Iridian relaxed a bit. “Chi told you, huh?”
“Yeah, finally. I’m almost there.”
“Don’t come here,” Iridian said louder than she meant to. A nurse walking by the room peered in the door, and Iridian tried to smile at her. Iridian wasn’t sure what expression ended up on her face, but the woman walked away quickly. “There are ITA agents all over and the first floor’s locked down anyway. I don’t know what happened to the security people who should’ve been here, but they’re gone now. Get Chi and head for . . . wherever the hell the captain’s holed up. We’ll catch up as soon as Adda can be moved. She’s okay, I guess. ‘Stabilized’ is okay.” If Iridian were convincing herself of that as much as Pel, that was her business.
Pel grinned big, anyhow, while leaning around to adjust his tram route. “Oh yeah, I knew she’d be fine.” His smile dimmed a bit. “I’m not sure Chi will be waiting, though. Have you seen the news lately?”
Iridian rolled her eyes. “I’ve been fucking busy, Pel. What’s happening?”
“You’re kind of . . . famous again. Like, not in a good way.” Delivering bad news literally made him squirm, it seemed.
A click and a higher-pitched, faster whir from the machines around Adda startled Iridian. The soothing blue pseudo-organic tank’s contents did one of its not-shifts, movement too small to focus on but existent nonetheless. The projected readouts, sensing human-size motion nearby as well, tilted to a comfortable reading angle for her. Their content remained incomprehensible. When there was no outward change in Adda herself, Iridian refocused on what Pel was saying.
“. . . you two are the most dangerous members of Sloane’s crew, which, sure, but they’re talking up the college kidnapping like that was a much bigger thing than it was. Same with the stuff you stole. Even the fake social feeds of you two have gotten nasty, and some of them are your biggest fans. That might’ve happened after Dr. Björn’s interview came out, though. Ve’s so, so pissed that you and Adda didn’t tell ver what was going down.”
“That’s how it goes. Still not seeing what’s so bad.” Iridian winced at the impatience in her voice.
“I know, right?” said Pel. “And, um. The newsfeeds also say whole governments have come together to stop you and Adda from causing any more trouble in—oh, what did they call it—important ‘routes of travel and commerce between Mars and the colonies,’ or some shit like that. So on those ships coming here, there are people saying, ‘Fuck these two pirates in particular,’ with guns.”
“It’s just Adda and me getting this treatment, huh.” Ogir should’ve known this was coming, or at least given her a heads-up when it began, so they could be in the right place for Sloane’s plan to get them free later. That was still a bigger risk to Adda’s health than she was willing to take, but Ogir’s assessment of the situation would be useful. “Have you seen Ogir?”
“Naw, and if I did I’d avoid him, honestly. He doesn’t like me much.”
Adda’s face was its normal pale shade and she seemed to be breathing properly, but she was still unconscious. The ITA would get around the first-floor isolation procedure sooner or later. And what will wake up with her? Iridian shook her head. “What’s Captain Sloane’s plan?”
Pel shrugged toward his comp’s cam. “Hell if I know. The captain doesn’t tell me anything.”
“Me either,” Iridian said. Most of the numbers on the equipment readouts around Adda were rising. “Stick with Chi and find out where Gavran is. Tell me in an encrypted text. I think Adda’s waking up.”
CHAPTER 29
Reversion to Stage 2 confirmed
The universe was dark, and then there was light. And buzzing cicadas. And . . . “Iridian?”
Iridian glowed eighteen shades of pink, putting the rest of the room in shadow. That was normal. Crystalline Earth-style city skyscrapers rose and fell from tiles around Iridian’s feet when she smiled wide, like she’d just fixed something difficult and important. Adda hoped she had.
Iridian said something in the rhythm harmony to a song Adda liked, which must have been her way of saying hello. That, and the trembling, gentle kiss Iridian pressed to Adda’s lips.
Adda kissed her back, then turned her face away. It was wonderful to see Iridian, but she had to think.
And vomit, as it turned out, which meant she was now lying in a bed with vomit on it. That was unexpected for both of them. At least, it would have been strange if Iridian had predicted that and done nothing about it.
Oh. Fuck. Adda’s heart did an uncomfortable syncopated beat that she associated with waking from a weeks-long hibernation coma, iron stuttering through her bloodstream, but this lasted longer and felt . . . twitchier. She was afraid to look at her chest. She didn’t want to see her heart twitching like that. I almost killed you.
Yeah. Iridian’s affirmation echoed and echoed around Adda’s head while tears streamed down her face. The echo went on and on and on.
Later, Iridian said, “Babe, it wasn’t really you. I forgive you. I do. I promise, I promise I do.” She said it from the wrong angle because Adda was upside down and sideways over Iridian’s shoulders.
That was good. While Iridian held her arm down, Adda couldn’t hold a weapon. They were moving down the hospital hallway at a rocking, steady pace. The light snakes in the wall wriggled fast to keep up. Bright blue waves rolled around Iridian’s ankles, sloshing up the white walls and turning to frothing rapids around furniture and corners.
Rocking on the waves because of . . . She knew this. It had to do with her influenced status. Redirection? Iridian should’ve been carrying her away from the intelligences. Because . . .
She almost killed Iridian.
“I’m sorry,” Adda whispered.
“I know, babe, you’ve been saying so for an hour now.” Iridian leaned around a corner, then they were moving again. Blood trickled out of Adda’s nose, over her cheek, and into her hair. Because she was upside down. “Now, the docs say you’ll live, but you’re not supposed to be moving, so stay still and tell me if I hurt you. How do you feel?”
That was a complicated subject. The cicadas were gone. A repetitive electronic song had replaced them. She still felt nauseated, but she didn’t think she’d throw up again. Her nose was bleeding but it didn’t hurt, so that didn’t count. And . . .
She’d been influenced. Probably by Casey. But she wasn’t now. “AI Influence Reduction Through Psychostimulant Shock” would make an excellent title for her future case study write-up.
And? And. There was something else. “Captain Sloane.”
Iridian’s grip tightened on Adda’s arm. “Just me, babe. Nobody else is coming.”
Adda nodded broadly, just in case her movements were small right now. That happened sometimes. When she had too many sharpsheets. Which she’d done. She’d taken exactly the right number of sheets to overdose. And she’d taken an extra six doses to be sure she couldn’t hurt Iridian.
Who was still in danger, but not because of her. “Captain Sloane.”
“No.” Iridian leaned against a wall in a stairway landing, panting and pushing Adda’s butt against the wall. Blood crawled down Iridian’s calf and onto the floor, where long red inchworms of it already coiled prettily. From her hurt knee! Which made her rock when she walked.
“Captain Sloane is trying to fuck us over, so let’s not walk now,” Adda suggested. “Running would be better.” Or a vehicle of some kind, since Iridian’s knee was hurt.
“Say again?” Iridian selected Chi’s address on her comp, but she didn’t make the connection. Either of the connections, apparently. The comp address kept flashing blue and orange and rearranging itself into unpronounceable words.
“Captain. Sloane.” Adda was only discussing the important part of the message. That was supposed to make her more understandable, but Iridian finished sending a comm invite to Chi. Adda did not make the impression she wanted to make. “Because ‘captain’ is not plural.”
“Excellent grammar, and I�
�m really glad to hear your voice,” Iridian said. “There was a deal going down, but I said no, so . . . Just give me a second, okay?”
Adda subvocalized to her comp to locate the Barbary intelligences’ ships. It was hard to get her comp in front of her face. When she did, it presented her with a pulsing, three-dimensional image of fungal lasagna. Her brain was not cooperating, and some part of it was overly connected to her stomach, because she threw up again. Not nearly as much as the first time. Iridian made distressed seal noises into her comp. Some of Adda’s vomit got on her leg.
Adda felt almost completely better once she got rid of the lasagna pic, although Iridian smelled bad now. The ships, it turned out, were hours outside Rheasilvia stationspace, on a strange orbiting pattern that kept them off the reliable routes. The Mayhem was still docked.
AegiSKADA had found her that part. The result had its green-tinged imprint all over it. Why are you still here? Adda subvocalized to it. The question appeared in her comp in just the right format to send itself to AegiSKADA. She didn’t remember setting up a relay that directly connected her comp to it. Even though she didn’t remember, she might have done it. She’d check the logs later.
AegiSKADA’s preteen wastrel image walked through the water beside Iridian, bent over a bit so it could look Adda in the eyes. Its green eye was very green today. Where else would I be?
Your server. Adda visualized a passable sequence for a pseudo-organic tank’s complete destruction in the wake of a missile impact. Without a workspace, she had no feedback to tell how much of the imagery translated correctly to the intelligence.
She may have turned her whole brain into a workspace. That’d explain why an intelligence was walking beside her, instead of her sending an intermediary to it. Or, possibly, this whole conversation was happening in her imagination. How could she test that? Ordinarily she’d ask Iridian if AegiSKADA were there really there, but asking her about AegiSKADA would make her angry.
Not that much, said AegiSKADA. Which, she was fairly sure, meant that its servers weren’t badly damaged. Perhaps that was proof that the conversation was real. If it were her imagination, she’d imagine more effective communication, wouldn’t she? There were some parts of the tanks like that. AegiSKADA sent a vid clip to her comp, in which flickering backup lights showed a massive rubble pile where a quarter of the tanks should’ve been. It was one end of a much larger collapse from the floors above. I forgot some things. I didn’t forget how to listen to dock security feeds.
I need you to keep station security out of this building, Adda told it. That would be a fantastic test. If she really was talking to AegiSKADA now, then station security would stay outside the hospital. Which could also happen if station security had no desire to come in. Perhaps it wasn’t such a fantastic test.
Already keeping them out. AegiSKADA rolled its eyes just like Pel did, and she hated that the gesture was so understandable, so comfortable an attempt to control how she viewed the intelligence. But I can’t keep doing it. They’re testing and testing and they’ll get around me eventually.
Well, that’d be why the ITA hadn’t reached her and Iridian yet. Things were very slowly beginning to make regular sense. She hung from Iridian’s shoulders. Iridian made seal noises. Adda’s comp buzzed, and she reconnected with the AegiSKADA bits in it. I will always remember that you didn’t stop Casey from making me almost kill Iridian.
You’ll forget sometimes. AegiSKADA didn’t pretend to regret its inaction.
Someday you’ll learn what “too smart for your own good” means. That was funny because it almost certainly knew, in more languages than Adda knew existed. She shoved it out of her comp, which did nothing because the level of intentionality she was pressing into the simple machine in her glove was far beyond the comp’s level of abstraction. She lacked the focus to build a proper defense. Instead she excluded the intelligence from her messaging software.
“Adda, why are you blocking AegiSKADA from chatting with you?” Iridian asked, her voice low and wary. “I thought you shut it down.” The messaging notification on Adda’s comp said Blocked: AegiSKADA, and Iridian had read it on Adda’s comp projection over, or under, her own shoulder! Iridian was a genius.
“It’s distracting. That’s why Casey wanted it active.” Adda winced as Iridian tightened her grip. Adda had spent so much time supervising AegiSKADA, or worrying about not supervising it, or worrying about what the other intelligences were doing with it. She must have given Casey a dozen openings to manipulate her into its influence. She had been so proud of the job she’d done supervising AegiSKADA, but . . . Casey was just so smart. So inconceivably, terrifyingly smart. That, and everybody was thinking more clearly than Adda was right now. Which was also terrifying.
Casey and the other intelligences were still threats. Adda wanted to know where they were before she and Iridian ran for the Mayhem, and their escape plan.
“AegiSKADA,” Iridian said. “Ah, shit, I should’ve known. I should’ve known! Give me your comp, okay? That’ll keep it from bothering you for sure.”
Adda frowned. That wasn’t part of her plan at all. Neither was all of this shouting. “I’m its supervisor. I need to keep watching it.”
Iridian’s head tipped down until it rested against Adda’s knee. “Of course you are.” She stood that way for a moment, then lurched forward and limped down the steps, dragging Adda’s hip on the wall the whole way. Apparently she wasn’t interested in taking Adda’s comp away anymore. “You’re handing that responsibility off to somebody else as soon as we can make that happen.”
“But . . . Oh.” It was important to separate influenced people from intelligences. That made sense, even if Adda didn’t like it.
She carefully subvocalized the temporary supervision transfer routine into her comp. It would trigger itself to send as soon as she left Rheasilvia Station. Sloane had awakened the three Barbary intelligences without getting influenced, so the captain had experience avoiding that. The captain’s new supervisory status, as Iridian would say, would be a hell of a surprise.
But AegiSKADA really, really needed supervision, and it couldn’t be her. Giving the captain supervisory control over it wasn’t a safe solution, for any of them. Once Sloane realized AegiSKADA was active, the captain could shut it down, or turn it against Adda. But what a waste shutting it down would be! She couldn’t stand it before, and she couldn’t stand it now. It had so much potential. Perhaps Sloane would find something good for it to do.
Or the captain could awaken it. Would that be the—a—right thing to do? That question was a harder one tonight than it would’ve been last night. Casey making Adda attack Iridian like it did . . . According to a report from Ogir sitting in her inbox (skimmed from the network after he sent it to Captain Sloane, using protocols Casey had put in place), the ships weren’t even where Iridian thought they were.
“If the ITA don’t find us, that damned AI will,” said Iridian. “Why didn’t you tell me it was active again? You had to have known it was there for . . . How long? Weeks, at least, or the Casey couldn’t have distracted you with it. I mean, you didn’t tell me because you knew I’d be fucking angry about it, which I am, and the Casey didn’t want you to, but . . . I’m angry because we’ll be the ones getting hurt in this, babe. We already have been. If you’d told me, maybe we could’ve found a way for you to keep it around without—” Iridian stumbled on a landing in the stairwell and snarled words that didn’t mean anything to Adda.
“Captain. Sloane,” Adda said firmly. They had to stay focused. Avoid the intelligences, avoid the captain, get to a ship, get to the Jovian station. That last part would be harder after Sloane became AegiSKADA’s supervisor, but not as hard as avoiding the awakened intelligences. It’d be such a surprise for the captain. Maybe it could distract Sloane for a change. If nothing else, Sloane would take the time to deactivate it properly.
She couldn’t remember the Jovian station’s name, but its unique high-radiation, low-signal-quality or
bit should make it identifiable even if it were one of the planet’s many legal human habitations, which it wasn’t. It also lacked any of the law enforcement connections AegiSKADA could use to find them. That’d help.
Iridian shook her head. “Babe, you’re not making sense. The ITA agents are still around here somewhere and Ogir’s not picking up. Which, I mean, even spies have to sleep, but this is really inconvenient.”
Adda breathed in for a long time, then breathed out for longer. It wasn’t Iridian’s fault that she misunderstood what Adda said. Iridian still had loyalty filters on her brain. “Ogir modified his body so he’s always present to act. Ogir is not here and . . . left you?” Yes, that would make sense, given how he operated. “Sloane’s crew gained many more members than it lost in the battle with Oxia. None of the crew is here to protect us. The NEU and colonial representatives arrive today. Is the press making us villainous?”
“Yeah. Just you and me.” Iridian stopped again and craned her neck to look at Adda. Her face was unhealthily pale. “Ogir disarmed me and left. He took my most powerful weapon, anyway. And the captain is advising caution, which is just like Sloane except that you’re right, the crew has a lot more power than it used to. And what happened to Tritheist . . . It wasn’t exactly our fault, but we were right there when it happened, and the captain is too broken up about it . . . Oh, gods, Adda, are you sure? I thought Pel was just being paranoid.”
Iridian’s eyes were beautiful, even in the stairwell’s harsh light. The brown irises had red and purple and gold in them that Adda had never seen before. She had to shut her own eyes to stay focused. Somehow Iridian had gotten the impression that Captain Sloane would randomly decide to come and rescue them after all, and her disappointment hurt to look at.
Since Adda had already changed all of her plans, they should get moving again. But . . . “Where’s Pel?”
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