Criminal Core

by Nick Broad

  “They definitely seem like bad motherfuckers, though,” I said, looking down at my chest. My eyes widened with shock. There was blood - a lot of blood. So much of it that if I was still a human being, I’d have passed out from the shock.

  “I was wondering when you’d notice that,” Meiko said wearily.

  I put two fingers against one of the larger wounds. The blood had already dried, and it was thicker and darker than the stuff I was used to from cuts.

  “Do I need to worry about this?” I asked mutely.

  “You should be fine, Master,” Ruby said with a faint smile. “Your wounds are already healing. As long as you don’t get into any more fights for a bit, your body will take care of itself. You’ll definitely be hungry, though - so I’ll have to make you a big meal when we get back to Alpha Spire.”

  Meiko was more blunt. “If you weren’t an android,” she said, “you’d be dead.”

  I swallowed hard. “Good to know.”

  A smile spread across Meiko’s face. “It took both of us to bring her down,” she said, her voice thick. “Xenian Queens absolutely are...how did you put it? Bad motherfuckers?”

  “Yeah,” I said, giving the cocoon an uneasy glance. “Definitely. How the hell did a thing like that get onto this station, Meiko? You said it yourself - they’re not from around here.”

  Meiko sighed. “The whole ‘committing crimes’ part, I can see. But being anywhere within fifty light-years of the Oubliette? It doesn’t make any sense. I can only guess that she has quite a story to tell, if we can get it out of her.”

  “Until a few minutes ago, I didn’t even realize we could communicate,” I grumbled. “It told me...She told me, I guess...that I ‘bested’ her. Then, right before she passed out, that she ‘accepts my service’. Any clue what she’s talking about?”

  Meiko’s lips disappeared. She looked like she was trying not to laugh.

  “I might,” she admitted. “Xenian fertility rituals resemble open combat quite a bit more than most other species do.”

  The wheels spun in my head.

  “Fertility...are you saying she considered that fight a date!?”

  “Something like that,” Meiko said, the corner of her mouth turned up in a smirk. She rose from the cot, wincing at the pain in her side, and shrugged off Ruby’s offer of help. “If you really want to know, we should go talk to her. She’s harmless right now - she will be for some time. She’s weakened, and we might be able to get some information out of her.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” I said. I rose to my feet along with Meiko, letting her rest most of her weight on my shoulder. “Are you sure you’re going to be okay?”

  “I’m not the one covered in blood,” Meiko said with a little chuckle. “I was more worried about the other thing, Noah. Thank you for your help back there.”

  I didn’t bother to ask what other thing. I knew. My attacking the creature kept whatever it was that lived inside of Meiko from coming out, and she was grateful that it hadn’t. So was I.

  “Any time,” I said, putting an arm around her side. “And any time you want to explain that to me, I’m more than happy to listen.”

  “Soon,” she agreed, nodding. “But first...”

  We had reached the woman. Her entire body was covered in the hard, glossy chitin, except for a patch over her face. It was like she was wrapped up in some kind of alien sleeping bag. I found the whole effect both creepy and kind of cool.

  “Hey,” I growled, raising my voice. “Wake up.”

  For a moment, I didn’t think anything was going to happen. The creature was so still it was like she was dead. Then one of her red eyes opened a crack, and she yawned.

  “You can impregnate me when I wake, servant,” she muttered, rolling over inside of her shell. “I am sleeping. Leave me.”

  I felt a hot blush rise to my cheeks. Without looking, I knew both Ruby and Meiko were holding back laughter.

  “I guess that confirms the whole fertility ritual thing,” I said with a shrug. “Hey, don’t go back to sleep! I’m not done talking to you!”

  Her face turned towards mine again, one of her eyebrows cocked slightly as if she couldn’t believe my audacity.

  “What?” she hissed.

  I glared down at her. “What’s your name?” I asked sternly.

  She snorted, apparently deciding she liked how eager I was to offend her. “I am Queen Bathory,” she said in a tired yet sultry voice. “Now let me rest, servant. I will inform you when I am ready for mating.”

  I just bet you will, I thought, remembering her claws. But I wasn’t finished with her yet.

  “Not so fast,” I said, leaning over her. Her chitin hood had started to close, and I wanted to be there to pull it back if she tried anything. “This black shit - you control all of it, right?”

  She narrowed her eyes. “My hive? Yes, of course, human.”

  I pointed at the reactor. “I want it gone. Pull all of it away from the reactor, right now. I want it clean.”

  She smirked up at me. “And if I don’t?”

  I thought about it and shrugged. “Then I’ll chuck you out the nearest airlock as soon as you pass out,” I said flatly.

  Her eyes widened with shock. “You wouldn’t,” she whispered coquettishly.

  My face didn’t change.

  Bathory sighed. “Very well,” she said, gesturing with her chin at the reactor. “But you will have to mate with me twice as much to make up for this, human.”

  “Oh, I’m sure I will,” I said, letting all the frustrations building in me out. “Trust me, you’ve never seen mating like mine, Bathory. You’re gonna get fucked so hard the Xenians won’t even recognize you when I’m done...”

  The chitin around the reactor melted away. All of it. It rolled across the floor, reaching Bathory’s cocoon and attaching itself to her. I was impressed. Cleaning all the nooks and crannies of the reactor would have been the work of several days, if not weeks - Bathory had done it in seconds.

  Maybe she’d be good for something after all.

  “You are funny,” she said with another one of those yawns.

  “Yeah,” I said, shaking my head. “I’m a real funny guy. Now get some rest, B. We’ll talk about all this when you’re recovered...”

  Just as her eyes started to close, I leaned all the way down. Our faces were inches apart. I glared straight into those red, glowing eyes like I was determined to stare down the sun itself.

  “And if you attack my friends again,” I hissed, quietly enough that only the two of us could hear, “I really will put you out the fucking airlock. Don’t test me, bitch.”

  Whatever wry comeback she might have had was cutoff when she dropped off to sleep. Her muscles relaxed, the chitinous hood working its way up to her chin.

  As I watched, completely in disbelief, the alien queen who’d just tried to kill us all started to snore.

  It was actually kind of cute.

  Seventeen: Gamma Reactor

  There were a million questions I wanted to ask Bathory - but she was out like a light. With the alien queen in a state of hibernation and Meiko’s assurances that she would be for some time, we decided to start working on the Gamma reactor.

  “I still think we should go back home,” Ruby said, her head and upper body buried in an access panel. “Master is bleeding. Even if he claims to be alright, we don’t know how much punishment his android body can take. He could pass out on us any minute!”

  “Don’t worry so much,” I said with a grin. “But just in case I do bleed out, make sure you drag my corpse back to Shay, alright?”

  I turned back to the console and continued working. Honestly, I didn’t think I was in any real danger anymore - I felt better and better with each passing minute. My android body was self-repairing, capable of healing damage that would have had the normal human Noah in traction back on Earth.

  Ruby giggled and climbed back into the access port. Her big ass swayed back and forth as she worked, humming a j
aunty tune. The clearest sign that I was back in business was that I couldn’t stop staring at it. I wasn’t feeling quite up to acting on any of those urges just yet, but it wouldn’t be long now.

  With a smile, Ruby turned around, noticing me checking her out. She wiggled her hips and winked, then went back to work.

  Oh yeah, I thought, grinning. Not long at all...

  Thinking about Ruby made me remember that the three of us weren’t alone down here. While the console continued to buzz, rebooting, my gaze traveled to the small black cocoon sitting next to the entrance of one of the cells. Bathory was still asleep - in a state of hibernation so deep it was like suspended animation. I remembered the blank room I’d woken up in when Shay reactivated my Core and shivered at the thought.

  “Hope she’s having pleasant dreams,” I said, watching the black shell around Bathory rise and fall gently.

  Meiko stopped mid-twist, a wrench held in both hands. “I’m not sure Xenian Queens dream,” she said, cocking her head to the side. “We could ask her when she wakes up, but I doubt she’d be terribly forthcoming.”

  “I didn’t have any dreams,” I said, looking down at my hand. Something about that sent a chill down my spine. “I’ve been so busy ever since Shay woke me up, I haven’t had time to think about it. I was dead. Dead for, like, fifteen hundred years.”

  My hand started to tremble. Then, all of a sudden, Ruby’s own clenched around it.

  “It’s okay, Master,” Ruby whispered, snuggling herself against me. She smelled like fairy dust and motor oil. “There’s nothing to worry about. We’ll help you. We’re your crew now.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  Meiko was staring at me strangely. “You really were never woken up? Not once before this?”

  “Huh? No.” The console was finished rebooting - a command line blinked on the screen, awaiting my input. “I didn’t even know that was a thing.”

  A look of shock crossed Meiko’s face. “That’s...unprecedented. Cores are usually slotted in and out of rotation specifically to prevent that kind of future shock. People like you normally only have to adjust to a few decades of time loss. Not centuries.”

  My lips twisted. “I’m one of the first. I go all the way back to Dr. Pavlichenko.”

  Meiko and Ruby shared a look. Not a very pleasant one.

  “What? What am I missing?”

  “There might be,” Meiko admitted, “a reason why you’ve never been rebirthed before, Noah. Cores from that era - your era - are...well, volatile.”

  “Shay told me that much.” I stood away from the console, squaring my shoulders. “Apparently not long after I died, things got really bad on Earth. Right?”

  I was more than a little curious about the specifics, but Meiko wasn’t about to provide them to me. Or she didn’t know them. I’d never learned that much history in school - maybe the future hadn’t changed much in that regard.

  “Pretty much everybody who got their brain scanned during those years had them thrown away,” Meiko said with way more reticence than I would’ve expected. “For safety’s sake, you understand. Nobody wants a bunch of psychopathic AI dictators running the world - wiping out planets, supplanting governments, destroying the galactic status quo.”

  “I can see the sense in that,” I admitted with a shrug. “But I’m not like that.”

  “But you were lumped in with them,” Meiko said, her eyes flashing. “Clerical error, really. But if I’m right, Noah...”

  Both hers and Ruby’s lips had compressed down to nothing. There was something they weren’t telling me, and from the way they were dancing around it, it was going to hurt.

  “Look, I’m a big guy,” I said, holding up my hands. “I can handle it. Whatever it is. I’ve already made every person from Ruby’s planet into my mortal enemy. How much worse can this be?”

  Meiko swallowed, looking more shaken than I’ve ever seen her. “If you’re on the Forbidden List, Noah - very. Very bad.”

  Something about the term ‘Forbidden List’ sent a chill through me. I thought of black Lovecraftian crypts, the kind where things that weren’t meant to be were sealed away. The kind every good horror story sets up before sending some overconfident adventurers to their doom.

  “Okay,” I said. “What’s the Forbidden List?”

  “The people who don’t get to live again,” Meiko said flatly. “Under any circumstances. The truly dangerous, the people who would completely upend galactic society as we know it.”

  I chuckled, which seemed to horrify both of them. “The bad guys,” I said, shaking my head. “Again, yeah - that makes sense. But I’m not a bad guy. Both of you know that. Besides, who even has access to this ‘Forbidden List’ anyway?”

  “Not many people,” Meiko admitted. “A fraction of a fraction, in galactic terms. Government offices, for categorization purposes. Libraries. Medical establishments where a complete record of the Pavlichenko device’s prior use is necessary. And...”

  “And what?” I asked, already knowing the answer. Dreading it, in fact.

  “Prisons.” Meiko nearly spat the word out. “Prisons have a copy of every connectome on the Forbidden List. They wouldn’t be able to identify potential reawoken Forbidden criminals if they didn’t.”

  The force of it hit me like a blow. All of a sudden, things made sense - too much sense. A sick kind of certainty settled in my gut, making the room swim.

  “What you’re telling me,” I said, feeling nauseous, “is my boss - our boss, the warden of this prison - is one of the only beings in the galaxy with access to this list of crazy people.”

  “We don’t know anything,” Ruby said, rising to her feet. A look of fierce determination blazed in her eyes. “We don’t know if Shay has the Forbidden List, or if she destroyed it the way she did the Beta reactor. She might have deleted it to make more room for herself.”

  “Even if she does have it,” Meiko said, seizing the thread, “there’s no guarantee you were reawakened from the Forbidden List, Noah. We’d have to hear that directly from Shay herself.”

  I took a step backwards. “Not that you’d believe her, whatever she said. Not that I’d believe her, to tell you the truth.”

  “It would explain your lack of knowledge,” Meiko said. “To be perfectly honest with you, Noah, I thought you were faking to an extent when we first met in the Oubliette. Trying to convince me you were less than you are, to make yourself more trustworthy. It took some time to realize you weren’t.”

  “You thought I was rope-a-doping you,” I said dumbly. My lips felt numb. “Did you think that when you fucked me, too, Meiko?”

  To her credit, Meiko didn’t look away. “No,” she said simply. “I understood by then.”

  I looked from one of them to the other, suddenly weary. “I need a break,” I said, sitting down.

  With another shared glance, the two did the same. The cold steel of the wall felt good against my back - a nice contrast to the fire blazing inside of me. What did all of this mean? If there really was some ‘forbidden list’ of Cores never intended to be brought back to life, why was I on it? I’d never hurt anybody - I was an ordinary guy. A boring-ass college student who’s only mistake was signing up for the wrong clinical trial. There was no reason to lump me in with criminals, thieves and psychopaths.

  Or was there?

  I knew so little about the Pavlichenko process. And, now that I had time to think it over, very little about myself. I took it for granted that I was the Noah I’d always known. For me, there’d been no time at all between sitting down in Dr. Pavlichenko’s chair and awakening on the Oubliette. I was still the same person - but what if I wasn’t?

  What if that chair hadn’t fried me to a crisp the way I always assumed? What if there were very good reasons for me to be on some list of all-time bad guys?

  Again I wished I knew the specifics of what went down on Old Earth. I wouldn’t know how I’d have handled it, but at least I’d have had a better picture. I might’ve bee
n able to reason what Shay would have wanted with an Old Earth refugee’s brain scan.

  Only, I realized with a start, I did.

  “She wants a bad boy,” I muttered, laughing. “A Daddy to dominate her. Who better than someone on the list of history’s greatest monsters?”

  Meiko cocked her head to the side. “A what?”

  “Nothing,” I said, shaking my head. “Pillow talk between Shay and me. I think I understand everything now, Meiko. Well, besides one thing.”

  She cocked an eyebrow. “You’re taking this very well,” she said. Was that a note of suspicion in her voice?

  “What’s the thing?” Ruby asked, her wings flapping.

  I looked over at her and smiled. “Whether there was a mix-up or not,” I said. “I’m pretty sure I know why Shay picked me out of everyone to make her right-hand guy now. I’m just wondering if she was right. Am I some kind of evil badass, or just an ordinary guy who was in the wrong place at the wrong time?”

  “You seem pretty badass to me, Master,” Ruby said with a grin.

  I matched it with one of my own. “I knew you’d say that.”

  Meiko’s eyes narrowed a fraction as she watched me. I could practically see the gears working inside of her head. “I suppose we’ll find out,” she finally said with a shrug. “We’ve gone too far to come back now - besides, you haven’t done anything to violate my trust, Noah. Even if you are some sort of monster, it’s clear you don’t remember any of it.”

  I looked at the floor, a note of unease cutting through my grin. “Do people like me remember? Cores, I mean.”

  “It’s not in the literature,” Meiko said, rising to her feet. “Now we really do need to get back to work on the reactor, Sir. Unless you want that Xenian Queen to wake up and find us all still here. I’ve heard they’re hungry when they emerge from hibernation.”

  That sounded like a good idea. “Hungry for what, though?” I asked, trudging back to the console. “Bathory was pretty forward about her plans for me. They involve mating, not feeding.”