Immunity

by Erin Bowman

  I didn’t think we’d be able to talk in here, she said.

  It must be different from the gas sedative.

  Cryostasis suspended the body, not the mind, so in a way, it made sense. But the fuzzy, weak quality of their conversations led Coen to believe that if he’d been placed in a pod across the room, rather than directly beside Thea, he wouldn’t have been able to hear her at all.

  Still, this fuzzy, weak connection was enough. More than enough. If the muscles in his face were capable of smiling, he would have. He could sense Thea’s excitement, too. A buzzy, electrified hum.

  It’s about two months back to the Trios, he said. Should we discuss escape plans?

  What for? We don’t know what we’ll be escaping. Not until we get there and see what we’re up against.

  Coen could see the logic there, but he hated how helpless it made him feel. At least when stranded on Achlys, there’d been plenty of tasks to keep him busy. Inventorying supplies. Gathering water. Charging battery cells. Cleaning the rover. Planning what he’d say to his sister if he ever made it back to her.

  But to be stuck in this cryostasis pod, useless, waiting. Doing nothing while the Paramount brought him closer to what would essentially be another prison . . .

  Thea, I don’t want to die like this: on their terms, under their knives, surrounded by strangers.

  We’re not going to die. And I’m not a stranger.

  I barely know you.

  Well, we’ve got two months to fix that. Here, I’ll start: I’m an orphan. I’ve been in child services since I was four. I never knew my dad, and my mom’s presumed dead, but I think she’s still out there somewhere. I’m going to find her one day, or at least find out what happened to her. After I get out of this mess and attend Linneaus Institute and am making a boatload of unnes a year, I’m going to hire a private investigator to track her down . . .

  Coen listened to her talk, and he took it into himself, the fear slowly drowned out by cautious optimism. Thea talked about an after with such certainty he began to picture one for himself. And when it was his turn to talk, he shared the future he longed for.

  His sister, Gina, and the tumor along her spine receding. Her regaining strength, leaving the hospital bed. His family, no longer bankrupt from the cost of the care. He’d go back to school, get his GenEd degree, think about attending a trade school for mechanics or robotics.

  Maybe, if the stars aligned, Coen just might be able to amount to something more than a scavenger.

  Nova lifted the welding mask, sparks from her soldering gun fading.

  “Think that will hold?” she asked.

  Dylan squinted at the work. “For now.”

  The breach in engineering had been minor, but this one, in Air Lock 3—a narrow slash in the interior no wider than a hairline, but nearly three meters tall—had proved a nightmare. That Nova had enough scrap to patch it was a miracle, not to mention that she completed the work without an EVA suit. It shouldn’t have been possible. In the twenty minutes it took her to seal the breach, the vacuum should have torn the station apart. And she should have run out of air. Or died from the cold.

  “It’s all in your head, remember?” Dylan chided. “Science doesn’t matter here. This is just you making sense of the situation with visuals.”

  “If science doesn’t matter, why can’t I just wake up? Something else must be broken.” Nova swung the welding mask off her head and dropped it. It spiraled near her hip. Dylan grabbed it and secured it to a holding station on the wall while Nova stowed away the soldering gun. “Let’s run diagnostics.”

  Nova pushed off the air lock door, propelling herself through the station. In command central, static filled the room, garbled and choppy.

  If you can hear me . . . things are . . .

  Nova pushed off the doorframe, gliding into the room.

  Your friends . . . danger.

  “Hello?” Nova said into the main comm radio. The static simply continued to crackle, the transmission repeating.

  If you can hear me . . . things are . . . your friends . . . danger . . .

  “Comms are down.” Nova abandoned the radio and turned to the central station, grabbing it at the lip to pull herself in for a better view. “I’m gonna reboot the whole system. Maybe that will get the station rotating again, too; get us out of zero g.”

  Dylan gave a shrug as if to say, Whatever you think.

  Nova moved through the interface, which was strikingly similar to the fighters she operated while training at the Academy. It was a relief to be so familiar with the interface, but also unsettling. A space station like this should run on entirely different operations. Then again, it was all in her head.

  She found the right command and tapped the button. “Rebooting.” All through the command room, the screens went black. The garbled message repeating from the radio died. For a moment the room was deathly silent.

  Then a blinking cursor appeared on the main console.

  “Did it work?” Dylan asked.

  The screen updated with text.

  REBOOTING COMMUNICATIONS . . .

  INTERNAL AUDIO AND VIDEO . . . ONLINE.

  EXTERNAL NEAR PLANET COMMS . . . ONLINE.

  EXTERNAL DEEP SPACE COMMS . . . ONLINE.

  COMMUNICATION SYSTEM REBOOT . . . COMPLETE.

  “I think that means yes,” Nova said.

  Another static crackle from the radio, then an alert on the screen before her. Transmission received via DSC.

  Deep space comms. Figured. Of course help wasn’t nearby.

  Nova pushed herself over the console, glided for the radio, and played the message.

  What happened to you out there in the Fringe? Was it bad? The voice was soft and reassuring, kind. Of course it was bad. You’re in a coma.

  Nova fumbled for the radio’s mouthpiece.

  If you can hear me, I think things are only going to get worse. I think your friends might be in danger.

  “Who is this?” Nova asked into the radio. “Hello? Can you hear me?”

  “It’s on old transmission,” Dylan said sadly. “It’s not live.”

  Nova sat back in frustration. For a long moment, the room was painfully silent. Then a light blinked on the console, indicating a new incoming message, this on the internal lines. Definitely live. Nova straightened.

  I’m just going to keep talking, the voice said. I’m pretty sure you can’t hear me, but I’m going to keep at it anyway. You’re stuck with me, I guess.

  “I’m here. This is Nova Singh, temp pilot with Hevetz Industries. Do you read me?”

  I wish I knew your name.

  “It’s Nova, dammit! Hello? Hello, do you copy?”

  They took your friends to cryo. I think something bad is going to happen to them. Who are they?

  “Thea and Coen. I can explain later. Where are you—did you just dock? I don’t understand how you’re on the internal lines. There’s no one else on this station.”

  Who are you? the voice continued.

  “I’m Nova Singh, dammit!” She threw the radio. It clattered against the unit, then bounced back in her direction, floating on its tether. It was no use. Despite being back online, the comms were clearly malfunctioning.

  “Morse code,” Dylan supplied.

  “What?”

  “You could try Morse code.”

  Nova followed Dylan’s gaze to the tap lever in front of the radio. It had appeared out of nowhere, as though her brain had conjured it.

  Maybe I’m asking questions that are too complicated, the voice went on. How about this: if you can hear me, blink.

  “Blink?” Nova glanced at the Morse code transmitter, then to the radio. She reached out and pressed the paddle, producing a single, short tap.

  Amber froze, certain she’d imagined it.

  The pilot’s vitals hadn’t changed. Her heart rate beeped on, as steady as ever. Her body was rigid in the medbed, and though her eyes remained closed, Amber was certain they’d just twitched.r />
  “I think . . . Did you just hear me? Blink again for yes?”

  The pilot’s eyelids tightened briefly, then returned to their relaxed, sleeping state.

  “Oh my god.”

  At that, the pilot’s eyelids moved rapidly, clenching for varying intervals of time. Amber staggered away from the medbed. The pilot’s body temperature was up a single degree, her heart rate just a touch faster than before. Still nowhere near where they should be, but they’d changed.

  “I don’t understand. Slow down. Let’s do yes/no questions.”

  The pilot relaxed.

  “One blink for yes, two for no. You can hear me?”

  A blink.

  “Are those teens they brought to cryo your friends?”

  Another blink.

  “Did something bad happen in the Fringe?”

  Yes. No.

  “So maybe?” Amber paused, sucking her lip. “How about this: Our crew picked up yours and now we’re headed home to the Trios. Are we in danger?”

  A pause, as though the pilot was considering the situation carefully.

  No.

  Amber let out an exhale. “That’s one silver lining, I guess. But I still think your friends are in trouble. The soldiers sedated them before moving them to cryo. Why would they do something like that?” Amber’s thoughts drifted to her father’s comments about quarantine procedures. “I wish I knew your name,” she added.

  The pilot’s eyes twitched again, frantic and sporadic.

  “Are you okay?”

  Yes. Then more panicked twitching.

  “I don’t understand.”

  The blinking continued, long and short, with intermittent pauses. It made no sense, except that . . . Amber froze, watching carefully. The blinks weren’t as frantic as she’d first thought. They made up a pattern.

  “Hang on!” She raced for the Tab, and swiped to a clean page in the pilot’s chart. “Repeat it again, slower.” As the pilot clenched and unclenched her eyes, Amber recorded the beats. Dashes for long blinks, dots for short.

  — • — — — • • • — • —

  She stared at her notes, puzzled. Was it a cypher? Some type of code? She lowered the Tab to her lap, shaking her head. The pilot was still repeating the pattern of blinks, but less enthusiastically. The Tab dimmed, and Amber glanced down to see the device had reverted to sleep mode. The Union’s military seal now filled the screen.

  The military . . . Military communications . . . “Morse code!”

  Yes.

  Amber brought the Tab out of sleep and pulled her notes into the built-in translation software, selecting Morse code as the language. The screen refreshed with a single word.

  “Nova?” she asked, reading from the Tab.

  Yes.

  “Hi, Nova. My name’s Amber Farraday. It’s nice to meet you.”

  The pilot began blinking almost immediately. After a moment, Amber had her question: Where?

  “Where are you? The UBS Paramount, somewhere in the Fringe. We’re headed back to the Trios, though.”

  How?

  This one was trickier, as Amber didn’t know all the details herself. “Our crew was tasked with picking up cargo in the Fringe,” she said, explaining what she’d been told. “You and your friends were part of that cargo. I don’t know much else beyond that. I’m only an . . . intern, I guess you could say. A medic in training shadowing my father.”

  Coma? How?

  “I don’t know. I wish I did. You’ve been this way since they wheeled you in. Maybe something was wrong with your shuttle’s cryo sequence. You might not have been sedated properly and—”

  “Amber!”

  She jumped at the sudden appearance of her father, the Tab nearly falling from her lap.

  “Burke wants all personnel in cryo.”

  “What about your research?” All Amber had heard since the cargo was picked up was how important her father’s research was to Burke’s cause and the Radical agenda. She’d seen enough soldiers and scientists making the Radical salute to each other in the halls to assume the entire crew were Radicals. Some even made the salute to her in passing. Amber always mirrored it, feeling like she was in on a secret without the actual details. Everyone on this ship was working toward the same goal—a goal no one seemed to think she needed to know about—only now the crew would be going under for the two-month flight home instead of using that time to work. It didn’t make sense.

  “I’ll pick up where I left off later,” her father explained. “I need more equipment than this ship can offer. Plus, Vasteneur will join us there to oversee things.”

  Aldric Vasteneur, owner of Hevetz Industries. Amber had heard one of the scientists onboard bragging about how close he was with the owner. Another had countered that Vasteneur clearly had faith in her as well, seeing as they’d both been recommended to Burke for this mission. They were like neglected children, Amber had thought, vying for Daddy’s attention.

  “What about the pilot? I can’t leave her now.”

  “I’ll program a med-droid to watch her vitals, change IVs as needed.”

  “But she’s responsive!”

  Amber’s father perked up. “What?”

  “She can hear me. Nova, can you hear me?” The pilot’s eyes clenched and relaxed. “See the blink? One means yes, two means no.”

  Her father peered at the readings on the pilot’s monitors and sighed heavily. “Amber, I’m sorry. We don’t have time for this. I’ll make sure the med-droid pulls me out of cryo if her state changes, but I’ve got orders from Burke.”

  Immediately, Nova blinked twice. No.

  “Dad, I want to stay.”

  “This isn’t negotiable!” He seized her arm and towed her toward the door.

  Another two blinks. No. Then another, over and over. It was all Amber could see as her father forced her into the hall.

  Eventually, their conversations faded, and Thea and Coen sat in eerie silence. Minutes, hours, days passed. Occasionally Thea would reach out to him, confirming she wasn’t alone. I’m still here, he’d say, the response always calm and warm.

  It was like any experience in cryo, in that she knew time was passing, but it was that much more unsettling because conversation was possible. Thea felt like she was stuck in limbo, half awake but still trapped in a sleeping body, unable to move.

  She thought of many things as the ship rattled through space. Where it might be headed, what type of facility she and Coen would be moved to, how they’d ever manage to escape it.

  One step at a time, she reminded herself.

  Before she could attempt to run again, she’d have to be awake. And she’d need to assess the situation fully. No more smash and grabs like her first attempt. The next time Thea would be careful, patient, precise. Her plan would be perfect and she’d execute it flawlessly. Lieutenant Burke and his Radical crew wouldn’t even know she was missing.

  This was just like any assignment, she reasoned, and Thea had never met an assignment she couldn’t complete.

  At noon, when he came to check on her as he always did, she attacked. Fists, palms, nails—anything she could get on him.

  “Sumi!” he shouted. “Sumi, stop it.”

  “It’s Naree,” the programmer snarled, “and it has been for years.” Sumi Demir had been dead since the moment the programmer scrambled her records and created Naree Sadik in her place. She’d been a ghost since her involvement with Sol had sent the Radicals after her family. She faulted him completely.

  If he hadn’t manipulated her, she wouldn’t have accepted his briefcase with version one of the tech before he disappeared from the Trios. And if she’d known what he had planned, she never would have left Thea at the bus stop while she delivered said briefcase to a courier at Sol’s request. But she’d stuck to her word, and the next thing she knew, she was waking up on a ship bound for Casey. Sol hadn’t just wanted the tech. He’d wanted the programmer behind it, too.

  She hadn’t seen her daughter since.<
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  “I came as soon as I heard,” Sol said, his gaze tracking to the computer. The news report featuring Thea’s death continued to loop. “It may not be accurate. Word is Hevetz Industries has fallen into Radical hands. They could be covering something up.”

  “Stop it! Just stop!” She wheeled on him, tears streaming, her pulse pounding in her ears. “You’re just trying to find another way to keep me here. Thea was your bargaining chip, and she’s gone. I’m finished. Take me home.” She collapsed into her seat and cried freely.

  “I can’t do that.” He knelt at her feet, took her hands in his. “I can’t do this without you, Sum—Naree. The recharging cycle is the final snag, and you’re the only one who can solve it.” His eyes gleamed almost catlike.

  She yanked her hands from his. “To what end, Sol? What’s in it for me?”

  “Were you always this selfish or did I miss it all those years ago?”

  “Selfish?” She shot to her feet. “You abducted me. You took me from my daughter and held me hostage here, and now Thea’s dead. The one thing I was working to get home to is gone. I couldn’t care less about your stupid flux drive and changing the universe.”

  “I recruited you,” he said, picking his words carefully, “because it was the only option. Paradox had to go into hiding. Coming to Casey, leaving the Union behind . . . it was the only way to escape the Radicals. They would use this for all the wrong reasons.”

  “At this point, I wish it would fall into Radical hands so they can tear the world apart. At least then I wouldn’t have to see your face.”

  He touched his tie, wounded. “It pains me that even now, after all these years, you still feel like a prisoner here. That you see me, and not the Radicals, as the villain.” Sol was always doing this, twisting her words, making himself the victim. “Besides, Thea is only presumed dead. Why would you give up on her preemptively?”

  “I have never given up on her,” the programmer snarled. “I’ve wanted nothing but to go home to her. That is all I’ve ever wanted.”

  “So help me with the drive until you have proof.”

  She raised her chin to look Sol in the eye. “I will ruin you one day,” she said calmly. “It doesn’t matter if she’s alive or not, if you let me go or keep me here forever. I will ruin you for what you’ve done.”