by K. Gorman
“The Nova facilities?” Dalajit asked. “And you mean Seirlin in general, not specifically Seirlin Genomics?” He paused to think, and a small accent crept into his voice when he spoke next. “Well, we do have some contact with them, but we’re pretty much on our own for—”
“No,” she said. “Not Nova. Old Earth. Before the gate incident.”
His eyebrows shot into his forehead. “Old Earth? That’s…”
“Incredible, yes. I know. But we were there.” To the side, Gretchen’s eyes had narrowed on her, thick with suspicion, and she spoke quickly before anyone else could get a word in. It was already a minor miracle that none of them had recognized her, but she guessed Fallon’s citizens didn’t pay much attention to Alliance feeds if they weren’t involved in trade. “The files should have been transferred seven years ago. If not here, then in Seirlin’s main system. Do you think you could get them?”
“Or any information about the projects there,” Nomiki cut in with a smooth, eager smile. “Anything would help us.”
Karin really wanted to know what she’d told Dalajit and Gretchen in order to get their trust. No one had given her a second glance since they’d come out, and the knife she’d wielded was more like a small sword. Not to mention how she’d gotten herself out of the security net in the first place.
“We can’t just give out information to anyone who asks,” Gretchen cut in. “You need clearance. You—”
“Yes, we know, and we can work it out later.” Karin tried to put more comfort and smoothness into her smile, but by the stiff reaction on Gretchen’s face, it hadn’t come out that way. “But we figured it would be better to ask first to see if you have it, since we were in the area. Our clearance is currently in her apartment on Enlil, so it’d take about a month to arrange. It’d be nice to start the process now.”
“That sounds logical,” Dalajit said, though a slight hesitancy in his tone belied the words. He paused, giving them another assessment, then exchanged a look with Gretchen. “We actually have someone on-site that used to work on Old Earth. Dr. Linnet keeps an early schedule, so she might already be in. Perhaps she could be of some use?”
“You can’t just take her back there,” Gretchen hissed. “We have clients. We can’t be seen to—”
“We have one client, and I know he won’t mind,” Dalajit said, already moving away from the gate. “It won’t hurt to ask. If she knows them, that could help the clearance issue, as well.”
As they left the desk to follow him, Karin exchanged a look with Nomiki and caught the quiet surprise mirrored in her sister’s face.
A doctor who had worked on Old Earth? What were the chances that she had worked on their project? And, if she had, was she a core member of the group, or one of the many visiting guests the compound had seemed to arrange over the years?
Just who did they have?
Chapter Eight
The green tinge of the lobby continued into the hallway, and as they left the ambiance of the sitting area, more signs of the corporation’s themes and aesthetics came into view. Clean and complex, packaged in subtle spotlights of expensive-looking artwork and embedded accents on the walls, the building closed in around them with a stepped, cuboid design as Dalajit led them farther into what Karin guessed to be the show floor.
Offices and conference rooms appeared almost immediately, their glass walls thick and shining, curved in an oval shape and untouched by any hint of dirt or dust. Inside one conference room, she caught sight of a matching oval table made of a rich, varnished wood, and a full holodesk set up in its middle. Further down, a screen in the middle of the back wall displayed a similar advertisement to the one she’d seen outside, except this one appeared to be more a compilation reel than a single, looping shot. Most images featured men, their new enhanced muscles, skeletons, and nerves giving them boosts in strength, speed, and reflex time, but she saw a few women in the mix, as well. A blonde caught her eye as she walked past the outside, making her do a double take at the screen. Outside of Nova Earth, blondes were a relative minority. But, like this one, often used as models.
“Wonder if they could give me bigger boobs,” Soo-jin commented, eyeing the woman’s other features.
“I’m sure they could. Boob jobs aren’t exactly a new phenomenon.” Karin glanced down, then over to her friend, eyeing Soo-jin’s chest. “Apart from sex appeal, do they really help with anything?”
Soo-jin shrugged. “I always hear it’s the big-boobed chicks that get free drinks at the bars, but I seem to do just fine when I go.”
“That’s because you’re gorgeous just as you are,” Cookie said.
“Aww, that’s sweet of you to say.” Soo-jin flashed a smile over to him, baring her teeth. “I’m still not sleeping with you, though.”
Karin’s eyebrows twitched. Had that been the thing that she’d missed? The past few days had seen her so preoccupied with the content of her last dream that she’d been ignoring the rest of the ship except for Nomiki. Now that she thought about it, Soo-jin and Cookie had been spending time together. They had a lot in common, what with the computer thing, though Soo-jin was more an engineer as opposed to Cookie’s hacker persona.
But their banter felt more like brother and sister than potential boyfriend and girlfriend.
At that moment, Dalajit came back up the small side-hall from the security center, a set of keycards in his hand. “I’ve been a guard here for ten years, almost, so I actually remember when we had contact with Earth. Of course, it’s been such a long time, and with the gate thing and… well, Earth never did keep much contact.”
Nomiki gave him a pleasant smile, picking the conversation back up from where he’d left it without batting an eye. “It was an offshoot branch. Special, long-term, social project. Do you remember anything about the gate incident? Anything coming through just before, perhaps? We got a bit rushed toward the end, so I thought that’s when most of the stuff was transferred.”
Beside them, Marc’s eyebrow had lifted. Karin met his questioning gaze with a raised eyebrow of her own, then nudged his arm with her shoulder. She hadn’t told him about the gate incident—hadn’t told any of them yet, actually—but she would. It wasn’t as important as the rest.
“Maybe,” he said. “There was a lot happening around that time, though—but if anything’s in the system, Gretchen can find it.”
“They trust a secretary with that kind of information?” Soo-jin raised a brow. “Isn’t that a bit risky? I assume you guys have some competitors.”
“Gretchen isn’t just a secretary. She used to manage the IT side of things for Headquarters. Then she met her husband in Fallon and settled down.” He gave her a polite smile. “If anything came through, she’d know where to look.”
“Sounds like someone I should be talking to.” Cookie backed away, saluting them with his netlink. “I’ll catch up with you guys later.”
Karin kept her features neutral as he left. She’d seen him eying the front computer before. Just what was he planning?
“You mentioned being short,” Marc said, likely to distract from Cookie’s exit. “Has the attack affected your operations significantly?”
“Oh, yes, we’re down over thirty staff now.” Dalajit sighed and rubbed at the bridge of his nose with his index finger. “Of course, with all the automation and subsequent client no-shows from the attack, we’ve been managing to run all right.”
“So, business as usual, then?” Soo-jin asked. “You just gonna keep enhancing people while the rest of the system slowly dies to Shadow attacks?”
Dalajit raised his hands, defensive. “Hey now, I’m just the security. They do have doctors here working on a cure—we’ve lost many of our own, of course—but we can’t disappoint our clients.”
As they’d been walking, they had entered a new part of the facility. The cuboid edges continued in the corners and over the thresholds, but one side of the hall had dropped away, ending in a handrail of frosted glass. A set of indoor gardens
framed a rugged, carefully sculpted koi pond. Over a dozen fish languished in its clear waters, their pale white almost glowing against the dark backdrop.
Several offices opened up on the right as the hallway curved around. As high-tech as the rest of the building had been so far, Karin recognized the modified auto-tone glass that frosted the inside of the window, providing a dose of privacy to those inside. Only a few vague shapes came through the window.
She froze when she read the name on the door.
Dr. Soichiro Takahashi.
One of the names from Nomiki’s journal.
It couldn’t be the same one, could it? Japanese names had a lot of repeats, but how likely was it that Seirlin happened to have more than one Dr. Soichiro Takahashi working for them—and how likely was it that they’d run into his office?
“Miki,” she pointed up to the door. “Do you remember him?”
Nomiki didn’t even need to say anything. The look on her face was answer enough. She turned on her heel, hiding the anger behind a neutral expression which she turned up at Dalajit. “Where is Dr. Takahashi? Is he available?”
He hesitated. “Ah, well… he didn’t make it.”
Karin’s eyes widened. “He’s dead?”
“What? No, no, but… he’s a Host of the Shadows now.”
She let out a breath. “Oh, so he’s Lost, then? Black eyes?”
His eyebrows drew together in puzzlement as she relaxed. “I believe that’s one term for them. Here, we call them Hosts.”
Ah, yes. She’d glimpsed that on some of the feeds coming in. An apt name, and a wee bit more accurate than the Alliance term, in her experience. Curing them felt more like an exorcism than any actual healing.
“Is he here on site?” Nomiki asked. “Or did you take him to one of the shelters?”
“No, no, he’s here. The company owes him that, at least.” A brief smile split his lips. “I doubt they’d give me that treatment, but so far, I’ve held my own and survived.”
“Can we see him?” Karin asked. “I might be able to help.”
He paused, considering. Then, after a moment, he shrugged. “Sure, why not?”
After radioing a message to the doctor they’d been going to see, he led them down a different path, backtracking and passing down through the garden they’d been overlooking. A set of elevators sat in a widened area ahead, hemmed in by another not-quite-full garden that curved in a semi-circle. Going down was a nice refresher. It was an odd thing, perhaps, but she found the smaller spaces more comforting nowadays. Something to do with being in space so long. And, as the building’s expensive aesthetics stripped back into more-recognizable concrete and cinderblock construction, she found herself relaxing.
It made sense to keep the Lost—Hosts—down here. Not the most comfortable place, perhaps, but it meant that they wouldn’t be punching through expensive drywall if they decided to get feisty. Unlike the station, or Archin, or any of the other more-industrial places she’d visited recently, most of the pipes and wires were hidden away behind the walls, and the ventilation had little more than a passing presence. The vent covers looked new, at least, which suggested the inner workings might have seen some upgrades, as well. Laboratories needed that, right? Especially expensive laboratories like Seirlin Genomics seemed to have? Even the most innocuous chemistry kit could become deadly under the right circumstances.
The hallway narrowed ahead, forcing them to walk two by two. Marc and Reeve brought up the end, the latter having lagged back to check his netlink. When she glanced back, she saw him frowning at the screen. Had he actually managed to find a connection down here? And how much of their hour had already passed? He didn’t look like he was about to use force on Nomiki—Gods help him if he tried—but he didn’t look too pleased, either.
Hopefully, he was more pissed about the drones dropping on their heads from the ceiling, and his serious frown was just him thinking of how he was going to compose his report on that particular incident.
She still didn’t remember Takahashi, and she didn’t expect to start anytime soon. Nomiki, on the other hand… if she remembered him as much as her sullen expression said she did, then wouldn’t Takahashi recognize them, too? It was good that he was Lost, then, but what about the other doctor? It didn’t sound like she’d been a core member of the team—the only woman she remembered was Sasha—but even a visiting specialist would probably recognize them. They’d been prominent in the compound. Its star residents, due mostly to their ability to survive their treatments. She doubted their recognisability had diminished after they’d murdered their way out.
But Nomiki didn’t seem worried. So she shouldn’t be, either.
The sound of jangling keys made her look up just in time to see Dalajit pull them out of his pocket. He’d used the keycards to work the elevator, but the lock on the door had a simple bolt and tumbler design she didn’t see very often.
“Most of them have clearance access to security scanners, so we had to lock them up with more conventional means,” he explained, catching her look. “They kept opening doors and wandering around.” He smiled. “You should have seen the look on Gretchen’s face when some of them wandered into the lobby with a client.”
“Have you managed to find out much about them? Or about the Shadows at all?” Marc asked. “Any idea what they’re made of?”
“I’m afraid we’re not set up for that kind of experimentation. More dimensional than biological. But I hear one of the Chamaki quantum labs had made a partnership with the military?” Unlocking the door, he grabbed it to hold it shut, pausing to glance up to Reeve with a question in his raised eyebrows.
Reeve shrugged. “If they are, they haven’t told me. I’m just a pilot.”
Yeah. Right. Just a pilot trusted to babysit Nomiki. Just how good was he? When he’d mentioned force, Nomiki hadn’t laughed.
Not that she usually laughed. When fighting, she always took her opponents with the utmost focus. Probably why she’d decided to break through the wall instead of staying with them in the hallway’s kill zone. She wasn’t just all about fighting. As per her treatment, she was smart, too.
In the compound, they’d half-expected them to sell her off to one of the wars. But that’s not what they’d wanted from them, in the end.
The memory of dream-Nomiki’s resurfaced in her mind.
They’re stealing our memories, Rin.
“Well, you can’t blame me for trying,” Dalajit said. “We don’t get much news, nowadays.” A click of the handle and a slight scrape as the door cleared the lip of the floor, and he pushed the panel open. “We have fifteen of them in here. Would you mind seeing that none of them get out while I fetch him?”
Marc and Reeve moved to the front as Dalajit disappeared inside. A light turned on, and a whisper-hush of sound came to her ears as the Lost adjusted. Like most of the empire’s population, the people in the room collected in a variety of skin tones and shapes, few of them white. Most had black hair, but it varied in style, texture, and tint. The closest, a woman, had cropped her hair in a close-shaved band around the base of her head, with the rest flipped into a loose, frizzy ponytail that had lost its style over the month she’d probably been in here. Farther in, another woman had let loose with a few streaks of pink, purple, and green that had grown out. A man on the other side had a curtain of long, trailing russet that fell down past his abdomen.
But they all wore the same clothes—a soft-looking, off-white sweatpants and shirt combo stamped with the Seirlin swan on the right breast.
A few seconds later, Dalajit came back into view from around the corner, dragging an older man along with him.
A ripple of shock went through her as she saw his face.
I know him.
But that was impossible, wasn’t it? How could she recognize someone she didn’t remember? Unless… Weren’t memories and facial recognition different processes of the brain? Lots of people remembered faces but forgot the names attached to them.
&
nbsp; Beside her, Nomiki did not share her memory conundrum. “That’s him.”
So he had been on Earth, then. And more than that—he had been a core part of the Eurynome team, not just some visiting scientist who’d stayed for a day and never returned.
“I still don’t remember him,” she said.
“He was there. Used to work with Brennan a lot.”
Ah. That would explain the expression on her face. Even now, Brennan was a sore subject for her.
“Then he can help us. I can heal him. Actually—” She did a quick survey of the room. “I could heal them all, then…”
“You want to help them? After all they did?”
Karin rounded on her, arm raised to point at the Lost through the door as she hissed at her sister. “Those people didn’t do anything to us. This place didn’t do anything to us. You saw the posters. They’re modifying consenting humans. Rich ones, yes, but still consenting.”
“Probably used all the experiments they did on us to make it possible for them,” Nomiki grumbled.
They’d been talking in a whisper, and Nomiki cut off her reply as Dalajit led Dr. Takahashi through the crowd. He stood out like a sore thumb amid the rest, the only one still wearing what looked like his regular clothes. Had he been caught while awake, or did he sleep in his lab coat? Come to think of it—what about the rest of them? They couldn’t all have been wearing company-approved pajamas when they’d gone to bed.
A few Lost tried to follow Dalajit and Takahashi out, one grabbing hold of his sleeve as he moved past, but Dalajit shrugged them off, pushing them back in a gentle motion as he steered Dr. Takahashi to the door.
Tall, and with a thinness that looked almost unhealthy, the doctor’s hair had grown into a scraggly mop, strands of it turned greasy from lack of showering. With fine features and a square jaw, he had a skin tone that placed him a couple shades darker than what she’d seen on normal Japanese people—maybe he’d spent some time outside during the moon’s last actual day cycle? The shadow of his eyes made it hard to tell where he was looking, but, as he stepped into the room in front of Dalajit, she felt the exact moment his eyes met hers.