Rearing back, Nell reached for whatever had caught her hair. Her hands closed around warm fingers and tugged. “Let me go.”
Nell nearly landed face first on the floor as her captor complied. The movement jarred the crystal from her pocket. The clear obelisk clattered to the floor before rolling to a stop against the gurney’s black wheels.
“If you are injured, you must seek assistance elsewhere.”
The soothing tones finally penetrated Nell’s panic. The woman wasn’t dead or undead. She was alive, which meant Nell hadn’t lost her mind. Nell sighed as her fear ebbed. Straightening her uniform shirt, she rose to her knees, glanced around then picked up the crystal. At least not too many people had witnessed her stupidity. “I’m not hurt, just scared. Bodies don’t usually talk once they’re covered with sheets.”
“My apologies for frightening you.”
Gripping the gurney with both hands, Nell pulled herself to her feet. Her knees wobbled but held her upright. Before she could talk herself out of it, she pinched the edge of the sheet and ripped it back.
A woman stared back at Nell. The flesh had split revealing a large silver stripe bisecting her forehead, the bridge of her nose and her cheek. Blood crusted the lids around her brown eyes like rust colored eye liner. Her narrow waist and hips were almost completely crushed on the right side and her shins and thighs deflated under the weight of the covers.
Notice how the flesh-like armor has not self-repaired? Her mother/conscience interrupted with all the emotion of a proctologist at an asshole convention. She has terminal failures.
Nell’s breath caught in her throat. The girl couldn’t be more than sixteen, no older than Nell’s niece the last time she’d seen her. And much too young to die. Needing to touch, but afraid she’d hurt the girl, Nell settled for smoothing what remained of her long brown locks away from her damaged face.
“I’ll get you help.” Where was all the blood? Nell left the question unspoken and forced herself to meet the girl’s eyes.
“Don’t.” The girl blinked. Her right eyelid flopped against her cheek like a loose false eyelash. “I-I—I will d-d-die soon.”
Her calm acceptance shocked Nell. If the girl wouldn’t fight for her life, Nell would. She glanced around the room, searching for a means to help. Anything. “Where’s the call button?”
“My death means others will live.” The girl laid her hand on Nell’s. “A Syn-En could ask for no greater honor.”
Arguments knotted Nell’s tongue. The girl couldn’t be a soldier. She was a child. Why were children still dying? Hadn’t anything changed in the last hundred years? Nell bit the inside of her cheek to keep from venting her rage. “What’s your name?”
“Richmond.” The girl’s smile was ruined not so much by her missing teeth but by the fact that her lips lay against her chin. “I am s—s-sorry I will not see Terra Dos, Nell Stafford.”
Richmond knew her name. But how? The answer came to Nell as a whisper. Or more likely, her mother/conscience again. The WA. Yet if that were the case, wouldn’t the girl know about the Syn-En death sentence? Then again, it might not matter to someone who was dying. Nell clasped the girl’s warm hand in hers. “Can’t you be fixed?”
“I am but one.”
“You’re a child.”
“I am Syn-En,” Richmond countered, her eyes darkened as she regarded Nell. “It is my honor to serve.”
Nell gritted her teeth. She hated the way they said that, as if those three words justified everything. Why didn’t they fight? How could they accept dying so easily?
“Why are you here, Nell Stafford?” The right side of Richmond’s face went slack and her words slurred. “In this room, not on the ship.”
“I need my head examined.” Nell glanced over her shoulder at the imager. She needed to find the source of her mother/conscience that was even now filling her thoughts with ways to fix Richmond.
“Perhaps the crystal will help?” Richmond gently squeezed Nell’s hand holding the obelisk, offering the comfort she should be receiving. “The data chip should fit in the auxiliary slot by the imaging system.”
“Thanks. Would you like me to keep you company until…?” Nell choked on the word die. Sure, Richmond looked a little mashed and mangled, but she was alert and aware. Didn’t that mean anything?
Syn-Ens are prohibited from opening the biologic core. Only certified citizen doctors are allowed as other repairs are a more efficient use of medical personnel’s time.
Sounded like a load of hooey to Nell. The Syn-En seemed capable of doing anything they put their mind to. Could the citizens be hiding something or was the space parasite in her head making her paranoid?
“I am content visiting with the others until my cerebral interface fires the last time.” The right side of Richmond’s face relaxed into a wistful expression. “My comrades are giving me a lifetime of memories. Some of them have lived nearly forty years!”
“That long, huh?” Tears burned Nell’s eyes and pricked her nose. What would Richmond say if she learned Nell was four times older? She’d… Nell blinked and glanced at the other shrouded figures. “You mean they’re still alive?”
“It will be twenty three hours and sixteen minutes before I have a fatal error. Many of the others have nearly two days to wait for a chariot ride.” Richmond frowned. “I had not completed my upgrades or perhaps I might not have been crushed when that bulkhead fell on me.”
“Chariot ride?” Lyrics of an old gospel song played in Nell’s head accompanied by the longing in Richmond’s voice. So the girl did not want to die, yet no one would help her live. Could Nell do it? Her mother/conscious remained mute.
“It sounds more pleasant than terminal error. And dying is reserved for citizens and civilians, those who have a chance at another life.”
Anger roiled through Nell at the innocent words. The Syn-En had been denied the comfort of a belief in something more. What kind of monsters had humans become? “Perhaps, I should leave you in peace.”
“No. Please.” Richmond’s grip tightened. “It is enough that our WA range has been limited to this room and each other. Normally, the terminal remain with the others so we might feel a part of the fleet until the end.”
“I’ll stay.”
“Do you wish me to do the imaging process so that you might examine your head?”
Nell eyed the helmet, mentally identifying the chin strap, the relay arm, the nodal interface, the 254 source lamp and other technical things that had taken up residence in her head. It was time her mother/conscience earned her keep. “No, I don’t think so.”
“Good.” Richmond lifted her head from the gurney and her scalp slipped onto the metal surface. “Because I am not very proficient at it.” Richmond’s lips rolled farther down her chin before she settled back down. “Will you cover me, please? I do not have complete control of my eyes and I find the vision of this room prevents me from staying in the WA for long and I so wish to experience a Martian dust storm.”
“Sure.” Nell waited until Richmond stopped fidgeting, then draped the sheet over her. A second passed, then another. The girl’s chest remained still. Could her timing be off, was she already dead?
Blocking the images of the nearly-dead from her mind, Nell forced her hands to her side and strode purposefully toward the helmet. Ignoring the ick factor, she pushed the occupied gurneys away from the imager and stared at the computer embedded in the wall on her left.
No objects should be on your person for the imaging.
But I’m not imaging my whole body just my head. Nell countered but stared at the crystal in her hand. Light winked off the warm obelisk. She stood entranced for a moment, then looked around for a place to set it. The gurneys offered the most logical place but she couldn’t bear to set it near the nearly-dead.
Insert it into the computer, her mother/conscience reminded her. It only fits in one.
Nell waited a heartbeat. What harm could come from sliding the crystal into the compute
r? After all, it contained no data. Stepping forward, she ran her fingers down the front panel beneath the monitor, searching the hexagonal, rectangular, and round ports until she located a row of square ones. Selecting the one of the closest size, she lined the obelisk up. It slid easily into the slot.
Initializing.
What? The clear crystal glowed white for a moment before filling with shadows and the hair on Nell’s arms rose. That couldn’t be good. Maybe it wasn’t wise to follow her mother/conscience’s advice to discover the source of the information.
You must initialize the imager before strapping yourself in.
Oh. Nell’s stomach danced in her belly, but she lowered the keyboard from its cubby sandwiched between the ports and the monitor and hit enter. The screen flickered to life, showing the subroutines being brought online. Satisfied, Nell labeled a new file with her name then stepped back. Using both hands, she pulled the helmet shape down onto her head and secured the chin strap. Claustrophobia chewed on her control while her breath echoed loudly back to her. The radial arms, used for imaging larger objects, circled her waist.
Adjusting for compatibility.
Compatibility? You mean I’m not supposed to use the imager? Nell trembled and tried to undo the helmet. Instead, she watched her hand drift over the keyboard, select cranial scan and hit enter. “What the hell?”
Beginning download.
“No. Wait.” Nell railed, but her body refused to obey. Oh God, she really did have a space parasite controlling her through her brain.
The word ‘scan’ filled the monitor along with a status bar. A slight hum resonated around her head and the cushions in the helmet inflated, holding her head secure. Pain burned along her scalp. The imager’s arms cinched around her waist, holding her upright and steady. She grabbed hold of the helmet, clinging to it as her legs flailed underneath her.
Shit! She must have done something wrong. Her body bucked and swayed but her head didn’t move in the helmet. Time slowed to a crawl. The status bar remained stopped on twenty percent. Spit splashed her cheeks and she bit her tongue. Blood foamed past her lips and bubbled in the air in front of her.
A black curtain descended on her consciousness. Her body relaxed. The arms of the imager dug into the soft tissue under her ribs. Just as she was about to pass out, the pain ended. Her legs felt like hundred pound weights as she shored them up beneath her. Muscles trembling, Nell wiped a hand across her mouth and swallowed the coppery blood. “What the hell just happened?”
Download complete.
Download? Why had she trusted her mother/conscience? Clawing at the strap under her jaw, Nell managed to wrench it open. She wrestled free of the helmet just as the imager’s arm sprang open and dropped to her knees on the cold floor. Crawling, she reached the computer terminal and pulled herself up on the folding seat.
The screen asked for a password prompt.
“Password. I don’t know no stinking password. What the hell did you do to me?” Nell slapped the keyboard in anger. The screen blanked blue for a moment then a site map appeared. Movies, television, books, music. Nell scrolled down the folders until she found the file with her name.
After she clicked on the folder, the image of her brain popped up, rotating in three dimensions on the monitor. A white aura surrounded the base of her skull.
She searched for the key to interpret the color and found it on the bottom right corner next to the image. “High brain activity. Yeah, well when something’s microwaving your brain you’d have high activity as well.”
Gritting her teeth, Nell looked at the scrolling results. Would she have to do it again?
You can isolate the activity from the scan.
I can? With the instructions flooding her head, Nell’s fingers flew over the keyboard before she even thought of the command. Her newfound instincts were right handy, even if they smelled like day-old fish.
The filtered results flashed on the screen. Red highlighted the anomalies. The one marked skull thickness caught her attention. Clicking on the word, she opened a detailed profile of the results. Her skull was almost fifty percent thicker at the base than normal. Could that have caused her seizure and why wouldn’t Doc have said something?
The base. Nell brought up the excited areas. They overlapped the thick area perfectly, too perfectly. She tightened the view on the base and noticed a bony protrusion as thick as a hair leading straight into the center of her brain. What was that doing there?
Download complete.
Had she actually heard the words or were they merely thoughts? Bones were made up of calcium and phosphorus and they had a honeycomb-like structure that according to Doc could hold data, like the crystal. Apparently undetectable data. The computer identified the area of brain where the bony protrusion ended.
The amygdalae. The portion in the brain that is in charge of instinct and hard wired memory. Could her newfound instinct be a computer program designed to control her? Tingles erupted at the base of Nell’s skull and a black vortex opened inside her head, sucking up her thoughts. She’d been right. She’d…
Awareness issue. Prepare for memory erasure and reboot.
As if viewing a play, Nell watched her hand reach out and delete the image of her brain. She had a momentary sense of falling right before darkness sucked her in.
While enhancements endow a Syn-En with superhuman strength,
it is the knowledge uploaded into their cerebral interface that enables them to complete a mission successfully.
Syn-En Vade Mecum
Chapter Twelve
“Nell Stafford, please respond.”
Richmond’s soft voice cut into the suffocating darkness surrounding Nell. Pain throbbed in her head, blazed down her right shoulder and echoed in her right hip. Squeezing her eyes closed, she swallowed the bile roaring at the back of her throat and waited for the nausea to pass. Bit by bit, her stomach settled and she dared to speak. “What happened?”
“You screamed ‘no’ then I heard you hit the ground.”
Memories surged through Nell: the hospital, the body parts on racks and the Monty Python morgue of the not-dead-yet. She opened her eyes and gasped in horror.
A pair of brown eyes in what was left of a tan face stared back. Pale pink lids masked the eyes for a moment before they continued their perusal. His eyes seemed to be the only part of him that remained intact. His bottom jaw had been ripped off, leaving flaps of skin and tissue to curl around his neck. His arms and legs had been cleanly detached at the joints, no doubt to join the heap of limbs for reuse.
Nell’s stomach burbled at the sight. What do you call a man with no arms and legs who is treading water? Bob.
It is an inappropriate time for levity. You must help him, Nell. Help all of them. Her mother/conscience prodded.
Help him? How? Nell countered, thinking of all the king’s horses and his men. Although what help horses would be, she really didn’t know. Then again, maybe just the thought of the nursery rhyme was a sign of impending hysteria.
“Anaheim says you’re bleeding.” The girl spoke from somewhere above Nell’s head. “You’re not hurt bad are you? Because, we’re cut off from the others and unable to send for help.”
“Bleeding?” Nell slid her hand through the cobweb of spittle hovering around her mouth and touched her sore head. As soon as she reached the goose egg behind her temple, lightning bolts flashed inside her skull. “What happened?”
Although she glanced at Anaheim, Richmond answered. “Anaheim says you had some sort of seizure while in the imager then landed on the floor next to him.”
“I had a seizure?” Nell used her arms to leverage herself into a sitting position. Her body felt as if she’d been beat with brick bats.
Doc said you had many seizures, her mother/conscience supplied.
I know that. Nell rolled her knees under her body, latched onto the side of a gurney and hauled herself to her feet. But there was something else, a shadowy memory lurking on the fringe. She tr
ied to tease it to the fore but pain ricocheted inside her skull.
You must help the Syn-En, show them you’re on their side. It is the only way to get them to trust you so you can complete your mission.
Nell staggered toward the computer near the helmet-shaped imager. If she had scanned her head, there should be results. She fumbled with the keyboard.
“You’re not going to try again, are you?” Richmond’s concern wrapped around Nell. “Anaheim says the imager emits an ultrasonic frequency that some people are highly susceptible to.”
They sounded so calm, so sane. Nell hated it.
“I just need to check something.” Tapping on the keys, Nell brought up the recent images. The file was empty. How can that be? Unease coiled around her spine. Her fingers trembled as she called up the computer’s trash bin. Empty. Shouldn’t there be something?
You deleted the pictures after you found nothing significant on the images. You didn’t want the Syn-En to think you didn’t trust them. Trust is important. Her mother/conscience soothed her, much like a snake charmer tamed a swaying cobra.
The comparison chilled the marrow in Nell’s bones and her thoughts flew making ominous connections. If the seizure hadn’t caused her to pass out, what had?
Perhaps you should sit down.
Her mother/conscience knew. Nell wiped her bloody fingers on her pants and looked around the cramped rectangular room. Except for the area under the imager, the nearly-dead filled the gurneys and baker’s racks crowding the floorspace. What did it mean that her mother could remember, but Nell couldn’t?
Nell, I’m a part of you. I know things because you know them. The truth is you’re just not ready to deal with what you discovered yet.
If that’s the case, then why are you going to tell me? Since there wasn’t a place to sit nearby, Nell propped herself against the wall. The cool metal dulled the ache along her right side.
I’ll tell you so you stop worrying and get on to more important things.
Like the mission. A sense of calmness settled over Nell. The moment was surreal and unexpected but it didn’t bother her. Maybe it was the last seizure, but she now knew her mission was to get safely to Terra Dos.
The Syn-En Solution Page 18
