by M. D. Cooper
As another lightning bolt cracked across the sky, she felt something brush her foot.
She’d been moving her legs lazily in the water as she clung to her board, as much for something to do as anything, but at the touch of the unknown thing, she froze. A clamp seemed to fasten over her chest. She hesitated to even breathe.
Did something touch me? Or did I imagine it? What touched me?
Just as Isa was succeeding in convincing herself that the sly brush against her toes had been a figment of her imagination, she felt it again. She screamed and, not even registering how, leapt out of the water onto her board. The flat surface was long and wide enough to hold her whole body without any part of it dangling in the water.
Why didn’t I think to do that before?
She was careful to keep her arms and legs within the board’s bounds. She looked all around for a fin breaking the surface, or for the sign of a long shadow, slowly weaving beneath the waves. But the rain had turned the surface into a shifting, distressed, formless expanse.
The thing touched her again.
Isa jerked her leg up and away from the creature, almost hitting herself in the chin. Something had reached out of the water to get her. She squirmed away to the far end of the board, almost unbalancing it and sending herself back into the waves. As she moved, however, something tugged on her ankle.
Then the realization hit. The thing tugging at her was the strap that linked her to her board. Isa turned over and sat up.
Her foot bore no marks and neither did her board. The strap hung loosely from her ankle. She’d been terrified of a slim piece of material.
Isa’s relief was so great, she flopped down and nearly slid off the board. Just as she grabbed at the side to catch herself, a low vibration came from overhead, and a shadow descended over her. At last! The rescue copter had arrived.
The craft formed a kind of umbrella over her, protecting her from the rain. A darker hole in the dark grey bottom of the vessel opened, and Isa saw the very welcome sight of another human face. An arm also appeared and waved to her. Holding onto one side of her board, she waved back.
Isa unfastened the strap around her ankle. She must only have been in the water ten or fifteen minutes, but it felt like hours. She looked up to see the soles of the Ocean Rescue Patrol woman’s shoes as she was lowered from the copter in a flexible woven basket. Isa brought up her knees to pull herself into a crouching position, ready to climb up.
Maggie’s face was smiling and cheerful as she leaned over the basket’s edge and reached out. Isa half stood and prepared to grasp the woman’s arms. At the same moment, a colossal gust of wind blew, sending Maggie sprawling against the opposite side of the basket. The pinnace swayed, and the rescuer swung away.
Isa’s hands gripped nothing. She overbalanced and hit the water face-first.
Not again, was her first thought as she went under. Her second thought was, I’m not attached to my board anymore. Her third thought was, Which way is up?
She flailed and twisted in the water, trying to figure out in which direction the surface lay. Neither her hands nor her feet broke through into air, which meant she was probably at least a meter deep. Her eyes were open, but all she could see were bubbles. No part of the water was brighter than any other. Considering the blackness of the sky, it wasn’t surprising, but it was annoying.
Her lungs were beginning to hurt. She was going to have to breathe, preferably soon. She stopped flailing. It was getting her nowhere. Maybe if she floated, she would naturally drift to the surface? But though she was trying to keep herself calm, she couldn’t remain calm long enough to relax her body, and she wasn’t sure that was going to work anyway.
said Maggie.
Her lungs were really hurting. The compulsion to breathe was so strong, she had to clamp her lips shut to prevent herself from inhaling. Then, all of a sudden, a sense of peacefulness began to invade her.
Perhaps it wouldn’t be such a bad thing to just stay under the water forever. Memories from Isa’s early life began to play in her inner vision. Scenes from growing up on the mining platform, hearing about things like sunshine and fresh, clean air—as much as you wanted and all for free—but not being able to really imagine what they were like. She remembered the moment her father died, struck down young by lung disease. She remembered the miners’ long, terrifying escape aboard the Hyperion, and the joy when they reached Victoria. She remembered stepping from the Intrepid’s pinnace onto the soil of Carthage, and finally feeling like she was home.
Home.
She wanted to go home. Suddenly, she knew what was wrong with her life. She wanted the chance to put it right.
Isa’s lips had been about to part. She clamped them tightly together. She wasn’t going to drown. She was going to return to Carthage. She wasn’t going to give it up. Focusing once more on her surroundings, Isa saw the bubbles again. They were all traveling in one direction.
They were going up. All she had to do was follow the bubbles.
With the last of her strength, Isa kicked hard. A moment later, her head burst through into sweet, rain-filled air. She gasped for breath. The rescue vessel was gone. No, it wasn’t. Though she couldn’t see it, she could hear it. She twisted in the water. The pinnace was behind her. Maggie was still swinging beneath it in her basket, her head weaving as she anxiously searched the water.
Isa shouted, but the noise of the storm drowned her out. She began to swim over. Delight suffusing her face, Maggie spotted her moments later.
“Got you,” Maggie said as Isa reached the basket, and the woman’s strong arms hauled her aboard.
Isa floundered on the bottom of the basket, probably looking very undignified.
“You had me very worried for a while there,” Maggie said. “We’ve never lost anyone yet. I certainly didn’t plan on breaking that streak today.” As she spoke, the basket was rising into the pinnace, swinging in the still-strong wind. “How are you feeling? Any pain anywhere?”
“No,” she replied. “I’m just cold.”
“We have something in the ship for that. And here we are.” They’d reached the interior of the craft. “Let me help you out.”
The hatch slid shut and the sides of the baskets collapsed. As Isa’s eyes became accustomed to the darkness and her ears adjusted to the absence of the rush of the wind and rain, she realized she was surrounded by twenty or thirty rescued surfers. They were all sipping from mugs as they chatted. No one she knew was among them. She contacted Usef quickly to let him know she’d been picked up.
Maggie gave her a hot mug of a steaming liquid. When Isa sipped it, warmth spread out from her mouth, throat, and stomach.
Usef chuckled.
Isa knew better than to ask for any details.
TARGET
STELLAR DATE: 12.05.8935 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Island of Cyprus, near Thrace
REGION: Carthage, 3rd Planet in the New Canaan System
Nathan had become a thing of dark places.
His newly transformed state made him stand out, yet he couldn’t risk being noticed and approached, possibly asked to identify himself. Any attention he attracted could be the end of his anonymity. He was no longer able to access the Link, which made him invisible to Carthage’s planetary management AI. Anyone who saw him face-to-face and tried to find his information would draw a blank. His retinas were no longer readable, and his breath signature was no longer human. All these factors marked him as highly suspicious. He was an anomaly in civilized society.
He was a freak.
By day, Nathan remained hidden. He had no need for water or food, so he was content to remain in the same place all day, squatting down in an unused stairwell or beneath a maglev, biding his time. At night, when darkness concealed his movements, he would seek out and steal the things he would soon need. He had only a short time before the picotech would be deployed once more, according to the prediction of Myrrdan’s agent.
Carthage was home to no true thieves aside from him, so people were careless about putting away their equipment and locking doors at the end of the day. As such, Nathan encountered no difficulties in his small, petty thefts.
After all but one item on his list was gathered, he would walk in the shadows, no longer requiring sleep, his metal feet clunking on the sidewalk, his weight testing the pavers’ strength. It was during these journeys that he discovered the range of capabilities Myrrdan’s agent had granted him. He estimated his vision to have vastly improved. His night vision was as clear as it was during the day, only lacking color. He could see great distances at high definition. Once, during the daytime, when no one else was around, he had left his hiding place and looked into the heart of Canaan Prime. He found that he could do so without flinching.
Nathan also estimated that his strength had increased a minimum of tenfold. Solid metal would give under his grip, and he could leave large hand prints in surfaces that would normally only yield to heavy tools. The strength of his legs had increased by a similar amount. He could leap onto the roofs of two-story buildings with ease, though of course he never attempted this feat by daylight. At night, exercising his abilities helped to pass the solitary hours.
One night, curious about the extent of the transformation of his respiratory system, Nathan walked into a lake that bordered the town. His great feet sank deeply into the mud until he was buried up to his knees. His legs accepted the sticky, clinging challenge of the mud, and met it easily, forcing their way through the slime. Eventually, Nathan’s large, oddly shaped head sank beneath the water’s surface. Instantly, his altered respiratory system adjusted to the change and began to extract the dissolved gas he required from the water.
The fact that he still needed oxygen helped to reassure him. Some of his body remained organic. A part of him held onto the wishful hope that, inside, plenty of organic parts remained. He clung to the idea that some part of him was the original Nathan Hart, the security operative who had made the long journey from Sirius to New Canaan. His brain, and perhaps some of his other organs were intact, he hoped, though not his heart. He was sure that his heart was gone.
Was he still a human being? He did not know. Most of his body and his thoughts were given over to the single goal of stealing the picotech and earning Myrrdan’s regard, but somewhere deep inside he had a sense of identity. Deeper than that, though, so deep he was mostly never even remotely conscious of it, a tiny sliver of Nathan’s free will lived still, entombed and silenced by a suffocating overlay of control that had been imposed long ago, somewhere on Victoria.
Only once during his long nights of wandering did Nathan come close to being discovered. He was at a place like the Party Field in the early hours of the morning. He did not know why he had gone there. A vague memory of a kindness someone had once shown stirred him, and his feet led him to the long grass and wildflowers that he could no longer smell. When he was deep within the field, far from the street lights and any sight or sound of human beings, he halted. In the darkness he stood, like a small tree, only his bulk did not waver in the breeze.
What remained of his mind slowly turned. He assessed his progress and considered how to achieve the one thing left to do. After that, he had only to wait until he was called. When the time came, Myrrdan’s agent would find him. He did not know how. Perhaps the person had implanted a tracker along with all the other technology somewhere within him. When the agent came, he would receive his final instructions. Then his task would begin.
As Nathan turned over the facts, he became oblivious to his surroundings. He didn’t realize until it was too late that people were drawing closer to him. By the time he was aware of their soft voices and footsteps muffled in the grass, they were close by. The couple was so near that if he left his position within the small grove, he would be quickly discovered. He could only hope they would pass by without entering.
Evidently, they had brought their pet, and the animal preceded them, racing into the grove where Nathan stood. The creature—he could not remember the name of the species, his memory and knowledge had been cleaned of trivial data—was immediately aware of Nathan’s presence. It ran up to him, its fur sticking up, and made its animal noises.
Nathan had to come to a decision quickly on how to react. Now that the couple’s animal had found him, they were sure to enter the grove and also discover his presence. They would be alarmed by his appearance, and if they recognized him as human, they might ask for his identity. They would try to find him on the Link. Then they would raise an alarm.
He would be discovered, reported, and Myrrdan’s plan would fail. Nathan could not allow that to happen. He stooped, picked up the animal, broke it, and threw it high over the trees so that it landed on the other side of the grove. The animal yelped once when he broke it, and again when it landed. The couple, expressing concern and fear, went in the direction of the second yelp.
While they were lamenting over their dead animal, Nathan left the trees in the opposite direction and walked away into the night.
He had left the most difficult task for last. Stealing and hiding an armored vehicle would be challenging. The information Myrrdan’s agent had left explained that he possessed the capability to disconnect any vehicle he could access from the planetary networks.
It was the accessing of a vehicle that would prove difficult. These were not odd items or tools that were left unsecured at the end of the working day; only the military possessed armored, weaponized vehicles, and even on fr
iendly, safe Carthage, they were appropriately guarded.
Yet Myrrdan’s agent thought that this kind of vehicle could be essential to his task. Though his new body was strong and no doubt capable of traveling hundreds of kilometers over land and under the sea, a vehicle would allow him to travel farther faster, and allow him a degree of anonymity.
Nathan went to the military compound under cover of darkness. Lurking in the shadows nearby, he listened to the guards’ conversations. He was too far away for any ordinary human to hear their words, but his enhanced hearing picked up every syllable.
Hours passed, but Nathan was patient. Sleep never called to him, and his body could maintain the same position indefinitely without aches or cramps. Waste no longer built up in his digestive or urinary system to require excretion, for the simple reason that he no longer possessed a digestive or urinary system. A solid shadow within deeper shadows, he stood and listened until he finally he heard what he was waiting for.
“Only half an hour until Lin’s back from perimeter patrol,” a guard said. “I can’t wait. I’m falling asleep where I stand.”
“It’s Lin relieving you, is it?”
“Yeah. I hate night duty.”
Nathan watched carefully which guard spoke. He waited a while longer until, a little over twenty-five minutes later, another guard appeared at the far end of the compound’s fence. The guard who had expressed his tiredness and impatience shifted his position, readying himself to depart. From the overheard conversation, Nathan understood that if the restless guard’s replacement was on his way, that meant the perimeter of the compound was momentarily unguarded.
For the first time in many hours, Nathan moved. He deployed nano-countermeasures to mask his body from scan, and began his approach. Clinging to the edges of the street where the light didn’t penetrate, he made his way to the far end of the compound. Checking that no guard was looking in his direction, he stepped across the road and slipped around the corner into the wild area that bordered the compound. Confident now that he had at least a few minutes’ freedom to work, he ran to the compound’s rear, where the assault vehicles were parked in perfectly neat, straight lines.
