Hugging her exposed hand to her chest, she climbed onto the platform and held on tight to the handhold on its back. As the drone whisked her away, she took one last look to the south, to the last light bleeding away into the encroaching darkness, imagining the ghosts of a past she could not remember rising from the tombs of the ruined city.
As Prisoner 141 stepped out of decontamination, she got a glimpse of four strangers before Warden Cooley slapped his sweaty palm down on her shoulder and redirected her toward the dropship prisoner cells.
“Removing a biohazard suit in the middle of a containment run is a violation of code 12 of the IC3’s policy,” he declared as he shoved her along, his squat legs pumping furiously.
The rest didn’t matter. She knew the drill. Cooley wanted to appear dominant, controlling of his wards in front of potential clients, especially if he hungered after a big contract. Any other day he wouldn’t give her sacrifice or injuries a second thought.
The strangers, dressed in exquisite garments made of shimmering fibers and projected light, didn’t look like the Warden’s usual band of seedy clientele wanting to purchase dangerous parts and equipment salvaged from their runs. Although humanoid in shape, their rich blue skin and yellow eyes spoke of outerworld origins, but she didn’t know where.
They’re wealthy, she thought as the Warden continued to spout policy violation punishments. Probably want an extraction.
Rich investors and warlords loved to get their hands on illegal power sources dug up from bombs and downed warship reactors. Though the last intergalactic war happened ten years ago, prisoners, or “duds”, like her still worked every day to clean up massacred worlds, under the slick promise from the Starways’ president that refugees could one day return home.
Not that she believed disarming bombs could salvage any of the dead worlds.
One of the strangers caught her eye. The alien’s gaze, confident and knowing, as if recognizing an old friend, made her pause, but the Warden pushed her forward.
“No,” she mumbled, resisting as he forced her past her designated cell and toward the red-marked door at the end of the row.
He pressed a stun gun into her back and pointed to the isolation cell. “Get in.”
A jolt of electricity sent her sprawling into the dark prison. She wheeled around just in time to see the Warden slamming the door shut, a delighted smile upon his pudgy face.
How long will he leave me in here?
141 took a few deep breaths of the poorly circulated air. The isolation cell, light-free and sound proof, would make minutes stretch into days. Even if he only kept her in here for an hour, she didn’t know if she could fight off the hallucinogenic effects, or worse yet, not succumb to exhaustion.
Don’t fall asleep. Not without meds to stifle her dreams. Nausea squeezed down on her stomach at the thought of her last trip into hell.
Focus on the pain, she told herself, clutching her damaged hand.
But the darkness, patient and silent, waited her out, pulling down her consciousness piece by piece, and blanketing her pain in the promise of relief.
Don’t…
Yellow eyes appeared in the distance as the darkness seized the last of her, watching as she spiraled away and into herself, into the nightmarish fold of her own subconscious.
The chorus of agonized voices called out from the shifting shadows. Stretched out and distorted faces appeared, then shattered, bleeding back into the restive gray sea. Her own panicked breath and heartbeat rose above the din as a cloud formed at her feet, then mushroomed upward, dwarfing her in its massive size.
One voice, cold and heartless, whispered in her ear as flames consumed the world around her: “141…”
“Wake up.” A rough set of knuckles ground into her sternum, followed by a stinging slap to her cheek. “Get up!”
141 peeled back crusted eyelids. Blurry figures hovered over her as the dark images of her nightmare decomposed in the sting of the ceiling lights. Tight restraints held her down against a cold metal table, not allowing her much movement beyond the turn of her head.
“Thank you, Warden. Allow us to take it from here,” a feminine voice said.
“You don’t have to coddle her; you know who this is, don’t you?”
141 closed her eyes again, not wanting to hear the response. Even with a wiped mind, her body still reacted, as if the horrors of her past crimes had been indelibly etched into some kind of cellular memory.
“We are aware.”
“For punishment and control purposes, IC3 protocol mandates that prisoners cannot learn of their former identities. Blow her up, kill her—I don’t care; just don’t give her back her name. Agreed?”
“We understand, Warden.”
Hot breath blew against her cheek. An acrid stench, doused in antacids, filled her nose as the Warden whispered into her ear: “Do this job, dud, or you’ll rot in isolation—forever.”
The sound of his pant legs brushing against each other grew more distant, followed by the clank of the infirmary door.
“Open your eyes,” the feminine voice said, her tone soothing and melodic. Fingers grazed against the exposed skin on her forearm, stirring feelings that she simultaneously invited and repelled.
141 dared to open her eyes, this time adjusting much faster to the light. One of the aliens sat at her side, the other three fanning out in the small infirmary, interacting with specialized holographic modules attached to their sleeves. She’d never seen such advanced tech before, not even in the heart of the Starways.
“I am Raza,” the alien besides her said, still touching her forearm. A faint smile touched her dark lips, transforming her already alluring face. Even if she could access all her memories, 141 didn’t think she had encountered any other beauty that compared. “I’ve come a long way to find you.”
Confused and transfixed, 141 could not look away as the alien continued to examine her forearm and injured hand with her blue fingers.
“You volunteer for the most dangerous containment and salvage missions, yes?”
141 kept her eyes on the alien as the tips of her blue fingers lit up. Deep warmth, followed by a pins and needles sensation, coursed up her arm as the alien pieced her injured hand back together.
“My people need your help. Long ago, in darker times, we built the sh’nar, a weapon that would end all wars, not realizing the magnitude of its destructive capabilities.”
Echoes of battle, of great machines blazing over ruined landscapes and bombs screaming down from the skies, jerked across her mind, but she held her breath until the ghosted images passed.
Were those my memories? she wondered, looking down at the alien’s glowing fingers.
Still holding, fast, the alien continued, her voice hardening. “We have since found peace, and are trying to move forward and rebuild, just as your species has done…”
The pause in her voice made 141 look up. Yellow eyes gazed back, wide and full of sorrow. “But we cannot. Not with the remnants of our darkest hour still haunting our dreams. Despite who we are now, we fear the sh’nar’s invitation, and the call of its power to the other Sentients of this galaxy.”
141 perked to the inflection in the alien’s words. Call of its power…
Whispers of a new war, one that would destroy the fragile alliance forged between humans and aliens across the galaxy, had circulated for years amongst the duds, but she noticed a change a few months ago. Her bomb disarming runs on war-ravaged planets hadn’t abated, but the Warden’s illegal salvaging missions had increased tenfold, as if old enemies felt the need to stockpile the last war’s most devastating weapons.
“I’ve studied your species for decades,” Raza said. “Humans are remarkable; you can adapt to almost any environment, bond with anything or anyone, and thrive in the worst conditions. And above all, you are strong in your convictions. That is why I’ve chosen a human for this task.”
Why me? Only the most notorious intergalactic criminals had their memories wiped an
d sentenced to bomb disarmament with IC3 as reparation for their heinous crimes against the Starways. Most died in training, and no one lasted longer than two years.
Except me. Anger boiled through her chest at the thought of her unusual luck. Even the devil doesn’t want me.
141 inhaled sharply as the alien lifted her repaired hand, the skin intact and healthy, better looking than the rest of her battered forty-year-old body.
“Back then, we were not able to destroy the sh’nar, so we hid the weapon on Cerreca, a planet hazardous to our species, not thinking that anyone else would seek it out.” Raza turned to the other aliens still interacting with their holograms. “My people are monitoring the traffic in our star system. There are many new starships near Cerreca. We are worried they will find the sh’nar. We don’t want to bring war to the galaxy…or worse.”
Raza lifted 141’s restraints. Sitting up, 141 regarded her healed hand, marveling at a beauty she never associated with her own flesh.
“I can manipulate your biology, enable you tolerate the environment. Will you help us?”
Flexing the hand into a fist, 141 felt the crinkle of the new skin, the softness of a palm free of callouses.
“Why me?” 141 whispered, expecting to hear something about her almost impossible record of bomb disarms and high-risk salvaging.
“Because of who you are.”
141 looked away. “I wouldn’t know what you mean. Everything I am has been taken away from me.”
The alien touched her arm again, sending a rush of warmth traveling to her chest. “Not everything.”
Discomfited by her touch, 141 wrenched her arm away. As she made to jump off the table, she stopped herself, thinking of the Warden’s threat: “Do this job, dud, or you’ll rot in isolation—forever.”
Flashes of light caught her eye as one of the other aliens highlighted an orange and green planet surrounded by starcraft. Must be Cerreca.
Up until now, if she had failed any of her missions, only she and any other dud out in the same field would be compromised. This posed something new, something she hadn’t—
Have I?—
—experienced before.
“Please…” Raza said, yellow eyes pleading. “Our people—the entire galaxy—needs you. I fear what the sh’nar would do in the wrong hands.”
“Meaning?”
Raza’s voice tightened. “Genocide.”
The sweat beading across her brow surprised her, as did the pounding of her heart. Impressions from her recent nightmare resurfaced in discordant images, as did the cold voice that haunted her dreams.
“141…”
“One condition,” she said, squaring back to the alien. The blue being regarded her with unwavering curiosity as 141 let the silence stretch out between them. “Wipe my memory totally clean afterward.”
“You remember your past?”
“No,” she said, dropping her voice to a whisper. “Just bad dreams.”
Raza tilted her head, but didn’t question why 141 didn’t barter for freedom, or even her name. “As you wish.”
Where am I?
141 found herself in another plane, surrounded by soft white clouds. A night sky, filled with a thousand stars, provided light, enough for her to see the figure floating toward her.
Raza? She didn’t believe her eyes, or the delighted smile upon the alien’s face as she reached out to her with lucent blue hands. I must be dreaming.
No, impossible; not the way the alien’s skin felt against hers. Soft and warm, she hadn’t felt such tenderness in—
Sirens wailed. White clouds and the night sky disappeared in the wake of a thunder-clap explosion. A mushroom cloud billowed out from behind the alien, harsh, red light shooting out from the base.
“141,” a disembodied voice shouted, filling her gut with ice. Distorted faces appeared all around them, eyes burned from their sockets, mouths trapped open in a scream.
“Don’t,” the alien said as 141 pulled away, “you have to remember!”
141 shot forward, heart thudding against her chest.
“You’re okay; you’re just waking from cryosleep.”
Blue hands settled her back upon a soft bed as her eyes adjusted to the lights.
“Where…?” she rasped through parched lips. She lie in a transparent half-cylinder, much more advanced-looking than the clunky coffins IC3 used to for cryosleep transport. Instead of the ugly prisoner uniform, she wore a sleek black suit that reminded her of the cutting-edge space tech she’d seen in the Homeworlds.
“You’re safe aboard my ship.” Raza appeared above her, a smile gracing her already beautiful face. “And you have the most interesting dreams.”
Was that really her? As 141’s cheeks bloomed red, she rationalized away what she didn’t want to believe. No; she must have been reading my cryo-readouts.
“While you were in cryosleep, I made some adjustments to your body habitus,” Raza said, interacting with a hologram projecting from the sleeve of her robe. The outline of 141’s body appeared in yellow light, with glyphs drawn over her vital organs. “Cerreca’s atmosphere is mostly ammonia and sulfur. I’ve lowered your body’s oxygen requirements and enabled you to withstand hotter temperatures.”
Sitting up, 141 studied the hologram more closely. “What else?”
“Bolstered your immunity, and augmented neural activity in preparation for a lower oxygen supply.”
141 caught a glimpse of her reflection in the half-cylinder, seeing the same tired eyes and haggard face she remembered. “Am I still human?”
Raza turned off the projection. “I would never change that.”
With a shrug, 141 climbed out of the half-cylinder and looked for the rest of her accessories to cover her bare feet and hands. The alien vessel, designed with minimalistic interfaces and pearlescent, curved surfaces, looked nothing like the rusty old tankers she was used to traveling in. Even the other cryocylinders, five of them in a row against a digital readout, looked far more advanced than—
(Home.)
The thought startled her, as did the flash of brown hair and hazel eyes that skittered across her awareness. In that moment, she remembered the feel of silk sheets rustling against her bare skin, and the weight of someone’s arm draped across her chest.
“Stay with me…” a familiar voice whispered.
No—
Bracing her temples, she stumbled the wall and slid down to a crouching position.
I can’t—
A barrage of emotions flooded her mind, bringing tears to her eyes.
—don’t want to feel—
Raza rushed to her side and ran her hands along 141’s neckline. “It will pass.”
“What’s happening to me?” she said, holding her breath until the confusing sensations dissipated.
Supporting her by the waist, Raza helped 141 over to a bench near a console.
“Altering your neurons may have triggered some residual memories.”
“No,” she said between breaths. “IC3 took everything.”
Raza laid her hand on 141’s chest. “Not all memories are stored in the same place.”
“That’s bull.” 141 grabbed the alien’s wrist. “Make it stop.”
“I can’t; not until you complete the mission.”
“Fine,” she said, shoving off the bench. “Get me the weapon specs.”
“You won’t need them; your experience will guide you.”
“Whatever,” 141 said, resuming her search for the rest of her biosuit accessories.
“What do you fear?” Raza’s yellow eyes searched 141’s face. When 141 wouldn’t answer, she pointed to a locker storage unit next to one of the cryocylinders.
141 punched the glowing blue button above the locker, and a door popped open. Inside the locker she found a helmet, gloves, boots, and a techpack to sling over her shoulders. “Just let me do my job.”
Raza sighed, the sorrow in her eyes hinting of all the thoughts left unspoken. “As you wish.”
Raza’s radioed voice barely registered over the screaming winds. “…lifeforms close...”
Dammit, 141 thought, tapping her helmet. Raza had given her only three hours to find, disarm, and then return to the drop site for extraction—all while competing with the other factions hunting down the sh’nar.
If I even have an hour, 141 thought, shielding her eyes as she looked up to the tortured sky. Blue lightning branched out across the knotted black clouds, explosive thunderclaps following close behind. From the readouts on her sleeve and the toasty feel inside her suit, the temperature had already shot up to104 degrees Celsius, and things would only get hotter as the early morning progressed to the scorching midday.
Well, it’s not raining glass. Yet.
141 removed the crystalline map from her techpack and held it up in front of her, trying to get a sense of direction over the hardscrabble landscape. Jagged spires, shaped over the centuries by the winds and rain, reached out like charred fingers rising from the grave.
This can’t be right. The green blip on the map wanted her to head south, but Raza had told her the sh’nar would be west, near acid pools. Given that Raza’s people had purposely tried to lose the weapon on the inhospitable planet, she didn’t expect it to be easy. But not like this, she thought as the map sputtered, then shut off.
“Raza,” she shouted into her helmet mic.
“141…”
The voice came out of nowhere, cutting through the winds.
No, she thought, looking out into the desolate horizon. It’s not the voice from my dreams; Raza did something to me. Still, a chill ran up her spine.
Not knowing what else to do, 141 picked her way through the towering silicate formations until she came upon a trail of blood splatter and shredded biosuits. By the scorch marks and carnage, she guessed a battle had broken out between the different factions.
I must be close.
Thunder boomed, rattling her bones. 141 paused, not from the overhead clash, but from the voice that whispered in her ear. “141…”
Parallel Worlds- the Heroes Within Page 18
