by S. A. Tholin
Annabeth had left Hierochloe years before the outbreak on Xanthe, but she had recognised her work immediately. When others had watched the news reports about demonic possession in confusion and disbelief, she had known. When the corruption spread to Earth, she had known, and when refugee ships had been shot down for fear that the passengers might be carriers of corruption, she had known.
And when Hierochloe, then rebranded as Primaterre, had with the approval of the terrified galactic community released a virus into Earth's atmosphere to purge the remaining population – a little over five billion – she had known.
"How could she do that? How could she sit back and watch them use her work to murder, to lie?"
"What choice did she have? She had a primer too. She knew that her former employers could turn her into one of the possessed with the press of a button. She had a family – she had children – she had things to lose, things far more valuable to her than a clean conscience."
"So do I," said Joy, "but here I am."
Elsinore made a face. "Only because we brought you here."
"Yet we wouldn't have brought her here if we didn't believe that she would do the right thing," Wideawake said.
"Yeah right." Elsinore scowled. "As if Hammersmith would've let a once-in-a-lifetime jackpot like her slip through his fingers. It doesn't matter what she wants, only what she's worth."
"What do you mean?" The weekend trip to Kirkclair had taken nearly as heavy a toll on her bank account as getting augmented and equipped on Achall had. Her final tally of merits, after buying drinks for her and Rhys in Kirkclair Spaceport, was a gut-churning 263. If she had value, it was certainly news to her.
"Wideawake might be trying his charm on you now, but fact is, he didn't want you here at all. I thought we should wait, to assess you, but..."
"But that wasn't an option," Wideawake said. "We snatched you up en route to Achall because there would've been a queue of recruiters there waiting for you – waiting still, I'm sure, more sour by the day as they realise they've been pipped to the post. You don't understand, because you don't know how Bastion works. Their victories are written before they are achieved; their failures turned into inspirational tragedy. They have their Tyrfing Company, their Ragnarok Fields, their Commander Cassimer – they have their stories, and they are always looking for fresh ones. And what story could be more perfect than that of the Earthborn girl who resisted demonic corruption and won the heart of a banneret commander?"
"Any company would have been lucky to have you," Elsinore said. "Ask Command for a budget increase and they'll say no. Ask for a budget increase with you on the team, and merits will rain down. You're the safest investment in the world, Somerset. Do well and you will be a hero. Die and become legend."
"I'm not interested in heroes or legends," she protested.
"Ah, but as Elsinore said, it doesn't matter what you want. That is the number one rule of Bastion and Tower alike. You are part of something greater now, a stanza in an epic poem."
An unpleasant feeling, but not unfamiliar. Control had been a rare luxury on Cato, and even boarding the Ever Onward hadn't been her choice; not really. It was for Finn she had left her home, his current too strong for her to resist. Enlisting hadn't exactly helped matters – as soon as she'd landed on Achall, her free will had pretty much been chucked in the regimental sergeant's confiscation locker along with all the other prohibited items. Part and parcel, she supposed, but she was tired of it.
She wanted to write her own poem.
Maybe Annabeth Elsinore had wanted the same thing. She could have gone to her grave with the Primaterre secret. She could have remained the celebrated scholar, the beloved wife and mother. Instead, she had called her grandson to her death bed, and she had spent the last days of her life deconstructing his reality.
Demons weren't real. Primers were tools of indoctrination. Purity was a corporate invention. The entire foundation of the Primaterre Protectorate was a lie.
And Grand-Mama Annabeth's hands, that had rocked children to sleep, had baked pies and threaded mittens over tiny fingers, had also helped create a system of slavery.
"But if she didn't execute Project Harmony, then who did? And who is running it today?" Remembering something Lucklaw had mentioned, she added: "Is anybody running it? Or is it an automated process?"
"Simple answer: we don't know," Wideawake said. "Long answer – after today's session, I'll share what intel we have to your primer. Perhaps you'll see something we haven't. Or perhaps it'll help you fall asleep. But first..."
He winced, his one remaining arm twitching spasmodically. Dark fluid trickled from the corner of his mouth. Underneath his skin, filaments undulated as they deployed anaesthetics.
"You should rest," Elsinore said, grimacing as he wiped the man's chin clean.
"No. The sooner Somerset learns, the sooner I can go on med-leave." Wideawake gave her a searching look, his chest heaving with hyperventilation. "She's ready. Prepare Lutzen for interrogation."
* * *
When Rhys had injected her with a primer, she hadn't thought much of it. It had been an essential element of her Cato escape plan, nothing more. Though learning about Project Harmony had made the consequences more ominous, it wasn't until Achall that she'd had time to really consider what was now inside of her.
A synthetic strand of DNA, permanently fused with her own. She was not quite the Joy Somerset she'd been born as, not quite human at all. The actual deviation was slight, barely more than the genetic difference that made her hair red and Constant's dark, but she'd thought about it often, nonetheless. She'd lie awake at night, watching the veins in her hand through the night-vision of her new visual augments. The blood carried there, was it the same as before? Had she separated herself from Finn in some way, losing kinship? Would her children be human, or would they look at her with alien eyes?
In the end, children had been the answer to her questions. In her imagination, they had her eyes and Constant's hair, or his eyes and her hair, or any one of a thousand possible combinations of her traits and those she loved so much in him. They would be as bright as starlight and she would love them no matter their shape or colour or species.
So no, DNA didn't matter in the least.
"Ah, but it does," Wideawake said. "Do you know what the primer modifies?"
She did not.
"It targets the arbor vitae; the tree of life." He pointed at the viewport, where the stars had been replaced by an image of the human brain. A tree-like structure of white matter grew branch-like and pale between grey. "The primer stores data, but it must also be able to receive and transfer data. It does this via white matter, riding the body's own relay for sensory information. Request a file from your primer and the white matter provides, straight from synthetic storage to your central processing unit – your brain. It may also interface with neural, semi-organic augments, such as your visual and comms implants."
"Can we do the lectures later?" Lutzen sat in a chair in front of the viewport. The captain of Room 36B's strike team was an impressive man; more hardened than aged. His fatigues matched his ash-cool eyes.
He grimaced as he shifted in his seat, one scarred hand going to his thigh.
"I'm so sorry about that," Joy said.
"If a girl wakes up slung over a stranger's shoulder, stabbing him is the least she should do." His smile had a genuine quality that set him apart from the other towermen. "But try not to do it again. We're not afforded the same luxuries as your banneretcy friends."
"We'll try not to leave any lasting marks," Wideawake said, smiling as Elsinore opened a box of tools that definitely were not made for healing. "Take note, Somerset: though the commander has endured interrogations before, his training has become instinct, clarity replacing the natural response of fear. The human brain is an interesting machine – infinitely complex, yet so easily manipulated."
"Can I at least get a smoke first?" Lutzen pulled a crumpled pack of cigarettes from his chest pocket.
The logo was a sunflower, bright and very familiar.
"I have a friend who smokes that brand," Joy said. A friend, who she desperately wished could be with her now.
"Yeah? Your friend has terrible taste. But at least they're cheap." He made to light one up, but Elsinore grabbed his wrists, locking them firmly in restraints. Lutzen's face revealed no concern, but his right index finger tapped rapidly against the armrest of his chair.
Joy had been in his position more than once – but these people were supposed to be his colleagues, his friends.
"This isn't right," she said.
"Of course not," Wideawake said, smirking, "but don't worry. Interrogators don't exist. Mind-worms are not real. And what we are about to do will never have happened."
* * *
"A primer can't be hacked, which is a great shame to those of us in the information gathering business. They hold so much data locked away, far more than you'd think. There used to be a time – well, you should know – when information had to be retained in memory or stored on devices or even paper. Now it can be carried inside your body, dormant data that can be accessed at any time and turned into thought. Some people believe it's to our detriment, that humans who don't need to learn won't bother, that their minds will grow slow and incurious. Others see it as the ultimate freedom, the collected knowledge of the galaxy available whenever and wherever they please." Wideawake paused, giving Joy a long look. "Tell me, Somerset, having lived with and without – what do you think?"
"I can have music follow me wherever I go. Songs, just for me." She couldn't listen to it on duty, but her HUD's top right corner displayed the Neave Crescent Creek playlist Constant had given her. Seeing the names of the tracks was a comforting reminder that the cold walls of Room 36B were not the walls of the universe. "And I never have to worry about forgetting the faces of those I love."
Not even Finn. Lucklaw had passed along her brother's employee photo retrieved from the Ever Onward's database. It was the only picture of him that remained and for as long as she lived, it would be with her.
"A photo is electronically captured light. How can that ever compete with the light captured by a mind? These loved ones, do they not live inside your memories? Their sounds, their smells, their colours and their motion. Their faces, as seen by you – not the neutral lens of a camera. The same goes for other information. A math theorem on a page is not the same as the theorem that has lived inside a person's mind for months or years. The mathematician's own experiences colour it, giving it texture and meaning – even though the algebraic variables remain unchanged. One historian reads a list of English monarchs and sees great kings and queens, while another sees cruel despots and backwards tradition. The data is the same, but the interpretation unique."
"Biased," muttered Elsinore, but Joy could sort of understand what Wideawake was getting at. In Kirkclair's Botanical Garden, she and Rhys had spent hours discussing plants. They could both tell a gardenia from a begonia, but where she saw classification and soil requirements, Rhys saw medicinal history, practical and recreational uses. If Constant had been there, she thought he would have seen the splendour of Earth. The same humble plant, given multiple facets, each a kind of truth. And in talking about it, Rhys had given her a little bit of himself, too, and vice versa; their perception of one another changed, however subtly.
"Whatever your opinion, it's important that you understand the difference, because we will be working with both kinds of data today. For security purposes, things like passwords and access codes are usually stored on primers. Lutzen is in possession of the code that unlocks the station comms. Your task will be to pry that code from him."
"Good luck," scowled Lutzen, his knuckles whitening.
"There are many ways of extracting information, and Tower has experts in them all. Infiltration, espionage, torture, bribery–"
"I like the sound of that one," Lutzen interrupted.
Wideawake rolled his eyes, and continued: "When it comes to non-citizens, we do whatever works. When it comes to our own, we prefer more subtle methods. Any Primaterre citizen of consequence is likely to have a kill switch. Torture them and you risk their suicide. Push them so hard that they feel they might give up vital information, and the same result may occur, depending on their commitment to whatever cause. So an interrogator must be delicate, you understand? An interrogator must be able to work people."
"You want me to talk him into telling me the code?" She had once talked a man into sedating himself, but that had been different. Hal hadn't known what she was trying to do. Lutzen did, and Lutzen's thigh throbbed with pain where she had stabbed him, and that wasn't a great start to a trust-building exercise.
"You will talk him into thinking about the code. See, the information is secure inside the primer's storage, but as soon as it travels the white matter, it's vulnerable to neural decoding. An interrogator doesn't work alone. It is their job to tease out the data, but it is their interpreter's job to filter the noise and piece together the relevant, reconstructing neural activity into coherent information."
"Mind reading?"
"Not quite," Wideawake said, smiling, but it sounded an awful lot like it to her. "Elsinore will be your interpreter, and you his conduit in the Primaterre Protectorate. During your previous exercises, he was working on establishing a direct link between your primer and his. For the purposes of this interrogation, he has already accessed the connection, but in the future, he will require your consent."
"A connection? Why?"
"To do things you can't. Ideally, a field operative should be a jack of all trades, but we don't have the time or resources to teach you how to override door codes or hack computers. Elsinore will be your skeleton key, your long-distance guardian angel. Today, he will use the connection to deploy a mind-worm into Lutzen's systems. It will read neural activity and transmit the data to Elsinore, who will decode and interpret it."
"The worm has been deployed," Elsinore said.
"Very good. How are you doing, Captain? Do you feel it in there, gnashing away?"
"Don't feel a damn thing," Lutzen said, but Joy didn't need mind-worms or interpreters to know that he was lying. Nothing but code, swimming through neural-linked augments, and yet it made the strike team captain sweat worse than his stab wound.
"Then let's begin."
* * *
The interrogation lasted five hours. Direct questions netted no result, nor did attempts at building trust with the man. He was a closed book, and Joy was about to give up out of sheer exhaustion when Wideawake handed her a cattle prod.
"Go on, motivate the man. Use it on his wound for maximum effect."
She took the prod, but only because she didn't trust Wideawake not to use it. "I can't do that. I'm not–"
"Not willing to do whatever it takes to save the Primaterre? Not willing to be an instrument of justice? Tell me, Somerset, have you seen The Hero of the Hecate?"
Once a week, the recruits on Achall had been treated to a movie. Every film had been patriotic or inspirational in nature, and most had – on announcement of their titles – received sighs and eye-rolls from the other recruits.
"You didn't go to Primaterre school, so they might seem interesting to you," Vienna had said, "but we've all seen these a million times before."
Only The Hero of the Hecate had been met with excitement, even cheers. Three minutes before the showing, Joy had excused herself from the assembly. She couldn't watch it, couldn't bear to see the horrors endured by Constant re-enacted for entertainment. The other recruits saw the hero, but she had seen the survivor and his scars.
Halfway back to the barracks, she'd found out that movie night was, in fact, mandatory. She'd refused to return and had ended up having a terribly awkward conversation with the regimental sergeant.
"Why don't you want to watch it?"
"Because I have a personal relationship to Commander Cassimer, Sergeant."
"What do you mean, personal?"
"As p
ersonal as relationships get, Sergeant."
That had impressed him, though not so much that she didn't get extra fire watch duty to make up for missing the movie.
"No," she said to Wideawake. "But I know what happened."
"And you would see those responsible go unpunished?"
"What was done to the Hecate was an injustice that I'd like to see corrected."
Yes. That's what Constant would want. Not bloody vengeance, but a rational correction. A wrong made right, a proportionate response meted out. A problem solved.
"But this is wrong too." She dropped the prod, kicking it underneath the table. "I won't do it."
"You've tried all methods but bribery and torture. Lutzen can't be swayed by sweet promises."
Nor by pain, judging by his many scars.
"There has to be another way."
"Such as?"
Such as. Such as, question mark. Punctuation was important, more so than Wideawake knew. She had been interrogated once, by an entity that had sunk its tendrils into her mind much like writhing mind-worms. Skald had wanted deep and secret things, but in order to take them, he had asked no questions. He had let her ask questions to open the gates to her mind, and each time she had, he had gone right in there to steal.
"I was born on Earth, nearly a century and a half ago," she told Lutzen.
"So what?" He spat on the floor. It made her sick to face such hostility, and sicker still to remember the taste of sea water in her mouth. Evil had touched her, and here she was, walking in the footsteps of that evil.
"We didn't have primers back then. Instant communication had to be done over devices, and not everybody could afford them. I had a computer and a phone, but the traffic costs were expensive."
"What do you mean, expensive?"
Paying for access to information and communication was a foreign concept to one who'd been connected to data streams since birth. Room 36B had to pay to keep their oxygen generators going, their water running and their power cells replenished – but they didn't need to pay to access the Primaterre network. It was more natural to them than breathing. The idea of having to spend to connect would've confused any Primaterre citizen; especially one who had – in the short span of time Joy had known him – brought up merits several times.
