“What happened to the population we thought we were meeting here? Did they have troubles with these rations?” Major Reynolds asked.
“I don’t know. I still have reams of data to search through, but I thought this was worth knowing. There’s more, too,” Lieutenant Minami said.
“As if knowing your rations were laced wasn’t enough,” Major Reynolds said, rubbing his forehead with a palm. He looked strained; the burden of command and all that.
“There was one colonist who made contact with the aliens and was able to communicate.”
“Well that sounds a bit better. Who was it?”
“It’s top secret.” Minami looked around the room.
“Don’t worry about the prisoners. They won’t be talking to anyone off-planet in their remaining life-times,” Major Reynolds said.
Well that was awfully pleasant of him.
She nodded and continued, “Another Matsumoto. She’s the third they’ve sent here.” Lieutenant Minami pointed at me when she said that. It worried me that she didn’t use my name, like she was trying to distance herself from me. “The other one was equipped with actual high tech. Some sort of brain implanted computer.”
Shoot. This was not supposed to happen. I concentrated on not looking at Driscoll.
“Impossible,” Dr. Daniels said. “I mean, it can be done, but it’s not just illegal in the Empire. Any whiff of it has led to executions and banishments. The Matsumotos would never stand for it.”
“Except if it helped them,” Driscoll whispered under his breath.
I narrowed my eyes at him, and he just stared at me like he wanted to take the top off my head and look for himself.
“Regardless, this other Matsumoto was equipped with it. They took her down to where the natives were at the subterranean drill site, and used her computer implant to communicate with them. The problem was, it failed after a few minutes. The Colony Doctor believed that her security over rides did something that melted her brain. He said he would have switched it off and installed it in someone else’s brain if he’d known about the protocols, but how could he have known?”
“So you’re saying we could repeat the process, provided we had another person to put the chip into once this Matsumoto’s brain fried?” Dr. Daniels said speculatively.
They were carefully not looking at me.
“Wait,” Reynolds said. I held my breath. Thank goodness someone was going to stop this insanity! “Why would the implant allow communication with the natives when the food additive failed?”
Dr. Daniels answered him, “The food additive is laced with nano-bots that re-wire the neural connections. They alter the brain entirely. You can’t go back, and they cause any number of unexpected permanent problems. The implant is in the brain, but it has not re-wired it. It sits apart from it.”
“Then could we remove her implant and use it in the new subject without triggering her self-destruct protocols?”
“A good question, Major, but impossible. The brain doesn’t rewire, but it does wrap itself around the implant. You can’t remove it without killing her, and you’d need her conscious to make the initial connection, although the colony doctor postulated that once the connection is made another brain could run the implant just fine.”
“But that’s all speculation, since the procedure would be done on two living brains while conscious and would doubtless result in one or even both of them dying in the process,” Lieutenant Minami said, “and while we could do without her, who would we use for the other brain?”
Oh, she was just making me love her more and more. Is it strange that right now I thought a terrorist who hated me to the core might make a better ally than the woman who had pledged her life to serve my family?
“Don’t worry about that,” Major Reynolds said, looking less concerned, “We have two problems.” He pointed at Driscoll and I with his two index fingers, acknowledging us for the first time in this conversation. “And one solution.”
He let the finger pointing to me drop and raised the other. I shivered and I didn’t care who saw.
“Start prepping for the procedure immediately, doctor,” Major Reynolds said.
“Give me five minutes and I’ll meet you back here,” Dr. Daniels said.
“No. We do it on the subterranean level just like they did. I don’t want to risk her not being able to communicate with them before we move the implant into his head.”
Daniels shrugged and left with a parting reminder, “Five minutes.”
I started retching immediately, but there was no time for that. Our little cell behind the force field was filling with a bitter smelling gas. I guess they didn’t want to risk fighting us for our lives.
Chapter Nineteen
I awoke feeling groggy and strange. There was a bitter taste in my mouth. I was supposed to be thinking about something important, but I couldn’t remember what it was. I was being held by strong arms and maneuvered out onto a ledge of rock over an endless black pit of shadows. The walls of the pit shone with their own iridescence. It was hundreds of meters deep. There was a platform with machinery that jutted out over the pit and the ledge was on the end of this platform. There were two cots, or stretchers, with restraints. It was towards these that I was being maneuvered.
Danger! Danger! Something in me was screaming. I tried to fight the people holding me up as my gut insisted that everything was wrong. I could barely move my limbs. They whipped around sporadically, not obeying my commands.
“Get her in the restraints before she breaks something.”
I was spun around and strapped in. The stretcher was angled upwards and my head was at the top, giving me a great view of what they were doing. They led a still-unconscious Driscoll towards me. The threat had to do with him, too. I remembered that. They strapped him on the other angled stretcher. I struggled for thought. It was important. I had to think.
Roman. I’m in trouble.
No, that wasn’t right. There was no Roman here.
Help...
I called out weakly through my implant, my lips still unable to form words. As my strength slowly increased, so did my cries.
Help.
Help!
HELP!
I could feel that abysmal echo I’d been hearing ever since I arrived on Baldric, but there was no reply.
Doctor Daniels emerged from the shadows and turned on some bright portable lights that threw everything around them into blackness and everything under them into a terrifying starkness. I wanted to shut my eyes.
My memory came back with shocking suddenness. Oh yes, he was planning to cut into my skull while I was still alive and remove my implant and then put it in Driscoll’s head. We would both be conscious while he did it. Of the many ways I could have, and maybe even should have, died over the last months, this was the most horrifying. I shuddered, thrashing against my bonds.
“Inject her with this. I can’t operate if she’s moving,” Dr. Daniels said, his voice snapping with irritation.
HELP!
We’re coming...
My eyes widened. Had someone answered me? Or was I deluding myself?
Reynolds hovered over me with a syringe in his hand. Funny that it was him and not some underling about to do the honors.
“Will it hurt them?” The voice was Ian’s. He must have helped them carry us here.
“Don’t worry,” Daniels said, distractedly, “It won’t happen to you. These two are dangerous, and the girl has something we need.”
Whatever Reynolds gave me paralyzed me completely. I was going to die with drool pouring out of my mouth, unable to close my eyes, or to scream when the pain finally came. I wanted to scream in panic, but it was too late. I screamed in my head instead.
Help! Please help! They’re going to kill me! Oh, please, please, please, please...
How do you stop begging for what you want? How do you stop panic when you’ve come to the end of hope? I couldn’t stop.
Beside me Driscoll was in
jected, too. I saw Ian behind Dr. Daniels, his face torn between hatred, loyalty and disgust. I wouldn’t want to be him right now. There is something about torturing another human that takes your humanity from you. Even watching when you could stop it will steal part of your soul.
Daniels pulled out a laser-scalpel and an auto-saw. Modern medicine at its finest. He approached me first.
“We’ll start with you first, Vera. Be a good girl and bring that computer online for us.”
Like it ever wasn’t online.
Download complete, my implant chirped. Useless timing. That’s non-sentients for you.
Daniels scanned me with a complicated device.
“Does she have one? An implanted computer?” Reynolds asked.
Awesome. They weren’t even sure. They were going to do brain surgery and they weren’t even sure.
“I think so, but I won’t know for certain until I get in there.”
“Maybe we should get the information from her first.”
“Not needed. Besides, she likely has some sort of self-destruct in case she’s tortured. We wouldn’t want to trip that.”
Because sawing into my brain while I was conscious wasn’t torture?
“Vera, if your implant is turned on, then please try to communicate with the device in my hand,” Dr. Daniels said.
Well, since you said please. What did he think? That a moment’s courtesy would make me forget what was going on?
“I have a device here that is designed to erase computer chips. Now, I know that you are probably protected from these – but you should know your implant can be manually erased once I have it out of your brain, so if you don’t want to lose it before you die, then please connect with my device.”
Ha. He was threatening to erase my files? Was he going to ground me next? Dr. Daniels tilted his head to the side, his lips pursed tightly.
“Wait a moment, Doctor. I can help you out.” Reynolds pulled Ian into my line of sight. He gripped Ian by one bicep pointing a nettlegun to his temple. “Play nice Matsumoto, or your friend gets it.”
Well, he did swear fealty. I owed him this. But on the other hand, my implant was all I had. Could I use it to break free somehow? The martial arts program wouldn’t free me from restraints. I was at a loss. I was going to die in the next few minutes one way or another. Was it worth Ian’s life to withhold this technology from my enemies?
“Last chance,” Reynolds said.
Connect to handheld signal.
Connecting...
“We’re connected!” Dr. Daniels said with delight. I wanted to kill him.
“Will you be able to use it to communicate? Can you hear the natives now?” Reynold’s voice bubbled with excitement.
“I think, maybe. There are some strange frequencies that might be them. I won’t know until we try from a different brain. I don’t want to trip the self-destruct...”
Reynolds threw Ian aside, not even watching as Ian walked away, rubbing his arm and scowling at Reynold’s back.
“Excellent. Now all we need to do is manually remove the chip,” Dr. Daniels said, calibrating the laser scalpel as he spoke.
My eyes were still on Ian. His baleful expression faded as he squinted at something in the shadows behind me.
Daniels lifted the laser and drew in close, his eyebrows knitted in concentration. So this was it. Time to die. My eyes tracked to Ian, seeking something to take to the grave, any flash of comradery would be better than dying alone.
The echoes in my implant had grown so loud I could hardly think. What did that device of Dr. Daniel’s do? I braced myself for the pain.
Something flickered in Ian’s eye. A look of surprise. He compressed his lips like he was keeping himself from crying out. I stared into his eyes. I saw myself reflected in his pupils, strapped to a table, with drool trickling down my chin and Dr. Daniels carefully picking his spot with the laser scalpel. Reynolds was leaning in close, too, watching the doctor’s every move in the sharp white light. And then two dark shadows leaned in from either side of my stretcher, arms extended, fingers splayed. It was something from a horror video, only I was hardly in a position to object as they reached out and grabbed Dr. Daniels, and twisted.
He screamed, and his scalpel bit long and deep into the left side of my face, slicing me from forehead to jaw, but his thrashing jogged it back and forth. I was unable to even flinch or look away as the scalpel destroyed my face.
Chaos ruled. Daniels’ scream ended in a pop like a cork out of a bottle as his head rolled to the side and his body dropped beside the gurney. Reynolds screamed, gripping his skull in both hands and then his eyes, which were staring at me blossomed red and rolled back into his head as he slumped to the ground. Ian froze in place like one of the ice sculptures from the party he took me to on the first day we met.
Sharp, jagged agony filled me. I screamed loudly in my mind although my lips made no move.
The figure that killed Daniels, which I had mistaken for a shadow, was a woman. She was – faded, somehow, like she was only half there. It was difficult to explain.
She wore a ragged marine’s uniform, carried a pack and wicked looking knife, and her hair was short and choppy. The other one who had attacked Reynolds looked very similar, except her clothing looked more like my tight-fitting skinsuit and less like a uniform. Her hair was also short, and her face was hard. She was the age my parents would be if they were still alive. She hadn’t killed Reynolds. I could still hear him thrashing, wounded, on the ground.
Someone else was behind me, but I couldn’t see him.
“Make her stop screaming,” the one who attacked Reynolds said, irritation high in her tone.
Who did she mean? Was my voice working again. I tried to focus my thoughts away from a scream. The man-shadow grabbed a syringe from the cart beside Daniels and started injecting something into my face in various places, and then he taped some gauze on it. It still hurt – a lot- but the pain was manageable now.
“Thank you,” the woman behind me said.
“Not what I expected,” the Marine-shadow said staring first at me, and then at the scene around us.
“She’s not one of us,” the other woman said.
“We’ll bring her anyways. Whatever she did, we need to know what that was.”
The man-shadow was nodding.
“What about him?” he asked.
“It looks like they were going to do the same thing to him. Maybe he has a Voice, too. I vote we bring him.”
“I agree,” he said, “but two of them are going to be hard to carry.”
“Can’t you give them something to wake them up a bit?” the skinsuited woman said. Maybe she always sounded irritated.
“Maybe,” he said, sorting through the cart. “This will get them semi-mobile, but we’ll have to direct them, and they won’t be talking or thinking clearly for a while.”
I was thinking just fine right now. It was just my stupid body that had opted out of the fight.
“And him?” The woman behind me asked, and they all turned on Ian.
“I didn’t see anything,” Ian said, with his typical moral courage.
The marine woman grunted. “You heard him. He saw nothing. But he stays here until we’re done. Someone put him on one of these gurneys for now and strap him down.”
The irritated woman took hold of Ian’s arm exactly where Reynolds had held it before. The shadow-man injected Patrick with something and hauled him to his feet. His eyelids flickered open, and his feet barely shuffled along as the other man supported his weight. The woman directed Ian onto the gurney and strapped him in.
“What’s this?” she asked, grabbing the computer-chip programmer device that Dr. Daniels had.
Oh shoot!
Disconne... I ordered my implant.
Everything went black.
Chapter Twenty
I woke up with an aching belly. It didn’t take long to find out why. Someone had me slung over their shoulder. My head bobbed pai
nfully against something hard strapped to that person’s back and their shoulder stuck into my soft gut. I gasped.
“Hold up. I think she’s awake.”
I was tossed to the ground, and I looked up to see the shadow-woman who wasn’t a marine had been carrying me. She had felt very solid just now.
“You awake?” she asked, nudging me with a foot.
I blinked up at her. My throat was dry and my eyes were crusty, and a bandage covered one of them, but at least the top of my skull was still in place. I thought about answering her question, but rhetorical questions bother me.
“Patrick?” I asked. Weren’t they going to bring him, too?
“Over here,” I heard his voice, thick and blurred. I turned to look at him. He was propped upright by the man-shadow and he looked worse for wear. Not only was he still mostly doped up, but he was covered in blood and scratches.
A painful twinge brought my hand up to my face where a thick bandage covered the side of it. It felt like pain dulled by freezing – the type you know is going to get real fiery at a moment’s notice. This was new for me. That broken rib I had complained to Edward about a few months -and yet a few lifetimes- ago was the worst physical injury I had ever suffered and I’d been able to recover in the hospital. My life since then made it seem like a trivial thing, but the injury to my face made my belly roil with fear and nerves. What if it was infected? What if I couldn’t stand the pain when the freezing wore off? What if my eye was injured? It was covered by the bandage. Could I still see out of it? I bit my lip until I tasted blood, pushing fear aside with anger. No. I would not allow myself to fall apart. I don’t need anyone to save me, I thought, and pulled myself onto my feet by sheer willpower.
“If you’re awake, then you can walk.”
I agreed, but said nothing, simply trying out a step towards the marine. It was clear she was their leader.
My legs were working about as well as Driscoll’s were, but I was determined to walk on my own. I’d either been rescued or captured. Either way, I needed to stand on my own feet. If I had been rescued, then I needed to make sure they knew that I wasn’t going to be indebted to them. If I had been captured, then I’d need to find a way to escape.
The Splitting (The Matsumoto Trilogy Book 2) Page 12