Immunity

by Erin Bowman

  But Coen wasn’t looking to attack. He hadn’t broken loose to make a move. He was standing there, shell-shocked, staring at the woman.

  “What is it?” Nova asked.

  The officer’s gun twitched between them, uncertain where to aim.

  Coen’s lip quivered. “Oh my god,” he muttered, and a single tear slid down his cheek.

  Coen blinked several times, certain he was hallucinating. He’d hit his head too hard in the crash. The desert had been boiling and he’d gotten too much sun. Even now his throat ached with thirst. But he continued to blink, and the woman standing in the entrance of the interrogation room remained unchanged.

  She was slightly shorter than Thea, with dark, straight hair cut to her chin and bangs that skimmed her lashes. But her eyes were Thea’s. Her mouth, too. He’d never met this woman before and yet he didn’t need to. He knew who she was.

  This was Naree Sadik.

  Coen’s heart throbbed as though it were his own mother. He opened the moment up to Thea, letting her listen.

  “Where’s Althea?” the woman said, looking between the three chairs.

  Thea recognized the voice immediately. She’d never forgotten it. It was a dormant memory, something she’d buried deep inside her only to be awoken now, as her mother said her name. Coen could feel the tears streaming down Thea’s cheeks. It was her happiness, weighted with disbelief and exhaustion and joy, that brought him to tears as well. He couldn’t stop crying.

  “She’s not here,” he managed to say. “We didn’t get her out.”

  “But she’s alive?”

  He nodded.

  “I thought she was dead.”

  “Everyone told her you were dead, too, and sometimes she even wondered if they were right, but she never truly believed it.”

  Tears pooled in Naree’s eyes. “You know me,” she said, staring at Coen. “How?”

  “Because I know your daughter, and she looks just like you.” A pause. “She wants to talk to you.”

  “I would love that. Soon. When we get her back.”

  “She says right now.”

  “What?” Naree’s brow wrinkled in confusion. Coen could feel the girls looking at him, too, their faces drawn with interest. There’d been the crash, then the convoy. He hadn’t had time to mention that his connection with Thea had returned.

  “We’re connected, me and Thea,” he explained to Naree. “She knows everything I’m thinking. I know everything she wants.”

  “Fifty-five light-years apart and you’re connected?”

  “Yes.”

  Naree shouldn’t have believed it. There was no scientific explanation for the phenomenon, no logic that could make sense of something so impossible. But Thea’s mother simply closed the space between them and cupped Coen’s face in her hands. Her skin was warm. She looked Coen in the eye and said, “Tell her I’m right here.”

  Coen felt Thea crumple onto her cot. She bawled into her hands.

  I’m here, too, she sobbed out, and he repeated the words to Naree.

  Up close, the woman smelled of fresh-washed linen and dry summer air. Sharing this with Thea made memories resurface for her: images of the car they had called home in Hearth City; hotels she’d never before remembered; falling asleep on her mother’s shoulder, barely four years old.

  It should have been her having this moment. It should have been Thea standing where Coen stood. They were both sick with the unfairness of it, yet overwhelmed with gratitude that the moment existed at all.

  “She can really hear me?” Naree asked.

  It was a question, but her eyes were hopeful. There was no judgment, no scorn. Coen didn’t know how the woman had such faith. Maybe she could see a piece of Thea in him. Maybe she sensed the nearness of her daughter in a way only a mother could.

  “Yes,” he said. “She says she loves you and misses you and she wants answers.”

  “And I owe them,” Naree said. “I do.” She ushered the interrogator out and closed the door. But it took her a long time to begin speaking.

  She could barely believe it. Her daughter was alive.

  After returning from Bev, a security detail had been waiting for Sol in the hangar. He spoke of several teens who had mentioned Thea. Sol’s men were always bringing in strangers who wandered too close to Paradox’s facilities, most of whom turned out to be Radical spies who never set foot outside again. But teens . . . She’d rushed past the convoy of dust-covered rovers and down to interrogation.

  Now looking at this golden-skinned, stern-eyed boy who somehow had a connection to her daughter, Naree didn’t know if she could bear hurting Thea any further. There was no easy way to tell the tale. It was full of heartbreak. But that was where she ultimately decided to begin, on the night that her life started to unravel: the evening Solomon Weet had shown up at her apartment with version one of the tech in hand.

  He’d slid it across her table and begged for her help, even though she’d left Paradox months earlier, committed to ending the affair and reconnecting with her husband.

  The Radicals were aware of what Sol was building, he insisted. They were trashing the office as he spoke, confiscating everything. Sol would have a cross on his back when they realized he slipped away with the drive. He needed to run.

  She’d refused to go with him, so he asked her to deliver the briefcase to a drop point Paradox used to obtain not-quite-legal quantities of black market corrarium for their research. It wasn’t safe for him to travel with the tech, not with Radicals looking to apprehend him. To this, Naree had agreed, if only to make him go away.

  When she arrived at the drop point two days later, the pier was swarming with Radical agents. They kept fingers on their ears, listening to comms. They ignored the whales migrating offshore that drew tourists to the pier and instead searched the boardwalk for the briefcase—for her. She fled home only to find the apartment ransacked and her husband dead in the shower, a bullet in his temple.

  She was lucky she got to Thea’s daycare before the Radicals.

  That evening was spent in a dingy motel, Thea watching cartoons on the vidscreen as Naree deleted all records of the woman known as Sumi Demir. She even altered Thea’s last name to Sadik, then changed her birth records so the girl’s father read as “unknown” and her mother pointed to Naree, a woman who would exist only in the fake IDs she planned to procure. A ghost.

  They moved around after that, calling their car home and living off meager food credits while Naree worked odd jobs and hunted for Sol. He’d disappeared from the Trios, vanishing like smoke. But she found him eventually, hiding in the Fringe. She arranged a transit for the briefcase because as much as she hated the tech and what it had meant for her family, she couldn’t bring herself to destroy it. It had been eight years of her life. Eight years of development and labor. She just wanted it gone.

  She left Thea at the bus stop and went to meet the courier. It got blurry after that. A cloth rag over her mouth, strange voices. Then she was waking up from cryo, Solomon Weet towering over her as his ship landed in Casey’s Inansi Desert.

  He told her he needed her.

  He claimed only she could finish the tech.

  He insisted he thought Thea would have been with her, that he expected the courier to deliver them all. The briefcase, Naree, and Thea. As though this made the abduction somehow kinder.

  She spent a solid month fuming in her quarters, cursing him, hating him, wishing him dead. She plotted and executed several failed escape attempts. And then, because she knew her only way back to Thea was through the completion of the tech, she swallowed her anger and willingly joined Solomon Weet in his labs.

  VII

  The Compound

  Paradox Technologies

  Casey, Fringe-2 System

  COEN LET THEA HEAR EVERYTHING. Her reactions rattled in his mind, strong and unyielding. Relief that her mother hadn’t abandoned her by choice. Anger that the woman’s actions had torn their family apart. Disgust. Fury. But a bitte
rsweet understanding, too. Naree had been the lead programmer on the tech. In the end, Sol would have sought her out regardless of whether they’d been romantically involved. The woman regretted many things, but she never chose to leave Thea. Sol took away that choice.

  As Naree finished speaking, a well-dressed man entered the interrogation room. He was tall and bronze-skinned, and his suit was freshly pressed, his shoes gleaming. He touched his tie and moved his narrowed eyes to Coen. “You don’t expect me to believe the story you told the interrogators, do you?”

  “What I expect doesn’t matter. It’s obvious you’ve made up your mind.”

  The man barked out a laugh and moved to the table. Naree slid away from him like a repelled magnet, and Coen knew instantly who he was. Solomon Weet, dripping with confidence, regarding others as though they were things he could control. “I want the truth,” the man said. “No detail left out.”

  Coen saw no point in withholding anymore. He told them everything—Black Quarry, Psychrobacter achli, Hevetz’s role with the Radicals, and Burke’s goals on Kanna7. Even what Thea had explained to him earlier about the cerebral implants for the newest batch of hosts. In the brief lulls of his confession, Coen mentally assured Amber that it was the right thing to do. She was a jumble of apprehension, and a single glance at Nova’s scowl told Coen she wasn’t too keen on sharing all this information, either. But Naree Sadik was safe to trust. This was Thea’s mom, and even if Solomon Weet had incredibly questionable morals, his company was shaping up to be the very company Amber had heard Burke worrying about. An enemy of the Radicals.

  “Great,” Nova grumbled when he finished. “You just confessed everything to the asshole who abducted Thea’s mom. You think he’s gonna let us go after learning about the bacteria you guys are hosting?”

  Weet didn’t so much as flinch at the insult.

  “I don’t know,” Coen said, gaze never leaving the man. “Paradox Technologies clearly has a complicated history with the Radicals. I think maybe we’re on the same side.”

  “Isn’t there an ancient saying about that?” Amber asked.

  “The enemy of my enemy is my friend,” Nova recited. “It dates back to Earth Era and was hammered into us at the Academy during lectures on war strategy.”

  “So do we?” Coen asked. He was still looking at Weet, and the man had not looked away, either. His eyes were almost feline, cool and cunning. “Have a common enemy, that is?”

  “The tech,” Naree said, wheeling on Weet before he could answer. “Sol, this is how I get Thea back.”

  “No. It’s out of the question. Besides, you know how I feel about discussing it with strangers.”

  “We’re several levels underground, with guards stationed at every level. There’s nowhere they can go without you knowing.”

  “According to their story, they broke out of Kanna7.”

  “But not Thea!”

  “This is bigger than your daughter, Naree!” the man spat, eyes flashing.

  “Oh yes,” the programmer said with a sigh. “This is bigger than Thea. It always has been, right? It’s bigger than me and what I want, too. It’s all about your noble goals, which mean more than anything, and now you’re not even going to put the tech to use.” Naree shook her head. “You spent years trying to keep this tech out of Radical hands, but now it sounds like they’re creating their own edge—something more powerful than what they tried to steal from you thirteen years ago, and more dangerous, too. I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a war on the horizon, and we have a chance to make sure it becomes the war that never was. That’s what this has always been about, right?”

  Coen watched carefully as Sol shifted, adjusted his tie.

  “I know our trust in each other has shattered, but we need to trust them.” Naree nodded toward Coen. “With this new breed of soldier, the Radicals will reshape the universe into one where power is everything, where the small suffer, where loyalty becomes synonymous with servitude. There’s a better way, and that’s what you told me this tech was all about. That it was about equality, accessibility. It was for everyone. That’s how you recruited me for Paradox all those years ago. The droning on about a better world, a better universe—it’s what made me fall for you. Please don’t tell me that was all a lie. That’s it really just about money. That you want to sell it to the highest bidder, so long as that bidder isn’t a Radical. Because if that’s your moral compass, Sol, it’s shit.”

  Sadness touched Naree’s eyes, and Coen got the feeling that the woman already expected it was about money. That Sol wasn’t apathetic enough to hand his tech to the Radicals, but that he was greedy enough to sell it to basically anyone else once it was complete.

  “You want to go down in history as this great creator?” Naree continued. “Someone who changed the world? Then you can’t turn away from this. If you do, what is the point of everything you’ve built?”

  Sol let his hand fall from his tie. He observed Naree for a long moment, then cleared his throat. “You always were my only weakness, Naree. Go on, tell them about the tech.”

  “It’s a drive,” Naree said plainly. “Capable of transmitting a ship from one location to another instantaneously. We’re calling it the flux drive.”

  Nova gaped. She’d heard of such tech at the Academy, but it was tossed around with the same skepticism or eye rolls that all impossible tech garnered. The Union was no closer to developing instantaneous travel than it was to achieving immortality.

  Amber muttered, “How is that even possible?”

  “FTL works by warping time in front of and around a ship, right? The flux drive works with that concept on a larger scale. This is bending time and space completely, folding the universe like a piece of paper until the origin and destination points overlap, then punching a hole straight through so the ship can drop out at its destination like that.” She snapped her fingers. “As long as the destination is known—a mapped point in our universe—you can travel any number of light-years in the blink of an eye.”

  “The concept has been around for ages,” Sol added. “Even Earth Era physicists and engineers toyed with it. But we had a breakthrough at Paradox about fifteen years ago, and that’s when the Union started offering us money, asking us to sign contracts to create the drives specifically for their military. I took money from private donors, but refused to sign contracts because I couldn’t vet every military employee and feared Radicals were likely already in their ranks. Unfortunately, the Radicals caught wind of what we were building anyway, and I could never shake them.

  “They asked nicely at first, then resorted to threats, tried to break into our offices. I eventually discovered a few Radicals had infiltrated my staff in low-level positions. They didn’t have the clearance to access anything of value, but it was only a matter of time before I lost control of the situation. So I took the tech, burned Paradox to the ground, and fled all in one night. Set up shop here on Casey. The Radicals have been chasing my shadow ever since.”

  “I’m sorry if I’m being dense,” Amber said, “but why is that tech so dangerous?”

  “Are you kidding me?” Nova breathed out a laugh. “Drives that can support instantaneous travel across the universe? Any military fleet with that tech would be indestructible. They could outrun enemies with the flip of a switch. They could appear out of thin air, surrounding entire fleets, surrounding planets. They could overthrow any military and take control of any system. The Radicals would be able to force any hand with that tech.”

  It wasn’t all that different from how Burke planned to use Psychrobacter achli to his advantage, Nova reasoned. If his ships couldn’t outmaneuver his enemies by using the flux drive, he’d find soldiers who could. Soldiers who were nearly impossible to beat. Soldiers who could think and act together, and be controlled.

  “This drive is how we stop the Radicals,” Coen said. “We figure out when Burke intends to make his move—Thea can help with that, even. She’s our inside mol—” Coen stopped abruptly,
brows drawn. “Never mind. She already knows.” For a moment, he was elsewhere, listening to whatever Thea was relaying. “He’ll make his move at the annual UPC trade summit. It’s being held at Xenia Station this year.”

  “That’s in roughly two weeks,” Sol said.

  “I don’t know how he expects to bring a small army onto Xenia without anyone realizing it,” Nova said. “It’s the newest station in the Union. Security will be insane.”

  Just last year, while working a job with Dylan in the tropics of Eutheria, Nova had watched the news as the station was put into orbit. That evening, she’d even spent an hour at her window, hoping to catch a glimpse of the station in the night sky. It had been too cloudy, but she saw it several days later, a spot of light that streaked across the heavens.

  A high-tech gift from the Cradle, Xenia Station was donated to the Trios amid trade disputes and growing Radical resentment. It was a way for the Cradle to say, “we value you, we appreciate you, we’re not simply using you for your corrarium.” The Radicals, however, saw the station as just that: an appeasement. A distraction from the true goal of independence. At Northwood Point, Nova had heard Toby discuss the political power plays enough times to induce a migraine.

  “The Paramount is a Union battleship,” Coen said. “A military ship would have automatic access to a station like Xenia, right?”

  “He can just waltz right in.” Nova nodded numbly. She should have put it together on her own.

  “Waltz in and force the hand of the various Trios counselors. Cancel corrarium trade agreements and withdraw from the Union entirely. His new hosts will infect someone if they fail to cooperate, showing just how dangerous these new soldiers can be. And there will also be a bluff about how additional host soldiers have traveled to each counselor’s home. If they fail to cooperate, their families will be infected.”

  “He’s bluffing with biowarfare?” Nova scoffed.

  “Who cares about the bluff?” Amber chimed in. “If he’s willing to infect someone on Xenia to illustrate how dangerous Psychrobacter achli is, there’s a good chance it’ll get loose on the station.”