THE SPLITTING: 18
WE SAT IN SILENCE, AND at opposite ends of our confined space after that. I had a lot to think through. For starters, there were the basics. We weren’t using breath masks. Did that mean the facility was secure and airtight? Was it undamaged enough to still be usable?
Lieutenant Minami did not seem overly concerned as she worked at the various consoles. Did she know something I did not? I felt like she should be more worried about the shadows that surrounded this tiny human haven. Did no one else feel the shadowy fingers reaching for us? Perhaps not. Perhaps I was the only one still running on adrenaline.
Less urgent, but even more consuming, were my worries about Roman, with his hot tears splashing on the face of the woman he had loved. He must have believed I was as dead. I didn’t blame him for loving her instead of me or for forgetting me so quickly, but I missed him. Never, since Edward died, had I felt so lonely inside my own mind. Loneliness is a hollow thing and it makes you feel like you’ve eaten a bucket full of hollow.
I thought about my relatives dying across the Blackwatch Empire at the hands of Patrick’s compatriots. My emotions were mixed. We were not an affectionate family, but we were still family. I did not wish for their deaths, or applaud them.
My mind went deeper, dwelling on Patrick’s tells. He had ridiculed the pill or supplements for manipulating a mind, but he’d as much as admitted that they were doing something else. What were they doing? Something tweaked my memory. Something about when Roman first became my guardian. I couldn’t quite remember what it was. It slipped away when I tried to grasp it. I needed sleep.
Lieutenant Minami was playing video logs on her screen and my mind was keeping tabs on them as I thought. Most of it was similar to what I’d heard at the other installation, but more specific to the colony. The colony came later. It started about twenty years ago. It was filled with scientists and ‘colonists’ even then. They were prisoners who did the grunt work for the research. It was risky work with a high mortality rate which explained our position here a little better.
I wonder why Reynolds left Patrick and me up here, of all places. It seemed somewhat ridiculous to place your highest security risks where they could hear every scrap of valuable information. He must have thought it was the best place to keep us secure, or maybe he planned to kill us very soon. Hopefully it was the latter. I’d hate to go to my death knowing we trained marines that stupid.
I was beginning to doze off when my ears perked up. Lieutenant Minami was listening to the scientists revealing Compound VX-7 and its adverse effects on the colonists.
I opened my eyes. Patrick was awake, and I watched as his eyes went from me to the uneaten rations on the floor and then back to me again. They narrowed down to slits as he considered me. So, now he knew I had some kind of inside information. That could be a problem.
I settled myself back down again, resting my cheek against the crook of my arm. I needed sleep and if these scientists were anything like the others they’d be rambling for a while. Besides, I was downloading it all.
I fell asleep into Roman’s mind. It was happening so often now that it was almost predictable. Maybe the relaxation of sleep loosened my mind so it could drift through time and space in some inexplicable way. Who really knew what dreams were made of, anyway?
This time it was different. This time, I could hear his thoughts.
He was in a conference room of a starship. Around him the crew and other marines were talking.
“We’re rushing there. Captain had me plot a course so close to the danger line I was sweating flechettes.”
“But will we be in time?”
No, Roman thought, we won’t be. Driscoll’s renegades are too good. I wish Ashlyn was here. I miss her. She understood these things. Vera. Vera. Vera.
“What are they doing this time, Aldrin? Why the big rush?”
“Classified.”
They’re infecting civilians with something that changes their brains. LT said they thought it was a mind-altering pill containing nano-bots. We need to get there before they kill innocents.
My mind flared inside his as I remembered what I’d been trying to think of before. The guardian program had injected Roman with his implant and he hadn’t even known. That’s how Driscoll’s men must be doing it! They were injecting random civilians and hacking their brains. I needed to warn Roman.
Roman! I screamed with my mind. Roman! He couldn’t hear me. Of all the…. What about his implant. I tried to ping it like mine.
Computer, take a note and set a reminder.
Taking note.
Let’s hope it was his implant listening, and not mine.
Note: Driscoll’s renegades are injecting civilians with nano-computer implants similar to the Guardian implants without their knowledge.
Note recorded. Setting reminder.
Set reminder for one minute from now.
Reminder set.
I hoped it would work. I just needed to wait for one minute to see if it would work…
I drifted into real sleep without any conscious thought.
I woke to voices. I glanced at Driscoll. He was eyeing me warily. It wasn’t him talking. It was Lieutenant Minami, Major Reynolds and Dr. Daniels. Ian was on the other side of the room carrying out the trash from the empty e-rats. He sent a glance my way freighted with respect. I guess he liked to see ladies save the day from the back of a shadow rhino. He was gone quickly, but that look of respect gave me hope. Maybe I had earned enough credit with the prisoners that we could work together when the time came. You can’t put a price on respect.
I blinked a few times trying to clear my weary brain. I’d slept, but without having eaten for so long, my brain was not working as well as I’d like. I needed a better long-term solution than a starvation diet. I took a sip from the water bottle and focused on the conversation.
“They laced the food with it. It’s in everything,” Minami was saying, waving a pack of e-rats at the Major.
“And what, it re-routes our brains so we can learn? That sounds like advanced tech.”
“No. It’s old,” Dr. Daniels said, “Old and so faulty no one would allow it now. Or at least, I would have thought so. The side effects of similar drugs were intense, within only a few years of them being on the market. This one could have hit on a strain researchers didn’t think of then, but it’s unlikely. More likely it’s off the books and super dangerous.”
“What kind of side effects?” Reynolds asked.
“For this particular strain? Who can say without testing? And I’m not seeing proper testing done here. It was begun, but there’s just not enough data for results – even non-conclusive ones. They stopped recording within a few months of using it because alien insurgents wiped out the colony populations.”
“But we brought these with us from the El Dorado.”
“It’s standard protocol, apparently, to equip anyone making planetfall on Baldric with the ‘enhanced’ rations,” Lieutenant Minami said.
“What happened to the population we thought we were meeting here? Did they have troubles with these rations?” Major Reynolds asked.
“I don’t know. I still have reams of data to search through, but I thought this was worth knowing. There’s more, too,” Lieutenant Minami said.
“As if knowing your rations were laced wasn’t enough,” Major Reynolds said, rubbing his forehead with a palm. He looked strained; the burden of command and all that.
“There was one colonist who made contact with the aliens and was able to communicate.”
“Well that sounds a bit better. Who was it?”
“It’s top secret.” Minami looked around the room.
“Don’t worry about the prisoners. They won’t be talking to anyone off-planet in their remaining life-times,” Major Reynolds said.
Well that was awfully pleasant of him.
She nodded and continued, “Another Matsumoto. She’s the third they’ve sent here.” Lieutenant Minami pointed
at me when she said that. It worried me that she didn’t use my name, like she was trying to distance herself from me. “The other one was equipped with actual high tech. Some sort of brain implanted computer.”
Shoot. This was not supposed to happen. I concentrated on not looking at Driscoll.
“Impossible,” Dr. Daniels said. “I mean, it can be done, but it’s not just illegal in the Empire. Any whiff of it has led to executions and banishments. The Matsumotos would never stand for it.”
“Except if it helped them,” Driscoll whispered under his breath.
I narrowed my eyes at him, and he just stared at me like he wanted to take the top off my head and look for himself.
“Regardless, this other Matsumoto was equipped with it. They took her down to where the natives were at the subterranean drill site, and used her computer implant to communicate with them. The problem was, it failed after a few minutes. The Colony Doctor believed that her security over rides did something that melted her brain. He said he would have switched it off and installed it in someone else’s brain if he’d known about the protocols, but how could he have known?”
“So you’re saying we could repeat the process, provided we had another person to put the chip into once this Matsumoto’s brain fried?” Dr. Daniels said speculatively.
They were carefully not looking at me.
“Wait,” Reynolds said. I held my breath. Thank goodness someone was going to stop this insanity! “Why would the implant allow communication with the natives when the food additive failed?”
Dr. Daniels answered him, “The food additive is laced with nano-bots that re-wire the neural connections. They alter the brain entirely. You can’t go back, and they cause any number of unexpected permanent problems. The implant is in the brain, but it has not re-wired it. It sits apart from it.”
“Then could we remove her implant and use it in the new subject without triggering her self-destruct protocols?”
“A good question, Major, but impossible. The brain doesn’t rewire, but it does wrap itself around the implant. You can’t remove it without killing her, and you’d need her conscious to make the initial connection, although the colony doctor postulated that once the connection is made another brain could run the implant just fine.”
“But that’s all speculation, since the procedure would be done on two living brains while conscious and would doubtless result in one or even both of them dying in the process,” Lieutenant Minami said, “and while we could do without her, who would we use for the other brain?”
Oh, she was just making me love her more and more. Is it strange that right now I thought a terrorist who hated me to the core might make a better ally than the woman who had pledged her life to serve my family?
“Don’t worry about that,” Major Reynolds said, looking less concerned, “We have two problems.” He pointed at Driscoll and I with his two index fingers, acknowledging us for the first time in this conversation. “And one solution.”
He let the finger pointing to me drop and raised the other. I shivered and I didn’t care who saw.
“Start prepping for the procedure immediately, doctor,” Major Reynolds said.
“Give me five minutes and I’ll meet you back here,” Dr. Daniels said.
“No. We do it on the subterranean level just like they did. I don’t want to risk her not being able to communicate with them before we move the implant into his head.”
Daniels shrugged and left with a parting reminder, “Five minutes.”
I started retching immediately, but there was no time for that. Our little cell behind the force field was filling with a bitter smelling gas. I guess they didn’t want to risk fighting us for our lives.
THE SPLITTING: 19
I AWOKE FEELING GROGGY AND strange. There was a bitter taste in my mouth. I was supposed to be thinking about something important, but I couldn’t remember what it was. I was being held by strong arms and maneuvered out onto a ledge of rock over an endless black pit of shadows. The walls of the pit shone with their own iridescence. It was hundreds of meters deep. There was a platform with machinery that jutted out over the pit and the ledge was on the end of this platform. There were two cots, or stretchers, with restraints. It was towards these that I was being maneuvered.
Danger! Danger! Something in me was screaming. I tried to fight the people holding me up as my gut insisted that everything was wrong. I could barely move my limbs. They whipped around sporadically, not obeying my commands.
“Get her in the restraints before she breaks something.”
I was spun around and strapped in. The stretcher was angled upwards and my head was at the top, giving me a great view of what they were doing. They led a still-unconscious Driscoll towards me. The threat had to do with him, too. I remembered that. They strapped him on the other angled stretcher. I struggled for thought. It was important. I had to think.
Roman. I’m in trouble.
No, that wasn’t right. There was no Roman here.
Help…
I called out weakly through my implant, my lips still unable to form words. As my strength slowly increased, so did my cries.
Help.
Help!
HELP!
I could feel that abysmal echo I’d been hearing ever since I arrived on Baldric, but there was no reply.
Doctor Daniels emerged from the shadows and turned on some bright portable lights that threw everything around them into blackness and everything under them into a terrifying starkness. I wanted to shut my eyes.
My memory came back with shocking suddenness. Oh yes, he was planning to cut into my skull while I was still alive and remove my implant and then put it in Driscoll’s head. We would both be conscious while he did it. Of the many ways I could have, and maybe even should have, died over the last months, this was the most horrifying. I shuddered, thrashing against my bonds.
“Inject her with this. I can’t operate if she’s moving,” Dr. Daniels said, his voice snapping with irritation.
HELP!
We’re coming…
My eyes widened. Had someone answered me? Or was I deluding myself?
Reynolds hovered over me with a syringe in his hand. Funny that it was him and not some underling about to do the honors.
“Will it hurt them?” The voice was Ian’s. He must have helped them carry us here.
“Don’t worry,” Daniels said, distractedly, “It won’t happen to you. These two are dangerous, and the girl has something we need.”
Whatever Reynolds gave me paralyzed me completely. I was going to die with drool pouring out of my mouth, unable to close my eyes, or to scream when the pain finally came. I wanted to scream in panic, but it was too late. I screamed in my head instead.
Help! Please help! They’re going to kill me! Oh, please, please, please, please…
How do you stop begging for what you want? How do you stop panic when you’ve come to the end of hope? I couldn’t stop.
Beside me Driscoll was injected, too. I saw Ian behind Dr. Daniels, his face torn between hatred, loyalty and disgust. I wouldn’t want to be him right now. There is something about torturing another human that takes your humanity from you. Even watching when you could stop it will steal part of your soul.
Daniels pulled out a laser-scalpel and an auto-saw. Modern medicine at its finest. He approached me first.
“We’ll start with you first, Vera. Be a good girl and bring that computer online for us.”
Like it ever wasn’t online.
Download complete, my implant chirped. Useless timing. That’s non-sentients for you.
Daniels scanned me with a complicated device.
“Does she have one? An implanted computer?” Reynolds asked.
Awesome. They weren’t even sure. They were going to do brain surgery and they weren’t even sure.
“I think so, but I won’t know for certain until I get in there.”
“Maybe we should get the information from her first.”
>
“Not needed. Besides, she likely has some sort of self-destruct in case she’s tortured. We wouldn’t want to trip that.”
Because sawing into my brain while I was conscious wasn’t torture?
“Vera, if your implant is turned on, then please try to communicate with the device in my hand,” Dr. Daniels said.
Well, since you said please. What did he think? That a moment’s courtesy would make me forget what was going on?
“I have a device here that is designed to erase computer chips. Now, I know that you are probably protected from these – but you should know your implant can be manually erased once I have it out of your brain, so if you don’t want to lose it before you die, then please connect with my device.”
Ha. He was threatening to erase my files? Was he going to ground me next? Dr. Daniels tilted his head to the side, his lips pursed tightly.
“Wait a moment, Doctor. I can help you out.” Reynolds pulled Ian into my line of sight. He gripped Ian by one bicep pointing a nettlegun to his temple. “Play nice Matsumoto, or your friend gets it.”
Well, he did swear fealty. I owed him this. But on the other hand, my implant was all I had. Could I use it to break free somehow? The martial arts program wouldn’t free me from restraints. I was at a loss. I was going to die in the next few minutes one way or another. Was it worth Ian’s life to withhold this technology from my enemies?
“Last chance,” Reynolds said.
Connect to handheld signal.
Connecting…
“We’re connected!” Dr. Daniels said with delight. I wanted to kill him.
“Will you be able to use it to communicate? Can you hear the natives now?” Reynold’s voice bubbled with excitement.
“I think, maybe. There are some strange frequencies that might be them. I won’t know until we try from a different brain. I don’t want to trip the self-destruct…”
Reynolds threw Ian aside, not even watching as Ian walked away, rubbing his arm and scowling at Reynold’s back.
“Excellent. Now all we need to do is manually remove the chip,” Dr. Daniels said, calibrating the laser scalpel as he spoke.
My eyes were still on Ian. His baleful expression faded as he squinted at something in the shadows behind me.
The Matsumoto Trilogy: Omnibus Edition Page 36