Alliance of Exiles

by Caitlin Demaris McKenna

  “Pri?” he said.

  The first touch of Drevl Char mental communication was tinged with unmistakable surprise. «You know who I am?»

  “You were in Neo-Chicago a few months ago. You were . . . helping Gau.” He kept his voice low, less because he had any illusions of hiding his emotions from Pri, and more to keep his voice from reaching the end of the alley. If there’d been other survivors from Gau’s group, they might be nearby. Perhaps—his stomach clenched—perhaps Gau himself was here on Greenwich Hub. Maybe Pri had already sent a mental distress call to him. Movement made Mose glance down the alley.

  Vernsky and the woman who’d been tending bar appeared in the alley mouth, the woman’s flashlight raking his eyes. Vernsky called his name—

  —and then he and the security woman kept going down the street. Mose blinked. It was like they hadn’t seen him at all.

  Which was impossible, unless . . . He looked at Pri, who dipped her teardrop-shaped head in a Terran nod.

  «My apologies for this subterfuge,» the Drevl Char sent, antennae quivering towards him as if caught in a stiff wind. «It was necessary in order to get close to you.»

  “How did you know I’d be out here tonight?” he asked. He didn’t bother, in what he sensed might be limited time, to ask how she’d located him; she’d infiltrated the Terran Embassy on Gau’s orders. Greenwich Hub would hardly be a challenge.

  «I’ve been monitoring you the last couple days from close by,» she sent—seemingly direct, though he noted her answer revealed nothing that could compromise her. «Once I was ready for you to find me, I . . . encouraged you to do so.»

  He cast his memories over the past two days. An increase in restlessness that penetrated even through his despair, coupled with an urge to tell Vernsky all that was tearing at his mind.

  Though still off-balance, Mose was rapidly getting used to the idea that he’d been tricked. It was a familiar feeling, after all. And the needle was still real .

  “ Did Gau send you to kill me?” He felt no worse than he had a few minutes ago, but there were slow-acting poisons; Gau could have arranged for an untraceable toxin that would leave Mose in agony for weeks.

  «Kill you? No.» The surprise in Pri’s thought tone felt genuine, but it would, wouldn’t it?

  “Then what did you inject me with?”

  «A message,» she said. «The syringe carried a nanite swarm that will deliver pieces of it over time.»

  More nanotech? A shiver of disgust prickled his skin and a sick fury burned in his stomach, twisting his words into a snarl.

  “You had no right!” He lunged forward to pin her to the wall—

  His palm struck concrete. Mose snatched his smarting hand to his chest. “Where are you? Show yourself.”

  «I apologize for not asking your permission.» Pri’s voice was soundless, but seemed to come from behind him. He turned to find her, but there appeared to be no one there. «This was the most secure way we could think of to contact you so deep in Terran space.»

  “Who is we? You and Gau?” Mose pivoted in place, pretending to keep looking about. He understood by now that Pri could be right next to him and he wouldn’t see her if she didn’t want him to. But he had other senses; for her to fool them all would take considerable concentration.

  «I’m not one of Gau’s associates anymore. He didn’t send me.» “Then who did? That Osk you hid behind?” There—was that air moving past his right shoulder? Mose spun, reached out. His hands contacted the Drevl Char’s sloping shoulders and he gripped hard, even though his eyes still insisted nothing was there. “Who is she, Pri?”

  The Drevl Char had gone tense in his grasp, but she didn’t try to pull away. Pri melted back into visibility piece by piece, like a holo building itself out of blurry pixels. Last to appear were her eyes, which met his with a liquid emotion that caught him by surprise.

  «She is my friend.» A pulse of affection traveled beneath the surface of her words. It obviously wasn’t for him, but an ache settled in the back of his throat. Mose couldn’t remember the last time he’d been someone’s friend.

  Pri’s outline went blurry again, reforming as the oskven with the white mane. She used the Osk’s voice to say, “And she’s someone I think you should meet.”

  Mose was startled enough by her shift to loosen his grip; Pri grabbed his wrists and removed his hands from her shoulders. He twisted out of the Drevl Char’s leathery grasp, which was far stronger than her physiology suggested. “Why should I trust you? Either of you?”

  A knowing smile lifted one corner of the illusory oskven’s mouth. “Because we know you aren’t helping the Project by choice. And we want to offer you a way out.”

  For a moment, Mose was too stunned to speak. By the time he’d recovered, Pri had reverted to her true form and was backing toward the mouth of the alley. “Wait, you can’t just leave!”

  «I must. I opened up a small hole in the Hub’s surveillance routines to allow us to meet, but it’s closing soon. We cannot be seen together.»

  “But how can I contact you? When can we meet again?”

  «The messages will tell you what you need to know.» She vanished into air as she turned, the click of her claws on the pavement getting fainter as she walked away. He unfroze himself, rushed out of the alley after her, and ran straight into the front of Vernsky’s coat.

  The burn of vodka in Vernsky’s stomach had changed from pleasant to acidic with worry. Ten minutes had gone by with no sign of Mose, even though he and the security agent had scoured each side of the street around the bar for fifty meters in both directions, with her shining her flashlight into the dimmer alleys as they went.

  “Let’s split up,” she said. “You got a flashlight?”

  He fished a penlight out of his pocket and displayed it with a shrug.

  “Good enough,” she said. “Let’s expand our search radius another twenty-five meters.”

  “You really think Mose would’ve gone that far?” Vernsky asked.

  “He’s obviously not around here.”

  “It’s dark. Maybe we missed something. You go on, I’ll check this street again.”

  Her lips pursed. “Okay. Holler if you run into any trouble.”

  Vernsky nodded. He was halfway down the street, rechecking alleys that were just as empty as they’d been the first time, when the import of her words struck him. What trouble could she expect him to run into in a secured, civilian area of the hab? The obvious answer was Mose. Though Vernsky was furious with the Osk for running off, he knew he wasn’t a danger to anyone on staff.

  Was that true? He’d seen Session 403-89—only the arrival of security had stopped Mose from inflicting a serious injury on his then-doctor. And Mose had known about the sedative patch in Vernsky’s pocket. What if running off was a ploy to get Vernsky away from the Project’s protective umbrella? He and the guard splitting up might be the worst thing they could’ve done.

  Rapid footfalls behind him made Vernsky whirl, just as a dark gray and red shape cannoned out of the alley and smacked into his chest. An involuntary yelp escaped him and he raised his penlight like a pathetically small sword. The thin beam of light reflected off a pair of horizontal pupils that immediately narrowed to near invisibility, accompanied by a hiss of surprise and pain.

  Mose backed off, shielding his eyes from the light. “What are you doing here?” he asked.

  Vernsky lowered the penlight. “I could ask the same—”

  The guard’s arrival cut off the rest of what he’d been about to say. She rounded the intersection behind Mose at a dead run. When she saw the two of them, she planted her feet and leveled the flashlight two-handed at Mose as though it was a pistol. Which it was—mounted under the flashlight lens was a stubby barrel designed to hold tranquilizer darts.

  “Back away, Attarrish. Arms where I can see them.”

  Mose looked between them, dazed in the glare of the guard’s flashlight. He pulled his arms out of the sleeves of his coat and slowl
y raised them. The coat slipped off onto the pavement.

  The guard nudged the air with her flashlight and Mose took slow steps backward into the middle of street, so that the three of them stood in a triangle, with Mose equidistant from the guard and Vernsky.

  “Mind explaining what you think you’re doing?” she asked.

  Mose squinted against the light. “Could you please put that away?”

  “Answer the question.”

  “Fine,” Mose said. “I wanted to be alone with my thoughts for once—really alone, not watched every second like you people do. Thought I might actually be able to get it, out here.”

  Vernsky stepped forward, raising a hand when the guard gave him a warning glance. “Just retrieving my coat.” He scooped it up off the ground and backed off, but at a different angle relative to Mose. Now, with the flashlight’s glare out of his line of sight, he could see Mose’s face clearly.

  “You said you smelled something,” Vernsky said. “Then when I looked back, you were gone. What was that about?”

  A deep scowl turned down the corners of Mose’s mouth.

  “Would you have left me alone if I’d simply asked?”

  “Sure. At the bar.” Where Project security could still keep an eye on him.

  Mose nodded once, as if to say he’d expected as much. “There was no scent. I made it up as a distraction.”

  For a long moment Vernsky didn’t say anything. Mose’s face, which had been so expressive a moment before, was blank.

  “I’ll have to report this,” Vernsky said.

  “I know.”

  “Don’t do it again.”

  “I won’t.”

  Vernsky gave a nod to the guard, who finally lowered her flashlight and switched it off.

  “I think this excursion’s gone on long enough,” he said.

  “Let’s get you back to base.”

  Vernsky and the guard made inane late-shift small talk as they walked Mose back to the mag-lev station. He was glad she seemed just as tired as he was and didn’t try to expand their conversation beyond small talk, because it gave him time to organize his thoughts. Vernsky was pretty sure Mose’s agitation and surprise at the bar hadn’t been feigned. He was even more certain that Mose’s explanation, as he’d watched the Osk’s exaggerated expressions and caught the subliminal twitches of his true feelings beneath, had been a lie.

  Vernsky said goodnight to the security guard in the foyer of the Project’s holdings and escorted Mose the rest of the way to his quarters.

  “See you tomorrow.” Mose moved to palm the door closed from his side.

  Vernsky hit the exterior override button. “Don’t do that again.”

  The Osk’s pupils dilated fractionally in startlement. “Or you’ll have to file another report. Yes, you made that clear.”

  “This is not a reprimand, Mose. It’s a caution.” That got Mose’s attention; his white pupils narrowed.

  “Now that we have a new director, you might be tempted to test things, see how far you can push him. Don’t.” He held Mose’s gaze, making sure the Osk understood he was serious. “Don’t make Jan decide you’re more trouble than you’re worth. If that happens I might not be able to protect you.”

  The expression that flitted across Mose’s face wasn’t easy to read; Vernsky detected an amalgam of bemusement, wry humor, and wariness there. He hoped the wariness at least meant something of what he’d said had gotten through.

  “What you said, about needing more privacy—I suspected something like that.” Vernsky licked his lips and plowed on. “I asked Jan for approval to turn off the monitors on your search history. And the cameras in your room. He granted it.”

  Mose’s lip curled in suspicion—but what was under it? Was that a flicker of vulnerable gratitude, in the way the edges of his mouth trembled?

  “Why would you do that?” he asked. “And why would Jan agree?”

  “We thought—” — It would keep you from breaking down. Long enough for you to do what we tell you. Vernsky bit down on that thought hard enough to make his teeth ache. “We thought it might help,” he finished limply.

  Mose was silent for a long, unreadable moment. At last, he said, “It’s comforting to know you take such an interest in my well-being.”

  The door slid closed. Vernsky shuffled toward the exit, trying and failing to pretend that the bed he’d clawed his way out of twenty-one hours ago was any kind of enticement now. He felt wide awake, though it was an alertness balanced on the stimulant edge of hard alcohol and his own blurring thoughts.

  Among them, he knew only two things with full clarity. He felt them in the hard pit of nausea in his stomach.

  The first was that Mose was lying. Something had drawn him away from the bar, and compelled him to hide from the Project’s sight, though how he’d managed to do so was less clear.

  The second was that Vernsky himself had lied too, when he’d laid the destruction of Fate’s Shears at Mose’s feet. The Osk had destroyed the last remaining canisters of the virus—but those weren’t the last Fate’s Shears in existence.

  The medical files were from before Vernsky’s time, but he’d read them. He knew the state in which Mose had come to the Project: suffocating in Olios 3’s environment of almost pure oxygen, with barely enough bio-implant left in his lungs to fill a micropipette. Yet there’d been plenty of Fate’s Shears roaming the scarred cavities of Mose’s lungs. So the techs and doctors had done the economical thing: they’d co-opted the nanovirus, reprogrammed it to repair the tissues it had damaged and sustain the life it had almost erased.

  The transformation had only begun with his lungs. Project technicians and doctors alike had quickly understood it would take more than some gross repairs and conversions to make Mose Attarrish live. They’d had no choice but to allow the Fate’s Shears virus to spread throughout the alien’s body.To let it make the necessary sweeping changes to his metabolism and insinuate these mechanisms into his flesh down to the intracellular level.

  The Project’s schematic commands had been of the crudest sort. Reengineer the Osk body to breathe oxygen. Keep it alive using whatever means necessary. In fulfilling this vague dictum, Fate’s Shears had accomplished so much more: It had changed something essential in both itself and its host—no, its symbiote. By now, neither Mose nor the Fate’s Shears within him were capable of existing apart.

  But he doesn’t know that. Vernsky and the other medical techs had worked hard to make sure Mose never learned the true identity of the nanotech that kept him alive. An acidic stab of guilt went through his gut—not just at the lie he’d told Mose tonight, but at the knowledge that he would lie again and again, as many times as it took to protect Mose from the truth that would destroy him.

  Chapter Four

  Gau is ascending a staircase that seems to stretch on forever. Or perhaps he is descending it—words like up and down have little meaning here; his body is weightless, and he doesn’t so much climb the stairs as glide above them. But no: he’s sure he is ascending this stair—just as he’s sure, even though he doesn’t remember when his ascent began, that the task before him is not infinite. It had a beginning, and it will have an end.

  As though this thought is a cue, he finds himself on a landing. A metal door is embedded into a concrete wall, featureless except for a keycard slot, a handle below that, and a peephole. It’s cracked ajar.

  Flickering orange light spills around the doorframe.

  Dread seizes him in suffocating jaws. He doesn’t want to see what’s behind the door. At the same time, he knows that whatever is within is what he’s been climbing toward. Gau reaches for the handle.

  No time seems to pass. One moment he was outside; now he is inside the one-room apartment where he grew up.

  And it’s on fire.

  Curling sheets of orange-yellow flame engulf the walls and ceiling, the huddle of blankets in one corner that had been the family’s nest, the threadbare wall-to-wall carpet under his feet. The fire rages
in total silence. Gau feels no heat on his skin. Air that should be thick with smoke is clear enough for him to see the two dark shapes standing in the crumbling ruins of the kitchenette.

  His mother and father look back at him over a counter that has become a bed of fire. Silent tongues of flame dance over their limbs and bodies, curl around their manes without crisping the hair to ash.

  They come toward him, his mother smiling as she raises her arms for an embrace. Orange light shines through the enamel of her smile.

  Gau doesn’t wait for them to reach him. He runs. But his mother is where the door should be. She clasps her arms around him, and then he too is burning.

  Gau snapped awake, emerging into cool darkness and the smell of mold. Something heavy wrapped around his body, and for a heartbeat he was still in the dream, still being smothered in heatless tongues of flame. With a wordless yelp, he shoved the heavy coverlet off his nest of blankets. The room revealed was still mostly dark. Grayish predawn light filtered between sheets of composite tacked over the balcony windows at one end. Nothing was on fire; now that he could smell again, the only scents that reached his nostrils were of mildew and the must of decaying carpet and cheap wall composite.

  Gau scanned the one-room apartment for a good minute, sending his gaze into any corners where someone might be hiding, before reality fully reasserted itself. He was alone, of course. The dingy apartment was the one from his dream, but it wasn’t on fire, nor did the surfaces show any signs of fire damage. It hadn’t burned, back then—that wasn’t how his parents had died.

  He took several deep breaths to calm himself and bring his attention back to the present. The predawn light suggested it was early enough that none of the other Osk in the decrepit tenement would be up and about yet. Gau peered through the gap in the boards and confirmed the early hour: from his vantage about halfway up the tenement building, Diego Two’s outermost district rose around him in a geometric constellation of brutalist concrete housing projects. The windows and occasional balcony pockmarking the tenements were dark, as usual. Diego Two’s non-Terran housing projects were officially listed as condemned, and squatters tended to avoid using lights that could get them discovered and kicked out, or worse. The bits of sky visible between the buildings were slate gray. Streetlights at ground level still burned, avenues of sodium yellow cutting through the gloom.