Fall and Rising

by Sunny Moraine

  Sinder watched Kerry silently. These questions were rather beside the point, but he was prepared to let Alkor ask them.

  Kerry was also silent for a moment. Then he shook his head, an awful smile stretching his mouth. “I know that’s the line they fed you, but you weren’t there. You can’t imagine. You don’t see something like that, all those people dying for nothing, and keep going the way you have. It’s not possible, Alkor.” He leaned forward slightly, his arms straining against the bonds. “Open your eyes. What’s coming for you—for all of us—is so much worse than some kid who didn’t die when he should have.”

  “Kid,” Sinder echoed thoughtfully. Now they were getting somewhere. “You mean Yuga. So he’s still alive.”

  Kerry pursed his lips. And said nothing.

  “We were almost certain,” Sinder went on breezily. “But it’s nice to have anything in the way of independent confirmation. By rights he shouldn’t still have been alive during the altercation on that planet, but given the fact, it makes sense that he would be now. Somehow he overcame what was happening to him, which is part of why we’re interested in him.” His voice dropped, grew more serious. “But we have to find him, Kerry. Him, the Bideshi, what they did to Melissa Cosaire and all those peacekeepers … We couldn’t have predicted it. But now we know Yuga’s a wild variable. He’s destructive. If you ever valued the world that bore you, tell us what you know about him. Help us, Commander.”

  “‘He’s destructive,’” Kerry repeated, shaking his head. “You … You don’t know, do you? They didn’t fucking tell you.” He laughed, sharp and bitter. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Cosaire knew, but she had every reason to. She was dying from it.”

  “What the fuck are you talking about?” Alkor stepped forward, shooting Sinder a worried look. “She died because Bristol Aarons put a bullet in her head. Because you helped him lead a mutiny. What’s this bullshit we’re supposed to know?”

  Kerry smiled, that same awful smile. “Every one of us is dying from it. The alterations to our code, the first enhancements. Nasty little imperfections, hiding in the very thing that was supposed to make us perfect. They’re in us, and they’re twisting in on themselves. You know how fucking ironic that is? Given why they’re there? Centuries of work leading up to the eradication of every cancer, of what the world feared then? Those initial enhancements. Then more and more, all built on top of each other, interweaving, combining. Now they’re acting like a goddamn virus. That’s what they aren’t telling you. In some of us it’ll go faster, in some of us slower … I haven’t shown any symptoms yet, but I will— if you don’t kill me before that. Adam … He wasn’t alone. He wasn’t even the first. He sure as hell won’t be the last, and he knows it. What he represents—the truth, that we did this to him, that we’re doing it to everyone, even now—it’ll bring the whole thing tumbling down. Everything we’ve done … Every species we ever subjugated in the name of that. Every one of us who worked for it. Believes in it. You know what happens when faith gets snatched out from under you? ’Cause I do. It all falls down once people find out the truth. Our leaders, our people … They just deny and deny and deny, to themselves more than anyone else. He would destroy all that. He would destroy everything. Don’t you get it, you stupid fucks? Why he’s so dangerous.”

  It made no sense. And yet it did, like fragments of a sunken ruin protruding above the water—Kerry must be raving, but it was reasonable, perhaps, to wonder what he was raving about. How the mad idea had worked its way into him. How it might connect to other things. Isaac Sinder had been born with powerful instincts, and he had learned over long years to trust them.

  He had to understand this.

  It was another reason to find Adam before anyone else could.

  “Then tell me where he is,” he said, stepping closer, his voice low and even. “I’m here because I believe in protecting what we have. If what you’re saying is true … Tell me where he is, and I’ll see what I can do to help him. I’ll at least hear him out. I know we have a mission, but if there’s another threat to the Protectorate … Commander, I’m as loyal as you were, once. You’re right. I don’t get it. Help me.”

  Kerry stared at him. Sinder could sense the wheels turning frantically behind his eyes, the internal struggle that he had started. The man wanted to believe him. How long had Kerry been alone, facing his own impotence? Perhaps he hadn’t been; perhaps he had been with Yuga and whatever other malcontents he had managed to scrape together … But he had a look of gaunt desperation that suggested that wasn’t true.

  This was a man hanging on by his fingernails.

  “Anything you can tell us,” Alkor said quietly. “C’mon, man. You can still turn this thing around. All those people who died on that planet … Don’t make their deaths meaningless.”

  He was going to give in. Sinder was sure of it. He could see the facade cracking, a flood threatening to burst through.

  And then it pulled together again.

  “Fuck off,” Kerry growled. “You think I don’t know how to read you? I knew Cosaire. I knew that look in her eyes, like she’d do anything, say anything to get what she wanted. You have the same look. You’re a snake, Sinder. You’re a fucking snake, and I wouldn’t trust you worth a shed scale.”

  Sinder stepped back, ice trickling down his spine. Not fear, but everything in him hardening, turning to cold steel. Not this way, then.

  There were other ways.

  “You know where he is,” he said. “Or you know something. I don’t care what you think of me, Kerry—I have a job to do. If you won’t help me voluntarily …” He gave the med-tech a nod. She returned it and lowered her hands to the screen, which flicked on under her touch. It glowed and then glowed brighter, numbers scrolling across one side, a sine wave at the top. The line shortened, the troughs and crests lowering and raising, like a sea growing more turbulent. The tech touched the screen again.

  Kerry screamed.

  It wasn’t a long scream, but it was tight with agony, strangled and then bursting from him as he failed to hold it back. Of course he couldn’t. The neuro-stim seized the entire nervous system and sent waves of stimulation into it, wrenching muscles, jerking limbs, and simulating sensory input—including pain. Kerry was likely feeling as though the skin was being flayed off every part of his body at once, torn from him in a cruel yank.

  Then the unit cut off and he collapsed back into the chair, breathing hard.

  “I don’t want to have to ask you too many more times.” Sinder’s tone was placid. He could feel Alkor glaring icily at him. “This won’t kill you, but it can cause permanent nerve damage, and believe it or not, I have no desire to hurt you in that way. It would look better if I handed you over to the tribunal whole and well rather than in constant pain.”

  Kerry only stared at him in silence. Sinder sighed and leaned forward. He had hoped for a little more cooperation than this, but he had enough sense to know that was unlikely now. “You can go to your execution with all the dignity appropriate to your pedigree, or you can be carried there a drooling, paralyzed shell. It’s entirely up to you.”

  “I don’t know where he is.” Kerry’s expression radiated scorn. “And even if I did, I wouldn’t tell you, you psychopathic prick.”

  Sinder nodded at the tech, who flicked on the stim once more. This time the scream went on for about half a minute, and when the unit finally cut off again and he went limp, there was a faint twitching in his extremities.

  “You know something,” Sinder repeated softly. “Give us anything we can use, and this stops right now.”

  Kerry shook his head, gasping, and then went rigid with a howl as fire leaped into his nerves.

  “Sinder.” Alkor stepped forward, holding out a hand. The tech, mouth tense—betraying the first emotion she had yet shown—cut the stim off, and Sinder gave Alkor a frown. This was something he would have preferred to avoid, though he hadn’t imagined for a moment that the captain would have been willing to absent h
erself. “This has gone on long enough. Whatever he did, this is one of our own, we can’t just—”

  “We can. We will. We have to, Alkor; I thought we had this clear between us.” He moved closer, his head down and his voice low and smooth, as if he were trying to soothe an animal. “He’s not one of our own, not anymore. He’s a destructive force. If he can’t be made use of, then his value is entirely depleted.”

  He glanced at Kerry, hit by a wave of sudden and intense disgust. No, they didn’t owe this man anything. Kerry had exhausted Sinder’s store of mercy. “The man you respected—that we both could respect—died on that worthless planet. He can’t be saved. He’s already dead.”

  Alkor simply looked at him, her brow furrowed. For a few seconds, he expected her to protest further. But at last she stepped back, flicking her gaze away, her shoulders hunched. Sinder was satisfied.

  She’d put on a show of strength, but there was profound weakness in her core. That was good.

  “I don’t know,” Kerry moaned. Speaking of weakness. Sinder turned to him.

  “I’m losing my patience, Commander. I told you, we don’t have the luxury of taking our time here. Give us something. That’s all I’m asking for. That’s not so much.”

  Nothing. The stim’s next thrust of pain went on for over a minute, and Kerry’s screams took on a rough, breaking quality, as though the unit was raking his throat raw. He was crying now, eyes squeezed shut and teeth clenched, but when it stopped he simply shook his head and said nothing else.

  So it went from there.

  It was, Sinder thought as he watched the man’s body arch and spasm, a little like the more delicate parts of mining, like wearing down solid rock until the ore could be extracted. You could blast your way through to some of it, but the rest took consistent, grinding pressure until at last it came away. That took determination. Faith.

  He knew there was ore. It was just a matter of getting to it.

  Fifteen minutes later, Alkor left, muttering something that Sinder couldn’t make out, her face colorless.

  Fifteen minutes more and Kerry broke.

  “He’s here,” he whispered, barely audible. His voice was almost gone, his head lolling to the side and a thread of drool trickling from the corner of his mouth. Sinder had to crouch close to him in order to hear. A flush of excitement spread through him.

  Finally. And better than he had hoped.

  “Where? Where, Commander? You can tell me. This is almost over.”

  “In … this sector. I don’t know exactly where. I was … I was going to make contact. Arrange … a meeting. Help him get past … patrols.”

  “How? How were you going to make contact?”

  “They’d have to … put in for supplies. One of the stations. I could … I could get word through others. People there …” His mouth stretched into an awful, sick smile. “They don’t ask questions.”

  “All right,” Sinder said gently. “Good. Thank you, Commander.” He straightened up and turned toward the door, his hands opening and closing in reflexive fists.

  Outside the cell, he nodded to one of the peacekeepers. “Get in there and see to him. Call another medic to assist. Have him cleaned up, see that he’s resting comfortably. We might need him again.”

  In fact, there was no might about it. Commander Marcus Kerry had one last mission to carry out.

  Whether he wanted to or not.

  Lochlan shifted beside Adam, turned over, and slung a leg across his thighs. For once, Adam was sleeping soundly, and he didn’t want to disturb him, but in the last week or so, touching him had been nearly impossible to resist.

  Those touches had been desperate. He didn’t like to admit it, even to himself, but it was still true.

  After the Battle of the Plain, there had been a kind of peace that he now recognized as mixed exhaustion and relief. That peace had made the decision to leave Ashwina easier. Lochlan wasn’t used to staying in one place for long anyway and Adam’s determination to go had made the choice for him. Though what the man felt he still owed those who had tried every weapon in their arsenal to kill him, Lochlan wasn’t sure, but he knew Adam would hold to it, this need to save them if he could. That he was driven in significant part by the fact that a lot of people had died because of the conviction that two civilizations who were truly siblings couldn’t be at war forever, hot or cold, and someone had to make the first move. That someone might as well be him, whatever the risks.

  It was what Ixchel would have wanted. What she believed, until the moment of her death.

  Lochlan wasn’t used to fear. It was there, but from long necessity he had gotten good at beating it back. Now the emotion was getting harder to ignore—fear coupled with frustration coupled with a heavy, sick boredom. Yet if they gave in to that boredom, if they moved too soon and too fast, they would likely be caught, even in slipstream. The Protectorate had demonstrated the ability to pursue them there before.

  Everything had changed. Everything was wrong. He had been ready for it to be right at last, to be with Adam and to discover what it meant to love someone like this, which was so new, and here as well there was an element of fear. What it meant to need someone in this way, the danger that followed from it. Of vulnerability. Of loss.

  What he had refused to do for so long.

  Now they were facing death again.

  They were stationed a few hundred kilometers from the patrol lines, Skyler’s ship pulled up alongside. Hours before, when they had exited slipstream, she had hailed them and explained what they would be doing. It hadn’t been a long conversation, and it all had seemed reasonable enough, but that hadn’t meant Lochlan had liked it.

  Not that they had much more in the way of options.

  “I’m sure you’ve noticed that it seems like they have no pattern,” she’d said. “To throw you off. It took me a week of watching them, but I have it all charted. We wait here a few hours, and then there’ll be about half an hour where none of the patrol teams will be in sensor range of this one twelve-kilometer area. It’s a blind spot, and far as I can tell they don’t know about it. If we move fast, we can sneak through.”

  Adam had frowned. “No slipstream?”

  “They’ve got some hot new sensor system that can detect ships in slipstream, even when they’re out of it. It’s actually got greater range than their sensors for normal space. Something about displacement or whatever; I don’t totally understand the physics. Either way, we should use the sub-slipstream engines. They’re slower, but safer.”

  So now they were parked, waiting. Trusting that in the meantime, they wouldn’t be spotted. Trusting Skyler, which Lochlan wasn’t sure he did, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t make use of what she knew.

  Skyler did complicate things, because assuming they got through, she would want the rest of her pay. But they would figure that out. Lochlan was good at figuring things out. He was also good at wriggling his way out of tight spaces. From an early age, it had always struck him as blackly funny how he had acquired that skill. Expertise through misery and grief and terror. Crawling through the conduits of Caldor Station, wedging himself into places too small for anyone but a child. Staying alive.

  Suddenly, he missed Ying so much it almost hurt. From the day she had taken him in after the murder of his parents, the Bideshi healer had been one of the few people able to comfort him, and now she was back on Ashwina, what felt like an impossible distance away, and it had occurred to him more than once that he might never see her again. And she might never know what had happened to him.

  He could hope.

  He lifted his head, leaned it on one hand. Adam was on his stomach, and the dim light fell across him in delicate patches of light and dark, which were a little like the soft mottling that had covered his skin since his healing on the Plain. Lochlan knew it now, the pattern of it, though—like the Protectorate’s patrols—it appeared random. Perhaps he had merely created one in his own mind, like constellations seen from a planet’s surface. A
parallax view of someone’s body.

  He settled his hand on Adam’s back and traced the marks with his fingertips, light and careful. Perfect, he thought, and smiled as warmth flooded through him.

  But Adam’s skin and eyes weren’t the only things about him that had changed since he was healed on the Plain of Heaven. His build had always been slight, but even when Lochlan had found him, weak and starved and so sick, there had been remnants of the strength he had once possessed, and on Ashwina, much of that strength had returned, and he had filled out again. But now he was getting skinny once more, as if his body were melting away with each day without progress. His sleep choked with nightmares he refused to share.

  There was distance between them now. It was small, but it was growing.

  I could lose him.

  There was more than one way to lose someone.

  Lochlan lowered his head and pressed his lips to Adam’s shoulder. Adam stirred, muttered, subsided back into deeper sleep. Like this, at least, there was a little of that peace they had had so briefly, a little of what they had begun to build together.

  Maybe someday this would all be over. Then they could start to build it again.

  There was a soft chime from the console. A hail. Lochlan sighed and pushed himself up, clambering over Adam’s body. From behind him, he heard Adam stir again.

  “Whassit?”

  “Comm.” He turned, bent, and combed his hand through Adam’s hair, kissing his temple. “It’s probably Skyler. I’ll get it. Take your time.”

  But it seemed too soon. By his estimate, they should still have another hour or so. He crossed to the comm, stepping over piles of clutter, and punched the receiver without checking the sender ID.

  “Bienentad, Skyler. What’s the good word?”

  “This is an automated message. The word is Takamagahara. Repeat, Takamagahara. That is the entire word. Seek location. Sender is plain orbiting body.” There was a pause, a crackle of static, then, “Message repeat. This is an automated message. The word is—”