The speakers announce our imminent arrival at Erano's cargo gate. I pull out the box, take the injector and slide it into my pocket. I tuck the empty box under the bench.
We get off the train with the mass of debarking people and file into a queue heading for the intercity train station. I stare at the numerous message boards, hoping to figure out which train we have to take before we draw the sentinels' attention. I can't decipher any of them without a synet, though, and have to rely on Jade.
People keep pushing against me, cutting in front of me, breathing in my face. It's increasingly hard to keep a clear head. There's at least a dozen Ticks patrolling the crowd, occasionally checking synet tags on their handhelds. I look at the weapons strapped to their backs and my palms start itching again.
Jade pulls me gently to the right, out of the way of a passing sentinel. He guides and nudges me into another queue. He tries to smile reassuringly, but he looks tired and scared as he maneuvers us through the filter. I realize the danger I'm putting him in and I want to say something, but I don't know what.
Luckily Jade manages to get us on the right Maglev train heading to the entrance into D2. As it speeds between buildings we keep switching wagons, sitting here and there, avoiding the staff. Erano flows past us in smudged grays and blacks, sprinkled with jagged skyscrapers.
The train slows as it approaches a curved wall with a large platform at its base, overshadowed by an enormous Rebreather. We stop and the Maglev tilts toward the platform, hundreds of people pouring out like a mudslide.
I reach for Jade's hand in the chaos, but miss him by an inch. Someone shoves me aside. I stumble over someone else's feet, excuse myself, and back away toward the wall. Someone gropes me in passing, another stomps on my toes with a heavy boot. I cuss and turn, and bump into the chest of an armored sentinel looking right down at me.
I back away and someone grabs my shoulders. I turn and stare up into Jade's eyes. He pretends I pushed him and steps on the feet of the guy behind him.
"Hey, watch it," the guy scowls.
"Sorry, man."
"Miss?" The sentinel stares at me, scanner at his side.
Think!
I run my hands up and down my overall, retrieve the injector from my pocket and slide it up my sleeve, acting all flustered. I snap around to face Jade.
"Give it back to me." I grab him by the front of his overall. "You stole it. Give it back, asshole!"
Jade's eyes widen, understanding my scam. "Hey, I didn't do anything."
"Liar. You pushed me, and stole my—"
"Did not," he insists.
"Whatever it is, discuss it on your own time," the sentinel warns us. "Now get the queue moving. You—come over here."
"Yeah, move it along," some people behind us shout. "Get going!"
The back of my neck tingles. My hands prickle painfully and my pulse is so high I feel like I'm about to explode.
"Miss!" the sentinel barks. "Step over here, please."
I stare at Jade. The sentinel grabs my shoulder and yanks me around. He lifts his scanner and aims it at my head.
Fuck.
In a moment's panic, I grab the device and push his hand down. He's surprised by my audacity. It takes him a second to react. That's all I need.
Lightning shoots through my spine and into my arms. My hands are on fire. Blazing surges run through my fingers and my vision momentarily blacks out.
I can still see something, but it's not the sentinel or the crowd around me. It's an explosion of sparks, a hot white cloud of light that bursts open in my mind. I see a block of red heat throbbing in my hand. Every circuit and resistance, every molecule of metal and every bouncing electron in the sentinel's scanner are visible to me. Slow and clear, brilliantly lit and immensely magnified. Everything's spread out. Predictable. Controllable.
The lights spin before me faster and faster until I lose focus and hit the ground. The impact knocks the air from my chest. My vision returns in a dizzying blur. Everything hurts.
Jade lifts my head up and says something. He fumbles with my sleeve. The sentinel crouches down to look at me. Random people rubberneck. Someone cusses.
"She sick?" the sentinel asks.
"Hope not," Jade says. "Don't wanna get infected or something."
The sentinel straightens back up. "We had a contamination incident last week. A lab blew. Has she been there?"
"Don't know."
"Better be safe. Step aside, people. Move along."
Jade stares into my eyes, mouthing my name. He touches my neck. A tiny hiss and a prick, just under my ear. He pulls me back up.
The sentinel gives me a disgusted look, picks his scanner up off the ground and knocks it against his palm. "Ah, fuck. Hey Warren," he yells at a colleague. "Thing's fried again. You take over."
His colleague aims his scanner at my head, frowns at the display for a couple of seconds, then takes his hand back down.
"Welcome to D2, Miss... Irina Bucova."
I feel sick.
Jade starts to walk me through the gates, holding me up around my waist. "I'll take it from here, sir."
"Whatever, Mister... Scott Mackenzie." The second sentinel pushes Jade along. "Next."
We pass through the gate and find ourselves standing on the sidewalk of a busy six-lane boulevard. I stumble along, dizzy and faint.
"Jade, I'm gonna throw up..."
"It's okay, just hold on to me." He rushes us through the crowd toward a side-alley.
I buckle, fall to my knees, and retch. Jade kneels down beside me, patting my back lightly as I convulse.
"You'll be fine, Taryn." His voice quivers. "We made it in. Just gotta find Preston and the others. Can you walk?"
I nod and stagger back up. We trudge through the streets, me leaning heavily against him, step after nauseating step.
25
Our new HQ is small and damp, with cheap carpeting and Spartan appliances. I collapsed on the first bed I found, and woke up hours later with a massive headache. I can't even remember if I thanked Jade for bringing me here safely.
I wipe the sticky hair out of my face, and sigh into the darkness. Here I am, in Preston's rental den, in a Tick-infested colony. Light years away from him. Yet I feel him closer than ever—his awareness entangled with my own.
Has it really happened? Have we re-linked, just like that?
The memory of our encounter still burns brightly in me. How ironic, to feel such intoxicating pleasure beneath such unavoidable enmity.
But I need to focus on the here and now, on my current situation. I could definitely use a new synet, but that's likely impossible. The temporary one Preston sent me almost killed me at the district gate. Amharr's particles won't allow any technology interfering with my nervous system.
That's why I was probably able to wreck the sentinel's scanner. But I have no idea how I actually did it. How I fried the lock on Costa's office door, and the military synet replacement Jade tried to implant me with. Or how I broke through the restraining field in the med-bay back on Spiron.
It was involuntary, each time. The common denominator was... were... strong emotions. Fear, despair, anger...
Great. Something I can't control drives something else I can't control. Nice pattern. Maybe it's a gradually worsening side effect of the link that'll eventually put me out of misery. Now that would definitely aggravate Amharr.
I smirk at the cracked ceiling hanging over me. I wonder what he's doing right now... How is he dealing with what's happened? Is he affected by it like I am?
He is. I know. I feel it, like a lingering agitation in the pit of my stomach.
In the silence weighing down on me, the distant crack of chitin plates bursting open into flames starts haunting me again. If I could go back in time and tell Old Me that I'll one day be responsible for the destruction of the Master Hive and the deaths of thousands of Dorylinae, Old Me would spit in my face. And if I told her that one day I'd be bound to an alien warlord who gets to decide if h
umanity grows or withers in the shadow of a galactic mega-culture, and all I'm doing about it is lying around dreaming of being mindfucked, she'd kick me in the teeth. Or worse.
Through the poorly insulated door, I can hear people chatter in the hallway, their voices increasingly agitated. I recognize Preston's penetrating timbre. Maybe he's not so wrong to want the resistance to re-emerge. The TMC is the biggest disease humanity's ever had. Maybe he's right to want to fight them with any means available, even if those means are as blunt and unstable as a union of the Confederacy's most ignoble radicals. Maybe I should listen to Jade, and Bray, and everyone else here, and join their fight. At least there'd be some fighting for a change.
But violence won't convince Amharr we're stable or evolved enough to be allowed continued freedom. If we end up slaughtering each other in the streets the survivors will be slaughtered in turn by the Ascendancy's Containment Order.
But I can't just wait for things to escalate on their own, which they most definitely will. This link is turning my nervous system into a weapon, and I'm right in the heart of the Confederacy's most militarized colony. I'd be stupid not to use this to my advantage.
I kick off the blanket and slip off the bed. Then dig a jumpsuit out of a cubbyhole and don it quickly, trying to make out the conversation going on outside.
"Well somebody's got to do it," Preston yells at Bray as I come out of my room. "You want respect? Take some responsibility. There's only one way to set up that encrypted com channel and you're wasting everyone's time trying to talk yourself out of it."
"I can't just break into the Spoke!" Bray shouts, dumbstruck. "There's surveillance bots everywhere. And I don't know how to hack the grid anyway."
"Then get Vik or Franky to help you. Show some initiative."
The door behind me shuts with a loud bang. Both men jump. Preston's hightech glasses give him a bright, manic glare. Bray looks hunted and distraught, his hair a mess and his eyes wide and bloodshot.
"Miss Harber." Preston nods at me. "Well timed. You could help Bray with his assignment—you've worked with TMC com tech before, haven't you?"
"Yes. But I'm out."
Preston looks as if I've just spoken in tongues. "You have something better to do? Or have those alien particles eaten your brain already?"
"Why did you really bring us here to San Gabriel?" I ask. "You're here to form a resistance cell, right? To gather manpower, weaponry... And start a revolution." When he doesn't deny it, I continue. "San Gabriel's the second most militarized colony world in the Confederacy, after Alpha Centauri. The people here have already lived through a revolution half a century back. That one ended real bad, remember? The Ticks have only multiplied since then. Another revolution's going to start a civil war. A massacre that'll give them reason to increase funding and upsurge their troops. You're playing right into their hands."
"Oh please." Preston waves away my concerns. "I was studying TMC strategies when you were still crawling in bug shit."
His attitude is starting to get on my nerves, but I manage to stay calm. "If you start a civil war here—one you can't win, and you know it—they'll use it as justification to widen their activities across all colonies in the Confederacy. That's the last thing any of us want. And I won't help you do it."
Preston opens his mouth, but I cut him off. "If, however, we figure out a way to disrupt the TMC's funding process, poison their roots with the Trust and the taxpaying colonists feeding them, we stand an actual chance to weed them out. Over time."
Bray nods thoughtfully.
Preston curls his lip. "Feckless drivel."
"What?"
"You really think you're the first to come up with that idea? There are hundreds of you in every generation, all as stupid as the rest. A lot of them were better organized than we are, and certainly better funded. Hell, a lot of them were insiders. They all failed. Didn't even leave a mark. 'Weed them out.'" He laughs. "No, Miss Harber. We can't linger in the darkness anymore, hoping to poison a beast that can feed on virtually anything. We need to start a chain reaction so violent it will rip that beast apart before it gets a chance to fight back. We need to cleave its gut open in broad daylight." He takes a step toward me, eyes alight. "It will be a massacre, yes. But it has to start somewhere. Better with us, right here on San Gabriel. Right now."
My hands tingle, heat washing over my body. I look to Bray, hoping for a sign that he agrees this is madness. But he's tight-lipped and stiff. I'll find no help there.
"You're insane," I mutter. Preston raises an eyebrow. "The aliens," I remind him. "You know what they're here for? To evaluate us." The words tumble reluctantly past my lips. I don't want to trust Preston with this, but he's left me no choice.
"What are you talking about?" Bray asks, the first sound he's made in what feels like forever.
"They evaluate species on behalf of a galactic Über-society, the size and power of which you can't even begin to imagine."
"Really?" Preston scoffs. "And you know this how?"
"They revealed more than they meant to," I say, rushing back to my point. "They're studying us right now, as you suspected. Your revolution will have us fail their test."
Bray straightens up. "What test?"
"We have two options," I continue, not wanting to lose the tiny window of genuine attention. "If we pass, we get the chance to become part of something greater, a galactic society that will propel our evolution by millennia. We'll struggle to preserve our culture, yes, but we'll survive. If we fail? We become an enemy."
"They'll attack us?" Bray asks.
"They'll send us right back to the fucking Middle Ages."
Preston hesitates, considering. Then shakes his head. "Nonsense."
"But you heard her," Bray growls. "The aliens are hostile. I told you!"
"I don't buy it. It's cheap doomsday bilge. You're just trying to talk yourself into inaction, like everyone I've had the misfortune to work with." He scowls at Bray, who avoids his gaze.
"I'm telling you the truth!" I yell. "That's what will happen."
Preston smiles. "And what exactly makes you so certain? Got a straight line to the alien leaders?"
"No." My throat goes dry.
"No? Well if you somehow miraculously find one," he pauses, letting it sink in that he suspects—if not knows— "tell them to stay out of our way. This is our fight, and if decades of mistreatment and deficiency haven't stopped us, neither will they. Evaluation or no."
"But—"
"If they're so superior, they ought to see reason and help us before passing judgment. They ought to be down here fighting on our side. Tell them that, if you will."
My palms itch fiercely. Bray is pale.
"Now stop wasting my time and put that alien infection and the rest of your skills to some use," Preston says. "They're the only reason I've not dispensed with you yet."
It's all I can do to keep from ripping the smirk off his face with my bare hands.
"You're still immune to energy fields?" He cocks an eyebrow at me. "Help Bray break into the Spoke and hack the TMC com grid." I make to answer but he cuts me off. "And in the morning you'll go scouting surveillance towers with Miss Ferrer. From now on you earn your keep like everyone else. Is that clear?"
I grit my teeth. Wild images run through my mind—the striker descending on this room, burning Preston to a crisp; Amharr's tendrils scorching his brain; Gary's talons slicing him throat to gut; Edrissa's mandibles crushing his skull like an egg.
"Good," he says, mistaking my silence for surrender. He tosses Bray a final, dismissive look, and heads back to his room.
26
Breakfast is hot tea and crackers, which Jade fetched for the both of us. I thank him and sit down at the small wall-table to eat, trying to pull my thoughts together.
"How did Bray take being turned down?" Jade asks, munching on a cracker.
"I won't help them hack the grid," I say, louder than intended. Then tone back down. "I don't take orders from Pre
ston."
"But you'll still go scouting with Denise."
I shrug. "Just keeping him off my back." Not to mention, knowing how many surveillance towers the Ticks have, and how well equipped they are, can only come in handy. If I have to play along with Preston, I might as well gather as much intel on things as I can. And find a way to turn things around.
"I'm supposed to help Vik set up com stations for some reactivated Syndicate sleepers." He takes a long gulp of tea, watching me over his mug. "Don't know how Bray's gonna hack into the grid all on his own. I can already imagine the crawlers creeping through his nervewires to hijack his synet." He shudders demonstratively. "It'd go much better if he had professional help. From someone who knows what the hell they're doing..." He stares pointedly at me.
"Let's hope he's careful, then," I say dryly. Jade sighs. "I don't like Preston's idea of a strike against the Ticks. He's gambling with our lives, and the lives of thousands more. And you're all just going along with this crap like a bunch of drones."
"Hey, just because we don't have other options—"
"There are always options, Jade."
"Yeah? Name one. You can take off anytime you like. Not that easy for the rest of us."
"You think I've got it easy?" I snap. "Infected with some fucking alien nerve cells that are eating my brain? Seizures, blackouts, nightmares I can't even begin to describe? And no synet. Real easy being me, Jade."
"You think you're worse off? How about being chased through half of human space because you witnessed something you weren't supposed to? How about being branded a terrorist because you sabotaged a mind-reframing facility and saved a couple hundred kids from being brainwashed? Or being hunted for a murder you didn't commit? Or mutilated 'cause your body had something the Ticks wanted?" He shakes his head. "We're not 'drones.' We've just got nothing left to lose."
I'm suddenly very heavy in my own skin. I drop my cracker on the plate, together with my appetite. "We all have it hard, then. Doesn't mean Preston's our last option either."
"Ahh, fuck it," he grumbles. "Do what you want, Taryn. Just spare me the gripe."
The Deep Link (The Ascendancy Trilogy Book 1) Page 19