Unchained Memory (The Interstellar Rescue Series Book 1)

by Donna S. Frelick

  “About fucking time.” There was another faint noise from below as the blazer got into position. “Okay. Come on out. Nice and slow.”

  Sweating, shaking, 1408 inched out of the tunnel mouth, her feet, then her legs bumping the rock face below the opening. Her chest and shoulders cleared the hole, and she felt the harness take the full weight of her body.

  “I’m out!”

  “I can see you.” The reply was calm, matter-of-fact. “I’m going to start lowering. Just hold on and use your feet to keep from swinging into the rock.”

  Once it began, the trip down was easy. Breathless, her heart pounding, 1408 watched the rock face slip steadily past her. She refused to look down. Instead, she did as she’d been told and worked to hold herself off the wall. In seconds, she was on her feet again on the floor of the cavern.

  Dozen grinned and slapped her on the back. “See? You made it!”

  Weak-kneed with relief, 1408 could only nod. She let Dozen unhook the lines from her harness. Then she stood, waiting.

  Dozen looked up at her. “What?”

  She took a step toward the blazer, hands clenched into fists.

  Dozen grinned even wider. She pulled something from inside her jumpsuit.

  “Oh, you looking for this?” She held out a twist of rag.

  Fourteen-oh-eight fell on it and unwrapped it with trembling fingers. Inside the stained cloth was a hunk of dark bread half the size of her fist. She smelled it, nibbled it, then devoured it to the last dry crumb. It was gone in seconds, so quickly she wanted to cry.

  “I have a friend on the night guard. He gets me stuff sometimes.” Dozen pointed to the metal bottle hanging from 1408’s harness. “Have a drink. We’ve had a thirsty morning.”

  Fourteen-oh-eight tipped the container back to let the water slide down her throat—and paused in mid-swallow. The light of her headlamp had caught a hint of color and sparkle in a jagged spike hanging from the cavern’s distant ceiling.

  “Yeah.” Dozen nodded. “This place is spectacular. Let’s take a look.” She pulled something from her pack and aimed it at the far side of the cavern. There was a heavy thunk from the tube she held, then a sizzling splash as the projectile hit high up on the wall. Whatever had been in the projectile splattered across the wall and began to glow white against the rock. In seconds the material was giving off enough light to illuminate an area of the cavern four meters square. Dozen reloaded and repeated the process methodically until the full dimension of the space they were in was revealed.

  Fourteen-oh-eight stared in awe. The huge dome was washed in color—salmon and coral and pale blue-green—and sparkled with light refracted by trace crystals in the rock. Graceful, tapered columns fell from the roof of the cavern and rose up from its floor; here and there they met to form a fragile latticework of stone, as delicate as glass. The living rock formed flowing curtains and swirling spirals of fanciful color.

  The beauty of the place created a hollow ache in 1408’s thin chest. She had no words to describe what she saw, no emotions with which to respond to it. She put a hand to her face and was surprised to find it wet with tears. She realized with a start that she had cried more in this one day than she had in—how long? She couldn’t remember the last time she had felt anything—anger, longing, desperation, even fear. She had felt them all today. And now there was . . . this.

  “The PhosGlow will last 24 hours or so—enough time for us to get back here with some light packs.” Dozen threw her bag against a relatively smooth outcropping of rock and stretched out. “We can waste a few days scouting around in here before they expect us to find a way through to the crystal vein.”

  She waved at the floor beside her. “Relax. We got all day now.”

  Fourteen-oh-eight lowered herself uncertainly to the floor. The concept of idleness was foreign to her; there had always been a guard at her back to make sure she was working. Days on the cutting face were a blur of unrelenting labor; nights in the barracks were a fog of exhaustion, cold and hunger. She couldn’t remember another life, a time that might have included rest and warmth and the opportunity to—what was the word?—relax.

  Dozen pointed at a sinuous river of blood-red crystal running across one quarter of the far wall. “See there? That’s what the fuss is all about. The Grays can’t live without the focusing effects of those crystals—most of their technology depends on them. But, oh, hell! There’s some kind of psychotropic fungus inside that drives the little bastards crazy until it’s refined out. So us dumbass humans have to do the scut work for them and dig the shit out of this godforsaken planet.”

  When 1408 said nothing, Dozen went on, her voice bitter. “That’s what started all this mess, anyhow, generations back. Then they discovered we were useful in so many other ways. I mean, why expose yourself to toxic chemicals or harsh working conditions or, hell, just plain old hard work when you can get big, strong humans to do it for you?”

  Fourteen-oh-eight looked at her companion in utter confusion. She had no idea what the woman was talking about. She sat hugging her knees, her mind full of unformed questions.

  One question coalesced at last. “Why did you bring me here?”

  “Here?” Dozen repeated. “You mean here on this job?”

  When she said nothing more, Dozen shrugged. “Because I had a feeling about you. And it looked like you could use a friend.”

  “I don’t even know what that word means.” She scowled, annoyed by a conversation—no, a relationship—that increasingly made no sense.

  “Maybe it’s time you learned.”

  Suddenly 1408 was angry, a charge of unaccustomed emotion exploding up through her consciousness to erupt in blinding fury. “What the hell do you want from me? You come to me, you bring me here. What the hell do you want?”

  Dozen shook her head. “Nothing.”

  “Bullshit! Everyone wants something!” She jumped to her feet and paced with short, stiff steps, remembering how her day had started with pain and humiliation. She whirled on Dozen, thrusting an accusing finger in her direction. “You saw who did it! This morning. You saw. Who was it?”

  “Yeah, I saw. So what?”

  “Who?”

  The smaller woman got up and came in close. “What difference does it make, Sphinx? What are you going to do, jump her?”

  “My business. And don’t call me that!”

  It was Dozen’s turn to get angry. “You prefer a number? Fourteen-oh-eight—the number they gave you when they stole everything else from you. Or maybe you remember your real name—the one everyone’s forgotten, the one you had before.”

  “Before?” Her hands fisted. “There is no before. I don’t remember anything but this . . . this hell.”

  Dozen watched her, saying nothing.

  Fourteen-oh-eight clutched her head as a wave of pain crashed through it. She moaned and sank to the floor under the weight of the pain and the confusion.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You will.” Dozen placed a warm hand on her shoulder. “Give it time. And meanwhile, as your friend, I have one piece of advice for you: stay away from Marge.”

  She raised her head. “Who?”

  Dozen smiled tightly. “That’s just what I call her. Number’s 1540. She’s the one who took your grub this morning. She’s big, she’s mean, and she has a gang of little helpers. I don’t think you were a deliberate target—you were just an opportunity. Don’t let her get in the habit of finding you. Stay out of her sight.”

  It was good advice—1408 could see the wisdom in it. Her anger was impotent, useless, even dangerous. Still, it sustained her in a way despair never could. She fed it to the engine of her survival, and waited, Sphinx-like.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “All right, Asia. We’re done for today. Open your eyes.”

  I blinked and squinted into a room filled with late afternoon light—as bright as the caves had been dark. The contrast stunned me.

  “Do you recognize where you are?”
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  His voice, coming from somewhere just above my head, was deep and soothing. My mind would not supply a name for the voice. I waited, hoping he would say something else.

  He must have read the question in my face. “It’s Ethan Roberts. You’re in my office. Do you remember now?”

  I struggled to sit up, felt his hand slip behind my back to help me. The room—and his face—began to come into focus. “Yes, I remember. I must have really been out.”

  Ethan nodded, a puzzled smile on his lips. “It was a remarkable session. Do you remember what you told me?”

  The images were clear in my mind. It was as if I had been transported instantly from that universe to this one.

  “It felt so real.”

  He didn’t try to hide the excitement in his voice. “Have your dreams always been so vivid?”

  “No. This didn’t feel like a dream.”

  “Part of that is the effect of the machine. But part of it . . .” He stopped and shook his head. “How often do you have this dream?”

  I rubbed my face. “Every night, if I don’t take those pills you gave me.”

  “And how do you feel afterwards?”

  “I wake up screaming. But . . .” I looked at him, a frown creasing my forehead. “I could never remember any of it before today. Doesn’t seem so scary now that I can remember it.”

  Ethan studied my face. “There’s more to the dream than what you remembered today. I had to bring you out of it; we’ve been working for hours.”

  That explained the light. It had been morning when we’d started. I hadn’t fully believed him when he’d said to set aside most of my Saturday.

  “The people in this . . . prison . . . with you—the guards and so on—did they seem like everyday people you’d meet on the street? Or was there something different about them?”

  I met his gaze. He was watching, waiting. What was it he expected me to say?

  Then I realized. “No. Dozen could have been my neighbor. She was just like you or me. But the others . . .” I shook my head. I refused to say the word, though it was there in my head. Alien.

  “Sit still for a while.” He left his chair. “Let me get you some tea, something to eat. Can’t have you passing out on your way home.” He spoke to Cindy across the hall. I heard her footsteps retreat to someplace in the back of the house.

  I liked the idea of letting him fuss over me a little. It was sweet, in a way. Homey. And I had to admit I was worn out, as if I really had been working all day instead of lying on a couch in his office.

  Cindy came back in a few minutes with a hot mug of fragrant tea and a sandwich neatly presented on a plate with a napkin. He took it from her at the door and set it on the table in front of the couch.

  “Thanks. Another of Grandma’s brews?”

  He shook his head with a little smile. “Plain old green tea and honey. Didn’t want to scare you off with the exotic stuff.”

  “Mmm.” The tea was light on the green and heavy on the honey, just the way I liked it. How did he know? I made short work of the sandwich, hardly pausing to take a breath.

  All the while he watched me with those eyes as blue and unfathomable as Northern seas. When I had recovered enough to notice, the attention began to warm me in places that hadn’t been warm in a long, long time.

  I searched a little frantically around the room for a source of small talk. My eyes lit on a framed medical degree from Cornell. I put that together with his Cree grandmother and took a shot.

  “So, what’s a Yankee boy like you doing down here in Nashville?”

  The smile widened. “Let me guess—my accent’s a dead giveaway.”

  “Well, there is that. But you mentioned upstate New York and . . .” I pointed at the degree behind his head.

  “Ah.”

  I waited, and when the answer wasn’t forthcoming, I pressed. “Nashville’s a long way from where? Albany? Buffalo?”

  “I grew up in Syracuse; got here by way of Baltimore. Arthur Claussen recruited me from Johns Hopkins.”

  Something in the way he said it made me think there was more to the story, but there was a warning in the set of his jaw. “You no longer work for him?”

  “No. I’m on my own now.”

  “I see.” I retreated into my mug of tea.

  Since this line of questioning was leading nowhere, I decided to try another. “So what about family, Ethan? Everybody back in New York?” I didn’t see a ring on his finger and there was no evidence of a significant other in the house, but you never knew. The real question was, what business was it of mine?

  His lips lifted as if he knew what I was up to, but the smile didn’t make it to his eyes. Those eyes caught mine and held them, his gaze somber and wary except for one fleeting second when they flashed hot with something that seemed so much like desire my heart stopped. I watched him, fascinated, waiting to hear what he would say.

  “I have a brother and a sister in New York,” he said at last. “I was married to a Nashville girl. She died in a car accident two years ago.”

  Ethan fought to hide a cold tremor in every muscle, appalled at his lack of control. Why the hell had he told her that? He could have stopped at “brother and sister”; she would have been satisfied with that. This was only small talk, after all, wasn’t it?

  But there was something in those golden-brown eyes that watched him so intently, something that even now made him want to tell her everything, though he could see she was already overwhelmed with the little he’d shared. Her hand moved a fraction, as if she wanted to reach out to him. He ached for the comfort that small movement offered.

  “Oh, God, Ethan. I’m sorry. I had no idea.”

  He shook his head and found a smile. “How could you? It was a long time ago.”

  She frowned. “Not so long ago.” She looked around. “You don’t keep pictures of her.”

  It wasn’t a question, but he answered it anyway. “Not in my office, no.”

  Her expression changed, as if she understood. He doubted she did. He didn’t display pictures of Elizabeth anywhere in his house, for reasons he was not about to share. At any rate, this conversation had gone way beyond the bounds of appropriate doctor-patient interaction. It was past time for him to end it.

  He made himself look down at his watch. “How are you feeling?”

  She got the hint and stood. “I’m good to go now.” She was pale, though, and subdued. His fault. “Thanks for the snack.”

  “My pleasure.” He walked her to the door. “I think we need another session with AL as soon as possible. Can you make it on a weekday afternoon?”

  She looked up at him and grinned. His breath caught in his throat. It was as if the sun had just emerged from behind a thundercloud.

  “Is dinner included next time?”

  “I’ll order pizza.” He was barely able to keep his voice level, his demeanor professional. “How about Tuesday at 4:00?”

  “Works for me. See you then.”

  He closed the door behind her. He made himself breathe. He sent Cindy home as if it were any other day. Then he ran a hand through his hair and paced into his office to face the shambles of his world.

  What Asia had shown him today shook the very foundations of his sense of reality. If he didn’t get a tighter grip on what he knew to be the truth, it just might slip away from him in a rush of wonder. The vivid, horrifying details of the world in Asia’s dreams—the hunger and fear; the black confines of the mines; the way Dozen’s reckless energy had brought Asia’s flat persona to life—were as clear to him as if he had been there himself. He could see that world because Asia had described it precisely under the influence of the alpha wave generator.

  AL had the opposite effect on most of his patients. Their “memories” of midnight abductions and ghastly experiments and little gray men with big black eyes gradually eroded under the influence of the machine and his own gentle suggestions. The details dropped from the narratives, the colors muted and faded, until the p
atients could hardly imagine what had disturbed them so profoundly just a few weeks before.

  Asia’s dreams included no spaceships or aliens of the kind Ethan was used to hearing about. What she described was day after day of servitude, not a few hours of probing and pain. The setting of her dream, at once familiar and foreign, was consistent, even logical. The narrative was sequential, not sporadic or leapfrogging from moment to illuminated moment. In fact, it was not like a dream at all. Her description had emerged more like a genuine traumatic memory being relived under standard hypnosis.

  He blew out a breath in frustration. How could she have a memory of a place that couldn’t exist? Other than the undeniable effects of sleeplessness, Asia herself didn’t believe the elements of her dream were capable of affecting her in waking life. She didn’t collect “alien” toys or watch science fiction movies for “clues” or read the National Enquirer for the “real” news.

  She wasn’t like his other patients. And his reaction to her was unlike his reaction to any of his other patients.

  Ethan had been trained to stand outside himself and be objective. From where he stood he could see he was under assault, both body and soul. His professional objectivity was in serious jeopardy. He was attracted to his patient—God, was he attracted to her. His body’s response to the thought of her was intense and immediate. He rationalized that he could hardly be blamed for the purely biological reaction of a healthy male to an attractive young female, but he knew it wasn’t appropriate for a psychiatrist to be carrying a permanent aching hard-on for his patient, either.

  And that wasn’t the worst of it. The real danger was that Asia had slipped through all the barriers he’d so carefully erected to protect himself. She’d made him want things from her he had no right to ask. By merely beginning an innocent conversation, she had opened a floodgate of emotion that should have remained firmly closed. The realization drew a frustrated groan from deep in his chest and sent him striding across the worn oak of his office floor in agitation.

  Ethan took a deep breath and struggled to set his feelings aside. Asia was his patient; he needed a way to help her. Unlike conventional psychotherapy, the AL protocol called for him to find a weakness in the patient’s delusion as the entry point for his counterbalancing suggestions. He hadn’t found one yet in Asia’s story. He would have to hear the whole fantasy before he found a toehold for reality. With a thrill of emotion somewhere between anticipation and dread, Ethan acknowledged that task was likely to take some time.