Rin could still see her sister standing out on that bluff, allowing them to take her without a fight. She knew why Grey hadn’t run—it was to protect her. What kind of sister would she be if she didn’t at least try to rescue her?
Mrs. March was right. She did have a decision to make, and it was one Rin had no trouble making. She’d never forgive herself if she hid somewhere safe while Grey was in danger.
Rin faced Mrs. March. “They’re really taking her to Jupiter?”
“Yes.”
“And you’re going there too?”
“Yes.”
“Then I’m coming with you.” She quickly brushed past her and opened the door that led back to her father’s workshop.
“I was hoping you’d say that.”
Everything looked different now. Every tool, each piece of equipment her father had bartered for, the rolls of wire sitting in a neat row—they had a purpose. All these years, she’d thought Dad just loved to tinker, and instead he’d been down here working on something of great importance. Something to save their family. She pictured Dad hunched over one of the tables working late into the night. Had she been so young she hadn’t noticed his attention to the cosmoship? She knew it was there, but he had never really talked about it.
“What will they do when they realize Grey doesn’t have any information?” Rin asked.
Mrs. March gave her a quick sideways hug. “That’s what worries me.”
“They’ll have no use for her then, will they?”
“Perhaps there is another possibility.”
Rin had seen Evangeline Yurkutz’s calculating yellow eyes once before. Even in a hologram they glowed with a thirst for power. Rin was sure that woman wouldn’t hesitate to kill someone who got in her way.
They climbed the circular steps to the living quarters, Rin leading the way. She turned back toward Mrs. March. “What other possibility?”
“It’s just speculation.”
“Tell me.”
With a long sigh, Mrs. March wiped her dirty hands on her pants. Her fingers left smudges in the denim fabric. “They could use her to bait your parents.”
***
Grey must’ve blacked out during the interrogation. She woke up in a cell like the one where she’d been held in Mazdaar City, and the slab of a bed was just as hard and uncomfortable.
She clutched at the flimsy blanket lying on top of her body. Her sweat-soaked shirt had dried stiff against her skin, and she could smell how dirty she was becoming. At least they’d removed the restraints. They couldn’t shock her without them. Not unless they’d developed some new kind of technology.
She almost laughed at the absurdity of that thought. She was flying in a cosmoship to Jupiter. They no doubt had technology she couldn’t even fathom. Yet as far as she knew, they hadn’t developed a way to read unconnected minds without inserting sensors.
A wave of fear crashed over Grey. What if they’d implanted something in her brain while she was unconscious? Being unconnected was the only thing she had in her favor. If she could stay unconnected, they could never know everything.
When the cell door opened and an androgynous drone pulled her off the bed, her legs gave out and she fell. She’d promised herself she would never beg, but down on her knees, Grey could only speak one word.
“Please . . .”
Grabbing her with both metallic hands, the drone forced her to stand. Hanging from its belt were the restraints. It snapped them onto her wrists, pulling each arm behind her back.
“You will come with me,” the drone said in a monotone voice.
Down the dreaded hallway they went, and Grey tried to prepare herself for what was ahead. How long could she withstand torture? How bad would it get?
So far General Yurkutz’s power of persuasion had been limited to shocks. Debilitating and painful, yet she knew there were other ways to make people talk. Ways that left worse scars.
They turned a corner, and Grey couldn’t help thinking of Rin. She hoped her sister would not despair and would believe that Grey would do everything in her power to come back, but her own hope of escape was fading with every step. The drone approached a wall where a door quickly materialized. It slid open, and a slender, older African woman dressed in medical scrubs was waiting. Silver hoop earrings the size of her hand hung from her earlobes. She looked at Grey and smiled.
“Come in, sweetheart,” she said.
Grey hesitated for a moment before the drone poked her in the back. This looked like a sick ward. An examination table along the far wall was illuminated with bright lights. Five cots separated by curtains lined the other wall.
The woman acted as if she’d been expecting her and led her to a chair by the examination table.
“That will be all,” she said to the drone, and it turned and walked out.
Grey stared after its broad back.
“Dr. Lenoir sent the drone to get you.”
“But . . .”
The woman smiled again. “General Yurkutz isn’t the only one with authority on this ship.” Her smile disappeared when she looked Grey up and down. “My word, child. What have they done to you?”
Grey dropped into the chair. “As I told Dr. Lenoir, you’re only asking for trouble if you help me. Yurkutz is going to find out where I am.”
“We are aware of that.”
Dr. Henry Lenoir appeared from behind one of the curtain partitions. He now wore the pale-green lab coat of a doctor.
“I was just telling your patient here that you’ll be taking care of her,” the woman said.
“Thank you, Tessa,” Dr. Lenoir said. “This is my wife and nurse. Now, young lady, I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure of knowing your name.”
“Grey.” She studied the couple standing before her. They had to be wondering why she was a prisoner. “Why are you doing this for me?”
“How old are you?” Dr. Lenoir ignored her question.
“Seventeen.”
Tessa sighed. “We have grandchildren your age back home with our daughter.”
“And we took an oath when we entered our professions to ‘come for the benefit of the sick.’” Dr. Lenoir reached for Grey’s hands, producing a small tool that looked like a fork on one end but was flat metal on the other. With one click to her restraints, they fell from her wrists. “That includes you.”
Now that the restraints were removed, the bright examination light revealed how deep her wounds had become.
Dr. Lenoir examined them, touching the skin around the gouges, and she winced. In unison, doctor and nurse shook their heads.
“Are you feeling nauseous?” Dr. Lenoir asked.
She nodded.
“You’re a strong girl. I’ve treated men twice your age who received half the voltage you’ve received, and they were barely lucid.”
Grey nervously glanced at the door, half expecting General Yurkutz to barge in and drag her away.
“Don’t worry.” Dr. Lenoir smiled. “General Yurkutz won’t be able to override the recommendation of the ship’s doctor. Now, let’s clean you up. Would you care to lie down?”
Grey eyed one of the cots, and her eyes drooped at the thought of resting.
“I thought so.” Dr. Lenoir helped her up, and with Tessa on her other side, they led Grey over to the cot. She groaned as she stretched out on the surprisingly-comfortable mattress that contoured to her body, hugging her with soft warmth.
“You’ll find the pain will gradually subside now,” Dr. Lenoir said. “The cot is made of a healing silica.”
Nurse Tessa sat down beside the bed and began typing in the air on a virtual keyboard.
“Do you have to enter this in the system?” Grey asked.
“Your personal data won’t be mentioned,” Tessa said. “But every patient we catalogue gives us one more piece in the puzzle of the human body and allows us to help others in the future.”
Dr. Lenoir cleared his throat. “Please note first that the patient has deep laceration
s, as well as erythema and ecchymosis circumferentially around both wrists. Please also note there are second-degree burns from numerous macro-shocks, and the patient seems to be suffering secondary effects from the electrical current.”
Grey closed her eyes as the doctor cleaned the wounds on her wrists and spread a thin layer of an ointment that felt like it flowed through her skin and soothed her flesh straight to the bones.
She opened her eyes when she felt him press a metallic disc to her chest.
“What’s that?”
“I’m taking your vitals.” Dr. Lenoir blinked his eyes shut momentarily, and she pictured her heart rate, oxygen level, and a million other statistics scrolling across his vision field in little red numbers and text.
Dr. Lenoir let out a small hmm.
Grey watched the doctor work. At one point she saw him pique an eyebrow, but other than that she had no idea whether his read on her was good or bad. After a minute, he removed the disc from her chest and slipped it into the breast pocket of his coat.
“That explains a few things,” he said.
“What?”
“You’re not connected.”
Tessa lifted her eyes to her husband’s, then kept typing.
Grey suddenly felt exposed lying on the cot, and she moved to sit up.
Dr. Lenoir gently pressed her back down. “You are safe here. Don’t worry.”
Grey stared up at the ceiling, relieved Mazdaar hadn’t yet violated her by forcing her to connect. “I won’t do it.”
“It’s a painless procedure.”
“That’s not it.” She thought back to everything her parents had ever told her about Mazdaar’s plans to manipulate those who connected. It wouldn’t start right away, they’d said. It might even take years, but it would come. Her family had risked everything to evade connection. Now it was happening to her.
“You don’t have to explain,” Dr. Lenoir said.
“I just don’t want to connect,” she said.
“That’s quite obvious.”
“Are you going to make me?”
“No. That does not concern us.”
Grey closed her eyes. Maybe not, but she knew sooner or later it would concern Evangeline Yurkutz. And the general could make her connect.
* * *
Chapter 17
The motion siren wailed as Rin and Mrs. March were busy inventorying food supplies. Rin’s adrenaline kicked into overdrive. The silo’s motion alarms each had a different tone to indicate where the breach in the system was located. This one was coming from the emergency exit up on the bluff. The sensors were “smart” and could usually distinguish between human and animal.
They jogged into the control room and checked the security screens. Mrs. March maximized the camera positioned on the bluff. Several human figures came into view.
“We have a few weapons,” Rin said, hating the thought of holding one. She’d always trusted Grey to protect them and hoped she’d never be forced to shoot anything.
“It won’t be necessary.” Mrs. March zoomed in on the figures standing at the exit and keyed on the audio. “Identify yourselves,” she said.
“Sergeant Rooley, Commander,” a male voice answered. “And my family. We received your transmission.”
The man turned his head, and Rin almost gasped when she realized it was Kildare Rooley, the man Grey often traded with. The man with the tigers. As if for emphasis, a low growl came through the speakers.
With a chuckle, Mrs. March pressed the button to unlock the doors. “I’m hearing more than your family, Sergeant.”
“Can’t leave ‘em behind,” he said.
Mrs. March turned to Rin. “I’ve called up reinforcements. We’ll need more than you and me for this mission.”
“He works for you?”
“That’s why I often urged Grey to trade with him.”
Rin shook her head. It felt like the silo was being invaded, and that went against everything she’d ever known.
Mrs. March gave her an encouraging smile. “Trust me.”
For the rest of the day, Rin was forced to watch her quiet home transformed into the command center of the Yien Dynasty’s Special Forces. What seemed like a never-ending stream of strangers flooded through the silo, loading crates and packs into the cosmoship and creating such a loud din Rin could barely think straight.
Unable to eat supper later that evening, Rin found Mrs. March and four others hunched over a table in the middle of her father’s workshop. Rin watched the group, leaning up against the cement wall.
“Did you tell them it was imperative they come?” Mrs. March had both hands on the table.
“They have refused,” Kildare said.
Mrs. March rubbed her eyes and sighed.
“Unfortunately, they have grown complacent,” said a woman Rin had never seen before. She was younger than Mrs. March but old enough to be Rin’s mother. Freckles splattered her cheeks, and her hair was the color of desert sandstone. Her accent sounded European, but Rin wasn’t sure. Where in the Preserve had these people been hiding?
Mrs. March hung her head and whispered, “Dear God, protect them. We have tried.”
“Who are you talking about?” Rin stepped forward.
All eyes turned to her.
“Come here,” Mrs. March said.
She slowly walked over to the table. Kildare gave her a slight nod, then focused on the ancient maps spread out across the surface. Rin had never seen so much paper in one place.
“Orinda understands our cause and has agreed to join us,” Mrs. March said.
“But she’s just a child,” a man taller than Kildare spoke. He wore a turban, and his dark eyes searched hers. Mrs. March introduced the man as lieutenant Arwin Choudry before addressing his concern.
“Perhaps,” she said. “But she is Tanner and Sue Alexander’s daughter.”
Rin thought she saw something falter on the faces of the four adults standing before her. A hint of reverence passed over their features, and the lieutenant did not press the issue further.
The red-haired woman introduced herself as Communications Specialist Maggie Coronado while a younger woman next to her remained silent. With a single braid draped across her shoulder, she eyed Rin like she was an annoying mosquito.
“And this is Dana.”
With a dismissive nod, Dana kept her focus on Mrs. March. Rin noticed she had been introduced without a rank.
“I have asked Dana to head the effort to rescue Grey. She has intimate knowledge of Mazdaar and especially General Yurkutz.” Mrs. March gestured to Dana. “Will you share with Rin why you are best qualified for this endeavor?”
Stepping closer to the table, Dana clasped her hands in front of herself. “General Yurkutz will stop at nothing to have her way.” Her voice was low and matter of fact. “She is especially intent on finding your parents.”
“But . . . why?” Rin shook her head. “Why are my parents so important to Mazdaar?”
Mrs. March shuffled through the papers. “Your father is a great scientist, Rin. When he was just a young man barely older than Grey is now, he was working on a project to develop hybrid insect MEMS. Instead, he accidentally discovered the technology Mazdaar needed to create drones from human bodies.”
“What?”
“They were made strictly of synthetic material until this century,” Dana added. “Then, with so many war casualties, bodies were in abundance and parts were harvested and banked.”
Rin shuddered.
“But body parts only got them so far. Mazdaar has tried for years to create a drone from an intact human body,” Dana continued.
Rin held up her hand. “Why?”
“Building a drone isn’t cheap.” Mrs. March stared down at the table. “And while they can withstand much abuse on the battlefield, once they’re broken they aren’t easy to fix.”
Dana’s expression remained grim. “Mazdaar projected that if there was a way to preserve a human body and use its brain to send m
essages to its limbs, it could become the perfect soldier. No objections, no emotions. And if it was irreparably damaged in battle, it could be discarded and another would take its place. They would be more expendable.”
“Your father,” Mrs. March said, “invented the chips that mimic the signals of the human brain. They’re called Gihern chips. He did not know Mazdaar intended to use them in the way they did. When he found out, he destroyed his research, the prototypes, everything. That’s reason number one that they want your parents.”
With a small sigh, Dana placed her hand on the nearest map, tracing some lines with her finger. “Evangeline also has a personal vendetta against them.”
Rin could feel herself becoming totally overwhelmed.
“In a way, I’m responsible.” Dana’s voice dropped to almost a whisper. “Your parents are part of the reason why I am not following in Evangeline’s footsteps.”
Mrs. March slid a chair out for Rin. “A year before they disappeared, they were part of the team who helped Dana defect from the system.”
Rin studied Dana. She was probably only a few years older than Grey, but there was something about her that made her seem older. Like she’d seen the underbelly of the world and survived. “Why would Evangeline care so much about you defecting?”
Dana paused, not meeting Rin’s eyes. “Because Evangeline Yurkutz is my mother.”
* * *
Chapter 18
Grey couldn’t remember Dr. Lenoir sending her back to her cell. He must have given her a sleep aid, because she was sure she’d been out for hours. Maybe the relief from the pain in her wrists and arms helped too. When she did open her eyes, she noticed another bowl of mashed meal on the floor of her cell.
This time Grey didn’t eat it. The nourishment wasn’t worth the stomach ache.
A drone came for her not long after she woke up, and Grey didn’t struggle as her hands were bound again. For now there was no escape, but her time with Dr. Lenoir and Tessa had given her a glint of hope that not everyone under Mazdaar rule was like General Yurkutz.
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