She looked up at the oncoming cloud and grimaced. "It's too dangerous, Sir. I don't know if I can control it."
"We can quarantine you," Hadley shouted, his voice just audible over the sound of the hydraulics as the crew began retracting the ship's landing gear.
It's not safe to have me on board, Sir. Not yet. Aliyaah's voice was clear in the minds of both men, despite the surrounding noise.
Hadley looked at Ansen, knowing that Aliyaah was testing them both, seeing if they really could handle her being on board. Ansen thought about what the CMO had said, that the Chief might be the key to understanding this thing.
Both men held out their hands to the Chief, and Hadley shouted, "We need you, Chief. The rest we can figure out as we go."
Aliyaah looked up again, feeling the clouds above her, the ground under her feet. She felt the slow, soft wind on her face and she heard a tangle of indistinct voices, the greater consciousness made up of the other women and what was left of the minds of the men. Then, as clearly as she could hear her own thoughts, Aliyaah heard another voice in her mind.
Silver spoke softly, her voice calm and lilting. She described what she could feel in Aliyaah's mind, and asked her not to be scared. Their connection would fade as she moved farther from the red planet, but it would never be completely severed, not unless she wanted it to be. They were entangled now, and as Silver spoke, Aliyaah could see how she had guided Ansen and the crew to ready Octavia, and had helped Hadley avoid the dust storm and get rid of the RMC. She knew Silver had sent her to rescue Hadley, and she could feel the weight of Silver's acceptance that she couldn't come with them. Silver communicated all of this in just a few seconds, and then asked Aliyaah to deliver a message to Cooper and Cosima. She hoped that people back on Earth would accept Aliyaah in her current form, but she knew it would be too frightening for them to see her as she was now.
Aliyaah's friend had changed too much to leave Mars. She was no longer a singular entity, but an excrescence deeply connected to the planet itself and to the others who had merged with the collective. They would never survive the trip back to Earth, not in their current state of being. Aliyaah was also part of this shared consciousness, but the peculiarities of the tissue in her brain had presented a challenge to full symbiosis. If Silver and the Doctor were right, Aliyaah could hold within her something remarkable for medical advancement back on Earth. Still, Aliyaah thought, she had to survive the journey home, relying on the crew accepting her in this changed form. And, even then, there was no guarantee she would be welcomed back on Earth.
"Come home, Aliyaah," Hadley said, interrupting her thoughts. With a last look overhead, and a final breath of sharp, rust-red air, Aliyaah smiled, flipped closed her visor, and took his hand.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Leigh Matthews lives in Vancouver, Canada, with a rambunctious border collie, and is the author of several works of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry.
To find out more about the author, go to leighmatthews.xyz
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