“Yes, they are. The man who owns the megastructure ring, a man called Verok, has built a replica of an Earth building. A castle. He’s taking the fleet all the way to Earth. They’ve dubbed it the Meek Crusade.”
“Why?” Whatever would her planet do with a huge fleet of aliens? Ella shivered again.
Torgeir shrugged. “We’d best go in. It’s too cold for you. As for why? Your planet has a saying, I’m told. The meek shall inherit the Earth. He’s taken it as his personal slogan.”
“Inherit?” She couldn’t resist one last look at the sky despite Torgeir’s tug on her hand. “Doesn’t that mean to take over ownership?”
“I’m sure it’s just a phrase. Invading a planet isn’t done on a whim.”
That invading a planet was done at all worried her.
“I hope not.”
He stopped and turned in the doorway, put his hand to the edge of the new plas-g folding shutter, and began hauling it in to shut off their balcony.
“That’s another reason for caution. Verok has some extreme ideas about cyborgs, their rights, and them needing to join his crusade. It’s causing riots on Pelagia. Maybe that one we were caught up in the other day was due to this.”
“No, that was just me. The poisoner.”
“Can’t be sure. Make sure you shut this every night.” He locked together the two sets of shutter doors, in the middle. “If you’re not sure you’ll remember, I can get one of your guards to come in to do it?”
“No!” she said quickly. “I’ll remember.” Damn, he’d have them hiding in her underwear drawer if she let him.
“Good. I want you so safe your own mother couldn’t get in to say hello.” He pulled her into his arms and almost smothered her with the intensity of his hug.
In a twisted way, that made her sad. She couldn’t remember the faces of her mother or her father, and maybe she never would.
Chapter 28
Incoming Henchman 1.
I can’t get near her anymore but we have a full coverage of her messages, calls, data incoming and outgoing. She has a doctor’s appointment that’s registered as a concern over an ankle lesion. The Plito individual is still attempting to recover her past from Concer records. She’s working at their shop also, from location data.
He’d known much of this. The difficulty of capturing her had escalated. But there were ways. Perhaps he needed bait to lure her to him?
Good. I have data for you to feed to the Plito hacker. I want her to know who she once was. It should unsettle her. Off balance, she may prove vulnerable. The data will be with you now. No further damage is to be done to her. Assure me of this.
Henchman.
No damage. Received, sir.
The crowd surveillance footage had astounded him. Ella had controlled the crowd with her voice. Others might not see it but he had the advantage of knowing what some Earth women could do. The silence had fallen on the people in a ripple, moving outward. Not all, but most. Farther examination of the footage revealed that only cyborgs, or those with higher cyber percentages, had been severely affected.
She had a power, a most curious one. It was wonderful. He’d soon have a princess with powers and it was one he could exploit. Had it only come about after the black app affected her? He might never know for sure.
*****
Torgeir was gone again. The sky had another contrail from his ship’s engines that would last all of half an hour before being blown away. She let out the breath she’d been holding in and turned on her heel. Five hulking men in full body armor were waiting behind her, glowering at passersby, their weapons holstered but in full view. Strangely the spaceport tourists were keeping away from them.
She shook her head. This was overkill. “Come on boys, let’s go home.”
The doctor’s appointment was soon but first she wanted to see Plito and he wanted to see her, from the message he’d sent.
Her five bodyguards agreed to wait outside the Hack and Slash, once they’d looked inside and made sure the boys weren’t about to assault her. She rolled her eyes and waited, hands on hips, until the door creaked shut. The hinges needed Mimi again.
She swiveled and stalked to Plito, sliding into a chair next to him. Then she leaned her chin on the back of her hand and grinned. “I know you’ve got something to tell me, but I have something big to tell you too, and I can’t wait!”
His yellow hair was stuck up in two peaks that made an X at the top of his head. He chuckled and made his own chair squeak, or perhaps that was his leg spines, as she’d come to call them. Soon he wouldn’t need those.
“Go ahead, Ella. Mine is a good surprise too but I can wait.”
“Excellent. Would’ve overridden you anyway.” She winked. “Like your new hairstyle.”
His sigh was long and obvious. “Tell. Spit. What is this wondrous surprise?”
“I have...drum roll, please...with the help of Doc and Gears and Torgeir, found, repaired, reconstructed, re-everythinged, two beautiful legs for you.” Then she gestured and brought up the holoscreen with the pic of them on the dining table. “Just got a few minor adjustments to do and I will bring them down here. Tomorrow that should be. Thought I should warn you, since we need to get the leg spines off you first.”
His mouth was open and she’d swear his eyes were gleaming with tears.
“I just...” Ella gave a few small nods while smiling quietly. “Thought I should show how much I’ve appreciated you.” She looked around at Doc and Gears. Gears was openly crying while beaming. Doc looked serious but winked at her. “All of you. Really.”
“Oh, Ella.” Plito collapsed onto his elbows, head in hands. “I will never be able to thank you enough.”
An Aussie saying was in order. “Bullshit.” Then she leaned over to hug him and kiss his cheek. The boy was shaking. “Thank you, again. Now, what was your news?”
It took him a moment or two to wipe his eyes and clear his throat but then he rotated his holoscreen toward her. “I’ve done it. Hacked into your records at Concer. I didn’t read it, Ella, but it’s there. I’ll transfer it to you?”
Shock left her silent for several stilted seconds. “Fuck. Really?”
“Really.” He grinned and gestured. “There. Done. It’s on your AI.”
The day had been unsettled as it was, with Torgeir leaving. She’d known this present of hers would make her happier. Gifting things always did, but after those few words from Plito, she was terrified.
How unexpected to find out that discovering who she was, or had been, was in front of her. Faced with the truth, she didn’t want it anymore. She didn’t care. She had Torgeir.
Yet she owed him the truth because she’d promised it. Ella sucked in a tremulous breath. “I have it. This is personal, Plito, so I’ll read it at my place.”
“I understand completely. I never meant to pry.”
“You didn’t.” Wow. If she’d been standing she might have been swaying. As it was the room was looking shaky. “I...have to go.”
“Of course.” He held out his hand and after she figured out what he wanted, they shook.
The trek up to the apartment was a blur of people and sound. The bodyguards followed her but stopped at the entry. She closed the door then turned and put her back to it.
“Get a grip, girl.” And talking to herself was totally normal. Where to go to read this? The bed? Yes.
When she slid across the quilt and rested her back on the pillow, the smell of him was there, in the air, on the sheets perhaps, or on the shirt he’d left crumpled at the bottom.
“I can do this,” she whispered, but she reached down and dragged the shirt to her, buried her nose, and took a deep breath. The scent calmed her – as if he was here.
At first tap, the data sprang to the holoscreen and she enlarged the text. Her eyes were already tearing up. Shit. This was not going well. She hadn’t expected any results anymore. It’d been so long since she’d asked Plito to
do this.
She opened the file marked Ella. And there it was. Multiple vids. Oceans of data, but the vids said it all within a few seconds of starting one of them.
She watched a girl creature crawl across a room. Huge tentacles and spidery legs clasped at things, pulled her forward, wrenched things down from the ceiling. A destructive, crazed, glazed-eyed spider girl. The face was hers. The rest of her? Was she even human? The fuck she knew.
Shock made her stall a few more seconds, breath stuck in her throat, before she shut the vid down. Her while body was shaking when she put her hand to her forehead. She would never read the rest. Ella gulped, dazed. The bed under her seemed to tilt and spin. She let her hand flop onto the quilt, steadying herself. That was what they had done to her. She hadn’t simply been altered by the Bak-lal, she’d been one of their morphed soldiers. An inhuman thing.
She vomited into the sink and wiped her eyes, then dry retched and slipped down to the floor to sit on her butt, her stomach heaving, her mind aching and whirling.
“What the fuck am I going to do?”
With her hand over her mouth, she sobbed, staring at nothing on the opposite wall. Her nose was watering too. If she did this long enough, she might dissolve away and only leave tears and snot.
A ding reminded her of the doctor’s appointment and her ankle. With her knees bent so she could reach, she swiped her thumb over the spot. It was bigger, by a smidge, softer, and it seemed to move inside. How had she not noticed that? With her luck today, it would be something new and devastating.
“God. Dammit.” She wiped her eyes with her palms then hauled herself upright, pulled her little aqua dress and white tights into place, washed her face and dried it. She could handle this. She’d never ever been a coward and wouldn’t start now.
Everything seemed ready to crack about her. She walked stiffly, nodded like a robot, answered people as if she was ten miles away. The doctor had fun sticking a needle in her cleaned and sterilized ankle. A proper hospital would know the answer in seconds but she shook her head and refused that option. So he imaged the contents, showed her on a screen, and she could only blink at the shadow she saw, something curled and nascent, something tentacle-like but small...in her ankle.
The spider girl ripping things off walls and crawling through corridors had never left her mind the entire visit.
He’d needled her and taken a sample but what did that matter? She knew. The darkness of this engulfed her. Where could she go? Who could she tell?
Nobody. Maybe the boys would understand but even for them this might be too much.
She was Bak-lal still, growing her tentacles and crazy shit again. Give it a year and she might be spider girl.
What was she to do?
Her bodyguards must’ve suspected something was wrong. One of them came to her shoulder and asked if she was okay, in a kindly fashion, as she led them back to the apartment, through shafts and up stairs, down halls, trudging through a black despair.
She left them outside.
There was no one at all for her anymore. Torgeir hated Bak-lal with a vengeance. He’d said he’d pay to kill them.
She was sitting at the dining table shaking, her fingers entwined, when the message came.
The information slid into her mind and she blinked. It was terrible news but now...she had purpose.
Whatever happened to her in the future, she was fixing this.
The man who wanted her had Plito.
Come to me if you wish him to live.
If you inform anyone of this, including your five guards, he dies.
Whoever this was they had resources and they were watching her. They’d waited until Torgeir left.
All the sorrow, all the confusion, all the despair, all her questions about why this was happening to her, they converted in an instant into anger.
With her hands over her eyes, she thought this through and came to one conclusion. If she went to this unknown person, it might not save Plito but it was the best chance.
She stood and went to the chair that was placed before Plito’s second leg where it lay on the table, pulled the chair out, sat, and began to finish the fine details in the pathways. Her nanogeers marched to her commands, zipping about as they’d done ever since she learned how to work faster. Once the leg was finished, she turned her attention to herself. She hadn’t told anyone, not even Torgeir, that after her memory returned, her own little army of nanogeers had remained. They lived in her cyber spaces, helping her when she needed small things corrected, and sometimes she had them transfer to the item she repaired at Hack and Slash. They came back to her afterwards, as if they knew she was their home.
Now she could use them for a greater cause. She shut her eyes, settled her plan into place in her mind, and commanded them.
The man who wanted her had Plito. He was going to get her, plus a little more than he expected. She was making him a surprise.
Chapter 29
She wrote a note for Torgeir on paper, or whatever this stuff was they used on Pelagia, leaving splotches of tears everywhere. Couldn’t be helped. It would be terrible of her to go without saying anything. She couldn’t bear to say the truth but at least she’d give him enough to help him see she was determined and would not be coming back.
I have to leave you, my love. I am so sorry. I don’t have the words to tell you the depth of my sadness.
Plito has been kidnapped by the person who wants me. I’ve found out my past and now I know we cannot be together. I’m going to get Plito free. You would not want me if you knew who I am.
I will never stop loving you,
Ella.
She left information about where she was going, but thought it unlikely her nemesis would be easily tracked. The guards would break in eventually. Tomorrow perhaps.
Mimi was pancaked above the door. “Coming?” she asked her.
Small ears popped out but Mimi failed to stir.
A pity. She might’ve been useful.
Descending Horuk to the arranged rendezvous at the spaceport would’ve been difficult if not for her chancing that money would get her neighbor below to open their door. She sneaked over the balcony and dropped in on an old woman cleaning her apartment.
Waving her comm with an open window to her funds had made the lady get over her shock in seconds. Deal done, with the repaired legs tucked awkwardly into slings at her side, she went out the door and found herself in a foreign corridor. Simply being one floor down meant the way out was an extremely different route. The place was a labyrinth, but she’d always known that.
A hovercab took her to the spaceport and she walked in, following a map guide sent to her when she arrived at the port.
She might have communicated the location of the ship, if not for two men who fell in beside her.
“Plito. Your comm,” was all one of them said. Then he held out his hand.
After a glance, she handed it over. There was no point in resisting.
A small, slickly orange spaceship with a plump set of rear engines turned out to be her destination. White symbols were etched on the hull. A man in black pants and shirt emerged and stood in the airlock at the top of a set of perfectly shiny metal steps. Her stomach crawled sickeningly.
Her left side escort took her elbow and her heart thumped erratically.
If she’d made a mistake, it was too late.
She hitched the strap of the carriers for the legs into a better place on her shoulders and climbed the steps. Each rung rang with expectant doom. Wherever this ship took her, she didn’t expect to come out intact, maybe not even alive. If she got Plito out, that was enough for her.
Even with the note, Torgeir was never going to forgive her or understand. That made her saddest of all. Her death or disappearance would leave him grieving but he would recover, he’d find another to love. An ugly gift, but it was the only thing worth giving – her absence.
At the top, she paused, stricken
by how much this was going to cost her...everything that counted for anything in her life.
She sniffed and wiped her eyes, then hitched at the backpack again. What did it matter? She’d lost him anyway. Least she could do something right for once. Abandoning Plito? Not ever going to happen.
Her escort tugged at her arm.
Do this. There’s no one else who can help him. It has to be me.
The outer airlock door slid open. Retreat was impossible.
She heard the airlock’s second door hiss shut behind her and the three men led her down a short passageway to a room – white walls, some table-high equipment and storage cabinets. The ship wasn’t much bigger than a small house. There couldn’t be much more than a control room and engines.
“Put those down.” After she slid the straps off her shoulders and lowered the legs to the floor, he switched his gaze to her pair of guards. “Scan them for anything amiss. Then we do her.”
There’d always been the chance they’d simply throw the legs away and not let them aboard.
“Don’t lose those. Your master will want to see them.”
His expression barely changed. “Perhaps.”
The legs were carried to a portable scanning table similar to those the boys used to check parts for design and flaws. The machine moaned into high gear in a second. A holoscreen showed the leg’s designs, in a thigh to toes direction, in a slowly advancing cross-section.
She guessed they were looking for weaponry.
“Strip.” That word from him had her throat squeezing in. There was something about being unclothed before strange men that generated instant panic. “Everything off. How are the legs? He threw the words in an aside to the man working the scanner.
“Normal. Nothing dangerous.”
“Good. Now you. Don’t make us wait or we’ll strip you ourselves.”
The ship hadn’t left port but even if she could disable these three, she wouldn’t know how to find Plito. He wouldn’t be on this little ship. A curious creak and small thump somewhere else on the ship had her wondering at the cause. Were there others?
Cyberella: Preyfinders Universe Page 20