by Sara King
Patrick glared up at the guy, then, when Steele raised a hairless brow, lowered his head and said, “When David was making the others fight, you and I would hide out down in the hollow by the creek and talk about our future on Mezzan together.”
Suddenly, Magali’s chest started to hurt. Patrick, she thought, horrified.
“And there you have it,” Steele said. “I’m offering to make this old-school. The rebellion’s best against the Coalition’s best. Show up on the parade deck of Rath for our duel, preferably within twelve hours. Otherwise, if you wanna see Patty, here, die horribly—” Steele stroked Patrick’s cheek with his glittering hand, making Patrick jerk away with a scowl, “you’ve got up to twenty-two hours before I start dropping nukes. Bring whatever camera crews you want to film the match. Bring your choice of weapon, though I was hoping for a little additional hand-to-hand time with you. It was so much fun last time, back in Yolk Factory 14. Did you get that pregnancy you were hoping for? I remember plenty of attempts.” His slow grin put shards of ice into Magali’s veins. “See you soon, buttercup. Message will now repeat.”
All around Magali, curious fighters were giving her questioning looks, obviously wondering…
The cockpit door opened and Tatiana burst into the room, panting. “Did you get that?! I patched it through as soon as it came in…”
Magali found herself unable to speak. She nodded, numb.
“So what do we do?” Tatiana demanded. “He’s got the power. Shit, under Wartime Regulations, he could nuke Silver City if he wanted to.”
“If he’s got any nukes left,” Magali managed.
“He’s got nukes left,” Pan panted, trailing in behind her. “We just weren’t expecting him to use them ’cause that looks really bad on their record. Planetary governors, even if it’s just an acting governor like him, get expelled from the service for that, even though it’s legally their call. Hell, once they get back to the Core, they usually do prison time.”
“Yeah,” Tatiana said. “He’s gotta be bluffing.”
Magali watched Steele’s video replay again. His smile was chilling—and not the smile of a man who cared about prison time. “What if he’s not bluffing?”
Pan glanced at her nervously. “Well, I mean, we could divert a few satellites to drop their payloads on his head, when he’s standing out there waiting for you. That should take him out.”
“He challenged me over the open waves,” Magali said. “People know. If he does nuke Silver City, they’re gonna know who to blame.”
Tatiana glanced at Magali, then at the dozens of rebels sharing the cargo bay with her. The little woman then grabbed Magali and Pan both by the shirts and dragged them into the cockpit with her. Drogire, she kicked out, after making him set the autopilot, then locked the door behind him.
“All right,” Tatiana said. “I think the elephant in the room, here, is what Steele’s trying to do.”
Pan frowned at Tatiana, then Magali. “Force her out into the open, where he can kill her?”
Tatiana threw back her head and laughed maniacally. “No. See, either way this goes down, whether Magali wins or loses, Steele’s gonna win, because, if she fights him on camera, he can’t lose. If she refuses to show herself, she’ll be branded a coward and she’ll lose her support and he can’t lose.” Tatiana started gesticulating emphatically to make her point. “Even if she beats the crap outta him, he’s gonna win, because everyone will finally see! You see?”
Pan continued to give the cyborg a frown. “Are you still high?”
Tatiana’s laser-like purple eyes found him and made him back up several paces. “I,” she said, “am not high.”
“I’m pretty sure you are,” Pan said.
“Ignore him,” Tatiana said, turning to face Magali directly. “Listen. Mag. You obviously know this already and are trying to play it cool, but if you go out there, he’s going to reveal what you are.”
“Yep. She’s high.” Pan sighed. “Come on, Magali. Let’s go talk about this somewhere the little cyborg isn’t—”
Tatiana had Milar’s Laserat in her hand and the barrel resting against the side of Panner’s skull in less than a heartbeat. “I am not.” She hit the CHARGE button, making the lights flare green. “High.”
“She’s not high,” Pan said, swallowing hard.
“So,” Tatiana said, now turning her attention completely back to Magali, the Laserat still aimed at Pan’s temple, “you get me, Mag? How he saw you fight, so he’s gotta know? How he’s gonna broadcast that shit to the world? That’s your whole secret identity, POOF.”
“Secret ident—” Panner scoffed, then cut himself off at Tatiana’s sharp look. “I mean, yeah, we should probably make sure the forces of evil don’t figure out who she is. Maybe you should hand me that gun so I can quickly make sure they haven’t sabotaged it in any way before you need to use it in the attack.”
“I have a history with Yolk Babies,” Tatiana said. “A violent history. So if you think you’re amusing, Pan, please, keep pissing me off.” She grinned. “And remember. I’m technically intoxicated and can’t be held responsible for putting a beam through your creepy-smart brain because it reminds me of someone else.”
Pan shut up.
“Now,” Tatiana said, facing Magali again, still holding the gun on Pan. “We need to think. You’ve gotta take him out, but you can’t do it on camera.”
“Now hold on!” Pan cried. “He said ‘hand-to-hand combat!’ You want Magali to fight a Nephyr in hand-to-hand combat?!”
“He’s not just a Nephyr,” Tatiana said. “He’s Orion’s SuperSquad.”
Pan blinked as if he knew what that meant. “Crap.”
Tatiana was looking at Magali again. “But Magali’s got an ace up her sleeve, and he knows it, and he wants the whole world to know it, too. You get me, Magali?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Magali whispered.
Tatiana narrowed her eyes. Then, without another word, she swiveled the gun, aimed it at Magali’s forehead, and pulled the trigger several times.
As Pan screamed, Magali felt the searing pain as the laser burned through bone and muscle, then felt the odd tingle as the weapon itself seemed to energize her. Her vision darkened again, and Tatiana’s body started to shine with highlighted electronics, nanos and implants lighting up to the size of cities, each electron’s pathway carved like a vividly portrayed superhighway in her mind. The maelstrom took her again, whipping every cell into a frenzy. Instantly, Magali was overwhelmed with the deep, instinctive urge to kill Tatiana. She took an automatic step towards her.
“That is what I’m talking about,” Tatiana said, lowering the gun.
It was the lowering of the gun that saved the tiny woman. Magali managed to shake herself out of it and slow before she reached Tatiana’s throat. She swallowed and took a quick step backward, fisting her hands in the uncomfortable knowledge she had almost killed a friend.
Then she realized Pan was staring at her, his eight-year-old mouth open about as far as it would go. He had, Magali noted, an implant behind his left ear, and three dental fillings, plus a couple pins in his right hip and leg where the bones showed signs of heavy trauma, crudely treated with twentieth-century techniques common to colonial living.
“What?” Magali demanded.
Pan continued to stare.
“I know, right?” Tatiana demanded.
Pan continued to stare.
“Totally AlphaGen.” Tatiana dropped her pistol back into its holster and snapped it closed. “And that is what Colonel Steele wants the whole world to see.”
Pan continued to stare.
Frowning, Tatiana swiped her hand in front of the eight-year-old’s face, making him blink.
“Okay,” Pan said, looking at Magali uncomfortably, “can someone please tell me what just happened?”
“What do you mean, what just happened?” Magali demanded. “She missed.”
“Uhhhh,” Pan said. “Noooooo, for
a moment there, I saw a gaping hole through your brain.”
Magali quickly reached up and touched her forehead, frowning. “There’s no gaping hole in my brain.”
“Yeah,” Tatiana said. “Now.”
Magali squinted at the cyborg. “You are high, aren’t you?”
“If she’s high,” Pan said, “then so am I.” He cocked his head at Magali. “Just what are you?”
“AlphaGen,” Tatiana said, sounding irritated.
“She’s not AlphaGen,” Pan retorted. “They’re three hundred years old, and Magali was born here.”
“Nobody has that kind of regen but AlphaGen,” Tatiana said stubbornly. “It’s top secret hush-hush shit and all the processes and labs got destroyed after we beat the Tritons, but I got really lucky one night after my fight on Muchos Rios—I was the hero of Sunwash Valley, you read about that on the waves?—and I got a few SuperSquaders in bed at the same time and boy do they like to talk when they’re having fun!” She laughed like she was seeing it all over again. “Yeah, you love that, don’t you, big boy?” She started petting the air.
“She’s not a goddamn three-hundred-year-old dinosaur!” Pan cried. “There would be linguistic mistakes, chronological references, culture-specific errors, things she couldn’t fake.” Then, when Tatiana continued to pet—and, more disturbingly, open her mouth and gulp at the air like a fish, Pan kicked her and snapped, “Fortune to Tatiana!”
Tatiana blinked. “Huh?” She frowned and looked around her. “Where’d they go?”
“That is what we’re concerned about right now,” Pan said, pointing at Magali.
Tatiana cocked her head at Magali. “What about her?”
“She can’t be AlphaGen. You said it yourself. They destroyed all the tech.”
“You don’t believe me?” Tatiana demanded. She reached for her holster and unsnapped the gun. “Here, I’ll show you again.”
“No!” Pan cried, cramming her gun back into her holster with both hands even as Magali felt her vision darkening again, that maelstrom taking its shrieking hold within her. Pan stepped hastily between them and pushed Tatiana backwards, keeping an eye on Magali over his shoulder. “Okay, so what do we do?”
“I dunno, that’s what I was asking her,” Tatiana snapped. “She’s the badass.”
Magali frowned at them. They were discussing her as if she weren’t standing there to hear them, yet she was still not understanding half the conversation. “What the hell is wrong with you guys?” she demanded. “What’s AlphaGen? We don’t have time to talk about a genetics company. We need to figure out what we’re gonna do.”
Tatiana giggled. “Genetics company. You hear that? She’s calling it a ‘genetics’ company!” She sounded delighted.
Magali frowned. “AlphaGen. It’s a genetics company back in the Core that Dad and a couple of his friends used to belong to. That’s what he told me when I overheard him talking about it with Natalia when I was a kid.”
Both Tatiana and Pan turned pale.
“She’s…” Pan sucked in a breath. “She’s an AlphaGen’s kid.”
Magali frowned. “Yeah. I told you that.”
“That’s not supposed to be possible,” Tatiana whispered. “They were supposed to be sterile. That’s the only reason the Council allowed their creation.”
“Oh shit,” Pan said. “This isn’t good. Shit this isn’t good.” He swallowed hard. “David’s gonna kill us if we put her on TV.”
Magali frowned. “My dad’s dead.”
“By Geo’s goons, right?” Tatiana scoffed. “Yeah, I don’t think so.”
“He was probably feeling the heat, decided to go underground,” Pan began. “Didn’t think Magali would make such a big fuss—”
“Okay, so we gotta keep her outta the limelight,” Tatiana said. “Keep her hidden until Steele’s outta the picture.”
“Yeah,” Pan said. “Hell, get some munitions and pound the living shit outta Rath, try to take him out before he—”
Having the two of them talk around her finally made Magali lose her calm. “I am standing right here!” she snapped, putting her fist through the steel headrest of the pilot’s chair.
Both Tatiana and Pan took a careful step away from her, eyes fixed to the now-twisted headrest.
“Look,” Magali said, immediately feeling guilty. She pulled her fist free of the leather and batting on the other side and shook it out. “We need a plan. We can’t let him nuke anyone, and I’m not sure I can take him in hand-to-hand. I mean, I don’t think Steele’s just a Nephyr. I hit him with EMP and it didn’t even do jack. How am I gonna kill a guy like that?”
But Pan was frowning at her hand. “Wait. You…” He cocked his head like a bird that had just figured something out. “You don’t know…do you?” He gestured at her forehead.
“Know what?” Magali grated. “That Tatiana just missed? That she put a hole in Joel’s ship?” She turned and looked behind her, expecting to see a Laserat’s burn hole in the wall. Seeing nothing, she frowned. Then she reached up to her forehead again. She had felt an instant of burning, of searing pain…hadn’t she?
Yet she felt nothing but smooth, unblemished skin.
“Okay,” Pan said. “So she doesn’t know. How do we deal with this?”
“Know what?!” Magali roared, the maelstrom like tiny flecks of fire spinning within her.
“Uh.” Pan looked her in the eye, then said, “Ms. Landborn, I hate to be the one to tell you this, but you’re not human.”
CHAPTER 33: Inhuman
12th of June, 3006
Honor
Fortune, Daytona 6 Cluster, Outer Bounds
Magali finished crying in a seated fetal position on the floor a couple hours later. Tatiana had shot her several more times to demonstrate, this time in places she could see. The first hit went through, burning a path through flesh and bone, but the subsequent blasts always disappeared in little flares of black, like the very light itself had been sucked away into nothingness. A moment later, the wound closed over like it had never been, and Magali had felt a burst of energy, almost like she’d chugged a strong cup of sweetpod tea. It reminded her of when her finger had been bitten off by that turtle, then regrown itself as she slept that night. Back then, Magali had written it off as a dream, maybe some hallucinogenic chemical the Coalition had sprayed to keep the population under control. Because fingers couldn’t grow back. Because what she had seen was impossible, her mind had slid over it, believing Anna when her little sister had told her how funny it had been to watch them stitch it back on… Worse, now that she was thinking about it, Magali had never actually remembered getting it sewn back on, but she’d always written that off as shock.
Ms. Landborn, you’re not human.
Magali had exhausted herself trying to come up with a reason why her finger had grown back, why the weapon didn’t hurt her. She tried to blame it on atmospheric conditions, gun malfunctions, optical illusions, a sick prank, hell, even a prevailing chemical in the air that was causing them all to experience the same hallucinations.
In the end, though, it was impossible to deny the fact that she was different.
“How?” she whispered, feeling betrayed by everyone she had ever known. And, worse, the only one who had bothered to mention it was her demented little sister, whenever she taunted her as a ‘robot.’
“I think the bigger question,” Pan said, “is how you’re going to win that fight with Steele without the truth coming out on every viewscreen from here to the Orbital.”
Magali’s eyes widened. “You still actually want me to fight him?” It came out as a whisper. “I can’t fight him.” Not now. Not ever. She wasn’t even human, and he knew it. She wasn’t going to be able to look anyone in the eye again, not knowing something like that, letting them think she was normal…
Pan blinked. “You were made to fight guys like—”
“You are human.” Tatiana shoved the kid aside and dropped down in front of her again. “More huma
n than your bitch of a sister.” She grabbed Magali’s hand where it rested on a knee. “And you can do this. You know why?”
Magali shook her head in misery, hugging her knees as the only source of support she had, studying the interlocking layout of the cockpit’s rubber-grate flooring squares. That one, all-important fact was tearing away at her heart, ripping her apart on the inside. She. Wasn’t. Human.
How could she live the life she wanted now? Could she even have kids? What if the world realized what she was? She’d be hated more than a Nephyr, because at least the Nephyrs didn’t hide what they were. They weren’t insidious. They didn’t actually think they were normal.
That probably had hurt the most. Magali had actually thought she was normal.
“Why didn’t Dad tell me?” she whimpered.
“Your dad sucked.” Tatiana grabbed Magali’s chin in both hands, forcing her attention back to the cyborg’s face. “Now listen to me. I know you can do this because I saw the way Steele was looking at you, Mag. That floater’s afraid of you. I bet he’s gonna have all sorts of sick, twisted traps for you to wade through before you ever even reach him. He’s terrified, because he knows you’re going to kick his ever-lovin’ ass, you get me?”
“What about my sister?” Magali managed, unable to think of anything except her own horror and humiliation. She was a machine. A weird, fugitive machine. “Is that what’s wrong with her? She’s a robot?”
“You’re not a robot,” Tatiana said. “You’re something very, very special.”
“Technically,” Pan said, “I think she’s closer to robot than—” Tatiana turned to glare at him over her shoulder and he coughed. “—or not. No, definitely not a robot. There’s a biochemical element at work that indicates more human than robot. The very fact that she grew suggests a life form. An intelligent life form. And not artificial intelligence, either, not unless we’re looking at some really sweet programming.”
Tatiana’s voice was totally even. “Shut up, Pan.”
“Yes, Ma’am,” Pan said, shutting up.
“So,” Tatiana said, turning back, “you go in there, kick his ass, and we’ll just keep it our little secret. You, me, Babe, and Pan.” The ganshi, who had been napping on the copilot seat throughout, lifted its head enough to give an indignant growl for being woken up before going back to sleep.