The show provided an impressive enough spectacle to elicit approving murmurs from Annie in his head, but Devon soon zoomed his vision in close to watch Emily alone. Her lips were pursed in earnest concentration, but her eyes shone with a glee that eclipsed their Artificial luster. Her blond hair was woven through with strands of emerald and gold photal beads to match her satin dress, which matched her glyphs. The result transformed her into a nymph, a mystical creature too fantastical to exist here among the mere flesh-and-blood mortals.
She richly deserved to be on—or above—the stage, to be a part of this performance, and he could not be more proud of her.
He sat perched on one of the balcony railings, two-thirds of the way back in the bowl-shaped amphitheater. He had a spot reserved on the front row as an ‘honored guest,’ as well as one at the governor’s cocktail party currently underway in the grandstand box above. But this wasn’t about him; it was about Emily, and he was enjoying being anonymous, where he didn’t face pressure from bigwigs to disguise his giddy enthusiasm.
The sky grew yet brighter and more colorful until it was saturated with light and plasma and strobes. The music swelled to match the intensity until both reached such levels of excess he wondered if the Anadens might notice the pageantry way over through two portals and into Amaranthe.
It was all quite over-the-top, but he guessed such celebrations were intended to be. A collective gathering of millions of voices to rise up and shout into the void: us silly humans are alive, and we are unbowed. We are triumphant.
Which they were, for tonight at least. And for tonight, it was enough.
As soon as Devon reached the backstage area, Emily burst out of the throng of performers to rush into his arms, panting, sweaty and exuberant. He laughed and kissed her on the forehead. “You were magnificent, babe.”
“Was I? It all happened so fast, and the overlay got so crazed I could only concentrate on the next motion.”
“Magnificent.”
“Okay, good.” She grinned sloppily. “We’ve been invited to a wrap party at the Carina Center, but I can’t go like this—I’m a wreck! Can we swing by the apartment so I can shower and change?”
“I think you look gorgeous sweaty, but sure, so long as you don’t take the beads out of your hair. I love them. Are you clear to leave now?”
She nodded, and he took her hand and began winding through the crowd toward the exit.
His apartment lay a few blocks away, and he spent the walk listening to Emily chatter on excitedly, basking in the afterglow of the performance. It was awesome.
He felt as if he’d sprinted through Hell and somehow come out the other side at the secret entrance to Heaven. He’d changed in the time they’d been apart, far more than in physical appearance. How could he have not? So had she.
They were still stumbling through what that meant for them, but it was beginning to feel like it was going to work out. She’d come here, to Romane, hadn’t she? ‘For a few weeks, as a trial run,’ she’d said.
He didn’t want to get overconfident, but he thought the trial was running pretty damn well.
The pedestrian traffic finally began to thin as they turned a corner and walked the last block to the apartment building—which was a good thing, because if the crowd hadn’t faded, he never would have sensed the three thugs advancing. As it was, Annie identified their movements as threatening only thirty-eight microseconds before they came within reach.
Hostile aggressors approaching 88° to 123° 4.1 meters—
“Run!” He flung Emily forward down the sidewalk and spun around to block a man’s arm as it arced toward Devon, a small injector in its grasp. The night was warm, and his hand found bare skin below the man’s shirtsleeve.
The attacker convulsed as Devon shoved him to the ground the same instant a second attacker came at him from the side. He threw his shoulder into the man and knocked him into the nearby building façade, brought a hand up to the man’s neck and throttled it.
Nothing happened. The man sneered.
Shit. Not only was the attacker mélanged at a minimum, his cybernetics were ready for the jolt and had dispersed it.
Annie, I need—
The man’s fist landed beneath Devon’s chin, sending his head snapping backward, his body following. He stumbled for two steps—but it gave him the space to grab the blade hilt attached to his waist. Since Abigail’s murder he’d begun carrying one despite his unarmed capabilities, as he’d adopted the opinion one could never have too many weapons.
He coaxed the man into lunging forward for him by acting dazed and unsteady. When the man reached him, he swept his arm up, slammed the hilt against the attacker’s neck and activated it. The man gaped in surprise as his momentum carried them both to the ground.
Suddenly there was blood everywhere, and the man didn’t fight when Devon heaved him to the side and climbed to his feet.
There had been a third assailant. Annie, where?
No contacts in the vicinity.
He scanned the area nonetheless, but saw no one except Emily standing on the sidewalk. She had one hand on her shoulder, grabbing clumsily for the injector sticking out of the skin above her collarbone.
“Devon…something’s wrong. I can’t….”
He sprinted down the sidewalk toward her in growing horror. The glyphs running along her arms darkened from emerald to an ugly, mottled brown, as if ink had been injected into them, and her knees buckled.
He caught her just before she hit the ground. Her head lolled to the side in his arms, eyes closed.
“Emily? Emily?”
He looked up in mounting panic. In the distance pedestrians strolled across the next intersection. “Somebody help!”
Annie—
Help is on the way, Devon. It will be all right.
The view through the tall windows of the grandstand box suite high above the amphitheater sparkled and shone in the wake of the pageantry on display tonight, but Malcolm’s attention hardly strayed from the view inside.
Mia Requelme wore a black silk shift of a dress, sleeveless and draped high in the front but plunging low to her waist in the back. Her sleek hair fell almost as low, but the skin it revealed when she moved her head in one direction or another was enough to send shivers up his spine.
This was the phase of a relationship, near the beginning but after the fumbling awkwardness had passed, where everything was new, where every touch was electric and every meeting anticipated. Knowing it was a phase didn’t lessen his enjoyment of it.
And many meetings to anticipate there were. Their much-heralded and oft-postponed lunch date had quickly turned into dinner then into a weekend, and now he spent so much time here he was all but commuting from Romane to the Presidio.
He tried hard to ensure the extra travel didn’t interfere with his AEGIS responsibilities, working during the transport flights and laboring to not allow his thoughts to drift to her while he was working.
Results had varied.
The businessman whose small talk had gone on a bit long finally excused himself to refill his drink, and Mia pivoted to flash Malcolm a brief, discreet look of annoyance. “He talks too much in Chamber meetings, too.” Her hand alighted on his elbow. “Let’s take the opportunity to grab some finger food and retreat to a corner for a few minutes’ peace.”
He did not need to be convinced. His moderately elevated military rank, the social strata his ex-wife resided in and other accidents of fate meant he’d been attending cocktail parties, banquets and the odd gala for a number of years now, but he’d never enjoyed them. He didn’t mind the uncomfortable dress uniform—he remained proud to wear it—but rather all the false niceties bandied about at the functions. No one actually engaged in conversations; they simply over-enunciated meaningless words into the air past one another.
He was here tonight because he’d been invited by Governor Ledesme on account of his role in defending Romane from the Metigen attack, given the success of the defense was o
ne of the events they were celebrating.
But mostly he was here for Mia. To support her, to be with her, to hope to steal her away from the party soon.
On reaching a vacant high table against the far wall without being waylaid, they offloaded their plates to the crystal surface and relaxed as much as the environment allowed.
She nibbled on a baby carrot. “How is work going?”
“As if you don’t know.”
“I meant the details of your work, specifically. Besides, I work for the IDCC, not AEGIS.”
He laughed quietly. “Are you sure?”
She rolled her eyes. “I suppose we’re all finding ourselves working for AEGIS in one way or another, even if it’s in spite of ourselves.”
The IDCC governors had finally gotten around to giving her an official title in the organization, Minister of Colonial Affairs. In the absence of stipulating, the job seemed to entail not only interfacing with the IDCC member colonies but handling external relations as well, both with individual worlds and institutions. Like AEGIS.
He shrugged. “It’s not a bad thing, and we can use the help. It’s been a busy week. Now that most of the systems are in place and running somewhat smoothly, improvements are coming at us fast and furious. At this point we’ve scrapped or shelved almost all the existing equipment in favor of new or upgraded gear—sometimes twice.
“I’m trying to confirm everything’s tested before green-lighting it, but the problem is we don’t know how long we have to prepare. Different things need to happen if we plan to move in a week than if we have six months. It’s no one’s fault, but that doesn’t make all the pieces any easier to manage.”
She gave him a wicked little grin. “You know you love a challenge.”
In answer, he slid a half-step around the table and placed a hand at the small of her back, lightly but firmly enough to feel the sharp intake of breath as her lips parted.
He still had trouble believing he invoked such a reaction in her. She was brilliant on a revolutionary level, elegant and a superstar in the private and public spheres. Far too lofty and illustrious for a former ground pounder.
But so long as he did invoke such reactions, he was not about to discourage them. His voice lowered to a murmur. “So, how much longer do you think we need to stay here? To avoid being rude?”
Her gaze roved across the room. “Perhaps fifteen minutes. Or twelve…no, nine. Nine more minutes should be sufficient.”
“Good.”
Nao Quhiro spotted them and all but sprinted over. Malcolm’s hand fell from her waist as she picked up her plate and stuffed a shrimp in her mouth to buy herself a few seconds to prepare.
“Jenner—it’s Brigadier now, isn’t it? Congratulations, and so good to see you here. Fabulous performance earlier, don’t you think?”
Malcolm donned the falsely cordial expression everyone wore at these functions. “A worthy commemoration, no question—”
A loud clang rattled beside him as Mia’s plate fell to the table. He spun to find her bracing both hands on the rim of the table, her head hung low between her shoulders.
Memories of a brutal attack and a more brutal seizure flared in his mind as he steadied her, his hands now at her waist in concern instead of desire. “What’s wrong?”
She inhaled deeply and gave him a wan attempt at a reassuring smile. “I’m all right. It’s not me. But Devon’s been attacked, and his girlfriend’s badly injured. I’m sorry, I have to go.”
She’d talked to him about how strong the Noetica Prevos’ connection to one another remained, though it rarely asserted itself so dramatically. “Of course. I’ll go with you.”
“No. Please stay. You’re a guest of honor. Make my apologies to the governor for me?”
He didn’t like it, but he didn’t want to delay her by arguing. “If you’re certain. Keep me updated.”
“I will.” She squeezed his hands then turned and hurried out.
14
ROMANE
IDCC COLONY
* * *
MIA RUSHED INTO THE EMERGENCY SUITE at Curación Hospital to find two doctors, three medical bots and a bevy of screens clustered around a stretcher. The limited free space barely revealed Emily’s still form laid out on the stretcher.
Beyond the swarm of activity, a security guard held Devon out of the way.
No one tried to stop her entry as she hurried over to Devon, though the guard did give her a warning glare when she neared. She leaned in close and kept her voice low so as not to disturb the medical efforts. “Do they know what’s wrong?”
Devon exhaled but didn’t get any words out. His unusually fashionable clothes were splotched in blood; the fact it wasn’t the first time she’d encountered him in such a state disheartened her. Back on Anesi Arch, after they’d fled EASC Headquarters, she’d wanted to spare him the pain of the kind of callous life experiences that had shaped her past. But she couldn’t do so then, and it was patently clear she couldn’t now.
“Her cybernetics are fighting themselves. Whatever she was injected with has caused a mutation in their programming, and both the original and the mutation see one another as foreign invaders.”
The doctor seemed to be answering her question, and when he shifted slightly toward her she realized she knew him, if only in passing. His name was….
Philippe Johansson. He rents a long-term executive bay from you at Exia Spaceport and is apt to take frequent off-world trips.
Thank you, Meno.
Before she was able to respond to Johansson, several screens began blinking red and he pivoted back to the stretcher. “We need to shut her down—shut everything down and bring her as close to a stasis point as possible.” He tilted Emily’s head to the side and attached conductive sensors to the ports at the base of her neck. “I’m booting down her eVi, but we need to get her Artificial to disconnect and go into standby mode. Can anyone here make that happen?”
She turned to Devon. “Can you contact her Artificial directly and convince it to shut down?”
He blinked, and after a beat nodded. “I can. But—”
“Do it now, son.”
“Right.” His expression blanked for a few seconds. “It’s agreed to disconnect…and it’s done.”
“Thank you.” A medical bot rolled an isolation chamber into the room, and the other bots lifted Emily’s body up off the stretcher and placed it inside. Mia got her first good look at the girl as they moved her. Her skin was ashen and drawn tight over her bones, almost as if she were decaying before their eyes.
Mia shuddered and banished the image from her mind.
Devon tried to rush forward, but the guard held him back. If Devon really wanted to, he could disable the guard with hardly a thought. But she imagined he wasn’t in a mindspace where it would occur to him to do so.
His voice quivered. “What’s going to happen to her in there?”
Johansson input a series of commands into the external control panel. “This chamber will lower her body temperature and slow her organ functions—and the ware routines interacting with them—to the minimum life-supporting level. It won’t be cryogenic stasis, but it will be close. We need to try to halt the progression of the degeneration until we can find a way to reverse it.”
Mia frowned. “Why can’t you simply flush her cybernetics? I know she’d lose any custom code she’s installed, but I’m positive it’s a price she’d happily pay.”
As the cover closed over the chamber and the frail-looking body inside, Johansson faced her. “I can’t decipher the malicious code. It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen. And until I can, I can’t design a flush that will wipe it out.”
Her eyes narrowed. “What do you mean, ‘it’s like nothing you’ve ever seen’?” Meno had fed her the man’s public file in the intervening minute since identifying him, and he was a highly respected biosynth specialist.
“Well, for one, it appears to display a five-dimensional quantum configuration, which isn’t exactly
mainstream technology.”
Crap. “Dr. Johansson, I need a copy of all the scans you’ve taken of the malicious code.”
He gestured to the other doctor, who began shepherding the chamber out of the room. “I have to ask why, Ms. Requelme. I recognize you’re a Prevo and a notable one, but you’re not a physician or a scientist.”
“Because I may know where it came from.”
Devon wasn’t sure when or how he’d ended up standing at the entrance to the corner lab in the basement of the hospital. He wasn’t even sure when or how he’d left Emily’s room—the new room, the one in the ICU wing where they’d moved her isolation chamber. Moved her.
But now he stood here, watching Mia work at an interactive terminal in an expensive cocktail dress and no shoes. His mind kept drifting off, though, and when it returned he’d be confused all over again for a second.
He cleared his throat and tried to keep his attention fixated here. “So?”
She held up a finger, but her focus didn’t otherwise avert from the two wide, virtual screens scrolling live code in three dimensions.
He tried to focus on the code himself. He knew he could understand it easily as well as she did if he just concentrated.
Devon, you’re making yourself sick. You can’t do everything, and Mia can handle this.
We can handle it, too, dammit!
But perhaps we shouldn’t.
He didn’t want Annie to be right. He felt as if he was betraying Emily every minute he wasn’t working exclusively to save her. Cracking the virus would be helping her, of course it would be helping her…but as a programmer by trade and a hacker by hobby, he was also afraid it would feel too similar to fun, and he shouldn’t be having fun. He should be suffering.
He should be in that chamber. The attack had been directed at him; he was certain of it. The third assailant had stabbed Emily with the injector in a panic as they fled, desperate to do at least some damage.
She was going to die because of him.
“She’s not going to die, Devon.”
He glanced up in surprise to see Mia had spun her chair around to face him. She cringed. “Sorry—I didn’t mean to intrude, but that thought was quite loud. It broke through the noise.”
Aurora Resonant: The Complete Collection (Amaranthe Collections Book 3) Page 11