She tilted her head slightly as a dragoon might when it spotted a prey animal out on the permafrost. “I have never worked on one before, but I am willing to try.”
I handed her mine. “Give me a moment to pull him across to the vehicle.”
“Where are we going?” she asked after I grabbed both of his legs and began dragging him across the snow.
“Away from here.”
“That is a good answer.”
• ѻ ● Ѻ • ○ ☼
“Where are you going to deposit his body?”
“That’s the problem. He doesn’t have any implants left in him.”
“I don’t see the problem,” she said.
“If the authorities find him without an implant they are going to torture him.”
“But we will be far away by then.”
“He is my friend.”
“He is?”
I grimaced. He was my friend. Who was he now? Sure he got us out of the transport facility, but he was going to hand her over to a batch of chop docs and then after that to Kull… a Councilmember. It did not matter what Kull claimed, whether he had truly defected or not. His intentions would be the same now as the Council was, to hand over an innocent to the overseers for personal gain.
“I have something I need to tell you.” I told her, “The Overseers are the founders of our planet. Without them, we would not be here. Why are they looking for you?”
"As I have said, I do not know why.” I watched her breath fog the air before her, waiting for a different answer. “Why are you doing all this? I am a stranger to you." She was right, why exactly was I doing this? But more importantly, what was my plan? I looked back at Kai and wondered where I could leave him safely. Back at the observatory? We could abandon the vehicle near it, and then we would escape on foot. He'll be warm and safe enough in the cab until he comes to or is found, and when that happens, the real fun will begin – eluding him. But first, I had to pay someone a visit.
I saw she was still looking at me expecting an answer. On the moons, security was less tight. They figured that if you made it there at all, you were supposed to be there. Besides, the moons were work colonies mainly, two meses on with a mes off for synth binging back on Icharus. I said, "I can get you off the planet, but not here, not from Torva."
“Why not hand me over to these Overseers?”
“Even if we hand you over, they plan on annexing this planet. While I might not like it here most dags, I know some people who do. Besides, I don’t like bullies, so I’m not going to make this easy for them. I can’t even hand you over to Kull now either.”
“I know Kull Α1.”
“I’m sure you do, but I am unsure of his intentions for you.”
“He is not a good man.”
“I bet he isn’t.”
“Why are you doing this?” she asked with an equal amount of lack of inflection as the first time she asked it.
“Why aren’t you trying to escape?” I rebutted.
Her face remained impassive when she said, “Something tells me I can trust you, but I cannot tell you how I know that.”
Undoubtedly, feelings have influenced her intuition or instinct. Or did I have it backward and it was the other way around? Did she really have no feelings? How could I tell?
I then got another assignment on my oculus. I tried to ignore it as I programmed the route to where Nage was in the glacier because just like her, I had a gut feeling he was a decent person. The message proved insistent. Once I had a moment, I pressed the button to open my government issued device and rather than begin the new assignment, I sent a note that I thought would buy us some time. It read: Damus is dead. Kai killed him but was injured in the process. In pursuit. Hopefully, when they found his doppelganger body, they will give up searching for him.
I next opened up the order, and it was signed personally by Tetra Prime. It read: Abandon the search for Kore Β1. A termination order has been issued for Kull Α1. It was in the customary curt manner in which all my assignments had been issued. I looked over at Kore. She was staring intently at me like I was some kind of puzzle to decipher. I could not blame her. I could not figure myself out lately these dags either, but one thing was apparent, I was not going to leave her willingly. I would go with her to one of the moons.
• ѻ ● Ѻ • ○ ☼
“I can’t do it.”
"You will, old man," I said as I raised my CO2 gun to point squarely at his chest.
"Once the implant is out, it will only live for a few hours, and then it will die. It is woven into the body’s neurologic pathways. It feeds on biochemical energy from the body. It cannot survive."
“Remove most of it then, leaving just enough to keep it alive. I’ll carry it around until I’m ready to tear the rest out of me.”
“It’s never been done that way,” he said.
“Then you’ll be the first to do it.”
He scowled, but I could tell he was considering it. He finally muttered with half-hearted interest, “Is that her?”
I looked over at Kore, who was examining his medical apparatus. “Yes.”
He hobbled over to her and asked, “Would you like for me to explain to you how this works?”
She looked at him and said, “Not necessary. I believe I already know how to use this. Go lay on the table on your front side Jett. I will remove ninety-five percent of the apparatus, leaving the one percent required for operational tracking and the four percent to report life functions as relatively normal.”
Nage’s brow wrinkled. I could tell he was uneasy about this arrangement, but ultimately nodded his head curtly once.
“Power it up,” she said.
He went into the other room and started the generator. His fingers danced nimbly over the keys and then she paused only long enough to ask me again, "Go lay on the table, Jett. No one deserves to have that thing in them."
“So you really don’t have one?”
“I was never supposed to be able to leave the facility. Why would I ever need one?” It was an oversight that the Overseers would not tolerate. No wonder they were annexing our planet. There had to be a way to stop them without giving them Kore.
I really looked at her. White-blonde hair, pink lips, feminine body, just the way I liked them. She was my archetype. How could anyone let Kull use her as a bargaining chip for our planet? She glanced up at me, and at first, I thought she was giving me an appraising look over, but then she said, “What are you waiting for? My impending abduction?”
I frowned and then went over to the table. After I removed my shirt and laid belly down, I heard the machinery turn on, and buzzing sounds draw closer to me. It was hard exposing my back to someone who had never operated before, let alone using a bootleg operation like this one, but instinct compelled me to trust her. I wanted to believe her, and she needed to trust me. This was a big step in building that bridge.
“You need to administer the numbing agent first.”
“Why?”
“My, my, you aren’t human, are you?” Nage asked her.
“What does being human mean?”
“For frack’s sake, can you please get this thing out of me already?” I complained.
“Do it,” Nage urged her. “Just press this now and that next.”
I looked behind me and saw the arm with a bar containing about twenty needles descend upon my back. I realized I had not studied the process as carefully as I should have when Kai was being cut and prodded.
I felt the needles pierce my skin simultaneously and I flinched.
“See, he feels pain.”
“It was an instinctual reaction only. Anyone would have done it,” she calmly replied.
“It hurts,” I confirmed. “Put me under.”
"Not only would that slow us down, but it would alert the sensor for an artificial manipulation," she told me.
“What dendrites will you leave connected?” Nage asked.
“This one and that one, I think.”
“The one monitoring his heart and brain activity? Ah, I see, good choice. But how will you remove these over here then? Aren’t they connected?”
“I’m rerouting their circuitry to his chest muscles. If we make a simple incision here, then I will be able to remove the remaining sensor with minimal damage.”
“This machine was not made to do this,” Nage told her.
“Show me the command protocols.” That did not sound promising.
My back went numb and then I relaxed, grateful she gave in to administer pain medications for me "How long will the numbing solution last," I slurred. Should it have affected my speech? Was it too much medication? I tried to look back again, but it was just too hard and the edges of my vision blurred.
“By breath and death, I’ve never seen anyone interface with the OS so swiftly. You may have flesh and bone, but you are not human.”
There was a pause and then she said, “No I am not; I am more.”
Chapter 12
“You are a universal donor? You can’t believe that was by coincidence.”
“I do not know why you think I am the way I am because of a virus.”
“It makes perfect sense. Gene therapy is manipulated through viruses. Maybe what makes you different is something that might be considered infectious. Maybe that was why they kept you locked in that lab for your entire life,” Nage argued.
“Would you like some of my blood to examine?” she offered.
“Yes.”
“Look, Jett has awoken.”
I shifted, and my entire back felt on fire, while a sharp pain in my chest caused me to wince. Both of which were now barely passable in the pain department. I opened my eyes and realized the reason I was freezing cold, was because I was laying on the floor of the cave. Before I could ask why, Nage said, "I thought the cold floor would help with the inflammation.
“Help me up old man,” I said as I reached up for him.
He took my hand and leaned back. “What the Kuthic did you do to me?”
"The protocols I programmed into it had to avoid detection. She rewrote them so you would still read as normal." I looked over at Kore, and she was zipping through multiple viz screens. "She is currently returning my OS to the way it was. I couldn’t do what she did for you."
I touched my chest and felt wires protruding from it. "When the time is right, simply pull them out," Nage told me. I looked at the table and saw the jumble of titanium wires and Selenium conductors, all the electronics that must have been inside me. It was difficult to believe that it all fit in the spaces between my organs, muscles, and nerves.
“You don’t always take the whole thing out, do you?”
“No. I usually just deactivate the homing device that allows the government to track you.” That would have explained the death warrant out for Kull. They knew he was alive, but could not find him.
“Why did you remove the entire device from Kai?”
“He needed to become an underground operative, all traces of him needed to be eradicated.”
“Why don’t you do that to everyone?” I asked.
“The odds for surviving is twenty-five percent,” Nage informed me under a cough. I looked at him incredulously. “With what she has done, leaving a portion active in you, a portion that can be easily removed later… well, you shouldn’t have survived the procedure.”
“It has been modified to the best of its limitations. The ratio for survival should be increased to eighty-six percent for those over forty annos and ninety-five percent for those under,” Kore told us, as she disengaged from the machinery.
He went over and investigated her modifications and said, "Simply amazing. I adapted this unit myself annos ago, and it took me annos to modify what took her only tigs."
“It is outdated,” she replied flatly.
He did not take it personally, but said instead, “Astounding! I would never have thought of connecting those two programs together. It will be twice as efficient with the FC adjustment too.”
“Where next?” Kore asked.
“The Observatory, I have to dump Kai there, so he’ll be found.” In the meantime, two more sedatives had to be administered to keep him under.
“Will you tell Kull we were here?”
He looked nervously between us and finally said, “I can give you a dag.”
“It will be enough, thanks. Now, we need to go to Aoki.”
• ѻ ● Ѻ • ○ ☼
After we dumped Kai in a different vehicle by the observatory, we kept the stolen vehicle and headed for the first checkpoint in order to cross from Torva to Senja, before eventually reaching Aoki. We drove in silence for the first thirty tigs until she asked, “Why are we going to Aoki?”
"It's too dangerous to try and catch a ride on a train from Torva. I have people in Aoki that run an off-planet greenhouse on Sepia."
“The Notos moon?”
“One of the two, the other is called Senap.”
“Will that not take us close to Kahel?” she asked.
"Not any closer than we are now. Currently, it is on the opposite side of Aka.”
“But the overseers said that they were going to annex this planet, not the moons.”
“We will go to Sepia. They will set up sub-stations on all the moons to expedite the annexation. When they are done doing that, they will shut operations down on them too. There will be an influx of people traveling to the moons. We'll hide right under their noses," I told her.
“What will happen when I am discovered on the Overseer ship?
If we hitched a ride somehow on the big ship, she would not be able to hide forever. I could only say, “We’ll figure it out.”
She stared at me and then shifted so she could stare out the window. Since she stopped asking any more questions, I stared at the intermittent patches of lichens that glowed in the perpetual darkness of Torva. Hidden between them would be tiny carnivorous creatures like ice lice.
She asked, “How long will it take us to get to the moon?” she asked.
“Almost two dags.”
“We will be cutting it close if they nudge the planet in less than twenty-eight oras. They will be carefully looking at all the ship weights and passenger logs as well.”
“We aren’t my family’s first illegal off planet refugees?”
“Your family is accustomed to breaking the laws?”
“Why do you think they kept me so long?” I did not add that illegal smuggling was their primary source of income. The government may have been aware, but they turned a blind eye for the right price, so long as we did not transport too many people or supplies off Icharus.
“And what is your current job description exactly?” she asked me.
“I track down people who have been deemed unproductive. They need to be reclassified as emeritus.”
“What does that mean?”
“They need to be put down.” I grimaced and added, “They are an encumbrance on our society’s resources.”
“Is that what they tell you?”
I did not reply to her question. She could judge all she wanted, but it was a much-needed job, freeing the parasites from Icharus. If there were too many of them, the whole economy and standard of living would disintegrate, and we would become savages until only a few of the most brutal would survive.
"I was on your docket," she stated.
“Not anymore,” which was worrisome. “But Kull is.”
“Are you going to kill him?”
"I'll lie and say I am in pursuit of him along the way, but no, I won’t be pursuing him.” He was as good a patsy as any to get us through the checkpoints.
“Do you have food?”
“Hungry?” I asked.
“I am human, despite what others might think,” she snapped at me. I tried to listen to the inflection of her delivery, and even though her pace had quickened, her tone remained flat.
“No, but we’ll get some soon.” She accepted that and then I asked, “Do you
have any augmentations?” They were pretty rare on this planet, draining too many resources, but who knew, maybe they were experimenting with a new regime change.
“Nage could not detect anything.”
“His equipment is old.”
She shrugged and asked, “How much longer before we cross.”
“Do you see those blinking lights up ahead?”
“Yes,” she replied, staring out the window ahead of us.
“That is the first checkpoint.”
“Will they detain us?”
"I hope not. These checkpoints are remotely operated. I'll declare my hunting status, and they will allow us to pass."
“You seem uneasy.”
“We’re about to see if Nage’s equipment isn’t too outdated. Duck under the seat there, and don’t come out until I tell you.”
The onboard navigational system brought us up to the checkpoint. We pulled into the next available spot to be checked. A master oracle orb came out, and I said, "Jett Ρ2, in pursuit of Kull A1, seeking permission to cross into Senja."
It scanned my eye, and then an automated voice said, "There is another life form on board. Please have them come up to be scanned."
I commandeered a plant from the transport vehicle’s cargo hold. “You need a sensing readjustment, you are sensing only this.”
The lens refracted and then refocused on me again. “There is a second heartbeat,” the electronic voice said with little inflection. Its delivery reminded me of Kore. At least it answered the question of whether or not she had a heart or not.
If Senja was the crowning achievement of Icharian settlers all those annos ago, then Kinnopolis was its crown jewel. Advanced technologies were sparse on this planet, with much of it being rejected or lost over the past generations, except in Kinnopolis, where it was rumored to have advanced biochemical and leventech. Old Nage made good use of his med table, but I was certain it was antiquated compared to whatever the ARC’s scientists were able to come up with over a ratus.
“Give me back my oculus." She did, and I scanned the device. Fortunately, after dating the OS of this station, there was a fifty-fifty chance of this sensor being tricked. I inputted the three-dimensional depiction of a tikus, which was a small rodent occasionally found along the borderlands. Up popped a somewhat realistic hologram of one. I muted the sound from my device and showed the sensor the image.
Icharus_ARC Series Page 9