by K. Gorman
A blue glow emanated from ahead. Nomiki had stopped swearing, but a shadow paced past the threshold of the door—stiff and hurried, pissed off.
When Karin turned the corner, she saw why.
She stopped dead. Speechless. Staring.
At first glance—and even at second or third glance—it wasn’t much to write home about. Like in the Macedonian compound, this one had average, run-of-the-mill equipment. She recognized a thermal cycler in one corner, along with a mass spectrometer and a microplate incubator that looked like a small, conventional microwave. Glass and metalware glinted from the shelves, gleaming in the light beyond their glass casings. The only difference was that it had a better display, metal and prefab instead of the concrete, wood, and weird, gross tiles that had welcomed them into the dingy sub-basement in Macedonia.
Well, that, and the floating brain that glowed in the tank on the floor.
Her jaw slackened. It looked like some kind of alien, seated in the middle of the space in a tank whose sides had dulled with neglect and dust. Cybernetic implants wove through its lobes, their flickering the source of some of the light—the rest came from the tank itself and the banks of displays and sensors that seemed to be monitoring it. The few inches of spinal cord sticking out underneath it had been neatly capped in a thick metal and plastic case that frayed into thousands of fiber-optics strings, all free-flowing and shivering in the liquid—or appearing to shiver, anyway—until they gathered into the top of the tank like crystalline lake weeds.
The Cradle sat on top, bulky and obsolete, its boxy structure looking like the top of a mid-sized garbage dumpster with the way it slanted. It whirred, and gave off a slight hum. Lights in its sides flickered and flowed.
Karin shuddered as they seemed to coordinate with the brain. Unease pulsed through her arms.
Beside it, the Cradle’s usual tank and laser-injector sat ready, a thin covering preserving the rippling water within it. The spines on the injector looked sharp, like a shower head with long, spiny teeth.
Soo-jin stopped beside her. Shock shot her eyebrows into her forehead, and her jaw dropped open.
“Suns,” she said, recovering with a hiss. Her arms crossed over her chest as she stumbled, reviewing it. “Well, we can’t move that.”
Karin let out a breath. It felt light, hysterical. A flutter of a laugh went with it.
So much for Plan A.
“No, we can’t.”
“Gods…” Soo-jin leaned closer with a shudder, squinting. “Is that…?”
‘Is that Tia?’ She wanted to say.
Karin gritted her teeth together. “Probably. Let’s assume yes.”
As her body began to shake, she felt Marc’s strong arms scoop her up again. She leaned into him, struggling to rein her emotions into control. Thoughts whirred through her head. Steps. Plans. What to do next.
“Takahashi—” She twisted, looking back, only to nearly run into him as he came up beside her and Marc.
His face was a stoic, grim mask as he took in the sight. She watched his eyes flick down. His jaw muscles tensed, eyes moving infinitesimally as he examined the brain, and his mouth curled back.
He uttered something she couldn’t understand, then curled his lips back from his teeth in a grimace. “We can’t move that.”
“No. We’re onto Plan B.” Karin ignored the frightened flip in her gut as she checked the Nemina’s monitoring feed. “Centauri will be here in three hours. I want you guys gone in one.”
“I’m not leaving you.” Marc’s arms tightened around her abdomen.
“Yes, you are. I need you guys out of the way. If I get out early, I’ll signal.”
Shinji had modified his electric drone tracker for Earth parameters. She’d hide it in the Shadow realm, along with several changes of clothes and a few weeks’ worth of ration bars, a Formosi water collector, and a radiation monitor.
She glanced at Baik. Apart from Nomiki, who steamrolled around authority, he was the ranking leader on this mission. And he usually had an opinion.
But perhaps their last encounter had bled the opinions out of him, because he said nothing.
“Kar.”
Marc’s voice rumbled over her like a smooth warmth. He was close, his scent in her nose. Her shoulders relaxed, and she turned around to face him. His eyes, and the dark skin of his face, were washed in blue from the brain, but the richness of his brown irises shone forth, strong emotion warring within them.
She reached up, placed a gentle, lingering kiss on his lips, and slipped out of his grasp. “I’ll come back to you.”
He let her go, but not before she’d caught the flutter of tension that rippled through his body. His stare burned into her shoulders as she walked away.
His, and almost everyone else’s.
She glanced up and found Nomiki watching her from across the room, Jon in the shadows behind her. She’d gone from prowling like an anxious tiger to standing utterly still. Much of the same emotions reflected in her wide eyes.
She dropped hers, felt her panic double as her gaze hit the shifting waters of the tank—Gods, she could already feel its cold touch, the way it would crawl over her skin—and slunk it past, her body brittle and stiff as she joined Takahashi’s side and peered at the computer display.
He already had menus up and running and was sliding his way through the program with a surprising ease.
“How long?”
“Five minutes,” he said.
Her eyebrows shot into her forehead. “Really? That short?”
“The program’s already input,” he said. “Anything more than sterilization would be simply wasting time.”
Tia.
If she could sense the woman in the Cradle from flying overhead, then she bet the woman could sense her, as well.
“I’ll, uh…” Cookie cleared his throat by the door, gaze darting away from the sight of the room, the awkwardness of the moment.
Any minute, she was going to have to strip, put on the laser injector, and climb into the tank.
Shinji stood stiffly beside him, looking like he’d just begun realizing the same thing.
“We’ll get your bag,” he finished lamely.
She nodded, barely registering their retreating footsteps. Her breaths were coming shorter now, the fear bubbling up within her. She stumbled back, back straight, jaw quivering as she tried to yammer something out. “Wow. Cool. That’s quick. I—”
“Breathe, sister.”
Nomiki descended on her in a stiff, solid hug, her klemptas armor digging in at every spot. She hugged her from behind, as Marc had done, but the difference in their height and weight made the experience completely different.
Karin let out an anguished, stressed breath as Nomiki pulled her in close, memories of similar moments, similar embraces, pulling at her chest. The smell of her sister’s sweat came to her, along with disinfectant—she’d suffered a wound to her rib cage—but, as the hug continued, it was an older smell, musky, with a coppery undertone.
Blood and other matter that Nomiki hadn’t been able to fully wash off the armor in the twelve hours they’d had to sprint to Brazil.
It said something, not only about her fucked up brain but also her and her sister’s relationship, that she found the smell oddly comforting in the moment.
She turned her head and tilted it back until the side of her skull rested against Nomiki’s temple.
They breathed together. The smell, and the movement, her sister’s nearness, grounded her.
Beside them, the Cradle’s interface made a small beep. Takahashi cleared his throat. Politely.
With effort, she extracted herself from Nomiki. Her sister let her go, arms sliding away much as Marc’s had done only a minute ago. She gave Nomiki’s hand a squeeze before slipping away.
Soo-jin clapped a hand on her good shoulder. “I’ll check out the ruins. Get all the deets. Make sure everyone’s on task.”
“Keep an eye on the map,” Karin warned.
&nbs
p; Soo-jin snorted. “No shit, sitla. You think I want to line up for another abduction? No, thank you.”
She laughed, Soo-jin’s surefire sarcasm bursting a surprising lightness across her chest. “You gonna go for the machine upstairs?”
“Babe, I’m going to spend the next hour getting every last piece of equipment I can that isn’t nailed down. Hells, even if it is nailed down.” She flashed a grin. “My engineering kit can break through damn near anything.”
Karin gave her a smack on the back when she turned to leave. “Go break things. I’ll see you in a few hours.”
Maybe days, if she had to pull her Shadow-world trick. Or longer, if the Centauri got her.
“Hey, if you can get our friends in the sky to leave a ship in the nearest village, keyed to my biosign, that’d also be great,” she called after her.
Soo-jin waved her hand in acknowledgment and headed to the door. Jon followed, a silent ghost in her footsteps.
Only Marc, Nomiki, and Takahashi remained.
With a rattle, Nomiki began to tug the thin plastic covering off the top of the tank. The smell of chemicals arose, dry and gilded with a scent that cut through her senses similar to must. She gave a hard swallow as her sister pulled it all of the way off and folded it in a corner. Her eyes met Marc’s across the room.
He nodded and moved forward. Helped her undress. Held her shaking hands, planted a kiss on her forehead, another on her lips. A lump formed in her throat, but she blinked the tears away.
Cookie came back with her bag after a few minutes. He kept his eyes downcast as he handed it to her—obviously disturbed by her nudity. She took it, naked, flashed it over to the Shadow realm, dropped it in a corner, and flashed herself back.
When she returned, Takahashi held the laser-injector in his hands. Its activation lights glowed, the needles retracted in their ready position.
She shuddered, the memory of her in the tank in Macedonia coming to her. Shaking, she stepped into the water, sucking a breath at the cold, filmy touch. Her foot grazed the bottom, planted, and she wobbled upright.
For a second, she stood there, feeling it lap at her thighs. Then, she held her breath, braced herself, and lowered down into the water. Her heel skidded along the bottom, the sound rubbing not unlike an old bathtub. The shock of cold plunged through her body, and she sucked in a series of breaths, but quickly forced her lungs to even out into a more normal pattern.
When she was ready, she glanced up at Takahashi and nodded once.
He bent down. She glanced up, meeting Marc’s gaze as he seated the injector crown over her head, saw the worry and pain reflected there.
She lifted a hand, gripped the side of the tank.
I’ll come back.
Then, there was a sharp pain. She jerked, felt herself fall back into the water. Static crackled through her body, over her vision, ate through her mind. Replaced every square inch of the world, bit by bit. Rose. Screamed. Took over.
As her senses blotted out, taken over by the buzz and pull, her body relaxed into the water. Began to float. Drift. Then, the world was gone.
When it came back, snow was falling.
Chapter Thirty-Five
It fell in a silent hush, coating the small, rural field in a thick white, layering every horizontal surface with a heavy blanket and leaving edges of darkness underneath. The cold hit her seconds later, biting her skin and sinking into her bones. Clothes rustled and groaned as she looked around, and she noticed the dense jacket, winter pants, and heavy boots she was wearing.
She didn’t know where they’d come from, but as the chill pressed deeper and deeper into her body, she was grateful for them.
Where the fuck am I?
Her breath rose in a veil of fog as she turned her attention back to her surroundings, recognizing nothing. The roll of a hill hemmed the white expanse of the field, fenced in by a fringe of bushy evergreen trees and others whose russet bark peeked out from under naked, snow-lined branches. Beyond, the snowfall obscured the rising base of a mountain in a gray, silver-flecked haze that made the slope seem foreboding and dark—like a massive, sleeping god from an old folk story. Everything was quiet. Behind her, a small house stood nearby, single-storied and faced with a cream-colored stucco that ran vague, rough patterns across the exterior. The window frames were white, matching a set of lace curtains on the inside. A yellow light glowed from within, giving the only strong color that she could see. Three concrete steps led up to a front door from a sloped garage where an older model Earth car sat parked, its rounded black frame as touched with snow as the area around.
Everything was quiet. Still, except for her breaths and the falling snow.
This was… not exactly what she’d expected to find in the Brazilian Cradle.
“I always liked the snow,” Tia said, as if following her thoughts. She stood at her side as if she’d always been there, wrapped in a thick, tan-colored coat with a red scarf stuffed inside its collar and wide black snow boots encasing her feet. Though her hands were gloved, she kept them jammed into her pockets, her shoulders stiff and rigid, shrugged up next to her neck.
“Most people hated it,” she continued. “Complained endlessly, bitched about shoveling and ice and slush, and salt on the car, or the idiocy of winter drivers, but I came to miss it when I was away.” A smile tugged at the corners of her lips. “Or maybe I missed the ideal of it, if you know what I mean?”
“The image, as opposed to all the bullshit that comes with it?” Karin guessed. She shuddered. She could feel something moving inside of her head, like an electrical current running through her mind. It tickled, as though someone had stuck their finger in the middle and was feeling around her brain’s interstitial routes. “What is happening? Where are we?”
“This? The United States of America. Just outside of Patten, Maine—or my reconstructed memory of it in February, 2936, anyway. You’re linked with the Cradle. Normally, in the Corringhams’ august plan, this is where they’d capture the rest of your consciousness, strip it down to its base components, and settle you into the hive mind.”
Karin shivered. “Is that why so many of us died?”
“Probably. They didn’t give a damn about human life when I was alive, and I doubt that changed after I died. So long as they could complete their experiment…” She blew out a long sigh, lips pursing in the cold air as she looked away. The field was empty, quiet except for the sound of her breath and the crystalline hush of falling snow. After a few moments, she closed her eyes.
“The genesis point experiment?” Karin prompted.
“Yes.”
“What…” She hesitated. “What is that?”
Tia chuckled. “It’s quite weird, I warn you. They had this fucking obsession… You know how they created you all as gods?” At Karin’s nod, she continued. “Okay, everything is linked. Not in some weird magical woo-woo psychic way, but subtler, involving energy and quantum fields. It’s how your abilities can manifest. Humans process this at both a conscious and cellular level, which is why we had to change a subject’s entire genetic makeup to get what we wanted. The human consciousness is, in the subconscious mind, aware of this interaction, but, since we haven’t needed to develop it on a survival basis, it has remained as a background process.” She paused. “Follow me, so far?”
“No, but keep going.”
“Right. So, human consciousness is a pretty well-developed state. Bernard had this idea that they could recreate an earlier version that might tap into a time when we did interact with the quantum fields more. His intention with the hive mind was to develop a set of archetypes, based on deity programs such as you and I, feed them into it, and create a microcosm that would allow him to simulate and develop a different consciousness scheme that used the quantum field.”
“Thus giving himself abilities?” Karin asked. “But… if that’s the case, why not just use one of the programs on himself? Is it safer or something?”
“No. He wanted the ultimate consciou
sness. Every deity wrapped up into one.”
“What, all-encompassing monotheism?” Her face twisted. “Are you fucking joking? He wanted to be the ultimate God? Sol’s fucking child, maybe we should let Sasha blow up the universe.”
She tilted her head back. Her breath rose in the cold air. Above, the sky was a blanket of smudged gray, ringed in by the scraggly, snow-topped branches of the trees and the telephone lines to the side.
“Fuck,” she said.
At least I’m getting answers.
“Why do you think I want to kill him?” Tia laughed. “It’s not all about pent-up hate.”
Karin blew out a breath. “Okay. Well, that’s what he wanted to do, right? Did he actually manage to pull it off?”
Tia shrugged. “If he did, he didn’t do it through my Cradle.”
“And you don’t know about the other Cradles, since Cradles are isolated systems and don’t talk to each other.”
Gods. An image popped into her head of the brain floating in the tank, connected to the Cradle through all of its cables and fiber optics.
That was Tia. That was who she was talking to, right now.
She closed her eyes, gave her head a small shake, and refocused her thoughts. “Okay, let’s look at this logically. He’d need a completed Cradle in order to become an all-aspect god, right? If he had completed one already, then why would he need us? Why continue to siphon our minds like that?” She squinted her eyes shut tighter, recalling the memory she’d burst into when touching the Cradle in Macedonia. “He didn’t seem very godly when he was experimenting on me.”
“If he didn’t have a completed Cradle, he may have tried with an incomplete one. Or, he may have continued his experiment on his own after Eurynome was shut down.”
The clouds seemed to ripple above them, a flash of light similar to an electrical storm flickering through them. She glanced up, then swayed as a wave of dizziness rolled through her mind. Snatches of memory came to her—the needles of the laser-injector, the water, the press of liquid rushing against her skin. Static rising in her brain. If she concentrated, she could see it in the clouds.