by Ann Aguirre
She let out a slow breath as Vost went to the control panel inside and switched the force field back on. Though she shouldn’t let her guard down, Dred felt measurably safer with that energy flickering between her and the people trying to kill them. Then the mercenary commander lowered the blast doors for good measure. Calypso whooped and gave Duran a long celebratory kiss. The merc seemed way less pissy when she moved off. Martine and Tam touched hands lightly, a subtle gesture that spoke of their bond. Keelah was watching, and the alien female moved away from the group; Dred didn’t need to read the room to know that there were layers of relief and sorrow here.
“Let’s stack the supplies over there,” Vost said.
Dred nodded and carried her crate to the wall, then she divided the stores according to mechanical and organic. They had enough paste to last several weeks though nobody would be in a good mood by the time it ran out. There was also the risk of someone’s developing sensitivity to the enzymes after eating too much of it in a short span. The bad feeling she had before hadn’t let up, but it probably didn’t have anything to do with lack of food choices.
It’s this place.
“Hope is a waking dream,” Jael had said. And it’s the last thing to go. It torments you like a bird killing itself slowly against the glass.
In some ways, she wished she could go back to the flat acceptance that she’d die here. When he came, Jael’s mad insistence that they could achieve the impossible—somehow, he’d infected her with it. Now she had only a handful of people left, limited supplies, and she was low on faith. If Silence didn’t get them, then more Conglomerate-hired goons would.
Time’s running out.
If hope was like a bird, then hers was molting and diseased, on the floor in its death throes. Yet she couldn’t give up. She’d committed and made everyone think this crazy idea might possibly work. Better to go out big, right?
“I’ll take inventory,” Tam said. “We might find something we can use.”
“There’s a side door over here,” Calypso called.
“Check it out,” Dred yelled.
“We should have RC-17 test for toxins. It’s possible they left some chemicals in storage that might have contaminated the site,” Vost added.
Yeah, we wouldn’t want to die of secondary poisoning when we could have our throats cut. But she kept her mouth shut and activated the bot’s scan protocol.
A bit later, Calypso came to get her. “You should see this.”
Dred couldn’t tell if this was a good surprise or a bad one. “Coming.”
As it turned out, the docking-bay techs and engineers had it pretty sweet. The side door led to a small, six-bunk dormitory with an ancient but still-functional Kitchen-mate, toilet, sink, and a tiny san-shower. While they’d have to sleep in shifts, it was still more comfort than she’d expected.
“I found some stuff.” Calypso nudged the nearest mattress and dust wafted from it though not as much as she’d have expected for the number of turns since anyone lived or worked here.
Dred picked up the antique handheld, long since drained of power. “I wonder what’s on this.”
“Might have some useful information about the station,” the other woman suggested.
“I’ll give it to Vost, see what he can figure out. Maybe we can charge it using RC-17’s battery?”
Calypso smirked. “Don’t ask me, I’m not tech support. You can tell by looking that I’m the eye candy, right?”
“And here I thought you were muscle, too.”
The woman’s smile widened into a grin. “You’re not wrong. I am the mistress of multitasking.”
She left Calypso poking around in the dorm and went to find the merc commander. He was working on the computer in the control room when she located him. Vost looked up, and she noticed for the first time how tired and ill he looked. Frag me. If he dies before we get this thing built—
“What are you hiding?” she demanded.
“Pardon me?”
“I can tell by looking that something’s wrong.” She stepped a little closer, and the faint whisper of putrefaction reached her. “Take that shirt off, right now.”
He stilled. From Vost’s careful lack of response, she knew she was on the right track. Before she saw, she knew. The bandages beneath his tattered uniform were filthy and obviously hadn’t been changed in a while. She steeled herself for the worst, but it was horrific when she peeled them away from his infected wounds. Red rays fanned out over his gaunt chest, and the burns themselves were yellow and seeping pus. The smell nearly knocked her down.
“Are you insane?” she demanded. “You’re our only way out, and you let yourself get this bad?”
“There wasn’t enough antibiotic to treat me fully. Oddly, the minuscule amounts worked just fine for you. Maybe we should talk about that.”
Before she could reply, the monitor in the control room flickered, likely activated by motion sensors. When the picture resolved, it showed Jael outside the blast doors, alone, and covered in blood.
• • •
MONSTERS took JL489 back to the labs.
Scientists in white coats strapped him back into the suspension rig that made it easier to get at him from all sides and prevented pressure sores from forming. It was hell on his joints, but they didn’t care if he was in pain. Even his reaction to prolonged unpleasant stimuli could be useful, all data for the file, and some kernel of information might help them to perfect the technological fluke that led to his creation.
“Subject 489, can you hear me?” He’d recognize Landau’s voice anywhere.
He managed a jerky nod because Dr. Landau liked his scalpels. He’d once peeled off JL489’s face because he spat on an assistant. The skin took three full days to grow back. Nausea swelled and bile rose in his throat, but if he spewed, he’d only get it all over himself, and there was no telling how long it would take for them to hose him down. Somehow, he sucked in the sickness and waited. He’d watched them haul four more corpses out of the lab yesterday.
We’re meat to them, nothing more.
“Good. You’ve been chosen to participate in a special program, 489. I expect full cooperation.”
With arms chained and legs shackled, it wasn’t like he had a choice. He didn’t make a sound, just hung quiescent. While they’d checked to be sure he could produce language, they weren’t interested in his words. Compliance was enough. Being malleable would be better, but he couldn’t seem to check out as so many other subjects had. Their eyes showed that pain had long since won—that they were broken.
His silence didn’t please the scientist. He wanted the same dead blankness he got from the others. JL489 had only hate.
Landau’s eyes narrowed. “You have no will of your own, you’re a thing. I made you.”
He dropped his eyes, and the scientist left his field of vision and pressed the call button. “Send her in, please.”
The woman who entered had black hair and bronze skin. The lab lights caught her from behind, filling her dark hair with blue lights. Her skin was spotted, too, in a way he hadn’t seen before, tiny darker dots all over her cheeks and shoulders. Wide brown eyes studied him from across the room; like the others, she wore a lab coat, but he hadn’t seen her before.
“This is inhumane,” the woman said to Landau. Her voice held a snappish edge that he’d never heard directed at another person.
Only test subjects. Only things. Like me.
Her apparent anger on his behalf eased the tightness in his chest though pain had become so familiar by now that he couldn’t imagine existing without it. Then she moved toward him, and he smelled something other than astringent bitterness. A sweetness came from her skin and hair that tightened him from head to toe with a pleasure he hadn’t known before. He breathed in deep, then deeper, and it was like he had some of her goodness inside of him.
The world become utterly inexplicable when she said gently, “I’m getting you out of there. Can you stand up? Can you walk?”
He had no idea. It had been a long time since they let him move around. In the early days, when he first came out of the tank, workers would take him to a small room and show him things, say words, let him watch moving pictures, and one scientist had taught him to read to see if he could learn. But they soon lost interest in his mental capacity, as he was supposed to be fashioned into a thing that followed orders unquestioningly. So he went back into the restraints while they tried to figure out why he was so intractable and why he was still alive when so many of his pod mates crashed out.
Yet he gave a tiny nod. Because to follow her, he’d crawl.
“I’m Dr. Indra Parvati. Do you understand?”
Another tilt of his head.
His gut told him she was different than the rest though he wasn’t sure why she was here or why Landau was letting this happen. Smiling, she turned off the suspension system, and he thumped to the floor. It took a few minutes for the feeling to return to his arms and legs; she waited patiently until he stumbled to his feet.
“I’m from the Sapient Rights Coalition. We’re investigating Sci-Corp for possible ethical violations and to determine your status.”
“My what?” His voice sounded strange to his own ears, hoarse and choked.
“There’s a proposal on the docket, exploring the rights of bioengineered individuals.” She didn’t say creature or monster, he noticed.
Definitely different.
“I don’t understand.”
“They’re considering your people for citizenship. That would give you full human rights though you’d have to check ‘other’ on certain government forms.” She smiled at him, and his heart did something strange, beating extra hard for a few seconds.
“Oh.”
In all honesty, he still didn’t entirely understand what she was saying, but Dr. Landau was furious. JL489 smelled the rage all over him.
He quivered a little as Dr. Parvati put a hand on his arm. “Let’s find a quiet place to talk.”
“Aren’t you afraid of me?” he whispered.
She shook her head and led the way toward the main exit. The scientists let him go. When he stepped out of the lab and into the unfamiliar hallway, he had no context for what might happen next.
“You must be hungry. I can tell they’ve been feeding you intravenously for some time.”
Her kindness hurt in ways he hadn’t felt before, a blooming tenderness that filled him with a different kind of fear. She took him to a room with a table, then she pressed a button to order food. When it arrived, he drooled at the rich, complex smells wafting from the covered dishes.
“Now then,” she said, smiling. “Don’t be afraid to tell me everything, JL.”
JL. Jael. It was the closest he’d ever come to a name. It felt right, even if it sprang from the loathsome Dr. Landau. She lifted the first lid to reveal—
Then she was gone, leaving him to monsters and darkness.
And pain.
11
The Knife of Failure
Dred raced for the front doors. Vost must have fixed his bandages and clothing, then followed because he was at the control panel not long after. He powered down the force field and opened the blast doors, then Jael stumbled inside. The smell struck her first, totally wrong, not Jael, and it overpowered even the reek from the merc’s wounds.
But first she needed to close off retreat options, if it turned out she was right. “Lock us down. Quickly.”
He complied, likely because he suspected there might be enemies on Jael’s six. She took Vost’s arm and pulled him away from the still unsteady Jael. Even if his scent wasn’t all wrong, she’d never seen him react this way to being hurt. He was too used to pain.
“Get back,” she said.
Vost glanced at her, a frown furrowing his brow. “He needs medical attention. We can bandage him up at least.”
“Do you smell the blood on him?” she asked.
The merc tilted his head as Keelah came a few paces closer, her nose twitching. “She’s right. There’s no scent of injury. And he smells completely off. More like—”
“Hex,” Dred finished.
The illusion flickered and went off, revealing the alien. Her bad feeling intensified. If this thing had tried to trick them, there couldn’t be an innocent reason. It didn’t want us to know Jael was missing, at least not right away. That probably meant that its mandate was infiltration.
It was supposed to make us think Hex was dead, Jael was safe, then turn off our security so Silence could finish us.
“Get it in restraints,” she said. “But be careful, I don’t know anything about Azhvarians.”
“They have the ability to project whatever appearance they choose,” Tam said quietly. “Similar to a hologram. And they have poison spines hidden in the suckers on their fingertips.”
“You bastard,” she breathed.
That’s how it took Jael down.
“Then I won’t get close,” Duran said. And shot the alien in the chest.
Then he walked over to make sure Hex was dead. The body looked so small and fragile, and the wound was violent, a red black hole in the torso. Part of her wanted to scream at the merc; they should have questioned it before execution. But really, what did it matter? It had to be allied with Silence, so nothing else mattered. There was no one else who could have taken Jael.
“Space it,” Vost said.
Calypso lifted the corpse and carried it over to the chute near the docking-bay doors. This asshole didn’t deserve any kind of a service and certainly wasn’t worth a trip to the recyclers. In seconds, the machinery hummed and sucked the dead alien out into vacuum. Dred dropped into a crouch, metering her breath until she felt less frantic. Knowing Death’s Handmaiden, the things she might do? With his reduced healing capacity, she could actually kill Jael. She couldn’t hear for the terror careening in her veins and the cacophony of her heartbeat.
“Not all aliens are good and gentle,” Keelah said.
Martine knelt beside her. “We’ll get him back, don’t worry.”
“No matter how you look at it, this is a win for the crazy bitch,” Duran muttered. “We go after his ass, and she’s drawn us out, bait for the trap.”
She let herself have these seconds of weakness, then she locked it away. Fear wouldn’t save her man. Only decisive action could. Dred touched Martine’s arm in silent gratitude over her attempt at consolation, then she reveled in the rage building behind her eyes. Now her pulse didn’t drum with fear; instead, it pounded out a message, no, an edict.
Kill. Kill. Kill.
“We need a plan,” she bit out. “Ideas?”
Tam said, “I’ve spied on Silence many times. I’ll do some recon and find out where she’s holding him. If possible, I’ll also take a head count though it may not be fully accurate, depending on how many she’s sent on patrol.”
“I’ll go with you,” Martine offered.
Tam shook his head. “This is a solo run.”
“We’ve had this conversation before,” she said with more than a hint of bite. “Have you forgotten how this works? Just in case, here’s a refresher. I decide, and you obey.” She flashed her sharp teeth in what Dred couldn’t properly call a smile.
Something sparked in Tam’s dark eyes. And then he nodded. “Let’s get moving.”
After checking the monitor to make sure the area was clear, Vost let them out with minimal drama. “Be careful,” he said as he locked the bay down again.
Dred straightened her shoulders. “There’s nothing we can do for Jael until they get back with intel. So let’s get started on our primary objective.”
Keelah patted her shoulder and moved off to check out the external maintenance rigs. Caly
pso went with her, and the low hum of their voices echoed slightly in the vast space. Vost lingered, probably because he felt some sense of responsibility, even though he wasn’t really in charge. Funny how command became an imperative after a while.
“Two things. First, you let me deal with the heinous mess on your chest. Then I need you to look at the handheld we found.”
“Do I have a choice?”
“Not remotely. Come with me.” She led the way to the dorm and cracked open the first-aid kit. The antiseptic was beyond expired, but the bandages were still sealed. “How long does Nu-Skin stay good?”
“Not sure. Isn’t there a date on it?” He watched her with an inscrutable expression.
Dred turned the package over in her hands and shook her head. “Should we risk it?”
“You’re too calm,” he said.
“Why?”
“It’s unnerving. I thought you cared about him.”
The words sank in deep, but she didn’t show it. Who cares if Vost thinks I’m an unfeeling bitch? “Panic won’t save him. Until there’s something I can do for Jael, I have to keep moving. Inertia is death.”
Instead, something like admiration flashed in his face, there and gone, then he peeled off his shirt. “True. Don’t kill me, all right? I have so much to live for.”
Dred almost smiled and pulled out her knife. “Hold still, this will hurt.”
• • •
WHEN he couldn’t stand the agony, Jael retreated. The monsters yielded to his tormentors, to old ghosts and sorrows.
“Is it good?” Dr. Parvati asked.
Jael had cleaned three plates, and his mouth was too full to answer. This dish had meat and noodles; he couldn’t stop eating even though his stomach was starting to hurt. The pain was mild and bearable compared to how he usually felt, but when this fourth dish was empty, he sat back and rubbed his belly.
