Traitor

by C R MacFarlane

  Hoepe chose the only thing that he truly knew anything about, and he pulled the auto-injector from his coveralls, dialling it to the last dose of sedative. Kieran had taken enough stims, combined with long-term exhaustion, to actually overload his heart, and Hoepe had been trained to never let anything die. “Kieran, you’re high on stims. When was the last time you slept more than ten minutes?”

  “I didn’t set no bombs.” But Kieran’s face scrunched up. “Did I? I don’t remember.”

  There was no other option. The injector hissed against Kieran’s neck, and Hoepe lifted him. “I’ll take Kieran back to his quarters,” he said to Leove.

  Leove put a hand on Hoepe’s arm, but Hoepe only flinched away, the touch less than meaningless. “I think Rami’s right. We can’t ignore this threat. I’m sorry. I’m going to put my vote behind Rami and the Rule of War. We need him to check over everything in Engineering.”

  Hoepe pushed through the Augments, nearly all of them pressed into the small space, despite the late hour, despite not seeing that many in engineering ten minutes ago. He didn’t dare look at them or their expressions.

  Grant caught up with him as he entered the corridor, pacing silently beside him.

  “Usually it’s Kieran carrying Sarrin around,” Hoepe said.

  Grant managed to override the door lock, and they stepped into the standard lieutenant’s quarters. “Where’s Sarrin?” He asked. “Is this really where she’s been staying?”

  Hoepe set Kieran on the bed gently. “I don’t know.” Sedated, the engineer was nothing like his usual bright self, he was just another body, another human machine. “Do you think he did it?”

  Grant bit the inside of his cheek. “No, I don’t. I didn’t have a chance to really look at the thing in that locker — I tried to stop them but they just tore it up faster. It wasn’t like anything I’d ever seen before, I couldn’t see any kind of trigger or detonator, no feedback loops, nothing. I know how to make things go boom. That machine wouldn’t have exploded — not more than anything else at least. Truth be told, most things will explode if they’re overloaded or mis-wired. It’s because of Kieran that nothing has. Not the other way around.”

  “You saw the shuttle. Do you think Kieran could have done that?”

  Grant rubbed his jaw. “I’d never seen anything like it, which is what we say about most of what Kieran does. But he wouldn’t have, not on purpose. And if he had actually wanted to tear the ship apart, that’s what would have happened.”

  “If not Kieran, who else?”

  “I don’t know.” Grant hung his head. “But we all make mistakes. I actively tried to blow up the ship when you landed on Junk the first time — you’ve forgiven me.”

  Hoepe sighed. “So what do we do?”

  Grant hesitated again. “You have to take my chip out. Rami has enough evidence to make everyone in that engine room follow him. Even your brother agrees. The Rule of War is inevitable. I have more marks than he does, but he’s convinced the others that the UECs are controlling me, and that Kieran is controlling Sarrin — neither of us are fit for the job, so he becomes our leader by default. But if the chip is out, I can be the alpha. I can at least keep Kieran from getting spaced.”

  Hoepe’s heart dropped. “We can’t remove your chip. There are too many unknowns.”

  “You have to take this chip out of me, or I think Kieran is going to die,” Grant said. “And then what happens to us?”

  “We need a full neural scan. We don’t know how the suit is tied in, or how the mind control element works.”

  “If Kieran is really what you say, we have to take the chance. Rami has gotten more extreme. He idolized Sarrin, the idea of her at least. Now he’s confused and angry that she’s not what he expected, and he thinks its Kieran’s fault she’s not the same.”

  “But Sarrin’s always been like this.”

  “I know, but Rami saw her leap through the observation tower during the war games, and he’s never forgotten. He says she’s the only one who really understood we had to attack to survive, ‘fight is might’.” Grant pointed at the sleeping figure on the bed. “Kieran might be a God, but he bruises the same as us. If something happens to him, we’ll all die. Or at least be smote down.”

  Hoepe took a steadying breath. All his instincts, the years he’d spent as a trauma surgeon, told him this was a very bad idea. Inspire of that, he nodded once, they would remove the chip. There was nothing else they could do.

  ELEVEN

  SARRIN PUSHED OPEN THE GREY panel, catching it before it fell onto the grey floor and sliding out into the grey room. Kieran laid on the single bed, silent and unmoving except for the artificially slow rise and fall of his chest.

  Certain he was asleep, she rounded the bed and peered down into his face. Unbruised. She pressed her five fingers to her chest in thanks. The terror that had flooded the ship, the images of Kieran surrounded by angry Augments, had overwhelmed her — sent her vision spiralling into blackness, the monster screaming at her to run. Only there was nowhere to run. The tight spaces between the walls of the ship held her, squeezed her tight, the weight pressing on her like a grav-trap in Evangecore. She spent unknown minutes — hours? — simply suspended. She would have stayed had it not been for the call of a particular biological function — a remnant of being human.

  The latrine was standard — shower, toilet, sink, and vanity mirror. She ducked her head, averting her eyes as she passed the mirror. The privacy of the room was a luxury, and she bowed her head, holding it in her hands. Palms pressed into her eyes, shooting stars across the emptiness. Another bathroom in another time: Amy stood at the sink, soaking the edge of a ripped shirt in the running water. “Gods, Sarrin,” she said, reaching out to dab at Sarrin’s cheek, “why didn’t you protect yourself?”

  Sarrin, age eight, sniffed, sucking up her quivering lower lip. Pain seared as Amy cleaned the blood from her already swollen face, the split in the skin stinging as the shirt brushed against it.

  “I didn’t mean to hit you so hard. I thought you were going to move.”

  And why hadn’t she?

  “The next time they put us against each other, I want you to fight, okay. I know you can.”

  She shook her head. “Why do we have to fight? I don’t want to hurt you.”

  Amy bent down in front of her — at age twelve she was nearly a head taller than Sarrin. “Because I don’t want them to hurt you.”

  A fresh round of sobbing rose from the knot in her chest. “I don’t understand.”

  Amy drew her in, wrapping her arms around Sarrin’s little body. “I don’t want them to think you’re weak. You’re strong, I know you are. But you’re also kind, and that… that doesn’t seem to mean anything here.” She pushed Sarrin to arms length, looking intently into her face. “They will make us fight again, Sarrin. They know we’re friends, and that’s the reason why — they want to know if we will still hurt each other. When they do, you have to promise me you’ll try. No matter what happens, no matter what you do or I do, I will always be your friend. Always, always, always.”

  Sarrin blinked, sitting once again in the little grey latrine. Amy had protected her, even when Sarrin was too stubborn to know the price of not obeying in Evangecore. And Sarrin had been unable to return the favour when Amy had needed it most. No doubt she was dead, a childhood memory long gone.

  She returned to the main room, intent to slip out the way she came, but Kieran was sitting up in the bed, scrubbing a hand over his face. “Hey,” he called out, making her pause. “Where did you go?”

  His speech was off, his eyes too droopy. She took a step closer to the bed, examining his pupils. “Sedative?” she realized, wondering why he had agreed to take one.

  His eyes darted to the side. “Yeah. Hoepe….” His hand brushed wildly through his hair. “God, I feel awful.” One leg reached out of the bed, pushing uncertainly against the floor. He wobbled, nearly falling forward as he stood. Instinctively, Sarrin reached her h
and forward, jerking it back before she made contact. Their eyes met in a horrible, terrifying heartbeat. Kieran fell back instead, plopping onto the bed.

  “You haven’t metabolized the drug yet,” she said.

  “Yeah.” His hands rubbed all over his head and face, and he groaned into them loudly. “What have I done?”

  She straightened, scanning the room for evidence — something significant must have happened while she was lost to the monster and trapped in the walls. There were three escape routes and thirty-six objects that could be used as deadly weapons.

  No.

  The console screen flashed an intermittent green light — powered on but the screen was dark. She stepped to it, activating the console with a touch of her finger, and it lit up. A program she wasn’t familiar with shone out at her, on it was a string of words and short form abbreviations. It was difficult to read, but she picked up enough: ‘Evangecore’, ‘alive’, and ‘continue study’. Kieran was writing a letter home.

  The Rubik’s cube spun in his hands, it’s multicoloured surfaces flashing quickly.

  “How do you do that?” she said.

  He frowned, gaze steady on the cube, and grunted harshly, “Practice.”

  The gruffness was so unlike him, it nearly pushed her into a trance. She looked for escape, but her feet stayed rooted in place. Instead, she said, “You were writing a letter home.”

  His vibrant green eyes lifted, suddenly wide in panic. “What?”

  She turned to the console — what else could it have been?

  He was beside her in an instant, then brushing past and leaning into the screen, his movements clumsy but agitated. He cursed under his breath, a word she didn’t quite recognize. Eyes darted across the screen, his pulse bounding loudly enough she could hear its rising pace. “This is bad.” He huffed and paced to the opposite side of the room, returning only to stare at the writing again. His finger hovered uncertainly, and then withdrew and he paced again.

  Sarrin pressed herself into the wall, pushing out of his way.

  He stopped in front of her, white. “What do I do?”

  She shook her head. Wasn’t he supposed to write a report home?

  “If I leave it there, someone will find it eventually. But Rami will be watching, and if I erase it, he’ll have a tag to find everything.” He lifted his wrist, looking as though he normally kept something there, and then turned his head to the clock on the console. “How long have I been out? Long enough for him to hack my computer.” He cursed again.

  She took a tentative step towards his hunched shoulders. “Why would Rami be watching?”

  Kieran sighed. “The shuttle crash wasn’t an accident. Someone set a bomb. They think I did it.”

  Her foot took another step at the same time as her mouth exploded, “What?”

  “It was stupid. The thing is, I can’t be sure I didn’t.” He paced across the room, throwing his arms into the air, and she stupidly followed. “I don’t remember writing that letter, Sarrin!” His hand flew out, nearly bumping into her. “I was building something in Engineering, and I don’t remember starting that either. Rami found it. He thinks it was a bomb, the same as I set in the shuttle, the same as I rewired all those convertors.” He let out a rough roar and fell back on the bed, head once again in his hands.

  “The solution with the convertors was sound.”

  “Well, Rami didn’t think so. Someone rigged one wrong and it blew up.” He sighed again, straightening. “Like, not really blew up, just fizzed a bit. Problem is, Rami has the Augments rallied against me. Even Hoepe thinks I caused the shuttle to crash. And, I don’t know, did I?”

  Her feet led her closer. “No.”

  “How do you know?”

  Because she had visions of him working, and never had she seen him in the shuttle hangar. Because she had been with him when it happened. Because Evangecore had opened up too many extra senses in her mind and the idea of Kieran sabotaging a shuttle was completely false. “It’s not in your nature,” she answered simply. Another step, and she bent down in front of him.

  His eyes were red, uneven from the sedative, and a thick layer of moisture collected on the lower lids. “I’m scared, Sarrin,” he said, his voice cracking. “He’s going to come for me. This rule he’s set up so he’s in charge, is it… is it normal? Is there a different way?”

  “It’s how we commanded our war teams in Evangecore.” She frowned. Amy had been their leader most often, her tactics calculating and deadly.

  “I asked you before what you would do….”

  She shook her head to stop him.

  “Please. Rami is in the engine room, tearing all the repairs apart. Gal still says the planet is a bad idea, and we couldn’t even get to the surface if we tried. We expected the warship two days ago, and by some grace of God they haven’t come back yet, but they’re gonna.” A fresh wave of emotion rolled off of him, so foreign she lurched back: anger. “They’ll listen to you, Sarrin. But you’re too scared to go out there and face them.”

  Everything flinched, her vision clouding around the edges. “I can’t. What if —.”

  “You can’t keep running away, hiding in the walls. Wanting to come back to the Observer ship — it’s the same thing. But this is your fight. No one is going to make your life better but you. You’re the best one for the job, don’t you understand?”

  Something flew by in her peripheral vision: a data tablet.

  “Did you see that?” The weight of Kieran’s anger lifted, and he turned his head left to right. Memory chips and old ration containers flew around the room. The bright Rubik’s cube went spinning through the maelstrom.

  She gasped, letting it all fall at once.

  “Sarrin?” he whispered hoarsely. “That was you, right? Because I got so upset. I’m sorry.” He rubbed his fists into his eyes. “I haven’t been sleeping, pumping myself full of stims and now seds. I’m probably as messed up as Gal.”

  She picked up the photo frame that had fallen at her feet, staring at the smiling faces. At a man who was not the same as the one in front of her. Her lips pressed together. “I told you I’m dangerous. I can’t control it. I’m a monster.”

  Silence followed, and when she finally chanced to look at him, his gaze held her. “You’re not a monster.”

  She bit her lip.

  “I’m sorry I yelled,” he sighed. “I… had a rough day… week… month….”

  She nodded.

  “I mean it,” he said. “You’re not a monster. You never were and you never will be. Got it?”

  She turned away. “You need sleep.”

  “Say it with me,” he told her. “Say, ‘I am not a monster’.”

  She turned the photo in her hands to avoid his gaze. “It’s foolish, Kieran.”

  “Sarrin, it’s true. Just once. You can’t keep telling yourself you’re a monster, you’ve got to change it and change the way you think. These things that happened, they were terrible, but none of them were your fault. The only thing you are in control of is what you do now, what you do with the cards you’ve been dealt.”

  A drop of moisture splashed on the photo, and she wiped it off.

  “Please, Sarrin.”

  Her eyes squeezed shut and she pushed the words out in a rush: “Iamnotamonster.”

  “Close enough.”

  “Kieran, what’s ‘cards’?”

  He barked out a laugh, sharp and hard in the tiny room, and collapsed back on the bed. “Just tell me it’s all gonna be okay.”

  Her mind flashed an image of Amy, leading their battle group, as they stood around, heads bowed in defeat. “It will be okay, Sarrin,” she said, but it was a lie, Sarrin could feel it in her tiny bones. They should not have lost. They never lost — none of the kids ever really lost or won, they just beat on each other until the sedatives permeated the air in the room and they all laid down to sleep and were transported to their dorms, or the infirmary, but this battle was particularly poor.

  In
that moment, Amy lied, but Sarrin understood the reason: hope, so she nodded, a smile on her face.

  Amy laid down, beckoning Sarrin to follow.

  They never saw Amy again.

  “Yes,” she told Kieran. “It will be okay. I’ll stay while you sleep.” Like she should have stayed with Amy. Like she should have stayed with Halud.

  His eyes fluttered closed, exhausted. “Thanks.” A minute later, soft snoring echoed around the room.

  * * *

  Hoepe threaded the large bore needle directly into the vein as Grant held his arm out. The infirmary was quiet. It needed to be that way. The last thing Hoepe needed was for Leove to see what he was about to do, to remind him what a very bad idea it was. “Tell me there’s no other option,” he said.

  “Not a good one,” said Grant. “We’ll be a lot better off if there’s no way for anyone to control my brain, for a lot of reasons.”

  Inhaling, Hoepe centred himself, shifting his perspective from friend to doctor, Grant melting away into a faceless patient. He pressed his five fingers to his chest, eyes closing as he prayed. “Ready?”

  “Someone put it in me, which means you can take it out. I know you can, Hoepe.”

  Hoepe pulled his hands back, wiping them on the back of his shirt so that Grant wouldn’t see the shaking. “Okay.” Hoepe pushed the dose of sedative — a strange concoction he had scraped together from incompletely dispensed vials and cartridges — through the needle into Grant’s vein. Grant blinked up at him once, then slumped sideways, and Hoepe guided him gently to the table.

  Normally, Leove would assist by attaching the myriad of monitors, but his brother wasn’t here, so Hoepe did it all. The machines started to beep in their comforting rhythm. He palpated Grant’s skull, marking the telltale indent with a surgical pen. It seemed far back, not in the same place as the others, but this was a very different kind of chip. He swiped across the skin with sterilizing solution.

  Grant melted away, now nothing more than a body, a medical machine that always followed a certain set of parameters.