by Eileen Sharp
Chapter Twenty-Six
Altered
CAINA WATCHED JOSHUA leap into the transport at an impossible speed, his body a blur. She stared up at him, but he didn’t seem to see her, as if his mind were somewhere else. He was covered in a shining red liquid. “What are you covered in?” she asked. She knew, she just didn’t believe it.
Joshua held out his hand, the red glistening on it. “It’s red plasma.”
Dylan took a medical scanner out of his pocket and ran it over Joshua. “Can’t be— because you’d be dead.”
A deafening roar thundered through the ship and alarms rang out. The jolt sent a shock of pain through Caina’s body, and she tried to brace herself against the bench seat. Without restraints, she swayed with every movement of the ship, causing fresh pain.
To her surprise, Joshua moved to put an arm around her shoulders, holding her while the transport banked. The distant look left his eyes. Glancing out at the Nos ships, he commanded, “Cris, go to the mine shafts.”
Without turning back to acknowledge him, Cristian adjusted his course. The gaping black entryway into the mountain rushed at them. They raced into the tunnels, the lights flashing by them on the shaft walls. The tunnel opened up to a large cavern filled with loading equipment and huge transports. The white rock walls gleamed in the stark lights. Joshua twisted around to call out to Cristian, “Let’s try to dock inside one of the bigger ships.”
They dropped down and flew along the floor of the hangar past a row of ships. Cristian drew them in close. “None of them are open!” he yelled. The alarms in their ship finally shut off, but the Nos would be back in a matter of seconds.
Joshua went to the door of the med ship. “Go ahead and let me out!”
“What are you doing?” Dylan asked.
Joshua didn’t look back. The doors opened, and Joshua’s long arms spanned the doorway, the wind blowing his hair back away from his face. He stared down at the ground, his fingers gripping the frame. The transport began to slow, but he didn’t wait, jumping out.
“Joshua!” Caina cried. She clutched her wound and inched toward the door, trying to see if he’d landed. She saw him roll and then he became a blur of movement. Cristian turned the transport around, and she lost sight of her brother.
As they circled the cavern and the equipment below, she saw the two Nostekoi ships falling behind them. Cristian skimmed the floor towards the carrier transports. From across the cavern they could see one of the giant carrier doors opening.
Weaving between the transports, Cristian headed for the doors. An alarm sounded, signaling that the Nos had targeted them again. Caina held her breath, waiting for the hit. Suddenly Cristian decelerated, and the dusty mine transport dropped.
“You’re too slow!” Dylan said.
Caina didn’t know if they had much of a choice. Being forced to dock on the ship at such a high velocity meant they would probably crash when they got inside. If they were lucky, they wouldn’t damage the large carrier.
Their ship bounced off the ground and threw them back in the air. Caina was tossed into the wall and to the floor. The engines cut out, and they hit the ground, skidding to the carrier’s open doors. Metal shrieked on concrete as they slid sideways. Cristian let out a cry as he tried to right their ship. They spun and slid into the doorway of the carrier, slamming into another small ship already docked inside, metal crunching against the wall. The two ships rammed against the hull of the big carrier.
Caina lay on the floor, blood seeping through her hands as she held her stomach. A roaring sound filled the small ship. She watched a crack appear on the main window screen. Cristian climbed over the seats, his dark blue eyes anxious. He gathered her into his arms. “Are you all right?”
She nodded.
The whole ship was vibrating as if the hull might shatter. “What’s happening?” she asked.
Cristian cradled her against him as he stood up. “I think Joshua is piloting the main c-carrier. W-we’re lifting off.”
Dylan joined them, holding the gash on his head. He glanced down at Caina’s wound. “It looked like it opened again.”
“Yeah,” she agreed, feeling light-headed.
Cristian swayed as the floor moved. He found his balance and stepped out of the battered mining ship. Through the closing doors of the carrier, they could see a Nostekoi ship hovering outside, its lights glaring and the engine loud like a massive bird of prey.
“Let’s get out of the cargo bay!” Dylan said.
Cristian tightened his grip, and she could feel him breathing hard with the effort of carrying her. The carrier pitched to the left and he stumbled, but quickly regained his footing. A brilliant explosion hit behind them, a wall of heat radiating in a searing wave. Cristian went to his knees. She almost fell out of his arms, but he pulled her close again, shielding her.
She began to slip out of consciousness. She felt him stagger to his feet, and then everything went black.
A rushing sound like wind woke her. She lay in Cristian’s arms, the two of them on the floor in a place she didn’t recognize. She finally realized she must be on the bridge of the carrier. Bright lights illuminated translucent screens all around the room. The wide front screen displayed the white rock walls of the mine shaft rushing by. Silhouetted against the bright white was a tall thin figure, his arms strung out by cables that reached up into the ship. His body was stretched so far it looked like his joints might disconnect. His head hung down, the muscles on his neck straining.
Dazed, she tried to understand what she was looking at. She realized it was Joshua, his arms tethered to the ship. Had they been captured by the Nostekoi? Why was he bound like that?
She grabbed Cristian’s shirt. “Help him,” she said.
He looked down at her, a sad expression in his dark blue eyes. “It’s okay. He’s doing it to himself.”
The ship shuddered, and she realized they were rising, and then the rock walls disappeared as they shot out of the mountain. The sun burned bright, flooding over Joshua’s tortured looking body. She put one hand down on the floor and pushed herself up, trembling at the pain. Cristian put his hand on her back, supporting her. “I’ll take you to him.”
As they drew nearer, she could see that the cables were not wrapped around his arms. Confused, she gripped Cristian’s shirt. He leaned down and said in a gentle voice, “This doesn’t hurt him. No matter what you see he’s okay. All right?”
Her heart began to pound, and she didn’t know why. Cristian moved around Joshua so she could see him.
His wrists were bent back and split open. The gaping hole was grotesque but bloodless. Cables sprouted from his arms, reaching up into the walls of the ship. His red eyes were luminescent, his face blank.
Scared, she whispered, “Joshua?”
He didn’t move at first, and then raised his head and met her eyes. He had almost no pupils, the red taking over his irises. He seemed to see her, though. A pained expression crossed his face, and then he bowed his head again. “We’re going to hyperspace, Cris,” he said in a stilted voice, as if the words had to come one at a time from different places in his mind.
Cristian shifted her in his arms. “Let’s get s-strapped in.”
Someone moved behind her, and she realized it was Dylan. “He’s perfectly stable. He’ll be all right.”
She blinked. Had everyone gone insane? She choked out his name.
His body jerked and he looked up, but not at her. He looked at Cristian. “You have twelve seconds. Eleven. Ten. Nine…” he kept counting.
Cristian swung around and ran. Breathless, he explained quickly. “Look, we’ll sort this out later. He’s fine.”
Lightheaded with shock and probably blood loss, she didn’t have the strength to argue. Cristian set her down with more gentleness than they had time for and the restraints closed over her. Dylan and Cristian strapped down.
Dylan looked over at Cristian. “She’s going to pass out again. I’ll get to her wound after the ju
mp.”
“She n-needs blood.”
Joshua’s head turned to look back at them, the movement eerily mechanical. “….two, one.”
She blacked out.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Alpha
COMING TO, Caina couldn’t guess how long she had been out, but she woke up feeling uneasy. The reason came back quickly––Joshua. Everything about him made her depressed. What she had seen was beyond horrifying; his veins snaking out of his body, and that odd detached look on his face. She closed her eyes and shuddered.
The warm breeze coming in the room told her they were back at the med clinic on Apollux. She supposed if they’d made it to the clinic and they’d lost the Nostekoi ships. Somehow she expected Cristian to be there when she woke up, but that was unrealistic; he couldn’t be with her all the time.
“Hey.”
She opened her eyes and found him sitting down next to her. He had stubble on his chin and there were shadows under his dark blue eyes. “You look tired,” she said.
“So do you,” he answered, smiling. She’d been so worried about the psychological damage he’d suffered that she’d almost forgotten how handsome he was. Her heart skipped a beat.
“So you sat here with me instead of shaving?” she teased.
“It was a huge sacrifice.”
“Was I worth it?”
He leaned down and kissed her, a slow, leisurely kiss that made her cheeks flush. “Probably,” he answered.
She ran her fingers through his dark, nearly black hair. “You can do that whenever you want.”
He gave her a crooked smile, looking like his old self, before the Nostekoi had taken him. “That’s good, because it’s becoming my favorite thing.”
Caina’s hand went to her stomach where her wound had been sealed, an unconscious gesture. “It’s nice not to worry about anything for a few seconds.”
His expression went serious. “Sorry it can’t be longer.”
“Where’s Joshua?” she asked.
He didn’t say anything at first, but then he sighed. “He’s with the Alliance.”
“What happened to him? What did the Nostekoi do to him?”
“Technically, they didn’t do anything to him. They made him. He’s a synthetic human manufactured by the Nostekoi. He had no idea—he’s having a hard time understanding it. He keeps saying he c-coded himself, that he isn’t real.”
“What does that mean? He coded himself?”
Cristian shook his head. “I’m not sure, but I think it’s true. He created his persona…himself. The Joshua we know is a program.”
She thought back to the afternoon when she was only twelve and he’d turned her cell band over to read the ugly messages her classmates had sent her. That didn’t seem like something a program would do. “So he’s with the Alliance? Where?”
“He w-wouldn’t tell me where. He doesn’t want us to have anything to do with h-him right now. He saw your dad, though, and he cried like a baby. Just broke down, like, I don’t know. He seemed real enough then.”
She pulled her hand away from his and drew her knees up, ignoring the stabbing pain in her stomach. “But he’s not.”
Cristian climbed up on the bed, careful not to move her, his face intent. “He k-kept me alive while he was with the Nos. I just thought he’d become one of them. I was wrong. I don’t understand why he kept me alive. No bloodless machine would have c-cared. He had nothing to gain.”
She didn’t answer. What would it be like to find out you weren’t real? What did that mean, anyway? Where did his thoughts come from? He even dreamed, or at least he’d said he did. She never thought about the origin of all the random things that crossed her mind. Didn’t all that come from her mind, her personality? Were his thoughts like that? Was he a person?
“I’d like to see him.” She felt guilty for saying it. Cristian would stop time for her if he could, and if she wanted to find her brother, he would help her make it happen no matter how difficult it was.
“Okay. We’ll do it.”
She let out a breath, her hand going to her injury again. As much as she wanted to jump out of bed, she couldn’t. She lay back, moving slowly. Cristian moved off the bed, catching her back with his hand, supporting her. He stretched out on the bed next to her, leaning on his elbow with an amused look. She rolled her eyes in exasperation. “Tomorrow. We can find him tomorrow.”
He laughed softly and kissed her. “Right.”
Her dad walked in the room and Cristian hastily stood.
“Hello, Cristian. Thanks for watching over my daughter.”
“Of course,” Cristian answered, turning red. “I was just leaving,” he said. “I’ll be back later.”
“Hi, Dad,” she said, reaching for a hug when Cristian had left the room.
He gave her a delicate embrace. “You scared me, Bug. It’s a good thing Dylan was there.”
His low, gentle voice always put her at ease. He sat down on the chair next to the bed. His distinguished gray was becoming more prominent, especially in the last year, turning most of his hair silver now. At first, she was worried about how fragile he seemed after her mother’s death, but even though he had a small frame and didn’t seem very hearty, he’d continued on, defying her worst fears. There was a steely resolve at his core that she deeply admired.
“Dad,” she said, not wanting to wait another minute, “I know about Joshua—that he’s artificial intelligence.”
The look he gave her was both affectionate and chiding. “He’s a little more than that.”
Tears welled up in her eyes. “Then help me understand because I don’t know what to think.”
He looked down at his clasped hands. There was a scar on his wrist from his days of torture with the Nostekoi. He rubbed it absently as he spoke. “He’s suffering. He’s repulsed and terrified by what he is, and I believe his pain is genuine. He said he knows he is programmed to respond with anguish, and that to some part of him, all of it is a perfectly played deception, no matter what he thinks he feels. He is afraid of himself.”
Her thoughts collided like trapped butterflies, frantic and going nowhere. “If he knows he’s pretending why does he still do it?”
“If he stops pretending then he loses Joshua. He ceases to exist, and his personality gets swallowed in the rest of the program.”
“What would he do to us if he ceased to exist?”
He glanced up at her and shook his head. “He doesn’t know.”
Fear overwhelmed her. She couldn’t risk her father being betrayed to the Nostekoi because Joshua could no longer control the program that controlled him. For all they knew, he had already lost, and the Joshua who cried and said he was afraid was just the program manipulating all of them. A few moments ago she wanted to find him, but now she wasn’t so sure. “We have to stay away from him, right?”
Her father reached over and took her hand, his touch firm and his eyes holding her gaze. “Yes, maybe you should. But if I am his last hold on the Joshua we know, then I won’t abandon him. As long as he fights, I will. I will always be his father. I promised him that.”
Grief overwhelmed her. Joshua had been her protector. He had watched over her when they were younger, shielding her from cruelty, her only friend when she had none. She couldn’t bear having him ripped away. “How do I know if he’s pretending? I don’t know how to tell. I don’t want to lose him, but I can’t trust him.”
Her father didn’t answer, though he squeezed her hand. She realized there would be no answer she could count on. It was impossible to know for sure. She would either have to turn away to protect herself, or make the ridiculous leap of faith to believe in him. She wanted to let him go, but the child in her could not leave her protector. If there was even the smallest chance, she wanted him back.
She let go of him and played with the blanket, looking down at her hands. “We didn’t part on very good terms, I don’t think.”
“Then go see him.”
Sur
prised, she glanced up.
“Take Cristian with you and be careful. The Alliance has him under guard, but I think he could leave them whenever he chose. He’s much more powerful than we realize.”
She had expected her dad to have more answers, to make it all clear for her, but he didn’t seem to know much more than she did.
Leaning over and kissing her forehead, he smiled. “We’ll talk when you get back. The important thing to know is that I do believe Joshua is still in there.”
It was ten days before Dylan cleared her to even speak to her commander about seeing her brother. It took a few more days for the Alliance to agree to it, but at least it was an approval. They couldn’t tell her where she was going, though. His whereabouts were a tightly guarded secret.
They put her and Cristian on a small ship and sent them to an unknown destination. She sat next to Cristian, sometimes reaching for his hand between jumps. During the journey, they passed cloud shaped nebulas, birthing suns, and cold expanses of nothing. Through it all, she burned to know who Joshua was, although it was more than that, if she was being honest. She wanted to save him. If she could reaffirm that she believed in him, it might be what he needed. Her father said Joshua was powerful; maybe he was powerful enough to control the original design.
Their final destination was not a planet or a space station—it was another ship. She supposed it made sense to have Joshua in a location that constantly moved so no one could guess where he would be next. It was one of the largest ships she’d ever seen, housing a crew that numbered in the hundreds. The shape was nothing special, almost blocky, and there were no identifying marks on the outside. She guessed the anonymity was purposeful.
She stepped out of the airlock, Cristian close behind her. Four soldiers in dark blue Alliance uniforms stood guard at the entrance, staring straight ahead. She and Cristian were in civilian attire since they weren't considered on duty in an official capacity. They allowed Cristian to keep a plasma gun holstered on his belt, though he wore a long, dark coat over his clothes. Caina didn't want to wear a uniform either but she liked her sturdy, reassuring boots and sleek, black pants. She wore a flowing white top, her arms bare except for a gold bracelet at her wrist. She'd pulled her long hair up in a high pony-tail, away from her face.