “Come here. Listen.”

  A voice started playing, though it quickly turned to glitchy garbles as Sanako moved her finger along the device. Then it was clear again.

  “- if you hadn’t told me. This barely even looks like human DNA.”

  She couldn’t tell who was speaking. “Who -”

  Sanako shushed her as anothe
r voice spoke. This on Ada recognised as Senjat Ashur. “I’m not a geneticist, so I’m not sure how much I understand this report. Is she technically human? Legally. That’s what I want to know.”

  “Well, sir, I have no doubt her ancestors were human. But we know germline genetic modification became a widespread part of healthcare on Earth after independence, and - to be frank, sir, one common understanding of species requires a pool of individuals who can collectively produce fertile offspring. I would be shocked if she could have a child with any of us.”

  “Why?”

  Ada grimaced. “Yeah, what? I have no intention -”

  Sanako shushed her again, and the scientist’s voice continued. “Well, sir, she has twenty-four pairs of chromosomes. We only have twenty-three - and the twenty-fourth here is massive, larger than any of the others, and so far the computers have barely found any recognizable genetic structures in it. The ones they did find could just be noise. I’ll be damned if I ever figure out what any of it means.

  “And of thousands of cells recovered from hair samples, statistically some should have had minor mutations or damage, but… It’s almost like she’s immune to DNA damage entirely. I hesitate to say that’s impossible, but it’s clearly unnatural. Her skin microbiome is a swamp of microbiota that don’t fit any known species. Huge areas of her shared chromosomes are changed, missing, supplemented - at a glance I’d expect radical differences in bone composition, muscle tissue, reproductive and sex characteristics, neural and cognitive features -”

  “So you’re saying she’s a… human-shaped animal?”

  “Mathematically speaking, she’s about as closely related to us as a lemur.” The scientist seemed to hesitate. “Sir, I’m afraid you and I are on the lemur end of that comparison. She’s clearly transhuman.”

  Ada shook her head. “Stop.”

  Sanako stopped it, and exchanged worried glances with Elsa. “Ada, do you -”

  “What - what is he talking about? What’s a transhuman?”

  “It’s you, Ada.” Sanako looked scared of her.

  Elsa’s eyes roved up and down her body. “Way too tall. Freakishly strong. Ada, you learned our language in days .”

  Sanako continued. “Your muscle and bone mass are denser than they should be, which is why you’re so heavy and probably why you can break bones with a punch. In the last six days you’ve only slept about fourteen hours, but you don’t seem exceptionally tired. You said men and women on Earth are the same size, but they never were.”

  She held up her hands and shouted. “Stop! Quiet. Give me a damned second.” She looked at those hands. Unblemished. Unwrinkled. Unscarred. Perfectly suited to her gift. “I remember something from the first real city I visited.” She thought back to the farm tower, to the strange insects and fish living within it. “There was a building where watchers grew food for us, but there were also animals there, animals that… They were too convenient. I realized the ancients - my ancestors - made new life. Plants and animals that did whatever they wanted them to do.”

  She turned her hands over, looking at the code she had had Cherry etch into her own skin, giving her powers beyond what any coder could have dreamed of. She was perhaps not so different from the ancients, in that way. She looked up, and found the humans staring at her still.

  “I guess I did wonder if they had made us, but… It just never really hit me.” The humans sitting next to her were quiet. She glanced at them both again. “But they did make us. That’s what this means, isn’t it? They remade themselves.”

  Elsa looked off to the wall for a long moment, expressionless. “I could just keep assuming you’re human, but what if suddenly something happens where you’re suddenly just not , and I’m not prepared for it?”

  “I’m not going to suddenly grow wings and fly.” Ada tried to smile, but on reflection that wasn’t as certain as it could be. Isavel had certainly done so once or twice.

  Sanako took a step forward. “Do you... feel the same things we fell? Do you think like we do? I don’t actually know, Ada.”

  She thought about it, but how was she supposed to know if she felt the same way as these people? People on Earth felt different in plenty of ways already. “I don’t know, Sanako. I just now that I’m a person.”

  Sanako sighed and averted her gaze. “Well, I agree, but… I don’t think Admiral Ashur does.”

  She tapped on something, dragging her finger as the recording made rapid glitching sounds, and then Senjat continued speaking. “So there’s nothing else you can tell me?”

  The professor sounded tired. “No. I’m guessing she has all kinds of exotic systems embedded in her, but without her in here to study, or even a blood sample -”

  Senjat cut him off. “Don’t worry. We’ll let the politicians play, then bring her in and open her up. We know it’ll play well to the family crowd thanks to video evidence she’s a sexual deviant, but if she’s some genetically modified thing , that’s a black mark against her for a whole other crowd. A summary of what you’ve been telling me could be a huge help getting public buy-in, doctor. That could help us sell a proper mission to Earth.”

  Ada noticed Sanako’s hand tremble a bit as the scientist in the recording hesitated. “When would you like the summarized report, Admiral?”

  “Send the key bullet points to my office by tomorrow morning, and I’ll have staff format it for outreach. We’ve already got a plausible accident story for her and the handler. Handler’s a disciplinary hazard unknown outside a few backwater offices on Tlaloc, so there shouldn’t be trouble. ”

  Ada stared at Sanako as the recording stopped. She stood up and tried to pace. For a long moment she was silent, steam building hotter and hotter behind her face. Then she screamed.

  “Open me up? Open me up?! ”

  She rammed her fist into the wall, driving it through the crumbling white material behind its thin paper coating, crunch reverberating through the room. Elsa was grabbing at her arm. “Ada, hey, hold up -”

  Ada flung her off, sending her stumbling across the room, and shouted at nobody in particular. “Back to Earth? What the fuck does he think -”

  Isavel. Isavel was on Earth. If he opened her up -

  Sanako was wringing her hands. “Ada, you’re not safe -”

  Elsa hauled herself up. “Ada, listen to what he just said, I didn’t -”

  Ada clenched her fists, pressing them against her skull, slowing time to a crawl. She needed to think. To figure out a plan. To strategize.

  Strategize?

  She was Ada Liu, Arbiter of the Gods, First Sorceress of Earth, Dark Angel and Mother of Wraiths. The last time colonials had tried to take something from her, she had broken a face and turned their weapons into dust to lacerate their lungs without breaking a sweat.

  She had sent the afterlife to space. Had broken into the thousand worlds without a walker.

  She had warded off tankfire with her mind, had pulverized millennia-old golems and commandeered ancient warships into battle.

  Strategize?

  She let time flow again, and spoke even as her chest heaved with laughter. “I am going to kill him. ” She locked eyes with them both in turn. “I’m going to find Senjat Ashur and grind his bones into a bloody fucking pulp, and smear it all across -”

  Elsa started shouting back at her. “That’s insane, you can’t just -”

  “ I can and I will .” She turned to Sanako. “You, you know him. Tell me where he lives, and I’ll -”

  Sanako was shaking her head. “Ada, you can’t just go kill an admiral!”

  “What, is he some kind of magic space god?”

  “No, but -”

  “Even if he was, he can die. ”

  Elsa chimed in. “The entire Union military will hunt you down and kill you. There are millions of active personnel. You can’t just -”

  She threw her arms up, and they both flinched. “So I’m supposed to let him kill me?”

  “No, but killing people isn’t the only
-”

  Why was Elsa trying to dissuade her? What did she care? Ada’s eyes widened. “They’re going to use you to try to get to me. You told me as much yourself, last night!”

  Elsa took a step back. “Woah, hey, fuck off, did you even listen to the recording? They’re planning to kill me to cover up your murder!”

  Ada clenched her teeth, but Elsa was right. She was expendable to her own leaders.

  Sanako shouted. “Ada stop! Nobody knows about this!”

  Ada wheeled on her. “Except you, conveniently enough! Did they send you here?”

  Sanako staggered backwards. “What? No, of course not! A - a friend of mine tipped me off to this!”

  “Some random friend got these recordings? They must have been military - why would they betray your leaders for me?” Her eyes narrowed. “Why would you? You barely know me.”

  Sanako clenched her fist, eyes flicking to the device and the recording on it. “Ada, I - it’s just not right. This isn’t… it’s not what I joined the navy to do. They shouldn’t look at you that way.” She sighed. “And my friend - he’s -”

  Elsa pursed her lips. “Ensign, please don’t say it’s complicated .”

  The ensign sighed and rolled her eyes, and Elsa groaned. “Look, he’s not military. He works for people who are, uh, critical of military science. Somebody within the military contacted sent him this. He sent it to me because he knows I was on this mission and - well -”

  Ada was shaking her head. “I’m supposed to trust you? Him? Whoever sent it to him? That’s a whole chain of -”

  “Would you rather I not have shown you this?” For the first time, Sanako’s face actually reddened as she raised her voice. “God damn it Ada, get your head out of your ass! I’m trying to help you!”

  Elsa nodded along. “Stop being paranoid. Listen.”

  Ada could slow time down at any moment. She could squeeze it to a near standstill, reach out with code, and crush their skulls at the same time, without them even noticing before they suddenly winked out of existence, off to an afterlife.

  She didn’t.