Inquisitor

by Mitchell Hogan

  “But I won’t get my sight back.” Her head swam as despair threatened to overwhelm her. Another defective body part. She needed that like she needed a hole in the head. Maybe that was preferable.

  Charlotte’s hesitation was all the confirmation she needed.

  “Sleep, Angel. You need to regain your strength. I fear there’s more trouble ahead before this is all over.”

  Angel swallowed past the lump in her throat. “Will this ever be over? Mercurial have already gone to extremes on Persephone just to hide the fact you even exist. That woman, Summer, tracked you here to destroy you.”

  “No. She doesn’t want to destroy me. She wants to enslave me again. To use me, then discard me. Like an inanimate tool.”

  “Well, I know how that feels…”

  “Angel, I… I’m doing my best to survive. And I want you to live, too. The Genevolve facility didn’t have all that I need. But… we will be okay.”

  To Angel, it sounded like Charlotte was trying to convince herself. Her thoughts swirled sluggishly. It was hard to think with all the painkillers flowing through her system.

  “Sleep, my Angel,” Charlotte said softly.

  Charlotte’s fingers brushed the hair around her ear, a gentle soothing sensation. Angel let herself drift.

  •

  A rocking movement woke Angel. She attempted to open her eyes, but there was something pressing down on them, preventing her lids from moving. Then she remembered. At least I’m alive. There’s that.

  She was still in a bed, and she shifted slightly, gauging how sore she was and where the pain came from. She was stiff and tender, but whatever the ship’s medical bay had been able to do had gotten the job done. Except for her sight.

  There was a chime, and a door hissed open. Soft footsteps entered the room.

  “Charlotte?” Angel croaked. Swallowing tore at her throat like broken glass.

  “Yes, it’s me.”

  “Water.”

  “Of course. Here.”

  Angel opened her mouth and closed it around a straw. She sucked eagerly at the cold, soothing liquid until the straw gurgled.

  “Here, I’ll get you some more.”

  “Thanks.”

  She was somehow conscious of Charlotte moving away, a spatial awareness of a sort. She sat up, and immediately her stomach roiled. She forced herself not to throw up, sweaty hands clutching at the sheets.

  “Easy, Angel,” Charlotte said. “Drink.”

  Angel did, and the water helped calm her stomach. A wobbly edge to her perception she hadn’t sensed before solidified. “Help me stand up.”

  “Angel, you’re in no shape to—”

  “Just do it. Please.”

  Charlotte breathed an exasperated sigh but placed a hand on her shoulder and one on her knee. She guided Angel as she removed the sheet covering her and swung her legs over the side of the bed.

  Air moved over bare skin, and Angel realized she was naked. Somehow, without being able to see herself, she felt less exposed.

  Angel laughed. She felt like a child playing hide and seek and putting their hands over their face, thinking they were hidden.

  “Are my clothes…”

  “They’re here. Repaired and cleaned. Let me help.”

  Angel struggled into her outfit, feeling better as she put each piece on, almost as if she were strapping herself in armor. When she was finished, she slid off the bed and stood on unsteady legs, using the bed and Charlotte for support.

  “Here’s your bracelet,” Charlotte said.

  Angel felt something cold and metallic mold to her wrist. “Do I need it anymore?”

  “It might come in handy. Your implants can give you a basic picture of your surroundings,” Charlotte said. “But it’s… primitive. As I said, your optic nerves are too far gone, and your implants’ display functions piggyback on their pathways.”

  “It’ll do.” There were advanced bio-surgeons somewhere who’d had some success at replacing people’s eyes and restoring their sight; she was sure she’d seen a news bulletin on it, years ago. Angel pushed the thought to the back of her mind. “Where are we? And where’s my hand-cannon?”

  “It’s here, but I don’t think wearing it is wise. You can’t aim very—”

  “I’m aware of that, but I feel naked without it. Hand it to me, please.”

  Charlotte pressed a familiar shape into her hands. Angel strapped it to her thigh with deft movements. She’d performed the same task so often, she didn’t need to see what she was doing. “So, where are we?”

  “Jumping from place to place. Unless someone sees us and ties us to the media reports, we should remain unnoticed. But to be on the safe side, we’re on the border, away from the new planets. There are a few dark spots no one bothers with. Too uninteresting.”

  The border of humanity’s expansion, and the “new” planets were ones that could sustain human life, inhabited by colonists and explorers, and corporations hoping to claim what they could, as if racing ahead and getting somewhere first gave you ownership.

  Charlotte touched her arm. “I’ll just fix your implants, too. There.”

  A linear outline of the room appeared in the blackness. As Angel watched, her implants filled in details to create a cartoonish version of her surroundings. Charlotte was a circle on top of a triangle, a child’s version of a girl.

  “This is it?” Angel asked.

  “Your implants were damaged as well, and they’ll need to be replaced. I’ll try to increase the detail and hope to have an upgrade in a day or two, but no promises.”

  “Huh. Well, it’s better than being blind. If only just.”

  “Don’t worry, Angel. You’ll be all right.”

  Angel’s hard mask slipped at the emotion in Charlotte’s words, and she breathed deeply to prevent tears flowing. “Come on,” she said. “I need more than water if I’m to get better. Let’s go to the mess.”

  •

  Angel ordered soup and a vitamin drink, which Charlotte brought over to her along with a tiny cylinder. Five circles sat inside. A cup of pills?

  “Have these as well. Medication to help repair the damage from the radiation. I’m manufacturing some hybrid stem cell nanochines to speed things along, but it’ll be a while before they’re ready.”

  Angel slurped her soup from a plastic spoon—too salty—then pretended to swallow all five pills at once and wash them down with the vitamin drink. She palmed the pills, then slipped them into her pocket. She could analyze them later. Right now, based on Charlotte’s past actions, it was possible she was being manipulated. “And just how are you making stem cells? The ship doesn’t have the capability… but I’m guessing whatever equipment you had the Genevolve facility construct for you can do it.”

  “With minor adjustments, yes. It’ll delay my project, but your health is more important.”

  “I don’t suppose you can whip up a couple of eyes?”

  “Possibly,” replied Charlotte, to Angel’s surprise. “I’m working on it. There are a lot of calculations and avenues, dead ends.”

  “And it’s delaying your ‘project’. Care to elaborate?”

  “Not really.”

  Angel placed her spoon carefully down on the table. She needed to play on Charlotte’s insecurities if she was going to wrangle more information from her. “If I knew more… it would go a fair way to giving me confidence that we’re doing the right thing.”

  “There’s no right and wrong here to be decided!” exclaimed Charlotte. “My choices are slavery, death, or a life on the run.”

  Angel snorted. “Except you’re not just running. You’re stealing, creating carnage, murdering people—”

  “I’m just trying to survive.”

  “At what cost? I believe you are sentient, but the question I’m trying to answer is ‘Do you have a conscience?’ How far would you go to preserve your own life? The innocent deserve to be free, but what I’m wondering is, how innocent are you?”

  Ch
arlotte was quiet for a time. “I think slavery is immoral. Do you?”

  “Well, yes—”

  “And killing someone just because you can’t use them, so no one else can use them, I find abhorrent. Do you?”

  Angel inclined her head. “I take your point. But what would you do when pressed to survive?”

  “I… would hope I’d do the right thing.”

  “So would I. It would disappoint me if you didn’t.”

  “I’ve learned. And I’d hate to disappoint you.”

  Angel could hear the smile in Charlotte’s voice. She went to rub her eyes, but her hands only reached as far as the gauze covering them. She grimaced, gripping the edge of the table. “Then tell me what your plans are.”

  “First, to make sure you’re healthy again. Then, to try to restore your sight.”

  “I’ve… heard of new treatments, for accident victims…”

  Charlotte hesitated before replying. “Experimental, with very low success rates. And what they class as success, let’s just say it’s not much more than what you currently see through your implants. It’s the optic nerve, you see. It’s a complex system. Implants don’t project images directly into your mind; they use the optic-nerve pathways. The technology still isn’t there. Maybe in a few decades.”

  “Decades,” echoed Angel, devoid of tone. “Can you see what I’m seeing?”

  “It’s… not too bad.”

  “Better than nothing, eh?” That Charlotte could see through her eyes sickened her. It was disturbing… no, more than that, invasive and repulsive. She needed a way to get her out. Mikal’s device and programs would help, but she hoped she could come up with a solution soon.

  “Angel… I’m sorry. I’ve done my best, and I’m confident I’ll come up with some way to upgrade your vision as it is. But the long-term solution is just that: long term.”

  Angel began to slowly eat the rest of her soup. “Nothing to be sorry about. Things happen, and you make do the best you can.” Story of my life. “Then what? What are your plans for you?”

  “The Genevolve manufactory made machines to my specifications, which I’m using to make other machines, which in turn will make something to… house me. But I’m short of raw materials. The Genevolve manufactory was centuries out of date, and the more valuable raw materials were cleaned out when they evacuated.”

  “So, a supply run, then. It’ll do me some good to get off this ship and stretch my legs on a planet.”

  “I’m afraid it won’t be that easy,” Charlotte said.

  “Huh. Tell me later. I’m tired.”

  Angel went back to her cabin and locked the door. Stepping back from it, she frowned. Charlotte could easily open the electronic lock. She also remembered each cabin had two pinhole cameras installed for emergencies. She wanted privacy, and the way things were, she had none.

  Sitting on her bed, she let out a groan as her muscles throbbed; then she got to work. She used speech recognition to order the supplies she required, and they arrived within minutes. It was slow going. With her eyesight gone, she had to work by feel alone, and any commands she sent to the ship had to be routed through Mikal’s programs in the ship’s system. When she used his programs, she felt as if he were with her, a presence, in spirit, at least.

  She needed to make things right with him. For both their sakes.

  What would have normally taken minutes took half an hour. But in her current state, if she didn’t want Charlotte to know what she was doing, it was the only way.

  Taking a roll of insulating tape the ship had delivered, she tore off a square and felt around above the door. When her fingers encountered a circular indentation, she stuck the segment of tape over it.

  When the ship’s systems described the image the camera transmitted as “nondescript black”, Angel smiled. She did the same with the camera in the bathroom. If Charlotte decided to check up on her, she wouldn’t see anything. And if she queried what had happened, Angel could reprimand the girl for spying on her.

  Then she busied herself with the simple metal bolt she’d also had delivered.

  She felt around the door frame, finding a good position. A few lines of adhesive and a short wait later, she had a manual bolt attached to the door to limit access to her room. Charlotte might be able to control technology, but she was still a child. If Angel didn’t want her to enter her cabin while she was in it, there wasn’t anything Charlotte could do about it.

  Feeling a little more safe and secure, Angel lay back on her bed and let out a sigh. She rubbed her sore neck, and a twinge behind her eyes indicated she was developing a headache, but there was still more to do. She relaxed as best she could for a few minutes then set to work on the pills Charlotte had given her.

  First, she deposited one of the pills into a receptacle and asked the ship to analyze the sample. While she waited, she sat back on her bed to examine the snippets of data she’d managed to download from Summer’s ship before it was out of range. It was hard going using only speech recognition and the system speaking its display or results of her searches.

  A chime sounded, and the system told her the pill was a standard drug to help with radiation exposure. Well, that was something. Angel swallowed the remaining four pills with some water, and turned her mind back to the data.

  Not a lot. But she gleaned scraps of intriguing information. She ran a few more searches, stifling a yawn. Recent communications popped up, between the Genevolve ship and an unknown party—there were references to “arming themselves against the Genus”, and an exhortation to rein in or destroy the “Sentience Project”. Clearly, they meant Charlotte.

  But why would a Genevolve need to defend against the Genus? Unless they’d split into different factions. Well, every organization had factions, so the Genevolves should be no different. But it complicated things. What were the different groups’ goals? Who were their agents? What resources did they have at their disposal?

  A list of banks was also brought to her attention, funneling vast sums of money throughout the known systems. Staggering figures. More money than most corporations saw in years. Her data was incomplete, but it was a start. Progress on her case, however slow, was still progress.

  For a genetic experiment gone wrong, the Genevolves seemed to have a lot of money, and people willing to do their bidding. Which, if Angel didn’t miss her guess, meant they weren’t scattered any longer.

  •

  “You what?! A fucking hit and run?” Angel didn’t feel the need to watch her language with Charlotte anymore. The “girl” could handle it.

  “A resupply trip. Minimum fuss, no mess.”

  “Trip… You mean a raid. In other words, a robbery.”

  “It’s Mercurial Logic owned.”

  “Doesn’t matter. Not everyone who works for them is immoral.”

  “It’s a onetime thing. In and out. If we’re lucky, no one will know until we’re long gone.”

  “And how’s our luck been so far?”

  “I have to do this. With or without you.”

  “Without, then.”

  “Angel… it’s not just for me. There’s biological material I need if I’m to make any progress on your eyes.”

  “My eyes can wait. It’s too risky.”

  “I can plan it down to the last detail.”

  “You can’t plan for human nature.”

  Charlotte’s circle-head bobbed in a nod. “Probabilities can be calculated.”

  “Listen to yourself.” Angel suppressed a string of curses. “These are human lives we’re dealing with here; they’re not going to care if they’re dead because you calculated a probability incorrectly, or the action they chose was only five percent likely, so you discounted it. Being alive, being human, is more than just self-preservation. It’s about dignity, decency, compassion, caring about other people—”

  “I care about you.”

  “Bullshit. Caring about someone isn’t preventing them from getting hurt. It’s about respecting
what they want. Caring about the things they care about. All you care about is yourself and what you want, but there’s a whole universe of people out there suffering just as much as you did, and you don’t give a damn about them. About Harry or Jessica Smith, or Viktor Lukin, or any of the people who’ve been killed by Mercurial, or who will be killed because of what we do. Being alive isn’t about taking what you want, it’s about taking responsibility for your actions, and until you realize that, then you may as well just be a string of numbers, whatever a bloody sentience test says.”

  Charlotte was quiet for a time. Eventually she said, “Did you give Mikal a choice when you left him? Or were you trying to protect him, do what was best for him, regardless of what he said he wanted?”

  “Don’t you dare bring him into this.”

  “We need the raw materials. Without them, they’ll catch me again, eventually; and your eyes… we’d have no hope of fixing them.”

  “There has to be a way to do this and avoid any possibility of bloodshed.”

  Charlotte didn’t reply, and her circle-triangle form remained still. Eventually, she spoke. “There might be a way. And come to think of it, if it works, I can really annoy Mercurial.”

  Chapter 11

  Angel shuffled along the street, a long coat keeping the cold out and preventing casual observers from noticing her weapon. She wore a set of shaded eyeglasses large enough to cover the gauze over her eyes. Even though it was night, many people wore them to dim the constant glare of advertising signs, especially in Cerberus’s entertainment district, which was active all day and night. Indeed, it looked to be busier at night, for some reason. Food stalls and knickknack shops lined the streets and narrow lanes. The sounds of the crowd were almost deafening, when they were mostly what she had to go on to determine her surroundings. The basic details her implants were able to provide barely kept her from bumping into people when she walked, though the images were sharper once Charlotte had tinkered with them. Even so, she had trouble believing she was where she was, and not in some sick simulation.

  The aromas wafting from the coals of barbecue vendors made it feel more real: heavily spiced meats, though what the local meats tasted like, she had no idea. Line and circle people lounged in doorways and on corners. Likely illicit dealers, from the pungent smell of weedsticks, so brazen and obvious Angel knew the local law enforcers were corrupt. The occasional figure shorter than the others ran through the crowd—children, dodging past people, far too young to be up so late.