by Anna Gaffey
“No. Because you gave me the real Restore.”
“The real Restore.” Rebirth is clearly not Restore, Silverman had said with eyes full of disappointed fatigue. “That’s not clearing things up for me.”
“The initial version of Restore. The one you saved the data for, on that tablet. You gave me a five-milliliter dose, and I haven’t needed a boost since 2231.”
Not everyone has his tolerance for pain. Jake stared in disbelief at Con, at his hands easy and capable on the flight controls. “Then you should be dead along with the rest of them.”
In spite of this pronouncement, Con continued to exist. Jake addressed the viewscreen instead. “I don’t mean to knock your healthiness. Great job, hurray for Con and all, but it’s unbelievable. You shouldn’t be here. One hundred percent fatality rate.” He looked down on his bandaged hands and fiddled with the fraying blue medical tape. The ends were losing their stickiness. “What is the initial version of Restore? Is that what you have?”
“That vial is fresh, following your formula on the tablet.”
“And you mixed it?”
Con snorted. “Oh hells no. Lashti Vanna,” he began, and stopped abruptly.
“You had the formula,” Jake mused. “Lashti Vanna mixed it. Probably with the help of Quinn. So did they take the serum, too?”
Con’s jaw tightened. “Jake, I—there’s so much to tell. And I’m not good at—this.” He made a short, cutting gesture at himself. “Talking.”
“How else do you expect me to know what you’re thinking?”
To Jake’s surprise, Con laughed again, but it sounded raw, more helpless than mirthful this time. He reached out and touched Con’s shoulder. “Are you okay?”
“There’s a way. To know what I’m thinking. But I can’t do it while we fly. And you’d have to trust me.”
“I do,” Jake said immediately, and wished it wasn’t so automatic, both the trust and his acquiescence to it. The pod walls were beginning to feel close again. Somehow he’d gone from chilled to sweating. That was bad, he’d learned his lesson well: heat, bad.
“I knew you would.”
“Yeah?” The hackles rose on the back of Jake’s neck. He felt awash with heat and ice, and a creeping, gritty sensation of inexplicable disgust. “What are you, anyway, a damn oracle? The freaking pilot of Delphi?”
“Doesn’t quite fit me,” Con said. “I’m not alone. Not anymore.”
The oracle, smothered and alone in her cave, waiting for everyone to come to her. Generally Nat was the only one who got his most random historical references. Jake tamped down the automatic swell of apprehension at the thought of her, and her voice churned through him like a dark river—
I can still feel it, Jake. Heavy. It’s soaking into my skin like damp in the air. And soon—soon it’ll be me. My skin won’t be mine anymore.
What had Nat felt? Known? Out of all the crazy things she’d said, that was an odd one to ring through his head.
I’m not alone. Not anymore. Because Con had Lashti and Quinn as healthy immuno buddies? And why stop with them? Who else?
Silverman’s golden memory gem was sliding slowly along the dusty surface of the console, and Jake picked it up. It warmed the palm of his hand. A blue light flashed, and Con flicked at some knobs, switching himself to detached normalcy with frightening speed. “Coming up on entry in under a minute. Inertial dampers are kinda minimal. Might want to tighten your seatbelt.”
Jake stuck the gem in his shirt pocket. They sank down, down, down, his belly far ahead of the rest of his body. His headache had returned to accompany the queasiness: an icepick-to-the-temple pickle on the shit sandwich of his day. Days, rather. The lunchy metaphor didn’t help—it only reminded his stomach how long ago the cheese sandwich had been. And sleep, he didn’t want to think about how long that had been. Unconsciousness didn’t count. He struggled into the safety harness straps.
The viewscreen shifted to visual, and they rode into the chop of the atmosphere, thick clouds blotting out the green. Jake clutched at the armrests of his seat. He’d had to shove the sack of supplies under his legs, and it jounced his knees with every dip and quake of the pod. The sack was overpacked: the two tablets and gems loaded with all the legacy data and memory he could cram into them on the fly, the power gems for his immobilizer. Some KO patches and stim injectors and some of the universally detested cardboard protein ration. His mother’s satchel, which made him feel silly. But he couldn’t have left it there in his quarters. Carmichael’s launcher, and packed alongside it, a wave pack with detonator. Plaguing hell, he had an explosive wave pack and rocket grenades rattling under his legs. What kind of idiot was he?
An idiot who, in a sense, had chosen a side. He could’ve convinced Santos to keep him on board the station. The mere thought of the clunker, his quarters, the comfortably out-of-date common area; it all sent a pathetic, longing thrum through him. He could’ve lied about the pain in his leg, worn her down that way. Instead here he sat, strapped into this cramped seat next to Con, his nervous system sending invisible neural curse words along the length of his painfully-slow-to-heal body. And he knew there was nowhere else he could be. His trust in Con was automatic, yes, and uncontrollable.
Jake supposed he should be glad, or grateful. But he wasn’t. He was scared and confused, and his sense of self-preservation had waved and jumped ship.
The pod thumped and juddered along, seats squeaking from the jolt. Jake closed his eyes and admonished his stomach to stay down. A throb of headache threatened, and he grabbed for the console as the pod bucked.
“All right?” Con asked. He sounded unconcerned, completely focused on his piloting, but Jake swore his ears pricked up.
“Mostly.” Jake rubbed his palms clean on his trousers and blotted his mouth with the back of one hand. “Headache. Standard for Selas.” The chip nightmare cycle also needed a reset and a full run. He couldn’t keep pushing it away. He shouldn’t be able to.
The descent slowed, and they leveled out. Con said, “We should have some visibility again soon.”
They broke through the grey gloom and into a spray of rain, the pod skimming incredibly fast over the wet, lush green grass and the craggy purplish outcropping of cliffs and rocks. Con piloted them around a mountainous rise, and then he called up the holo map again over the viewscreen. “Landing pad?”
“We’re going to the secondary one.” Jake poked at the map. “There. Nearest the foundations and the habitat.”
Con took them in another wide bank, this time over a wide valley of shadowy waving grass. A gloomy vista, but it was darkly appealing. Selas had always been pretty. Jake imagined the strange-colored energy writhing over the basin and hills, invisible to the naked eye. It repulsed him; it also gave him an idea.
“Let me meld the data.” Jake undid his harness and rifled through the supply sack until he found the tablet. He connected the legacy gems and linked everything together with the console’s tablet well. “Heart—uh, I mean, shuttle?” The viewscreen shifted to a blank pause display. “Combine and overlay new data from 2130 with current flight plan, maps.”
The holo map shimmered under the transfer of info, and then a rush of data streamed over the lines of the land. Tiny glowing pockets, molten pools of light settled at various points around the planet.
“Limit to quadrant area…H39,” Jake commanded, and the map zoomed in close until it focused on a tight expanse around the pod. One of the gleaming spots overlapped the easternmost edge of the scan. Jake squinted close. Beneath the pulsing light, the scan showed the uneven juts of the foundation rock.
“There’s our tunnel, our entry point. Where Santos wanted us to go.”
“Can you do a real time link?”
“Hmm, that’s a provocative thought. Possibly?” Jake swept through the readings. Yes. Sure enough, there was a fresh spate of data feeding in through the pod’s sensors. It was collecting and correlating one step ahead of him. “Yes, it already synced up with the se
nsors. And there’s new data, but it’s legacy-coded. Earth tech, old and incompatible with the pod. It doesn’t say what it is.”
The glow pulsated at the edge of the screen. The rhythm of it set Jake’s stomach rolling again.
“So something from the station, you mean? And the original crew?”
“Yes. On the foundations, or in the tunnel, I can’t tell which yet.” Jake slapped the console. “Quality junk as always. We didn’t have the legacy data, we didn’t have the parameters. Funny, isn’t it? It’s like these guys and their digital standards were just wiped away. At the very least, you’d think the recommissioning crew would’ve investigated for historical salvage.” Of course, Jake and his own crew could’ve poked around more, too. But no one aboard the station had enjoyed plodding through legacy data, especially when more pressing matters, such as hazards of structural decrepitude, arose on a regular basis.
“So what could it be?” Con pressed.
“I don’t know. Anything meant to transmit data. These spots are kicking out constantly. I’m impressed, actually, because where’s the power coming from? Not from the station…”
Con gave him a look, and Jake pulled himself back on track. “Transmitters. For any kind of research, depends on what data they wanted to collect. Seismic, atmospheric, geologic.” A stray thought sent a cold finger up his spine. “Biotags.”
His headache was growing sharper, the icepick making hash of his grey matter. Jake pinched the bridge of his nose. It didn’t help. The feeling was so insidious, so—so frantic. It surrounded him like air. It’s all right, he wanted to tell it. As much as I’d like to, I won’t forget you any time soon, so just ease up already.
He dug into the supply sack for a KO patch, one of the emergency ones, and slapped it against his neck. A warm hand patted his clenched fist.
“All right?”
Jake relaxed a fraction. “It’s Selas. The planet. Yeah. Hell, it’s been pulling on me—us, since—since always, I guess.”
He couldn’t even remember when he’d first felt the gentle, chill tug of Selas, the allure of the alien surface and the secrets waiting there, the sheer mystery of the welcome promised in the dim shadows between the trees. Probably the moment he’d looked out the transfer ship’s porthole at the unassuming green globe. “The headaches, I could handle those, and the dreams. This feels much more intense, almost directed.”
With a small, flaccid throb at the pain in his head, the KO pulsed into Jake’s skin and then dissipated. Hellish circles. Lindy knew he’d take too much. She must’ve spiked the mix with half-placebos. He sunk his nails into his palms and breathed through his nose until the wave passed.
The respite wouldn’t last, though. The inaudible din of Selas’ pull was getting heavier, louder. Jake thought longingly of old-time aspirin ads, of morphine syrup and injectors. Even a regular Selas migraine would be a tiny echo in comparison. Selas migraines usually had a singular touch: sharp but clean. In this he could sense a cloudiness, a strange, sweetly fetid pall surrounding his skull.
“Can you feel this?” Jake gesticulated around his head. “This damned plaguing…influence, or whatever it is?”
A vein stood out on Con’s temple. He wouldn’t meet Jake’s gaze. “As soon as we entered the Eos system. In the Harmon.”
“No good time to bring that up, hmm?”
“In a way that doesn’t sound crazy? Whatever it is, it seems to want us down here. I didn’t want to go along with that without knowing something, anything.”
“It’d be easier to learn that sort of thing if you shared your own damn knowledge. What a waste of time.” Jake blew out a frustrated breath and surveyed the dusky expanse of grass, the looming violet peaks now behind them to the north. The prairie grass was thickening into briar and saplings, and the forests of Selas appeared in the distance, a dark latticework spreading over the land.
“Is that the landing pad?” Con pointed.
“Yep.” It was a few klicks away, but perfectly visible: a blazoned red and orange button bleeding through the dark shivering throng of trees. The pod slowed, and Con hovered them over the vivid color. He paused at the controls.
“The thing is, Jake…” In the light he looked exhausted. “I brought the serum for you. To take.”
A yellow light flashed on the comm section of the console, and yellow, golden, yellow was burned into him, the yellow liquid sinking from the vial into Rebecca’s arm, jaundiced skin, iodine, chromate, oxidization, fertilization, sizzling, pocked flesh—Jake bit hard on his tongue and jerked back in his seat. The nightmare roared in his ears, and then receded. The metallic taste of blood filled his mouth.
“Are you all right?”
I’m not alone. Not anymore.
“No.” Rebecca, Rebecca, writhing in his head. “I can’t take it, Con.”
“Please. You don’t understand.”
“I can’t. I can barely even think about it, understand? It’s not just the chip bashing my brain in every seventy-two goddamn hours, it’s me, it’s what I did.”
“It won’t kill you.”
Jake laughed. He couldn’t help it. “No, I know that’s the sell. You think it’d be right? If I lived a long sterling healthy life after, after—”
He cut himself off, and they sat in silence, on the cusp of it, the accident, the deaths.
Con said finally, “I don’t know.”
“That doesn’t help.” Jake raked his hands through his hair. The bandages and tape snagged unhelpfully, and he pulled them free.
“You said you trusted me. Trust me on this,” Con began, but the pod’s comm pinged. The yellow light continued to flash.
“Can you hear me?” Santos’ voice crackled. The viewscreen flickered, and she appeared before them, her face witchy in the bluish-grey holo transmission.
Jake leaned forward and pressed the transmit button. “We’re getting you, Rachel. What’s the update?”
Her lips moved, but they only caught snatches of sound. “…Need to—return…no…none.”
“Too much interference. Clear your comm channel already, Rachel.”
A blinding flash lit up behind her head. Then she cut out, and the screen darkened.
“Doesn’t sound good.” Con looked unfamiliar and defenseless in the bleaching light of the screen. I’m not alone.
“Nothing sounds good when you can only hear half of it,” Jake countered. He was having trouble making his fingers obey him; the griminess pervading his mind was so dense that it took most of his attention just to focus on the comm controls. “I can’t get her back. You don’t think that the station, that she…”
“No,” Con said with certainty.
I’m not alone. Not anymore.
It clicked for him then, and Jake’s hands froze on the controls. “You gave it to Rachel, too. Restore. That’s why you’re not alone.”
The pod shivered to life again, and dropped toward the vivid color of the landing pad. Tree branches wafted past and scraped at the sides as Con sank them gently down, down, down between the branches, light as a leaf drifting onto a pond. He steadied the landing, eased and killed the thrusters, powered down the displays with calm habitual movements. Then he turned and met Jake’s gaze squarely.
“Everyone on the Harmon has had a dose. Everyone except Silverman.”
“Everyone?”
“A standard dose of Restore. They all survived.”
A shipful of people, all working and functioning and breathing, alive, better than alive. Hope for the human race. Just as he’d hoped, as everyone had hoped. But when Jake opened his mouth, what came out was, “You asshole. How could you do that, knowing what happened? And with only three successful subjects?”
The harness straps tangled with his arms. Jake flung them away.
Con shook his head. “We only gave it to whoever consented. I guess it’s a good thing they send a lot of black sheep to Selas.”
“What about Rachel?”
“She was almost dead when we n
etted her. Drained. Like Carmichael.”
Like Silverman, Jake thought. Silverman, who was still dead, despite her supposed Rebirth. Another thought occurred to him. “That’s how Rachel could see the energy on me.”
“I had to do something, Jake. I made the call to give Santos the serum, and it saved her. And I’m not going—where are we going?”
“I don’t know.” Jake wiped sweat from his brow. “To the foundations. To that energy source. Tunnel. Extraterrestrial kinetic anomaly of dubious origin.”
“We’re not going down there unless you have the same advantage as the rest of us. The same as me. I won’t let you out of this shuttle.”
“You won’t.” There are some side effects. Mostly hallucinatory in nature. Not everyone has his tolerance for pain. “How badly does it hurt?”
Con smirked down at the console, but his tone was quiet and cold. “Like I was burning alive. I thought I’d die.”
Horrible pain. If it wasn’t fate, it was at least appropriate. And if he didn’t survive, all the more fitting. Why drag it out? “I’ll take it.” Jake gathered his various gear, stood up, and stooped before he could bang his head.
Con looked astonished. “Here?”
“Nah, let’s go outside.” If things went bad, he’d rather spend his last moments surrounded by beauty, by Selas, by home. The inside of the pod was too ignominious and, in any case, likely no more sterile.
He climbed the ladder with Con’s evil-smelling boots in his face. His knee complained with every step. Then he was taking Con’s proffered hand, and Con pulled him up onto the roof of the pod, out into the Selas of Jake’s dreams.
Or hallucinations, he corrected himself. Trips. Visions. Hauntings. Memories.
“Shut up,” he whispered, and shook his head at Con’s look askance. If his vid-self was correct, soon he’d be getting the Restore side effects bonanza: hallucinations and then some.
They scaled down the side of the pod. Con jumped, his boots leaving deep prints in the muddy soil. Jake eased down after him, mindful of his leg. In the far side of the sky hung a yellow swollen Helias, while the star Eos set to their south. The delicate, drooping trees swayed in the cool breeze, sweeping dappled light back and forth across the clearing, but the shadows were lengthening in the growing purple twilight, thick and velvety dark between the trees. They still drew him. But Jake no longer wanted to know any of their secrets.
