Nucleation

  Helen got control of her fingers and used them to pull her hand, her arm along. The neoprene of her suit, the stickiness of the gel padding in the coffin, meant each motion was in millimeters, the weight of her own nerveless arms holding them in place. It wasn’t going to work, she wasn’t going to be free in time, and whatever Dougal was planning to do to her through the coffin’s interface was going to be the absolute end of her.

  Dougal coughed. He’d sucked in a lungful of fire-retardant foam when Helen had blasted him.

  Too bad that shit’s not poisonous.

  Somewhere, down beneath the rising fear and frustration, an idea took hold. The chemicals might not be poisonous, but they were laced with eenies, units to handle the cleanup once the all-clear had been given. They’d resurface and repair anything splashed with the foam. They weren’t designed to work on living beings; they were built to clean up concrete floors and transparent aluminum displays.

  And Dougal had made himself look just like a piece of lab equipment.

  Helen gave the Maintenance system the “all-clear.”

  A series of thuds told Helen that the lockdown had been released, doors and vents opened to let emergency responders in. The door was kicked open, and Helen could hear the rush of bodies and chatter of commands, but she couldn’t see them from her coffin.

  “LOCK THIS ROOM DOWN.” Helen didn’t recognize the voice, but she recognized the tone.

  Someone’s taking over.

  Dougal coughed again, and this time, bright red blood spattered the touchwall. His eyes widened, and he put a hand to his lips, disbelieving.

  “What . . .” The paroxysm wracked his frame as the fire-retardant eenies he’d inhaled resurfaced the inside of his lungs like they would a concrete floor, destroying alveoli, turning the sensitive cell membranes into feedstock as they went. Dougal made an attempt to take Helen with him, pawing at the commands on the touchwall to no avail. He collapsed, clutching at his chest, a horrible wheezing sound the only communication he had left.

  “Helen? Dougal?” Ivester’s voice was full of questions.

  “Medic!” Hofstaeder read the room faster. She rushed to Dougal’s side, dragging a first responder in her wake. Helen couldn’t hear what they were saying, but she could see Dougal’s hand pointing a bloody finger in Helen’s direction before collapsing back. “Someone get a call into County Medical.”

  No. That’s where Ted died.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  “Just where the hell is Hofstaeder?”

  The walls of the hospital room were not painted in Hofstaeder’s signature, calming pink. Pale greens and blues dominated the space instead, giving a sense of clinical efficiency. Cold, calculating, the room was strangely empty of the usual collection of medical machines and monitors. It felt more like a quarantine than a recovery room.

  Even the Scale-space was warmer than this.

  “Doctor Hofstaeder is Far Reaches’ private medical personnel. She has no jurisdiction here,” the nurse replied tartly.

  Helen didn’t like her, but she couldn’t put her finger on why. Something in the way she looked around Helen, rather than directly at her. She was the first person Helen had seen since waking up from a nightmare filled with angry sand and the unendurable quantum scream of a wind she couldn’t feel.

  “So I got pushed to County?” Helen asked the next reasonable question.

  The nurse smiled, lips pressed into a line, a gesture as clinical as the rest of the room. “All your questions will be answered when the doctor on call comes in.” She was a slight woman, pale green scrubs casting her golden skin a couple shades darker than her hair.

  “And who’s that?” Helen eyed her cautiously as she took a medical tablet out of her scrubs pocket and fished a cable out from the foot of the bed. The gesture was odd, most medical gear was wireless, secure, easy to clean and easy to store. With a quick snap, she plugged the tablet in and started collecting information.

  Helen was used to the constant whispers of Far Reaches. Even the public spaces had wireless communications that pinged and passed feedback to her Insight. The silence in the air started to creep in.

  Different hospitals, different tech.

  But this was County. As a government-owned facility, it worked with bleeding-edge medical technology. This was where they had brought Ted.

  This is where Ted died.

  “Captain Marshall and Attaché Ravennis will be in to check on you later today.”

  Shit.

  “Attaché” meant XERMo had stepped in, or stomped in. Ivester must have finally told the board what they’d been up to. Or perhaps Dougal had leaked something in his attempt to let Beauchamp keep control. Helen took a deep breath, let it out slowly.

  “So do you work for County or XERMo?” Helen asked the next logical question. There it was: a flinch, a tightening of the shoulders. Watch for body language, Ted used to say. That tells you what people are really feeling.

  “All questions . . .”

  Helen waved off the canned response. “Will be answered later, I got it.” Without access to Insight, she was cut off, unable to get a look at where she was from the outside. She had been isolated. Quarantine was looking more and more likely.

  Don’t panic. Panic never helps.

  She needed to figure out what they were thinking. She needed more information if she was going to build a checklist to get herself out of this.

  “Can you at least tell me how long I’ve been here?” Helen shifted in the bed, felt the connections along her spine pinch. Unlike the coffin-kluge Hofstaeder had used to save her before, this hospital had swapped out her neoprene supersuit for the medical variety. It meant they had access to her nutrient drips, the drug delivery ports, all the interfaces she used to connect to a coffin. But without the coffin computers, without her Insight, Helen had no way of taking those back.

  “All questions . . .” the nurse began.

  “Ugh, you’ve got to be XERMo.” It was another bit of information that Helen could work with. XERMo had rules, very specific ways of doing things. She just needed to dial in.

  But if XERMo had been called in, things must have gone from bad to worse.

  “Can you tell me what happened to Dougal?” Helen didn’t want to think about it. Didn’t want to think about the damage the eenies had done, of what they would have done to his lungs, his skin.

  What you did, she reminded herself unkindly. That’s why you’re here, right? Not because County has better care, better doctors.

  The fact that it had been self-defense seemed unimportant.

  The nurse blanched at the question, golden skin going pale. She popped the cable out of the tablet and let it clatter on the floor, rather than putting it away.

  Oh shit. She’s nervous.

  Helen saw it now. The nurse had been staying well out of arm’s reach, keeping the tablet at the full stretch of the data cable, not getting any closer than she needed to.

  So what the hell is going on?

  “You know the answer to that.” The nurse stepped back, pocketing the tablet. “All your questions will be answered when the doctors get here.”

  “Look . . .” Helen fished around, looking for a name tag or other identifier in order to make a connection. “I’ll take anything you can give me. I’m alone in here, there’s not even a screen to watch the newscasts. I’m stuck in a bed. I have no idea why Hofstaeder transferred me here or if anyone on my team was hurt.”

  The nurse paused, considering, one hand on the door handle. “I’ll see what I can do, but no promises, okay? We’re on orders to make minimal contact until you get debriefed.”

  Helen spread her hands in a gesture of acceptance. “I’ll take anything. Thank you.”

  As the nurse slipped out of the room, Helen got a glimpse of someone in a uniform outside. It was uncomfortably familiar.
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br />   Except this time there’s no Keller to find you.

  She tested that thought, turned it around in her head, measured her distance from it. She’d grown used to the painful reminders of Ted’s loss, of Keller’s murder. The way they stung and then passed on. This was different. There was nothing. The idea fell quietly into empty space.

  This was familiar too.

  While an Operator, any Operator, was far from helpless when connected to a coffin, Helen had been carefully cut off from anything that might allow her to act, even from her own emotions. That was something even Hofstaeder did lightly.

  Helen closed her eyes and walked back through the last of her memories. Dougal’s accusing finger, Hofstaeder taking charge. Getting out of the coffin had been a challenge, since Dougal had already fried some of the hardware, so the only solution had been a manual disconnect. Hofstaeder had knocked her out for that, officially because it was safer, but Helen could read the anger in the line of her jaw. Ivester, she hadn’t caught a glimpse of, but there had been panic in his voice. The idea that she had simply straight-out murdered her colleague should have been more distressing, but whatever they had her on took the edge off that too.

  The knock on the door broke her focus.

  That was fast.

  The two who entered where both definitely XERMo. A tall, dark-haired man in the lightweight daily-wear uniform Helen had become familiar with in the early days of the Golfball’s launch had to be the attaché. The woman Helen recognized. She’d been working with Hofstaeder to upgrade the coffins. The pale green scrubs were new, and her Captain’s bars were missing. Oddly enough, uniform guy was the one with the smile: bright white teeth and brownish skin that should have put Helen painfully in mind of Keller. That alone was enough to put Helen on her guard, “no-care” drug cocktail be damned.

  “Operator Helena Vectorovich, nice to see you awake.” The smiling attaché spoke first. He was new; when Helen had first connected to the Golfball, Dr. Tate had been the liaison between Far Reaches and XERMo. The captain faded back, her eyes on the medical tablet she’d brought in.

  “I’m Ani Ravennis, Senior Attaché between XERMo and Far Reaches, and this here is Captain Jira Marshall. She’s been assigned to head up your personal care team during your stay here at County. We’re looking to get you healthy and back to work just as quickly as we can.”

  “What happened to Tate?”

  The professionalism of the smile never wavered. “He continued on with the rest of Line Drive when the Golfball portion of the mission was decommissioned. I’ve been assigned to handle this new, and surprising, turn of events.”

  Helen eyed them both, weighing her next words. There was a process here, a checklist she could execute to get out as quickly and smoothly as possible. The presence of the attaché meant there was something official going on. She just had to get a handle on all the details.

  “Nice to meet you both,” she said perfunctorily. Helen turned her attention to the captain, who was still paying more attention to the information on her medical tablet than to either Helen or Ravennis. “Excuse me, Captain Marshall, can you give me a quick rundown on what you’ve dosed me with since I’ve been in your care?”

  The two officers exchanged a glance like they’d been caught at something.

  “All in good time.” Ravennis redirected the conversation like he did so all the time. “We need to go over just what happened in the Recovr lab while it’s still fresh in your mind.”

  “The lab security cameras and coffin logs should tell you everything you need far more accurately than I can,” Helen replied. “Without knowing what Captain Marshall’s been giving me, I can’t be sure I’ll be accurate.” With no idea where Ivester or Hofstaeder were or what the status of the connection to the Scale was, Helen chose to play it close to the vest. Holes in an Operator’s memory were a well-known problem after a bad drop-out, and she’d had more than her fair share of those recently. She could keep them at arms-length for a little while, at least.

  They exchanged another look.

  “Whatever you can give us will be just fine, I’m sure.” Ravennis pressed on, throwing up more red flags.

  “Of course. Once my advocate arrives, we can put something on paper for you.” Talking to Hofstaeder, being debriefed by Ivester and the Far Reaches team, those were all par for the course because she worked for Far Reaches; there were binding, career-crushing contracts involved. Keller’s reminder that she needed to negotiate better, that she needed to make better use of her advocates came to mind.

  “Well, Miss Vectorovich, we’re just trying to get an overview of events, nothing official, nothing binding.”

  “I’m under contract. I can’t say anything without my union advocate present. You know how it is, I’m sure.”

  Helen caught the hint of a smirk on Captain Marshall’s lips. She knew better, at least. A flash of irritation crossed Ravennis’ face, gone as quickly as it appeared.

  “Of course. Let me go check on their arrival time. I’ll be back in a moment.”

  Captain Marshall watched him go, then tugged on the door handle to be sure it had closed completely.

  “Well, now that’s out of the way, let’s talk about your after-care,” she said briskly.

  “After-care? What exactly happened? I had a bad drop-out, that’s all.”

  “What I know, medically, is that something went wrong with your coffin software. You narrowly missed having your nervous system burned out,” Marshall explained. “We think it’s part and parcel with whatever short caused the maintenance systems to go haywire.”

  “Haywire?” Helen didn’t correct her, didn’t offer up any new information. She wasn’t sure how to approach what she had done to Dougal, so she kept her mouth shut. “What happened to Dougal?”

  Marshall pursed her lips. “I don’t have that information. He was transferred to a different medical facility.”

  “Different? Which one?”

  “Sorry, I don’t have any of that information. Now, let’s talk about your recovery.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  “She’s not allowed to talk about that. Terms of contract.” Helen’s advocate had his nose buried in a checklist of items that XERMo wanted answers to. She’d forgotten his name again. He was an average man in an average suit with an unflappable demeanor that Ravennis seemed genuinely stymied by. Helen got the impression that he had faced down bigger bears than XERMo and that this barely rose to the level of “remarkable” in his career memoir.

  XERMo had filled out her tiny room with a table and three folding chairs. They’d been brought in at the beginning of the session and would be folded up and taken out again at the end.

  They hadn’t allowed her out of the quarantine room without an escort. They had finally allowed her out of the bed after the advocate had argued it was no longer necessary and could be considered unlawful restraint, if it turned out that her recovery was, in fact, progressing quickly. Books and other entertainments had started showing up, but no screens, nothing with an outside connection. Helen remained isolated from outside contact. The doctor should have made the call to release her, but in quiet conversation, Helen had managed to tease out that her recovery was supposed to be as slow and complete as necessary.

  They didn’t want to let her go.

  “XERMo has an ongoing contract with Far Reaches regarding the Line Drive mission and all its offshoots,” Ravennis tried to argue in that same reasonable tone he’d been using for days. The man’s feathers never got ruffled; he never seemed to get upset or angry. He was an implacable wall of authority and uniform. Helen went out of her way to get under his skin, to no observable effect. Their impasse had stretched on for days now.

  “Those rights were signed away when XERMo agreed to allow Far Reaches to scrap the Golfball portion of the mission and prep it for sale.”

  “That was before thi
s . . .” Ravennis waggled his fingers, searching for a word . . . “glitch turned out to be something bigger. There is an exigent circumstances clause in all our contracts . . .”

  “Which you have been unable to prove.”

  “Because your client refuses to cooperate.”

  “Because my client refuses to throw away her contract, her seniority, and her career to help you do your job.” Helen’s advocate barely even glanced up from his tablet. “Once you prove exigent circumstances, we can have a different conversation.”

  Helen relaxed back in the chair they’d provided, ankles crossed, arms folded across her chest. There was nothing for her to do except glower at Ravennis until she got the go-ahead to answer a question.

  “Fine. Let’s move this along and start with any questions that aren’t restricted,” Ravennis conceded gracefully.

  Helen was sure he was simply taking another tack, trying to see what he could get her talking about to then pull the conversation sideways. She’d seen the tactic years ago, when she and Ted had been called on the carpet for Ferguson’s Asteroid. Ravennis seemed to have graduated from the same school of negotiation. Ted had watched carefully, explained to Helen what he saw. It was surprising how transparent it was once you understood what you were looking at.

  “Excellent.” The advocate pushed a sheet of paper across the desk to his counterpart. “Ms. Vectorovich has given written responses to the following questions and we have vetted them to be sure the contents are within the guidelines.”

  Ravennis took the page and pushed his chair back, getting to his feet to pace the room as he read. Her advocate threw her a glance, a warning to stick to the script they’d already discussed.

  “So, Ms. Vectorovich. It says here that you joined the team at Recovr after you were taken ill in a coffin-related accident, is that accurate?”

  “That is accurate,” Helen replied shortly, using as few words as she could.

  “And your Doctor Hofstaeder cleared you to return to active duty before you joined Recovr?” Ravennis didn’t look up from the page. He seemed to be reading and re-reading the answers, looking for holes, places he could force an opening.