The Matsumoto Trilogy: Omnibus Edition

by Sarah K. L. Wilson

  Daniels lifted the laser and drew in close, his eyebrows knitted in concentration. So this was it. Time to die. My eyes tracked to Ian, seeking something to take to the grave, any flash of comradery would be better than dying alone.

  The echoes in my implant had grown so loud I could hardly think. What did that device of Dr. Daniel’s do? I braced myself for the pain.

  Something flickered in Ian’s eye. A look of surprise. He compressed his lips like he was keeping himself from crying out. I stared into his eyes. I saw myself reflected in his pupils, strapped to a table, with drool trickling down my chin and Dr. Daniels carefully picking his spot with the laser scalpel. Reynolds was leaning in close, too, watching the doctor’s every move in the sharp white light. And then two dark shadows leaned in from either side of my stretcher, arms extended, fingers splayed. It was something from a horror video, only I was hardly in a position to object as they reached out and grabbed Dr. Daniels, and twisted.

  He screamed, and his scalpel bit long and deep into the left side of my face, slicing me from forehead to jaw, but his thrashing jogged it back and forth. I was unable to even flinch or look away as the scalpel destroyed my face.

  Chaos ruled. Daniels’ scream ended in a pop like a cork out of a bottle as his head rolled to the side and his body dropped beside the gurney. Reynolds screamed, gripping his skull in both hands and then his eyes, which were staring at me blossomed red and rolled back into his head as he slumped to the ground. Ian froze in place like one of the ice sculptures from the party he took me to on the first day we met.

  Sharp, jagged agony filled me. I screamed loudly in my mind although my lips made no move.

  The figure that killed Daniels, which I had mistaken for a shadow, was a woman. She was – faded, somehow, like she was only half there. It was difficult to explain.

  She wore a ragged marine’s uniform, carried a pack and wicked looking knife, and her hair was short and choppy. The other one who had attacked Reynolds looked very similar, except her clothing looked more like my tight-fitting skinsuit and less like a uniform. Her hair was also short, and her face was hard. She was the age my parents would be if they were still alive. She hadn’t killed Reynolds. I could still hear him thrashing, wounded, on the ground.

  Someone else was behind me, but I couldn’t see him.

  “Make her stop screaming,” the one who attacked Reynolds said, irritation high in her tone.

  Who did she mean? Was my voice working again. I tried to focus my thoughts away from a scream. The man-shadow grabbed a syringe from the cart beside Daniels and started injecting something into my face in various places, and then he taped some gauze on it. It still hurt – a lot- but the pain was manageable now.

  “Thank you,” the woman behind me said.

  “Not what I expected,” the Marine-shadow said staring first at me, and then at the scene around us.

  “She’s not one of us,” the other woman said.

  “We’ll bring her anyways. Whatever she did, we need to know what that was.”

  The man-shadow was nodding.

  “What about him?” he asked.

  “It looks like they were going to do the same thing to him. Maybe he has a Voice, too. I vote we bring him.”

  “I agree,” he said, “but two of them are going to be hard to carry.”

  “Can’t you give them something to wake them up a bit?” the skinsuited woman said. Maybe she always sounded irritated.

  “Maybe,” he said, sorting through the cart. “This will get them semi-mobile, but we’ll have to direct them, and they won’t be talking or thinking clearly for a while.”

  I was thinking just fine right now. It was just my stupid body that had opted out of the fight.

  “And him?” The woman behind me asked, and they all turned on Ian.

  “I didn’t see anything,” Ian said, with his typical moral courage.

  The marine woman grunted. “You heard him. He saw nothing. But he stays here until we’re done. Someone put him on one of these gurneys for now and strap him down.”

  The irritated woman took hold of Ian’s arm exactly where Reynolds had held it before. The shadow-man injected Patrick with something and hauled him to his feet. His eyelids flickered open, and his feet barely shuffled along as the other man supported his weight. The woman directed Ian onto the gurney and strapped him in.

  “What’s this?” she asked, grabbing the computer-chip programmer device that Dr. Daniels had.

  Oh shoot!

  Disconne… I ordered my implant.

  Everything went black.

  THE SPLITTING: 20

  I WOKE UP WITH AN aching belly. It didn’t take long to find out why. Someone had me slung over their shoulder. My head bobbed painfully against something hard strapped to that person’s back and their shoulder stuck into my soft gut. I gasped.

  “Hold up. I think she’s awake.”

  I was tossed to the ground, and I looked up to see the shadow-woman who wasn’t a marine had been carrying me. She had felt very solid just now.

  “You awake?” she asked, nudging me with a foot.

  I blinked up at her. My throat was dry and my eyes were crusty, and a bandage covered one of them, but at least the top of my skull was still in place. I thought about answering her question, but rhetorical questions bother me.

  “Patrick?” I asked. Weren’t they going to bring him, too?

  “Over here,” I heard his voice, thick and blurred. I turned to look at him. He was propped upright by the man-shadow and he looked worse for wear. Not only was he still mostly doped up, but he was covered in blood and scratches.

  A painful twinge brought my hand up to my face where a thick bandage covered the side of it. It felt like pain dulled by freezing – the type you know is going to get real fiery at a moment’s notice. This was new for me. That broken rib I had complained to Edward about a few months -and yet a few lifetimes- ago was the worst physical injury I had ever suffered and I’d been able to recover in the hospital. My life since then made it seem like a trivial thing, but the injury to my face made my belly roil with fear and nerves. What if it was infected? What if I couldn’t stand the pain when the freezing wore off? What if my eye was injured? It was covered by the bandage. Could I still see out of it? I bit my lip until I tasted blood, pushing fear aside with anger. No. I would not allow myself to fall apart. I don’t need anyone to save me, I thought, and pulled myself onto my feet by sheer willpower.

  “If you’re awake, then you can walk.”

  I agreed, but said nothing, simply trying out a step towards the marine. It was clear she was their leader.

  My legs were working about as well as Driscoll’s were, but I was determined to walk on my own. I’d either been rescued or captured. Either way, I needed to stand on my own feet. If I had been rescued, then I needed to make sure they knew that I wasn’t going to be indebted to them. If I had been captured, then I’d need to find a way to escape.

  “Who are you people?” I asked. My words started out slurred, but I forced myself to focus and they were clear by the end.

  “She looks just like her,” the woman who had been carrying me, said. “Especially when she speaks.”

  The marine grunted.

  “We’re what’s left of the Baldric Colony,” she said.

  “Funny way to treat your reinforcements,” I said.

  They glanced around at each other, and then the marine settled into a form of parade rest, her feet wide, and her firearm neatly arranged. It must have been some kind of signal, because the other woman and man formed a circle with her, nudging Patrick and I in place. We could all see each other’s faces now. It seemed like this was an official thing that they were doing.

  “You called us,” the marine said. “So that means you need to explain to us what’s happening and why we rescued you.”

  I looked at her silently, trying to keep my expression clear as my mind raced. I’d called them? How had I called them? Had I called someone at some
point? I’d called to Roman. I’d called into the empty channel. Had they heard that?

  Like this? I asked, broadcasting to them as hard as I could.

  They winced in unison.

  “Don’t yell! You’ll draw them all for miles around!” The male scientist, or shadow, or whatever yelled.

  “I apologize,” I said, carefully and slowly, watching their faces for any flicker of emotion, “I wasn’t sure you’d hear that. I can’t hear you.”

  The echo I’d been hearing since coming to Baldric started up again and then the marine locked eyes with me and held them.

  this…buzz buzz …like…buzz…this…buzz…can you hear…buzz…when…buzz…like this?

  I focused. Then I could hear her, faint and tinny, but there.

  Can you hear me when I talk like this?

  I almost jumped out of my skin.

  “How?”

  The male scientist looked bitter, “We needed to find a way to communicate, so we rewired our brains. If you’ve eaten enough of the rations it will happen to you, too. I see you’ve been eating them. He’ll need more. Maybe it’s a body mass index thing,” he shrugged, indicating Patrick who was watching us with confusion.

  “You can’t hear us, right?” the marine asked him.

  “Of course I can hear you,” Patrick said.

  “But not when we talk with our minds.”

  Patrick’s eyes shuttered for a moment like he’d made a connection. They narrowed as he looked at me and his jaw tightened. I thought back to what he was probably thinking about. Untouched e-rat packages. And his men injecting people with computer chip implants. He was putting the pieces together.

  “No,” he agreed.

  “Then why were they going to cut your brain open?” the male shadow person said.

  “They wanted to put what she has into me so that they could use it to communicate with the shadows.”

  The Baldric colonists looked at each other and then they all looked at me.

  “You really are a Matsumoto, then? You don’t just look like them?”

  I felt myself sigh inside. Of course. In the end, this was all anyone ever wanted to know about me.

  “Wait, before you get all into who she is, what are your names? I can’t keep thinking of you as shadows,” Patrick said. He was smiling, and it looked like he was trying to charm them.

  “Roberta and Michael are scientists. I’m Lieutenant Jaya Kitsano. Who are you?”

  “Patrick Driscoll. I am a colonist sent here for my revolutionary acts against the Matsumoto Dynasty.” No one looked too impressed or too worried, but it’s hard to be impressed by someone so drugged that they are still slurring their speech. He pointed at me. “And she’s Vera Matsumoto.”

  Lieutenant Kitsano frowned. I felt irritated that he’d revealed that instead of me.

  “We should never have gone after her!” Michael said, pulling at one of his ears. His eyes were darting all around.

  “No. We can use her,” Roberta said, folding her arms over her chest.

  So, it was going to be the usual. Fear, with a hint of practicality. The lieutenant looked me up and down again, and her eyes seemed to be reassessing me. This relentless series of people who saw me as a tool rather than a teenage girl would have worn me down if I wasn’t already completely shattered. Sometimes it’s good to be broken because then there’s nothing left to break.

  “If that’s true, then we need to head out. Now,” the lieutenant said.

  “Leave her here. We can’t risk bringing her,” Michael said, and Roberta looked disappointed.

  “No. She comes with us,” Kitsano said. “With her we could end this.”

  Everyone was frowning now, including Driscoll and I.

  “Mind filling me in?” Driscoll asked.

  “Move out,” said the marine, and everyone followed her in silence. The only sound was our feet and clothes as we hiked through the undergrowth.

  THE SPLITTING: 21

  LIEUTENANT KITSANO SET A QUICK pace, but all three of our captors seemed comfortable. I studied our path carefully. There was some wear on the little trail we were using. Perhaps it wasn’t wildlife that had worn it thin, but rather these three. Did wildlife make trails when they were shadows? Did people?

  I had my implant running diagnostics. I had no idea what damage may have been done from Daniels’ little computer erasing device, or what Roberta might have managed when she set it off. So far the diagnostics were coming up clean, but who knew where a problem might pop up?

  The drugs Driscoll and I had been given were dissipating with our activity. He frowned constantly, so either he was in pain or he was bothered by something. I didn’t see why he’d be bothered. These were his people after all. Renegades. They didn’t want to use or kill him. Pretty much everyone but Roman wanted to kill or use me.

  Roman. I felt a twinge of loss at his name. I missed him, and he wasn’t even mine anymore. He wasn’t my protector, just a regular marine, and he wasn’t my lover because he’d fallen in love with someone else. I supposed that if he knew I was alive he would probably still be my friend. That was something at least.

  “Are we there yet?” Driscoll said, like a child.

  “Almost,” Michael said from beside him. He was slightly more compassionate than the others and had hovered over Driscoll until he was sure he could walk straight.

  We hiked up a hill, winding between white and yellow granite rocks that jutted through the hillside and around huge tree boles encased in black and white vines. I concentrated on Kistano who was right in front of me. She didn’t break a sweat despite the steep terrain and the quick pace she was setting. This wasn’t the first time they’d made this climb.

  “How long have you been here?” I asked.

  “Too long,” Roberta grumbled when no one else replied.

  Roberta studied my face when she thought I wasn’t looking. I wasn’t sure what she was looking for. Was I the first Mastumoto she’d ever seen? Maybe she didn’t really believe my story and wanted to be sure that I really looked like the ruling dynasty.

  The hill grew steeper, and we were forced into a single-file line on a tiny path between rocks. We weren’t quite on all fours yet, but it was close. We crested the rise abruptly, and stood on what was more or less a ledge, tucked against another cliff face. Forty yards across and twenty deep, the ledge was well populated with trees. Strung between them were tarps, some ersatz walls made of shuttle cladding, fallen logs, and what appeared to be a water catchment system from a tiny stream running down the cliff beside the ledge. It was both elaborate and rudimentary all at once. The camp was very lived-in. Our new friends had been here for a while.

  I followed the others into one of the enclosures. It was a combination of shack and tent, but large enough for a few different rooms to be partitioned off. In the first was a makeshift kitchen with tools and dishes hanging from beams. Off to one side there was a solar powered workstation with a large antenna reaching up through the tarp roof. Systems were actively monitoring several processes in tandem. I was curious enough to try looking at the screens, but Roberta angled in front of me and I chose to look away. If I needed to, my implant would connect and download whatever I wanted.

  Michael dropped into the stool in front of the systems and started reading while Roberta kept her eyes on us. Lieutenant Kitsano disappeared. She came back a few moments later.

  “Security is online,” she said, and the others nodded like that meant something.

  “You can keep the shadows out?” Driscoll asked.

  “We can deter them,” she replied, “And we prefer to call them ‘Javierians’ because that is their name for themselves.”

  He nodded.

  “So you really can speak to them?”

  “To a degree,” she said.

  “Why do you think we look like this?” Roberta said, bitterly. “We’re fading slowly into shadows ourselves.”

  “They turned Sammy into a shadow when he fought them,” I said
, testing the waters.

  “Then they thought he was worthy. They only turn the ones they think are worthy. They have a strong code,” Roberta said, still sounding bitter.

  “And the ones that become magic mushrooms?” Driscoll asked. No one cracked a smile at his joke.

  “Garbage. Not worthy,” she spat.

  “That’s harsh.”

  “That’s Baldric.”

  Driscoll grunted and I frowned.

  “How do they determine who is worthy?” I asked.

  “We don’t know,” Kitsano answered, her eyes narrowing, “We think they read thoughts, and watch for people who are particularly strong in qualities they desire.”

  “Desire?”

  “Their mind is collective, or semi-collective. Once you join it, you add to the whole. They seem to be choosy about who they want to add.”

  Makes sense. I’ve had enough people in my head to know that who is in there makes a big difference.

  “I guess they don’t get a say about the three of you?” I asked.

  “Or any of us who were turned by the nano-tech,” Roberta said sourly. I was starting to think she wasn’t capable of any other tone. “But we have a say. None of us wants to join the collective.”

  “Then why did you just trash your reinforcements down there?” Driscoll said.

  “Reinforcements?” Roberta said with a harsh laugh. “We have no allies but ourselves. Do you know how many groups of marines and prisoners I’ve seen come to this planet?”

  “How many?” I asked coolly.

  “Six,” she said. “And every time it’s the same. ‘Help us integrate these colonists and then we’ll take you off planet, Roberta.’ But they never do. First few times they said it was against orders. The last three times they haven’t even had a working ship to leave from here. It’s just crash after crash. Death after death. They never learn.”

  “Seems a bit wasteful,” I said mildly. The starship we came in would have set the Empire back by a few billion credits. We don’t tend to lose those easily. Certainly we wouldn’t keep sending them into a black hole, and it sounded like Baldric was a black hole.