Bender of Worlds

by Isaac Hooke

  “That’ll show up on the security cams, you know,” Sinive said as she pulled herself onto the platform. Tane followed behind her, with G’allanthamas hauling himself through with his tentacles.

  “Yes, but we’ll be long gone by the time any security robots arrive,” Jed said.

  “Stay close to the walls,” G’allanthamas said. “Where the shadows are deeper and we’ll blend in more easily.”

  Tane and Sinive obeyed, while Jed merely became invisible where he stood.

  “This station isn’t connected to the underground pedway system,” Sinive said.

  “No, the only exit leads to street level,” Jed said. “But that’s good, because our rentals are located in a residential silo a few blocks to the south from here. We need to surface anyway.”

  As the party made their way up the steps to the street, two security robots appeared above.

  “Stop!” one of the robots said.

  Jed blinked into view. His blue Chrysalium sword was out, and he split the robot and its companion in half before either could react. Then he vanished once again.

  “We’ll be long gone, huh?” Sinive commented.

  “Guess I was wrong,” Jed admitted.

  The Volur hurried onto the street and made a quick survey of the area before returning to lead the party forward.

  The four moved quickly along the dark streets, wanting to avoid any further incidents. They kept close to the silo-shaped structures that bordered the road, staying in the shadows formed by the street’s light globes. No one was about—as Jed had suspected, the TSN had apparently issued a curfew.

  Since Tane wasn’t connected to the Galnet, and was refusing connections to outside mixnets except for those of Sinive and Jed, the usual digital overlays from nearby shops and kiosks didn’t clutter his vision. Probably a good thing.

  At each intersection, Jed paused to ensure no robot, mech or drone patrols were nearby, and afterward the four hurried across. At one point, Jed did spot a drone patrol, and he ordered the party into an alleyway formed by two silos. The eight drones hummed past overhead without detouring.

  In about ten minutes the four of them reached the destination residential silo.

  Sinive approached the glass double doors. The lobby inside looked deceptively empty—the building AI would be watching the doors and entrance hall at that very moment, ready to call the authorities at the first sign of trouble. With Sinive there, it would look like a large, dark sphere resided just outside. Tane hoped the AI’s cameras weren’t sensitive enough to discern the outline of the sphere from the night around her.

  “Are you able to hack in without connecting to the building’s mixnet?” Tane asked softly. He didn’t want to risk her logging in to the Galnet.

  “Of course,” Sinive said. “It has a local interface I can use for privilege escalation. First I have to disable the security protocols, and then open the actual door. Trust me, once I’m done, the AI won’t even know we were ever here.” A moment later the door clicked open and she shoved it aside. “Let’s go.”

  Tane and Sinive held the doors open for G’allanthamas. The big alien fit relatively easily into the lobby; the trouble came when the dweller reached the spiral stairwell that ran up the center of the silo. G’allanthamas had to rotate sideways so that half of his eight legs were on the wall and the other half on the steps.

  “I call dibs on the room closest to ground level,” the dweller said.

  “Call dibs,” Sinive said. “An alien speaking human slang. Next he’s going to start believing he actually is human.”

  “You mean I’m not?” G’allanthamas joked. “And all this time I thought you three were merely deformed.”

  “As always, your humor is the epitome of funny,” Sinive said.

  On the second floor, G’allanthamas squeezed into the hallway and then straightened somewhat, though the dweller still had to proceed at a slight angle thanks to the tightness of the walls.

  Tane cringed at every noise the group made, and was worried a resident would open his or her door to see what the commotion as. Thankfully, no one ever did. Though some of them probably accessed the door camera feeds; in the dim light they’d only see dark blobs bobbing past.

  Sinive stopped in front of one door.

  “This is the biggest room,” Sinive said softly. “You’re lucky it happens to be on the second floor.”

  “Finally,” G’allanthamas transmitted. “These cramped hallways were really starting to get to me. Big, you say? I was worried I’d be stuck in a tin can once we got here.”

  “Oh, it’ll still be a tin can in there,” Sinive said. “Don’t you fret.”

  “This is your revenge for my bad jokes, isn’t it?” G’allanthamas said.

  Sinive worked her magic and the door clicked. She opened it and gestured inside.

  Jed entered first, and returned a moment later. “Clear. I disabled the robot assistant.”

  “When will you return for me, Doomwielder?” G’allanthamas said.

  “Probably tomorrow night,” Tane said, keeping his voice down. “You’ll have to stay here all day tomorrow while we secure a ship.”

  The dweller peered inside the room. It was definitely a little cramped in there, given the alien’s size. “I should have stayed in my universe.”

  Tane thought of something, and glanced at Sinive. “Since we haven’t actually rented the rooms, won’t each suite still show up as available on the Galnet?”

  “They will,” Sinive admitted.

  “What do we do if renters show up tomorrow and discover Gall?” Tane asked.

  “I’ve changed the access codes,” Sinive replied. “Renters won’t be able to get in. As soon as anyone tries, I’ll get a notification.”

  “If you do, notify me,” Jed said. “I’ll deal with it.”

  “When would you like me to dispel the blurring spheres?” G’allanthamas asked.

  Tane glanced at Jed.

  “Wait another ten minutes until the rest of us are sequestered in our rooms,” the Volur said. “While I’m not detecting any security cameras in the hallways, as you know each door has a camera of its own embedded inside. It’s possible the video data is being logged.”

  “It is, actually,” Sinive said. “But when I hacked in I confirmed that none of it is being sent to a security office anywhere. It’s all local. So the TSN or the owners or whoever would have to physically visit the building to review the logs.”

  “Good,” Jed said.

  “Okay, ten minutes, and then I disable your blurring,” G’allanthamas said.

  The alien turned its carapace sideways to squeeze inside and Tane shut the door behind him.

  At Tane’s suite, Jed once more entered first.

  “The suite contains a robot assistant,” Jed said when he returned. “I disabled its connection to the Galnet. Up to you if you want to turn off the robot entirely.”

  “All right, thank you.” Tane stepped inside.

  “Rest well, Engineer,” Jed said. “I will come for you tomorrow morning, and then you can tell me how you plan to remove the control chips.”

  “Sounds good,” Tane said.

  “Good night, Outrimmer,” Sinive said.

  “Night, Smuggler.” Tane shut the door.

  He stared at the inner surface and resisted the urge to connect to the door camera and watch her go. He set a flat palm down on the door. Good night, Sinive.

  He wished she was sleeping in the same room, like the last time the two of them had returned from the Umbra. The sexual tension between them had been through the roof, then. Sort of like when he had visited her quarters on the Red Grizzly after recovering from the crillia attack. There was just something about traveling into the Umbra and living to tell the tale that caused the sparks to fly between them…

  Ah well. Even if she were here, he would have been too tired to do anything anyway. And too shy.

  There were two double beds. Each contained an overabundance of pillows, as if
that somehow made the drab beds more luxurious. He made a beeline for the mattress closest to the door.

  Tane started when a trashcan-sized robot wheeled out from an alcove in the wall. “Hello, Furly! I’m Mizzy, your personal assistant and trainer!”

  Tane quickly raised a hand to his open helmet and turned away slightly. He was worried the robot might perform some kind of facial recognition scan on him and report him to the authorities. Jed had said he disabled its connection to the Galnet, but that didn’t really put Tane at ease. It still felt like a camera was watching him. Recording. It was a good sign at least that the robot had called him Furly: the ID spoofing was working.

  “Can I help you with anything, anything at all?” Mizzy pressed.

  “No help is needed.” Tane kept his head turned away from the robot. “Please shut down.”

  “Shutting down,” the robot replied. It wheeled back into the alcove and its lights turned dark. Tane noted that the robot hadn’t commented on his spacesuit. Nor his weapons.

  Tane went to the bed and removed the cover from one of the pillows, then he crab-walked to the robot, keeping his face angled away. When he reached the alcove, he slid the pillowcase over the robot’s head, covering the camera. Just to be on the safe side.

  Then he returned to the bed, opened up his pouch, and stowed his external gear inside. Then he lay down.

  He smiled in guilty pleasure as sleep began to overtake him. He had no intention of changing out of his spacesuit. Or even showering. None at all.

  Due to inactivity, the room’s motion sensors automatically shut off the lights.

  Tane was starting to drift off when his neck began to cramp. Sleeping in a spacesuit in gravity wasn’t the most comfortable of experiences. He decided to ignore the crick.

  Unfortunately, the cramping just became worse. After five minutes, he finally gave up.

  Reluctantly, he sat up and the lights reactivated. He dimmed them way down and slid off the bed. When he glanced at the comforter, he realized he’d rubbed off a bunch of alien blood onto it, covering the fabric in black stains.

  Whoops.

  He slid the comforter from the bed and set it down in the corner of the room. Then he began removing the blood-covered assemblies of his suit, tossing them onto the already ruined comforter.

  He wondered if he should reactivate the robot and ask for help, but he suspected those tiny pincers would get in the way more than anything else. Besides, he didn’t want it to see his face.

  He continued tossing the different suit pieces onto the comforter, intending to bind up the entire thing tomorrow. When he was done, he went to the bathroom and washed off the alien blood from his skin-tight gauntlets.

  He returned to the bedroom and removed the gauntlets and his remaining accessories. He grabbed the binding cord Lyra had left inside his pouch and threaded that through the rings first, followed by the bracelet, and then wrapped it around the two gauntlets so that all the items would take up only a single slot.

  After stowing the bound set in his storage device, he reclined on the second bed. Fully clothed. By then the dweller’s blurring sphere had vanished entirely from around him. He felt a little exposed with the sphere gone, but the feeling quickly passed. A pleasant smile once more formed on his lips as he closed his eyes.

  And then a loud knock came at the door, setting his heart pumping.

  Cursing softly, he sat up.

  The door’s external camera was within range of the reduced transmission intensity of his chip, so he accessed the remote interface. His heart rate picked up even further when he saw just who was standing outside.

  Sinive. She had doffed her spacesuit, leaving behind her white dress. A hood hung low over her face, no doubt to hide her features from the in-door cameras that Jed had mentioned earlier. She didn’t appear to be armed.

  He hurried to the door and opened it immediately.

  “What’s going on?” he said softly, not wanting to attract the attention of the neighbors. “Everything all right?”

  He wasn’t sure if he should invite her in, or what.

  “Everything’s fine,” Sinive said. “But do you mind if I use your shower? Mine’s broken.”

  What if she turns me on? Err, I mean turns on me. Yeah, that’s what I meant.

  It was possible G’allanthamas was wrong about her, after all. There might still be subconscious commands hidden in her mind. How well could an alien know the inner workings of the human brain, after all, let alone any unconscious orders another human being might have placed there?

  Or maybe she wanted something else. Something that had nothing to do with the control chip in her mind. Something men and women had been doing for thousands of years…

  Then again, most likely, she simply wanted to take a shower.

  “Sure, go ahead,” Tane said against his better judgment.

  He let her inside and closed the door.

  “Thanks.” She lowered her hood and promptly vanished inside the in-suite bathroom, shutting the door.

  Tane went back to his bed. He closed his eyes, but of course he wasn’t able to fall asleep, not now. What if she really wanted to have sex? His heart rate doubled at the thought.

  No, she doesn’t.

  By the time the bathroom door opened again, it felt an eternity had passed. He was unbelievably nervous.

  Tane shot upright and the room lights auto-activated. They were still dim because of the last setting he had programmed. He made a show of rubbing his eyes. “Morning.” His hands were shaking, so he quickly lowered them.

  Sinive stood silhouetted in front of the main doorway, where the bright light from the bathroom flooded over her from the left side. She was wearing her white dress. There was no sign of the hood. Her long hair flowed silkily down her shoulders: he had never seen it unbraided before.

  She walked toward him, her movements seeming sultry. The bathroom light shut off behind her, leaving only the dim bedroom glow. He watched speechlessly as she took a seat across from him on the second bed.

  For a moment he worried she might have sat on the alien blood, but a quick glance reminded him that he had removed the comforter and stowed it in the corner.

  Sinive leaned forward slightly, revealing some cleavage. She never wore the dress low like that. Never. Every one of her movements seemed slow and purposeful, as if designed to turn him on.

  As he stared into her lovely face, he thought she had used some of the makeup the smart mirror provided in the bathroom. The edges of her eyes seemed highlighted, longer. Her lips, plumper. Her cheeks, rosier.

  No, I must be imagining it. She would have no reason to apply fresh makeup after a sonic shower. Unless…

  This moment was eerily familiar. He had to wonder if he would mess it up yet again.

  The déjà vu of the situation sparked a sudden worry. “Hey Sinive, would you mind showing me your shoulder?”

  “What?” she said, seeming slightly confused. “Whatever for?”

  “I want to make sure the microcrillia infection is gone,” Tane said.

  “Huh? Of course it’s gone. Just because we entered the Umbra doesn’t mean that my old infection is going to magically flare up again. I was never exposed to that tainted environment. Suit pressure was always a hundred percent.”

  “I just want to be sure…” Tane said.

  “You know, you’re really terrible at this.”

  “At what?” Tane said.

  “Flirting.”

  Yup, he’d messed it up again.

  Well, that was just too bad, because her well-being was more important to him than anything else.

  “I’m not trying to seduce you,” Tane said. “Look, last time you were infected, we were in a similar situation. You, me, inside a short termer. You on a bed. Me across from you. And the last time, you didn’t tell me you were infected. I don’t know why. And then the next morning you didn’t wake up.”

  She stared at him with smoldering, defiant eyes, then finally slid t
he top part of her dress down over her shoulder. The skin was smooth and unblemished.

  “Satisfied?” Sinive said.

  Tane nodded quickly.

  She lifted the collar of her dress again, concealing that perfect shoulder.

  “Sorry,” Tane said quietly. “I had to be sure.”

  Thankfully, she spared him any further embarrassment by leaning back and changing the subject. Somewhat.

  “Speaking of microcrillia, there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you,” she said softly. She had planted her arms on the bed behind her, and leaned on both palms.

  Tane nodded slowly. “Ask away.”

  “You came back for me,” Sinive said, staring into his eyes. “Why?”

  “What?” Tane said.

  “Back on 57A,” Sinive said. “After the microcrillia infected me, and the aliens kidnapped me. You came for me. Why?”

  “Lyra and Jed—” Tane began.

  “Wanted to give me up,” Sinive interrupted. “Lyra told me that you were hellbent on boarding that alien ship. That you were going to go with or without them.”

  Tane was quiet a moment. He couldn’t hold that penetrating gaze, and looked away.

  “You’re my friend,” Tane said finally. “I couldn’t leave you there. I have a rule: I don’t abandon friends in need.”

  “Is that it?” She seemed disappointed. “You followed an alien ship halfway across the galaxy, and you boarded it, facing wave after wave of aliens to rescue me, because I’m your friend?”

  “Well, yeah,” Tane said.

  “A-hole,” Sinive said, standing.

  “You say that a lot, don’t you?” Tane commented.

  “Only when it’s deserved.” She crossed her arms and stomped across the room toward the doorway.

  Tane felt stunned.

  What the hell did I do wrong now?

  He bit back an angry remark, and instead decided he had to do whatever he could to make things right between them.

  “I shouldn’t have made you do that,” he said hastily.

  Near the door, Sinive stopped to glance sidelong at him.