by J. J. Green
“Just a small sample, and you’re done,” Sparks replied into the mic. “I appreciate it, Rogers.”
The man muttered to himself as he went closer. Sparks watched the Paths carefully. They were due to have one of their fading spells. Right on time, the creatures became slightly transparent. No change there. As usual, they didn’t move, despite their obvious fear of the human getting closer to them, holding something metal and sharp.
Sparks felt a tiny bit sorry for the aliens. If he’d known how to administer an anesthetic, he would have. But it couldn’t be helped. The sooner he found some useful information about the Paths to convey to Polestar, the better. He hoped that then he would be relieved of the assignment. It was well past time for the project to be handed over to real scientists.
“About to take a sample,” said Rogers. His voice shook slightly. “I can tell you, it’s certainly making me question my choice of profession, if this is how all my subjects feel.”
“It’ll be over in a moment,” Sparks said in what he hoped was a reassuring tone.
The scalpel sliced into the flesh of a Path, and at the same moment, Rogers yelled. His arm began to shake as if he were fighting for control of it. He grunted as he lifted his hand and forced it down again to take a section of flesh.
His arms wobbling dangerously, Rogers transferred the tiny section to a glass microscope slide in his left hand. He tried to turn, but his legs also began to wobble. In a moment, he’d lost control of them, and he fell, dropping the slide and scalpel as he went down.
Sparks thumped an alarm on his interface and raced to the man’s aid. He grabbed a hazard suit from the wall, hastily donned it, and sealed the flaps. He pulled open the door to the Paths’ chamber and ran over to the prone Rogers. The man had fallen on the scalpel. It had pierced his suit and cut his thigh. Blood dripped from the wound, but it didn’t look serious.
Rogers was in danger of contamination from exposure to the air of the room, which could contain anything the Paths might excrete as a defense mechanism. Sparks grabbed the man under his arms and began pulling him to the door. A couple of colleagues had turned up in response to the alarm. One of them lifted Rogers’ legs, and they carried him out of the room between them.
Without waiting to remove Rogers’ or their own hazard suits, they carried the affected man toward the station’s medical center. Medics met them halfway with a gurney. They were also suited up.
Sparks and his colleague lifted Rogers onto the gurney, and one of the medics also leapt aboard and began cutting open the hazard suit. The other grabbed the bar and pushed the gurney, running with it down the corridor. Sparks also ran to keep up, watching as Rogers was cut free of his suit.
He couldn’t understand what was wrong with him. The cut from the scalpel hadn’t looked too bad, and any emotional effects from contact with the Paths should have worn off by then. Yet Rogers was staring unblinking and apparently unseeing at the ceiling as he was rushed along. His mouth worked wordlessly, though Sparks could hear a faint droning hum or moan escaping his lips.
Chapter Eight
Jas reached up to her head as she woke. It hurt so much she was almost surprised to find it wasn’t locked in a vise. She squinted against sunlight as she opened her eyes and registered that she was lying somewhere hard, cold, and bare. She tried to sit up. At the second attempt, she managed it and also closed her mouth, which had been open. Her gums and lips were painfully dry.
Krat. Krat. Krat. That misborn Erielle had drugged their food and taken the antidote herself before the drug had taken effect. She gasped as pain from her wrist registered. She looked down. It was covered in dried blood. Where her credchip had once been was now a raw gash. The impact of this discovery was beyond cursing to express. She could only stare at the wound for several moments as her heart and stomach plummeted to her feet.
She was sitting on a sidewalk, she realized. She turned to find her friends. All three were behind her in various states of consciousness. Makey was sitting up like her and staring in disbelief at his bloody wrist. Sayen was still out, and Carl was just opening his eyes.
Erielle and her crew had dumped them in an anonymous, empty street. Jas’ bag was gone. Aside from the wounds they in their wrists, the loss of their credchips didn’t matter a lot. They couldn’t use them without giving away their location, and it was only creds that they’d lost, not something more serious. But to have the chip physically removed was violating to a degree Jas had never experienced.
“What’s happened?” Makey asked. “Did they cut that thing out of me?”
“Yeah, and me too,” Jas replied. “All of us. The food was drugged.”
“Krat,” Carl mumbled.
Sayen awoke and gasped at the sight of her wrist.
“I only had mine put in a few days ago,” Makey said. “Does that mean all our money’s gone?”
“Bloody deros,” said Carl as he sat up and checked out his wrist. “Yeah, they’ve got the lot.”
“And everything we had to sell,” Jas added.
“I guess we’re lucky they didn’t cut off our hands or kill us, like Erielle was saying,” said Sayen.
“Guess so,” said Jas, wondering why the woman hadn’t done just that. She looked up at the sky between the roofs of the surrounding apartment blocks. “I reckon we’ve been out a couple of hours. Plenty of time for them to empty all our bank accounts. They won’t have to worry about us reporting the crime now.”
She couldn’t believe what an idiot she’d been. Why had she gone into that woman’s place? Why had she let the others eat the food and eaten it herself? How could she have been so stupid?
“What are we going to do now?” asked Makey.
Jas rubbed her face with her hands. The movement broke open her wrist injury, and a line of fresh blood snaked down her arm. She stood and pulled her shirt sleeve down over her wrist wound. “At least they left us our clothes.”
“Erielle was right,” said Sayen. “I do—or did—have millions of creds in my account. They could’ve given me some shoes at least.”
This brought a subdued chuckle from the others. Carl held out his uninjured hand for Jas to help him to his feet. Jas gripped it tightly and pulled. Makey and Sayen also stood up.
“Well, my plans haven’t come to much,” said Jas. “What do you guys think we should do? I’m kratted if I know.”
“We’ll have to deal with the Shadows soon,” Carl said. “We can’t survive like this for long.”
“Yeah, we haven’t yet discussed just what we’re going to do about them,” said Sayen.
“It’s hard to know what to do,” said Jas. “Sayen, I never asked you what you found out about them when you were at the Security Headquarters.”
“I told Carl while we were on the shuttle. The Government knows about them, but they’ve put a media ban on any mention of them. To avoid mass panic was the reason they gave, but I found a memorandum saying it was important to show the Transgalactic Council that they had the situation under control. The Council have been banning traffic to and from planets where the Shadows are known to be established. If I recall correctly, the Government didn’t want to jeopardize Earth’s trade agreements with other galactic nations.”
“Misborns,” Jas said.
“Oh, and those tests on Earth and Dawn that you two took?” Sayen said to Jas and Carl. “Fake. Or mostly fake. There’s only one test that actually works. It’s a scanner, and it detects a glow around Shadows that no other species has. All the other tests are only to confuse the Shadows about what we’re using to identify them.”
“Really?” Carl said. “You didn’t tell me that. I saw the same thing in the Shadow base. They were surrounded by a glow. Did you see it, Jas?”
“No. I didn’t get a chance to notice much before one of them ran into me and got my goggles off as we struggled. What did you see?”
“It was just like Sayen says. A kind of aura. I wondered if it was an effect of the invisibility spray.”
> “Well, that might be useful information,” said Sayen. “We can detect them if we have the right scanner. Then they can’t hide by disguising themselves as our friends and relations.”
“I wish I’d hidden that invisibility spray,” said Jas, “instead of trying to sell it. I wonder if it was because you were looking through the spray on your goggles, Carl, or if the stuff altered your brain chemistry.”
“No point in speculating right now,” Sayen said. “What are we going to do about the Shadows? We can’t find and destroy them all by ourselves, and I don’t know who to tell about them. Who can we trust? It was a Shadow at the Global Government Security HQ who had me abducted, and I swear the Security Minister is a Shadow too. She was really creepy.”
“If Earth’s government is compromised,” Jas said, “it seems to me we need to go one step higher.”
“That’s the Transgalactic Council, right?” Makey asked.
“Yeah,” said Carl, “but how the hell we contact them, I don’t know.”
A hand clutched Jas’ arm. It was Sayen. Her eyes were wide and her mouth was open. Jas followed her gaze and looked down the street. A group of underworlders had appeared at the end of it, and they were heading in their direction. Had Erielle decided that leaving them alive had been a mistake? Had she sent her cronies to finish them off?
“Shouldn’t we run?” asked Makey.
“Not unless you want to be shot,” Carl replied.
The underworlders were aiming weapons at them. They wouldn’t stand a chance if they tried to escape, and they had nothing to defend themselves with. The only good news was that if Erielle had wanted them dead right away, the underworlders would have fired at them by then.
“You’re coming with us,” said one of them as soon as he was within speaking distance. They had no choice but to do as he said.
Chapter Nine
Erielle was a lot less friendly than she’d been earlier, in Makey’s opinion. Instead of inviting them up to her room with the comfortable cushions, she had them shown into a basement. He didn’t like the place. It was cold and damp and had no windows. His three friends also looked worried about what had happened, which didn’t make him feel any better.
There wasn’t even anywhere to sit down. All four of them stood waiting in silence, but they didn’t have to wait long before the underworld leader appeared.
Her shaved head and narrow eyes were even more intimidating the second time round. Makey wondered why she’d called them back after drugging them and stealing those things called credchips. The amount given to him as his refugees’ allowance had been so pitifully small, he wished she’d just asked him for it. It would have been a lot less painful than having the thing cut out of his wrist.
Erielle was standing with her arms folded across her chest. She pointed at him. “You,” she said, “here.” She lowered her hand to point at the ground next to her.
“No,” cried the other three.
“You wanna argue about it?” asked Erielle. “I’ve got ten people with guns out there.” She jerked a thumb toward the door. “You gonna fight me for him?”
“It’s okay,” Makey said. “I’ll go.”
He crossed the space and felt the pull of his friends’ gaze as they looked at him across the divide. Erielle folded her arms again. “The people who I sent to download your creds have disappeared. I want to know where they’ve gone, and what you’re going to do to help me get them back.”
“We don’t know where your friends are,” said Jas, “but we can make a good guess at who’s taken them.”
“Who would that be?” asked Erielle. “And let me make it clear: if I find out you’re lying, the kid here gets it.”
“Geez, woman,” Carl said, “why would we lie to you? The things that took your people would’ve taken us if we’d tried to use those chips.”
“Things? What things?” Erielle asked.
“Shadows,” Jas said, and she proceeded to tell the underworlder what had happened aboard the starship Galathea and on Dawn. Carl and Sayen offered more information as she spoke. When they told Erielle about the Shadows on Dawn, Makey noticed her glance at him.
After half an hour or longer of explaining, Jas finished with their intention to try to contact the Transgalactic Council in the hope that they could help.
Jas stopped speaking, and Erielle seemed at a loss for words for a while. “Is this true, kid?” she asked Makey. When he nodded, she said, “But you would agree with them, wouldn’t you?” She deliberated a little while longer before sighing and saying, “It’s so bizarre, I don’t think anyone could make it up. I guess I believe you.”
“So will you help us?” asked Jas.
“What do you mean?”
“We have to do something to stop the Shadows. You can help us get a message to the Transgalactic Council. We can’t do it by ourselves. You saw what happened as soon as someone tried to use the credchips that identified them as us. We can’t go to the Government because we don’t know who we can trust.”
Erielle snorted with laughter. “Me? Help you digifreaks? Your kind have been making our lives a misery for centuries. All we ever wanted to do was live the way we wanted—naturally. And what did you do? You ruined our Earth for us. You made us the lowest of the low. We have no respect, no voice, and no power. Naturals are shunned and ridiculed wherever they go.
“Help you? Forget it. You can all go to hell. These Shadows you’re so worried about won’t be interested in us underworlders. According to what you say, they prey on people in authority or who have something they want. We don’t have anything to offer them. Who knows? Maybe they’ll turn out to be better masters than our current ones.” She winked sardonically. “No, I think you’ve told me enough. I’ll do what I can to get my people back from these Shadows, though it sounds like there isn’t much hope. I should have known to steer clear of digifreaks. They only ever bring trouble.”
She turned to Makey. “You can stay with me. I made a mistake in letting you go with them. You belong here with us. You understand our beliefs, and as a son of a Dawner, I owe it to your parents to look after you.”
“I don’t want to stay here,” Makey said. “I want to go with my friends.”
“That’s a bad idea,” said Erielle. “If you go with them, you’ll die. No one survives outside digifreak society without help.”
“I don’t care. They’re still my friends, and they saved my life more than once. I trust them. I don’t trust you. Look what you did to me,” he exclaimed, lifting his arm and pulling down his sleeve. The wound was thick with dried blood.
Erielle looked down. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking. I was forgetting that you were one of us.”
“I’m not one of you,” exclaimed Makey. “This isn’t what the people of Dawn were about. I don’t know what you underworlders think, but this life doesn’t have anything to do with living naturally and caring for Earth Mother. I don’t believe in that stuff, but even I know that.”
“He’s got a point,” said Carl.
Erielle scowled at him. She turned to Makey. “After you’ve lived with us for a while, you’ll understand.”
“How many times do I have to tell you? I’m not living with you. And I’m not going to be lied to anymore. I’ve had enough of that. What are you going to do to make me stay? Are you planning on keeping me a prisoner here? Is that what being an underworlder’s about? Keeping kids locked up?”
Erielle bit her lip. “No, I won’t keep you prisoner. You’re right. That isn’t the underworlder way, unless—”
“Unless you aren’t underworlders, like my friends. It’s one rule for you and another for everyone else,” Makey interjected contemptuously. He was amazed to see the older woman redden slightly. He hadn’t been trying to embarrass her. He was only angry at the idea of being separated from his friends, and he’d said what he really thought.
“You’re wrong if you think the Shadows won’t come after you,” Jas said. “When we first encountered
them, they went after the highest in command, it’s true. But we had every reason to believe they would have gone for the entire crew eventually, and then they would have returned to Earth aboard our ship to help infest the planet. I can’t think why they wouldn’t work their way through the whole of Earth’s population eventually and replace even underworlders with their kind. Look at what happened to the people who tried to use our credchips. It’s already started.
“Erielle, I get what you’re saying about what your people suffer. I really do, and these last few hours have opened my eyes to things I was never aware of, but believe me when I say this isn’t an 'us and them’ thing. We have to put away our differences and work together if we’re going to defeat these aliens. It’s going to take everything we’ve got.”
Holding up a hand to Jas, Erielle said, “Okay, okay, enough. I need to think. You can all stay here tonight. I’ll get some food sent in.” Reacting to the looks on their faces, she added, “Drug-free food. You have my word.”
She left them. Carl went over to Makey and ruffled his hair. “Nice one, kid.”
Makey grinned. Finally, he’d done something useful.
Chapter Ten
Sparks stood nervously outside Rogers’ room. The nurse had told him that the lab tech had shown signs of coming around, and he peered at the man lying in the isolation room. He was worried about what Polestar would make of the incident. He might be held responsible.
Inside his room, Rogers smacked his lips lazily, and his eyes half opened. Sparks felt a surge of relief. He pressed the intercom button. “Rogers, can you hear me? Are you awake?”
“Hmmm...who’s that?”
“It’s me, Sparks. How are you feeling?”
Rogers tried to rise, but slumped back down onto his bed. “Where am I? What’s happened? Oh, wait, I remember. The Paths.”
“Yes, that’s right. You’re still on the station, in the medical center. How are you feeling? You had some kind of fit.”