Ascension: A Tangled Axon Novel

by Jacqueline Koyanagi

  Tell me your story, I thought to her, my fingertips aching, longing to trail along her metal as we walked. Tell me what you’ve seen. Tell me why you called to me.

  I had to find a way to stay on this ship long enough to find out.

  We had arrived in the crew’s dormitory, where Ovie shoved me into the “brig”—nothing more than an unoccupied quarters. Departing without comment, he left me with the medic.

  “So this is the brig?” I said, taking in the crisp sheets and extra blanket folded at the foot of the bed. A built-in desk and a lamp occupied the opposite corner of the room. Empty shelves lined the wall, and a couple of silver charms consisting of interlinked rings hung from a stud in the ceiling. Rings like those comprising the crew members’ jewelry.

  The medic sat on the bed and leaned back on one elbow. I noticed she wore a bracelet made of the same metal rings. “Where’s Nova?”

  “Why do you need her so badly?”

  She laughed, but it wasn’t kind. “Why is it you keep asking questions as if you’re not the stowaway here? We ask, you answer. That’s how this works.”

  I sat down next to her and whispered. “I thought we had a deal.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Will you at least tell me your name? The name of the ship? Anything?”

  She smirked. “I’m Doctor Helen Vasquez. As far as you’re concerned, I’m the bitch keeping an eye on you until the captain decides what to do about our dirtheel infestation. You realize there are plenty of captains out there who would’ve shoved you out the airlock without a second thought. You’re lucky ours has a soft spot for strays.”

  “Why are you acting like you don’t know anything?”

  She sucked her teeth at me and clicked off the intercrew comm link behind her ear. “What, you think you have a right to be here?”

  Heat rose to my neck. “If you want my sister, your captain will have to be a little more accommodating than throwing me into the . . . ” I looked around and laughed. “Brig.”

  “I’d be careful about making demands, stowaway.”

  “I’d be careful too, accomplice. Tell me why you want Nova, or I’ll just disembark at Adul and you won’t be any closer to finding her.”

  She laughed. “I only put my ass on the line for you because you have information we need, girl. Don’t make me regret it.”

  “If you have nothing to offer me, I don’t see why I should help you.”

  Dr. Vasquez sighed and tilted her head, staring at me as if she couldn’t quite decide how to reprimand me. “Oh yeah, I get it. We all want to fly. We all have the same sad story, the same debt collectors chasing us, but no one’s entitled to be here. What makes you special enough that we should make room for you on our ship? You think the world owes you something? We don’t even know you.”

  “I don’t think the world owes me—”

  She waved her hand dismissively. “Save it. I don’t want to hear anything else unless it has to do with Nova Quick.”

  Maybe I was being stupid, but I couldn’t lead them to my sister in good conscience until I knew why they wanted to talk to her. I rested my head in my hands, face against my palms. Now that the adrenaline was wearing off, the pain from my arm had amplified and migrated to my shoulders, neck, and head. Migraine territory, ahoy. Soreness crept along the tendons in my hands, throbbing with every pulse.

  The Panacea sample loomed larger in my awareness than such a tiny object should. I touched my fingers to the outside of the pocket, feeling the bulge of the familiar Dexitek bottle and the smaller, more ominous shape beside it. A shape that contained all the power to relieve my symptoms in one capsule, albeit temporarily. Power to heal me in exchange for creating some kind of chemical dependency I wouldn’t be able to feed.

  No. Not yet. You need your wits.

  I drew my hand away from the pill.

  When the silence persisted, I just listened to the ship to distract myself. That electric hum, ever-present and soothing. Pops and creaks in the hull. Someone’s voice on another part of the deck, muffled by the walls between us. It sounded like Lai, though I knew it wasn’t. Maybe the captain.

  I took in the musty scent of the room, so similar to the Adul station. Something familiar to cling to. At least if this didn’t work out, I’d soon see my parents. Shuttles ferried folks between Ouyang Outpost and the research station all the time.

  “Why don’t you just tell us where Nova is?” the doctor finally said. “Why’d you bother stowing away if you didn’t plan to give us anything?”

  I lifted my head and looked at Vasquez, who leaned back on her elbows like she had all the time in the world. Legs crossed, thick hair spilling from her ponytail.

  “What do you want with her? Does the captain need spiritual counsel? Someone to serve as guide during a mystical journey?” I couldn’t keep the sneer out of my questions.

  “Not exactly. Why we want her is irrelevant, anyway. If you help us find her, the captain might see you as valuable. Or at least worth a little more than a stop at a penal colony.”

  “I don’t think trespassing merits incarceration. A fine at the most—”

  “You’d be surprised how little the authorities want to deal with us fringe folk these days. Penal colonies are convenient.”

  “You’re just trying to scare me.”

  “Is it working?”

  “Maybe a little.”

  “Well.” She shrugged, a grin perking up her face. “There you go.”

  “Why you want my sister isn’t irrelevant to me, you know.”

  “Either way, I’m not authorized to tell you.”

  I bit down on my frustration. “I know what I look like.” I bunched my locs between my hands and tossed them back over my shoulder, a nervous habit that I knew made me seem even smaller, emphasizing the fountain of hair that dwarfed me. “I look younger than I am. I bet you think I’m fresh out of some internship, but I’m not. I’m thirty-two central years old—”

  “Great. You’re an old bag like the rest of us.”

  I refused to take the bait. “You’re missing my point. I’m saying you’re right. About all of it. About me being no different from anyone else. I’m getting older and I have no money and no real future in Heliodor. I’m desperate, but desperate people are powerful, Vasquez! I really can make your ship more efficient if you just—”

  “Yeah. You said that. What we want is your sister.” She lowered her voice. “I made that clear at the ship yard.”

  “I can hear it.” I pointed up, as if that’s where the ship was. “In her, the vessel. You hear the hum, right?”

  “The buzzing noise?”

  I couldn’t help smiling, and shook my head. “Not exactly. There’s a broken thread in her that needs mending. I feel it.”

  I meant, it too. I felt the ship’s discomfort deep inside my forearms, layered underneath my own cramping muscles. Meant there was something that needed adjusting in her thrusters.

  “It’s not like she’s ailing, really,” I continued, “but just not operating at full capacity. I can help.”

  “That sounds more like mysticism than ship doctoring. Maybe your sister has rubbed off on you.”

  I bristled. “Look, I’m not asking for a lot. Just a chance.”

  She sucked her teeth at me again. “You really don’t get it, do you? That is asking for a lot. How do you plan to feed yourself, dirtheel? We’re already going to have to waste rations on you as it is. If you don’t have information for us, we don’t have anything for you.”

  “I do have information. I just want to know why you want a member of my family first.”

  “This isn’t a debate. Tell us how to reach your sister or you’re useless to us.”

  Staring at Dr. Vasquez’s anxious face—the way her body periodically shifted out of eagerness—I could see what was going on: I had the real power here. Or at least some power. They were trying to get what they needed from me without helping me realize how mu
ch influence I really held, as Nova’s sister. Their silence on the matter made me all the more determined to find out why.

  “Let me talk to the captain,” I said, straightening my back.

  She stood up, towering over me, her wavy hair falling over her shoulder like a storm cloud.

  “I’ve been beyond patient with you,” she said. “Let’s try this instead. You sit in here and hope the captain keeps feeling generous. Accidents happen in the black all the time. Getting rid of you quietly would be a lot less paperwork than turning you in, believe me, and we wouldn’t have to waste time docking somewhere while we press charges. So you just keep that in mind and think real hard about your situation, about what’s smart here. We’ll talk tomorrow. See if you’re feeling more cooperative.”

  “Your threats are empty.” I hoped they were, anyway. “Without me, you’ve got nothing. I’m not telling you a damn thing unless you tell me why you want her.”

  She shrugged and opened the door, its metallic complaint punctuating her anger. “Your choice.”

  I swallowed. “Wait.”

  Her grip tightened on the door handle and her shoulders tensed. “Yes?”

  “I have Mel’s Disorder. It’s an autoimmune disease. My digestive system is wonky, so if you end up bringing me anything to eat—”

  “Do you think this is a passenger ship? Is there a menu in your room? Do you see me carrying drinks or tapping out orders? Do you—”

  “I get it.” I massaged the center of my palm, trying to get the pain to ease up for a second. “I just figured . . . you know, you’re a doctor. I figured you’d want to help.”

  Dr. Vasquez stared directly at me, the lines of her face hard. She seemed to be debating something; her silence gave me a glimmer of hope.

  “You figured wrong,” she said at length. “Use the time to think. Hunger sharpens the mind.”

  She stepped out, closed the door, and locked it. The metal clang reverberated in my ears.

  I was alone.

  “Go to sleep.”

  My body wouldn’t listen. Every time I closed my eyes, hoping sleep might pass the time, I homed in on the sounds of the ship instead. The minute flexing and stretching of her hull. The occasional voices of the crew. Bootfalls down the hallway. Eventually I gave up fighting the urge and placed my hand on the wall to see if I could feel the sky in the ship’s skin. Humming tickled my palm, soft and low. She was warmer than expected; I imagined it was her blood rising to the surface, all plasma and light.

  I thought about Nova carrying inspiration and comfort to patrons on distant planets, and I was both envious and full of admiration for what she had accomplished, as much as I hated admitting it. I might have been no fan of mysticism, but she’d been out here in the Big Quiet for over six years now, trading in magic. All her innate talent for shaping belief and weaving reality-patterns into shiny new futures for her clients had granted her an easy life. There wasn’t a spirit guide enthusiast in the system who didn’t know her name. Meanwhile, I woke up every day and struggled just to find work.

  But now I was out here too. In the black. On a ship.

  As much as I longed to see my parents again, I wouldn’t be able to stay with them on the outpost. There was no way I could give this up. I’d sacrifice almost anything to look inside this vessel’s engine, see the plasma moving through the heart of her, slide my fingers through her wires like a lover’s hair. Listen to the thrum of her reactor while my hands learned her every curve.

  I needed to know her name.

  After being surrounded by othersider tech for so long, it felt good to be inside a solid old ship. A piece of the technology from our side of the breach. As miraculous as Transliminal’s advances seemed, they still scared me. Just like the pill sitting in my pocket scared me. We didn’t understand their technology because they wouldn’t let us, and as desperately as I wanted a cure to Mel’s, I was frightened of letting them mess with my body when I didn’t understand what it would mean.

  This vessel reminded me the world I belonged to was still out here, that our science still meant something, and that the whole system hadn’t already been handed over to the othersiders. To folks from over there. This vessel? She was real, solid, and true. Part of our universe. She made sense, unlike the terrifying ships that made up the Transliminal armada.

  Not that I’d ever seen them, mind—I’d just heard stories of light twisting out of the dark folds of reality, ribbons shivering in impossible shapes. Vessels that ran on “dark energy.” A vague name for something they refused to explain to us, and we just accepted our ignorance because they had the cures and advances we’d failed to find on our own.

  Why had they succeeded where we failed? I thought. Why do they scare me? Just because they come from another universe?

  Ugh, I hated being stuck in here with nothing but my thoughts. At least they could’ve left me some metal to play with. Being off the grid, I couldn’t even access shows or books through the net.

  It occurred to me then: Had Lai gotten my message? My implant had probably bounced the transmission through Orpim’s net instead of the ship’s, but how reliable was the connection during takeoff?

  Stop thinking about it.

  I turned over on the bed and picked out patterns in the discolored spots on the floor. My pill bottle dug into my hip, reminding me of how little time I had, which in turn stretched each minute out like taffy while I lay there with absolutely nothing to occupy my time. Forty-eight pills. Twenty-four days. And then, if I couldn’t get more, I had to either get home or watch my motor functions deteriorate until I couldn’t walk, much less operate on engines.

  Unless I wanted to take Transliminal’s appetizer and become dependent on them long before I could afford to be.

  I had to give them Nova’s location. There just wasn’t any other way.

  Suddenly, a pair of small, bare feet appeared in my field of vision. I sat up to face the young woman who’d somehow come into the room without making a sound, barefooted and wearing a white shirt over shorts.

  Any words I might have conjured fell away as I took her in. She didn’t look a day over eighteen or nineteen, but I felt the unmistakable gaze of time staring back at me from behind her dark eyes. Sleek, straight black hair draped over her shoulders like liquid, falling almost to her waist, and her skin was so white I could almost see through it. Her left upper-arm was covered in a tattoo sleeve of a honeycomb—an arresting look on someone with such a young face. The phantom taste of honey coated my tongue, its scent surrounding me. Surrounding her.

  She said nothing, but hollowed me out with her stare. Any hope I had of forming coherent thoughts slipped away. I felt her inside me, disturbing me, rocking my reality sideways. Like a negative picture with white spaces in all the wrong spots. Inside my head, I felt her awareness probing me—a lightning-bright mind with a hole where her heart should have been.

  “You are on my ship,” she said, tone flat, voice soft. She tilted her head to the side, her movements languid. “Are you paying attention?”

  When she spoke, a buzzing sound hovered somewhere between my ears, between the music of the ship and the rush of my blood and the awful disturbance that was her mind. Buzzing like summer insects.

  A faint movement flitted across her face. At first I thought it was a muscle twitch, some indication of emotion, but then it happened again, and . . . I saw. There could be no mistaking the patch of translucence that rippled across her left cheek, shivered down her neck. Muscle, tooth, tendon, and bone: a shimmer of anatomy beneath the invisible sheath of her skin.

  She wasn’t just pale; she was translucent, in a constant state of fading and rematerializing.

  I tried to answer her, to ask the half-formed questions eddying in my mind—Who are you? What are you? Paying attention to what? Why are you here? Can you help me?—but nothing came out. The taste of honey slid down my throat. Buzzing drowned out any hope of translating thought to speech. Hollowness pulled at me, an ache behind my eyes. So
mewhere in the back of my mind, I was aware of the ship’s anticipation.

  As quickly as it appeared, the window into the girl’s body vanished. She was whole again, if only for a moment. Then another shimmer, and her right leg was missing. Her shorts remained filled out as if it were there, but there was no muscle or bone to be seen—only empty space where flesh should have been.

  My mind grappled for purchase.

  Gradually, the bone, muscle, fat, and skin reappeared, though unevenly at first. My world shifted, groaned, stretched. I struggled to make room for something that shouldn’t be, but was. Tears welled in my eyes, not from sadness, but from my ever-loosening grip on reality.

  “You are distressed,” she said. “Go to sleep.”

  Immediately, I lost consciousness.

  That night I dreamed I lost my hands while working inside the ship’s engine. I grew new fingers full of metal and electricity, and their fire licked away what remained of my bones.

  Chapter Three

  Morning came with a bang and a shake.

  As the world rocked around me, bits of reality trickled in, my thoughts mere fragments: Dizzy. Muscle aches. Stiff neck, cramping hands. Starship. Stowed away. Pills? Pocket. Hunger.

  When my mind settled into something more closely resembling coherence, I realized I wasn’t alone. The shaking came from Dr. Vasquez, who had pulled me into a sitting position on the bed.

  The captain stood in front of me. She put her hands on my cheeks and forced me to look at her, blond hair curtaining her face like a veil of silk, and all I could think through my bleary-eyed half-consciousness was, her hands are warm.

  Something beeped at the site of my implant.

  “She’s fine,” Vasquez said, pulling her medical monitor away from my head. “Her Mel’s is flaring, but blood pressure is normal.”

  “Good!” The captain patted my cheek a little too hard, then let go. “Morning, love. It’s time to talk to us about your sister.”

  Excruciating pain pummeled my lower back and hands—my price for curling up in that box. Mel’s didn’t take kindly to cramped spaces. It took a fair amount of concentration not to let it show. Weakness wouldn’t help my case.