A Plain Jane Book One

by Odette C. Bell

  Chapter 9

  Jane

  What was happening, what was happening to her? Was she in a dream? But she didn’t dream. So was she hallucinating?

  None of it made sense. She couldn’t move her body, couldn’t control anything but her face and her voice. And what had that creature been? A strange black box that had grown up into an organic-looking robot?

  The second she’d seen it, an explosion of recognition had gone off in her mind, and yet she hadn’t been able to pin down why she knew it. She couldn’t deny the familiarity that surged within her.

  Why? She’d never seen it before….

  What was going on…?

  She was running now. Running because the thing had told her to run. No, that wasn’t right; her body was running because the thing had told her body to run. The robot. It was as if it could bypass her mind and talk right to her limbs.

  She was sprinting full pelt, faster than she’d ever run in her life, faster than she would have thought possible without the assistance of bio-armor. While she had no idea where she was going, her body did, or at least it seemed to. She twisted around the right corners, pelted up the correct stairs, sprinted down the right corridors. After a while, she realized she was heading up to one of the hangar bays above the building.

  Occasionally, she would face security blocks: fields that had been put in place along corridors to stop enemies from accessing all areas of the Galactic Force. Every time she came across one, she darted forward and ripped open some panel, her body knowing how to hack right into it until the security field flickered out. Then she kept running.

  “Why? Why is this happening to me?” she asked herself, her breath shaky as her body didn’t stop.

  She was normal; she was meant to be completely normal…. Wasn’t she?

  Her tears had dried up long ago. Or maybe she didn’t have any left. What good would they do, anyway? Crying wouldn’t give her back control over her arms and legs.

  Jane kept heading down the corridor, and she knew that the hangar bays were now only two levels above. Obviously, the security systems were catching on to the fact somebody was hacking through them, and she could now hear the sound of security forces assembling on the other side of the door she was currently trying to bypass.

  What would she do? What would her body make her do? When she’d tried to get into that research lab, she’d been so agile, trained, and competent. She’d managed to take down those three security guards as if she’d spent her whole life preparing to do just that. It was so terribly strange, it was as if someone had swapped her body with that of Lucas Stone’s, for god’s sake.

  Before Jane could finish hacking through the door, she heard somebody running up from behind her. Her body stilled for a moment, but then it went straight back to switching around the control crystals in the panel.

  “Jane? Jane?” somebody called. She realized it was Lucas.

  … Lucas Stone. When this had all begun, she’d fought the urge to go find him. Her mind had been convinced of the fact that if anybody could solve her problem, it was him. After all, wasn’t that what the Galactic news had told her over and over again? Wasn’t that what every single member of the Galactic Force believed? If you had a problem, and especially if it was of the big universally threatening kind, you sought out Lucas Stone. There was nothing the man couldn’t fix.

  And Jane was starting to appreciate that her problem… it was big, it was awfully big.

  She heard him race down the corridor toward her, and though the lights had been turned to a quarter illumination, she picked out the form of his armor easily. He sprinted, ran at full bore, his arms flashes by his sides as his legs pumped. She could make out the blue and white stripes along the shoulders of his black armor.

  “Jane,” he called once more.

  She waited for her body to act. She squeezed her eyes closed, not wanting to see it. She was sure her limbs would make her snap up, rush toward him, and land a punch somewhere, perhaps push him over, maybe steal his rifle and try shooting him with it… but she didn’t. She just kept trying to bypass the console.

  He reached her. His gun was in his hand, and her eyes widened as she watched it. After a moment’s hesitation, he didn’t raise it at her.

  His helmet flicked to transparent, and she could see his expression even in the dim, dim light.

  “Jane,” he repeated, voice quiet, throat constricted.

  “What’s going on? What’s going on?” she asked through a choke.

  Lucas’ skin was pale, his mouth open, his eyes drooped, and he shook his head slowly. “I have no idea.”

  Jane swallowed hard and tried not to cry. While she tried not to cry, her body ignored her. Her hands expertly and quickly manipulated the controls within the panel, and soon the door clicked open. She found herself instantly ducking behind the side of it, her body smart enough to know that if she was standing right in front of it, whatever assembled security forces were behind it would shoot her on the spot.

  Lucas didn’t move.

  His gaze locked on her, and then he shifted his head to look through the doors. “Stand down,” he snapped.

  “Sir, what’s going on? We have reports that the entity is—”

  “We have a major disruption in Research Lab Two, that’s the problem,” Lucas snapped. “Redirect all forces to Research Lab Two. Have someone check on Basement Level One. Get the Chief Engineer. Tell her to try to relay as much power as she can to the grid. Tell her I don’t care what the Mayor says; tell her to get it all. We have a major, major incident going on here.”

  Jane heard a noise as if someone were snapping a salute, and then the sound of a whole host of heavy footfall started to recede from them.

  “But, but why didn’t they shoot me? Are you going to shoot me?” Jane found herself stuttering. Before she could get her answer, her body twisted around and began to run full pelt through the door.

  Lucas ran up behind her, but it seemed as if he could only just match her speed.

  “I’m not going to shoot you, Jane,” he finally replied. It was muffled, indistinct as if it came relayed through his armor, as if he were having a hard time catching his breath.

  “What have I done? What have I done?” she kept asking herself. It seemed to be the only thing she could do. Well, not the only thing – her body was busy trying to save her, or trying to commit every single crime under the sun. “Where am I going? What am I doing?”

  “We’re heading to Hangar Bay One. Yaka is trying to clear us a ship,” Lucas replied.

  “A ship? What? To get off the planet? But I’ve never been off the planet,” she replied with a stutter, but then her body drew to a shuddering halt as another security field blocked off their access. She found herself turning to the panel by the field and ripping it off easily with her fingers.

  “Disable security fields between corridor 2B and Hangar Bay One,” Lucas snapped.

  Jane’s fingers kept pulling out and switching around the various security crystals in the wall.

  The security field blinked off, anyway.

  “I…” Jane began. Then she found her body running again.

  “It’s going to be okay,” Lucas replied from her side as he kept pace with her.

  “But I’m a criminal; I shot two people.” She grabbed hold of a door frame and used it to pivot so she could run up a different corridor without ever losing speed.

  Lucas fell behind, but then he put on another burst of speed and ran up to her again. “They are fine. You stunned them; you didn’t shoot them.” His voice was heavy, his breath loud and choppy.

  “I can’t go off planet,” Jane repeated to herself. The same voice in her head that told her to shun adventure had always warned her to stay on home soil. If she wanted to go somewhere, she could darn well imagine it instead. It was cheaper and far, far safer.

  Yet now Jane ran toward a hangar bay, apparently trying like crazy to get off the planet. While she couldn’t control her limbs and had no
idea what was happening to her, she still understood why. She had to escape because of the white, eyeless entity back in Research Lab Two.

  It made her cold to think about it. Whenever a picture of it flickered before her mind’s eye, she wanted to stop, double over, and throw up. While she hadn’t raised her head to look at it, she knew it had stared at her. The entire time. Its eyeless face directed toward her, its jaw open wide, its teeth glinting. She’d never seen anything like it in her life, but that didn’t matter; some part of her recognized it. The same part of her that was now running like crazy to get the hell away from it.

  “How can I go off world if I’ve never been off world before?” Jane asked, breath choppy yet still far steadier than Lucas’. Though she could feel that her body was under considerable strain, she imagined she could keep doing this, whatever this was, for some time. Lucas, on the other hand, seemed to be at full pelt, and she could tell from his movements that he couldn’t keep it up for long.

  He also didn’t seem to know how to answer such a stupid question. After all, it was fairly obvious: you went off world in a spaceship, the same as everybody else. If you’d never been off world before, it didn’t really matter, because there always had to be a first time for everything.

  They were nearly at Hangar Bay One now, but Jane wasn’t slowing down.

  “Why is this happening?” she croaked out one last time, her voice low.

  “I don’t know,” was all Lucas could reply.

  …

  Lucas Stone

  He’d found her, but damn it had taken him a while. She could run, and she was fast. And the speed with which she hacked through security terminals was phenomenal. Lucas had never seen anything like it, not from a robot, not from a bio-synthetic, and not from a biological life form. She was possessed of speed, agility, and knowledge that was far, far beyond her.

  When he’d finally reached her, he’d had a moment of hesitation. Seeing her bypass that security panel with such expertise… he’d wondered whether this was a trap, after all. Perhaps Jane was working with Specimen 14 somehow.

  Then he’d seen her expression again. Her expression had been at complete odds with the expert moves of her hands, with the slack, easy posture of her shoulders and the comfortable stance of her legs. Her expression had been wild with fear and such obvious, genuine fright that he knew in an instant it couldn’t be faked.

  She kept talking, and what she kept saying sounded exactly like Jane. Not that he’d known her for long. Yet even the way her expression crumpled and her nose crinkled reminded him of the first time they’d met. Whatever the movements of her body were, they weren’t Jane. Though he had no evidence to go on, he wondered whether it had something to do with the Paran Artifact. Whenever it had told Jane to move, she’d moved, whether she’d looked like she wanted to or not.

  So Lucas made another decision: he would trust her. At least for now. Too much was happening and it was happening too quickly, and unless he acted to create certainty, he would be swept up by the chaos.

  Plus, even if he had no idea who Jane really was or what she was capable of, his gut told him one thing: Specimen 14 was dangerous. No, it was beyond dangerous; it was terrifying. Terrifying in a way that the Galaxy had never experienced before. Most species of the Galaxy, that was, except the Parans.

  All of his worst suspicions, his nightmares about the mysterious ancient race from Hell’s Gate, were turning out to be true. The Darq, as the Paran database had called them. They were fiendish, deadly, and intent on destruction.

  He didn’t know why, and while he now had access to the Paran database, he couldn’t make sense of most of it. He did know one thing, however: he had to stop them at all costs. They felt like a deadly force that could easily sweep their way across the Galaxy, conquering what they could and annihilating what they could not. The Galaxy would be a soft target. It hadn’t been to war in years, maybe didn’t even know how to protect itself anymore. Maybe it thought that there weren’t any real enemies left out there to threaten it. Well, they were wrong. There was one downstairs.

  Lucas swallowed hard and put on another burst of speed. He didn’t know how long he could keep this up for; his armor was already giving him feedback that he was taxing not only the living membrane of his bio suit but his joints, tendons, muscles, and bones. It was weakening him. They were almost at Hangar Bay One, though, so hopefully he could hold out just a little longer.

  Jane wasn’t slowing down. She kept up the exact same pace. Lucas wondered how long she could do it for. He knew she wasn’t human; Miranda had told him so. Yet Miranda had also told him that she had lower agility and strength than your average human. Which was obviously completely wrong, because Jane had speed you never associated with a human. Still, all races had their limits. Jane could run like this for a while, but she couldn’t run like this forever.

  To get to the hangar, they had to pass through the decontamination unit. It was a long corridor which, ordinarily, you walked through at a healthy pace, and while you walked, all the nasties that you’d picked up on Earth that you didn’t want to incubate with you in space were irradiated right off you. The process was perfectly timed to how long it took to walk to the hangar, but if you ran, or even half jogged, the computer would snap at you to stop running in the corridor. Jane ignored it.

  There was now no security personnel around. Obviously, they’d all been redirected to the real problem: the Darq in Research Lab Two.

  They reached the decontamination doors, and before Jane could rip into the panel and hack into it, Lucas put a hand forward and typed in the right code, the doors opening for them easily.

  The number of panels that Jane had now torn through and hacked in her attempt to run to the hangar bay was clocking up, and Lucas knew that when this had all died down, if it died down, the Chief Engineer would have some strict words for him.

  When the decontamination doors opened, Jane began to run down the corridor behind them, but Lucas did notice that she was starting to flag. She was breathing heavier now, and there was sweat dripping down her face. Lucas used the onboard biometric scanners of his armor to note that whereas her life signs had been steady and almost vibrant before, they were starting to taper off quickly.

  “Jane?” he asked her. “Are you okay?”

  “Tired,” she replied simply, breath heavy. She still didn’t stop; she kept on running. Sure enough, the computer blared out several times to slow the hell down so it could decontaminate them properly.

  He just snapped at the computer to prioritize decontamination and hurry the hell up. And, being Lucas Stone, the computer paid attention. After all, there were several benefits to having his rank, one of which was the ability to prioritize computer functions. Even if every person under the sun accused him of always having his priorities wrong, at least he could dictate to the computer what it should do and when.

  By the time they reached the end of the decontamination corridor, Jane was stumbling.

  He glanced up to see the ship in dock one, and he was happy to note it was one of the fastest cruisers the Galactic Force had. A small, nimble ship usually used in reconnaissance.

  How Yaka had managed to clear it so fast, Lucas would never know. Well, possibly it had something to do with the Darq in Research Lab Two threatening to tear up the planet to get to Jane. Getting her off-world before that security field failed was everyone’s last and best hope.

  In any case, Lucas didn’t have the time to wait around on the hangar deck and make the right calls to ensure everything was legitimate. Plus, Jane was already running up the ramp to the ship.

  There were two surprised engineers either side of the hangar door, and they glanced at Jane and then straight at Lucas.

  “Umm,” one of them began.

  “Priority mission,” Lucas snapped back. “Is the ship ready to go?”

  “Yes, sir,” one of the engineers said as he glanced at Jane and then back at Lucas. “But there is no crew.”

  �
�We will pick them up later. We just have to get off-world as soon as possible. Has she got clearance?”

  “Not yet,” the other engineer replied through a stutter.

  “I need you to get on the net, get absolute priority clearance. I need to be the next ship that goes off.”

  “Yes, sir,” both of the engineers replied.

  Lucas ran into the ship. As soon as he did, he turned, he clamped his hand over a panel on the side, and his armor instantly linked to the on-board computer. The hangar door closed in a whisper-quiet move. Then Lucas, his armor still linked to the ship, instructed it to begin the takeoff process. Soon enough the engines hummed into life. He also set the shields to maximum, primed the scanners, and even uploaded some biometric data from the Paran database into the computer. Data on the Darq. Should one come close, the ship would let loose with every gun and torpedo it had.

  Only when takeoff was well under way and the ship was unclamped and moved toward the giant hangar bay doors at the end of the room did Lucas take a massive sigh. He let his head tip back, closed his eyes, and took several relieved breaths.

  He’d already plugged the course into the ship’s onboard computer and had set the navigation to autopilot.

  He finally undocked his hand from the panel and moved forward into the rest of the ship.

  He’d always been fond of these smaller, faster reconnaissance ships. There was so much you could do in one of these that you couldn’t do in the heavier battle cruisers. Fair enough, you probably couldn’t take on a horde of space pirates or blow up an asteroid field, but you were quick, you were silent, and you went unnoticed. Now he needed to be unnoticed. If Specimen 14 really came after them, then maybe this was exactly the kind of ship they needed to have a hope of getting out of here.

  If it came after them, that was. After all, Lucas still didn’t know anything for sure. He was still working on instinct, working on full throttle, going from one problem to the next without having the time to properly analyze the situation. The Paran Artifact could have been lying to him; he was still aware of that fact. And though he’d decided to trust Jane for now, he still wasn’t stupid enough to think that the case was solved. He had no idea what Jane was or why she’d done the things that she’d done. Or even how she’d done them. She’d undergone a physical examination the day previous, and Lucas was pretty sure that if Miranda had uncovered that Jane had superhuman agility, speed, and strength she might have mentioned it. No, and it wasn’t as if Miranda would make any mistakes; Miranda was one of the best doctors Lucas had ever met. Which meant one thing: Jane was far more extraordinary than she’d ever let on.

  Lucas made his way toward the bridge.

  The ship was small but was still large enough to be comfortable. There were two small dormitories, a small mess hall, an armory, and of course the bridge. Underneath the bridge was the engine, computer, and life-support core. It was compact, but still, it had enough room so you wouldn’t be running into the other crew and stepping on each other’s toes.

  When Lucas entered the bridge, he stopped. Jane was there alright, but she was crumpled on the floor, her hair covering her face, her limbs an awkward mess.

  He snapped down to his knees, put a hand on her back, and let the highly sensitive sensors over the surface of his armor pick up Jane’s life signs.

  They were weak. Obviously the amount of energy that had gone into getting her to race here like a super soldier had taken its toll. She was breathing, but only just, and the lactic acid build up in her limbs was dangerously high.

  “Prack.” Lucas spat.

  Reluctantly, he left Jane as he snapped up to his feet and slammed his hand down onto the docking panel in the middle of the major console at the front of the bridge. All reconnaissance ships like this had docking panels for bio-armor like his. They introduced a new level of control that you simply couldn’t get with holo manipulation and the ordinary user interfaces. He could link directly with the computer system, the living membrane of his armor almost melding perfectly with it, enabling him to borrow the processing power of the computer and also enabling him to make quick flight decisions and movements that would take too long to input by hand. Right now he was feeding the computer Jane’s biosignatures, using its onboard medical knowledge to diagnose and treat her. In another moment, it blinked into action and told him it was synthesizing some kind of drug for her. While synthesis was expensive and took up a great deal of energy, Lucas gave it clearance without a second thought.

  Unfortunately, it would take at least five minutes to manufacture the drug. Lucas instantly asked whether she had five minutes, and the computer bleeped out a worrying answer: it didn’t know.

  Grimacing, Lucas let his helmet recede into his armor, not just letting it go to transparent but getting it right out of his face for once. Then he let his legs fall out from underneath him, and he sat heavily, one hand going up to his brow, the other hand clamping back onto her shoulder.

  He waited there right beside Jane.

  She wasn’t moving; she was still crumpled on the floor. Considering what she’d been through, he couldn’t blame her. Considering the pounding he’d given his own body, he felt like passing out. But he couldn’t do that right now; Jane needed him.

  “Jane, it will be okay; you will be okay,” he tried to reassure her. Which was useless as she was unconscious. Yet he said it anyway because he said it for himself. He was vocalizing a wish, not a fact. He wanted her to be okay.

  The next five minutes were agonizing, and Lucas could do nothing but wait there, one hand on her shoulder as his armor picked up the live feed of her life signs. He couldn’t do anything to make her better. He could only wait for the computer to synthesize the drug.

  So he waited. He kept one hand on her back as he used his free hand to massage his brow. And he waited.

  Lucas hated waiting. His whole life was built on action. Never-ending action. One move after another, one disaster after another, one mission after another. There was never any time to stop, and there was never any time to rest.

  Yet here he was, waiting.

  Two minutes left.

  She was weak, terribly weak.

  He started to get angry about it. Furious even. Why had she done this to herself? Had she done this to herself? Or was it that Artifact that had done it? He knew one thing – while her body had moved confidently and competently, her expression and voice had been laden with genuine fear. So it seemed sane to conclude that whatever had been happening to her, Jane hadn’t had much to do with it. She’d been the victim.

  One minute.

  How did she fall into the rest of this? Did she have something to do with the Artifact, with Specimen 14? While Lucas had never believed that Jane was plain, and would not use that word to describe her, she was, until a few hours ago, normal. She led a peaceful and ordinary life. She wasn’t the kind of girl to be right at the center of this Galactic mess, whatever this Galactic mess was.

  Yet he could no longer deny what he’d seen.

  30 seconds.

  She was at the center of it all. There was no doubt that the Paran Artifact had acted to keep her safe. It had also told him in no uncertain terms that she was the target of Specimen 14. A fact he could believe; he’d seen the way the Darq had looked at her. He’d felt the aggression and hatred lap off it.

  10 seconds.

  Lucas now stood up, hand hovering over the service panel where the drug would be formed and delivered to an endo syringe.

  His fingers were tensed as they hovered over the panel, waiting, waiting until he could snap the drug right up.

  Two seconds.

  He clamped his jaw down, his teeth so solidly stuck together that the pressure translated all the way through his skull.

  Done.

  Lucas snapped up the syringe, got down to the floor, and injected it right into Jane’s neck.

  Then he stood back, and he waited again.

  “What is the effect?” he asked the computer.
/>   The computer waited for a moment, beeping softly. It told him it was analyzing and not ready to answer his question.

  “Effective,” it answered after an agonizing wait. “Patient will regain consciousness shortly. Unusual biology; the computer has adjusted.”

  Lucas doubled over in exhausted relief.

  “Are we cleared for exit from Earth?” he asked as he remembered the most important thing. If those two engineers hadn’t managed to secure his ship priority, there was a high chance that Lucas would be ordered back to the hangar bay until they could fit him into the flight pattern.

  “Processing. Yes,” the computer replied.

  Lucas shook his head and even indulged in a smile. That had to be the first thing that was going right today.

  Then Jane groaned.