by Cindy Zhang
Table of Contents
The Network
Book Details
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
About the Author
The Network
CINDY ZHANG
Sabine is working on a mixed-species spaceship when it abruptly comes under attack by a strange monster. When she encounters Eirlys, a set, they manage to hide together and survive the assault.
They're soon rescued by Naomi, captain of a mercenary ship which was hired to kidnap the two survivors but at the last minute chose to rescue them instead—putting them, Naomi, and her crew in peril from the government who hired them.
And if being wanted wasn't enough, the monster is still out there.
The Network
By Cindy Zhang
Published by Less Than Three Press LLC
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission of the publisher, except for the purpose of reviews.
Edited by Amanda Jean
Cover designed by Jennifer Gavens
This book is a work of fiction and all names, characters, places, and incidents are fictional or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people, places, or events is coincidental.
First Edition September 2018
Copyright © 2018 by Cindy Zhang
Printed in the United States of America
Digital ISBN 9781684313457
To Isadora, for having my back
CHAPTER ONE
"Set: the word for a singular being from the Network. Composed of a "set" of "rules". Your co-worker.
Network: the name for the species as a collective. Only part of the Network has made contact with humans, as part of this Expedition.
The Expedition Force: the organization that every set you know belongs to. More in Chapter V."
"Sets are non-physical beings that reside in temporary bodies—both organic and inorganic—like hermit crabs. They can shed these bodies and inhabit new ones at any time (see exception Chapter VI). They also have the capacity for empathy, meaning a basic sense of what emotions and surface thoughts beings nearby are experiencing. They cannot read minds.
Sets may be more social than humans, and value individuality and unique identity to the extent that imitation is a crime. (See Chapter II.)
The Expedition has invented a way to design and create organic bodies for themselves that resemble humans. For reasons elaborated on in Chapter II, they have taken pains to make sure these bodies are clearly identifiable as non-human. It's impossible to mistake a set for a human, no matter how human-shaped they are. (Some sets have chosen to take inorganic and/or non-human forms, due to personal preference.)"
- Excerpts from The Unofficial Guide to Sets, Piper Patel, Chapter I. Basic Anatomy and Etiquette.
"There's no right way to do it." Sabine leans over Jules to reach some switches on the communications module in front of them. At sixteen, he's only four years younger than her, but none of the Supplies Assistants have had any experience in space; they're all muddling through this together. Sabine's read the entire manual and then some, and she can never resist feeling competent, so she volunteers whenever the others have questions. "You have to watch this panel—"
All the lights blink off at the same time.
"That's not supposed to happen." Sabine frowns. Her hand drifts to the flap of her pants pocket, buttoning and unbuttoning it with the inattentive practise that comes with a nervous habit. "You stay here. I'll go see what's up."
"Maybe it's one of the sets freaking out?" He blinks his big dark eyes at the panels in front of him. "I'll just. I'll wait here and watch these lights."
"Good man."
She takes off, trying to maintain a calm and confident stride. The hallways are oddly empty. If it's not a malfunction in the lights, it has to be telepathic interference. It's not technically her job to find out, but "Supplies Assistant" is about as vague as you can get on a supply ship. There's often some wiggle room with their responsibilities. It's supposed to be good on a resume, though: a few years' trip to the Expedition's base and back, a quick break from her studies.
She reaches the first door, but when she gets close enough to hit the button, she realizes it's locked. These are never locked. Something blinks on, flashing red and yellow above the door, and she steps back to read it.
"LOCKDOWN," it screams in twelve-centimetre font.
Fuck.
Sabine breaks into a run. This corridor leads to the centre of the ship, and she hopes that she can reach it before everything locks down completely. She doesn't want to be stuck in this hallway alone, whatever the emergency is. She hears what might be distant screaming. She runs faster.
The warnings are blinking on as fast as she's running, now, and she tries for another burst of speed to keep up. Lights flash at her shoulder, in her peripheral vision. How much further is the centre?
She's finally within sight of the last door. The light next to it is still green, and she doesn't have time to think before she rushes through it. It slides shut behind her and the emergency lights glow from the crack around the door before that seals too.
She takes a second to catch her breath. This room is the main gathering space, where workers go to eat their meals and chat with each other between shifts. It's one of the only nice-looking places on board, with ceiling fixtures mimicking natural light from Earth. Sunlight glows overhead from an unbroken spread of friendly blue, and it's too bright and hopeful for the situation she's in.
There's only one other person in here. A set—Sabine has seen her around, but only in passing. Enough to guess at her pronouns from other people mentioning her, but she doesn't remember any conversations they might have had. The set has chosen ear-length hair a shade lighter than the sky-ceiling, paired with amber eyes and grey-blue skin. She's standing with her back pressed against a wall and wide eyes staring at another door to the left. She doesn't seem to have seen Sabine yet.
"Hello?" Sabine tries, and immediately feels stupid.
The set's attention whips to her, and with it comes a mental barrage. When the sirens start you're already running—felt it coming—at least you have this but—never wished more that you could just shut it off—know that the danger isn't going to pass—trying like anything to reach someone else. Anyone else.
Sabine blinks to find that she's taken a few steps forward, and she finds herself being looked at like she's the threat, now. She doesn't like that. Floundering in the situation and clinging to the bit of etiquette she does know, she whispers, "I'm Sabine."
"Eirlys," the set mutters back, and Sabine's back in that headspace again to get her full name. The loneliness of an open sky, looking up instead of staring down, a heart-pounding plunge down a too-steep hill with grass underfoot but sharp rocks at the end—
A sound from outside draws Sabine's attention to the door that she barely made it through. From the crashing and screech of metal, she knows it can't be anything good. She can't remember what comes next in the etiquette guide she'd tried to memorize, but she doesn't think it covers anything like this under the suggested conversation topics, anyway.
"What's going on?" she asks Eirlys.
The set glances at her, almost dismissive. At least Eirlys seems to be in more control of herself now, since Sabine's not picking up any leaking memories or emotions anymore. "I'm not sure." Her tongue flicks out to dampen her lips. It's the colour of copper.
Another metallic screech, this time closer. It soun
ds like the outer walls of the ship are being damaged, but… Sabine's never heard of anything like it. She can't even fathom what technology would be capable of doing that. She thinks about the communications room where she left Jules.
It prompts movement, so that neither of them is standing around useless. Eirlys rushes from control panel to lock to blacked-out monitor, palms patting and fingers wrapping around behind everything like she expects to find a secret failsafe button tucked away under the entertainment screen. Sabine tries to help, head spinning, looking for anything that might still be working or that she doesn't know the function of. Nothing will turn on. The general scanners that she checked ten times a day in her first week don't respond, the familiar switches cold under her shaking fingers. She keeps finding herself fetched up against Eirlys's side, despite trying her best not to get in the way. Eirlys doesn't leak anything else, but occasionally Sabine catches her glitching, a flare of something reaching Sabine before it's suppressed.
Before she can muster up the courage to ask Eirlys if she's okay, something terrible happens.
That's the only way she can describe it, after—terrible. In the modern sense and in the old, old Middle English meaning, to cause terror. She hears herself screaming a few minutes after she starts, and her hands clutch at her ears like she can block anything out with physical gestures. The artificial sun is so like the real thing that she can't help but fixate on it, on its incongruence with everything that's happening to her, and she screws her eyes shut, but the darkness only makes it worse. It's so bright. The shadows are all sharp angles. Her head hurts. She wants to at least see her parents again.
She hears a very small sound from beside her, and she forces herself to look over. Eirlys crouches, like Sabine, the duck-and-cover response the same regardless of species. She's not screaming, is barely making any sound, but if Sabine concentrates past the chaos in her brain (it hurts, it hurts) she can feel flickers of Eirlys out of control. Whatever Eirlys is transmitting is being overpowered by the terror, and Sabine suspects that the only reason she can notice it at all is because they're right next to each other, almost brushing skin-on-skin when Eirlys trembles and spasms.
Almost touching. Not quite.
Something crumples outside the door. It might be the outer layer of the door itself. It sounds much too close.
In one final movement that looks like it takes all her strength, Eirlys collapses to her knees and reaches out. Falling forward. Her amber eyes meet Sabine's, orange like a beach bonfire, the only nighttime thing in this horror-scape of mocking sunlight. Her outstretched arms remind Sabine of a child asking to be picked up, and years of instinct in reaction to that overpower one of her fundamental memorized rules (don't touch a set without explicit permission). Sabine fights past the numbness in her limbs to embrace this strange creature who looks so much like her.
Eirlys's mental presence crowds out the fear, and Sabine is relieved before she realizes what Eirlys must have been aware of this entire time.
The threat, a sense of a massive and primordial being, looms not over or above the ship but around it. It's wrapped around the entire ship, and it's ripping rooms right off the damn thing. She can't see it, but Eirlys can feel it and she can feel Eirlys, and so the unpleasant image of giant tendrils whipping through space and tearing hallways off support beams and crunching them like apples roots instantly in her mind. Sabine shudders, tries and fails to recoil away.
"What is that?" Sabine whispers, but she receives no response.
As she gets over the initial shock of comprehending the scale of what's attacking them, Sabine realizes she's never had skin-on-skin contact with a set before. Very few humans have, and she's starting to see why. It feels like her brain is too full, like thinking about what's for dinner while humming a complex tune and working through a trigonometry problem all at once; it takes so much concentration, but also none at all. She only has to keep her hands where they're clinging to Eirlys's back, scrunching up her uniform jacket. She doesn't have to do anything difficult, but the discomfort is still a constant pressure inside her head.
She leans her cheek on Eirlys's temple. She tries to slow her breathing. They kneel together, knees touching, and Sabine thinks this isn't too bad. If they're going to die here, at least she gets this last physical comfort. She hopes this is all right for Eirlys, too, that she hasn't misinterpreted what Eirlys wanted with that gesture.
It's okay.
Sabine startles at the words, softer and scratchier than Eirlys's physical voice. She feels the presence in her head settle into a more compatible shape, curving into corners and filling out rather than pushing. Explanation comes in little careful packages, like she's being careful of simple human minds: this is good. This is fine. When Eirlys is in Sabine's mind, the terror can't get at either of them, like double protection by removing themselves from the wider network.
It's stupid, but even though she's about to die, the only part Sabine wonders about is that Eirlys didn't capitalize 'network' in her thoughts. She's seen—and on occasion felt—it that way every other time.
It's a slightly different concept. Don't worry about it.
"Okay," Sabine whispers, "okay."
Things are quiet.
Things are quiet?
Sabine lifts her head a little. She'd thought the muted colours and lessened noise had been a side effect of not being under psychic assault anymore, but everything actually is silent, now. No more metal screeching. No more rumbling. It's still too bright.
"Is it gone?" She can't make her voice any louder, like her throat is too afraid to try.
Eirlys doesn't answer, but her eyes close with a brush of eyelashes against Sabine's collarbone. Her breathing slows.
They listen for what seems like forever for the end of the world to come back.
CHAPTER TWO
"Other than deaths related to Matches, which are if not the most common cause of death in Network society, at least the most thought about, death can also occur in other circumstances. If the anchor body is too "small", sometimes a set entering the body reduces themselves into non-sentience. Sets can also be shot or caught in resonance storms.
Resonance refers to free-floating pieces of a set (unattached to any living set) that aren't the bonds/memories that hold these pieces together. Anywhere that a set has died or entered a body violently, resonance drifts in the atmosphere. These pieces then collect into a new child, are incorporated into growing sets, whip up into resonance storms, or are collected to be ammunition.
Storms are similar to sandstorms, and slightly akin to a Match death: the pieces going at high velocity can tear through bonds and kill sets indiscriminately.
Weapons that use resonance ammunition can kill sets whether they're anchored or drifting, and are currently unavailable to humans."
- Excerpts from The Unofficial Guide to Sets, Piper Patel, Chapter VII. Death and Weapons.
The monster doesn't come back.
The human can't hear anything strange, but Eirlys takes the risk of reaching out mentally, casting all around until she's sure it's gone. Whatever that was. She has the beginnings of a suspicion, but it's hard to think when she's all tangled up with Sabine.
She lets go of Sabine once they're sure. Once the threat of losing life support in the wreckage of their ship is more imminent than the monster that attacked them. What remains of the emergency signal systems blink on, crippled by the attack but still functioning. All that's left is to wait.
When a law-enforcement cruiser comes by to investigate, they pull the stripped central room into their emergency bay, and then crack it open once they're on the right side of an airlock. Eirlys can feel Sabine wishing for physical comfort as they wait, but the best she can do is not mention it when Sabine reaches out to hang on to Eirlys's jacket, knuckles barely brushing her shirt.
The humans check Sabine over for injuries. They give Eirlys a blanket because she won't let them get close enough to touch her. The blanket is too thin, not warm e
nough compared to the memory of Sabine's shoulder pressed into her chest.
There are no other survivors there with them on the rescue ship. Eirlys assumes they'll come back to look for the bodies when they scavenge for usable parts from the wreckage. She brushes against Sabine's mind, unnecessarily, checking on her. The shock and fear are giving way to sleep, even though the cushioning on the bench is thin and the little human ship rumbles as it speeds up. Eirlys lets her be.
She sits wrapped in the scratchy gray blanket, watching Sabine carefully so she doesn't slump over onto Eirlys's shoulder. Her thoughts turn immediately to leaving. She's been ready to go at the drop of a hat for a long time, now, though she'd always thought she'd be running from something she'd done. She's not waiting for whatever it was to come back, that much is certain. She's not going to stick around long enough for the administration of either species to try to pin blame on her, either.
As soon as this ship stops, she's gone. Decision made, Eirlys lets herself drift, too.
The sounds of docking and routine checks pull Eirlys back into consciousness. She shifts, about to get up, but the sound of footsteps and voices outside make her tense and snap her eyes shut again. She makes her breathing even and her thoughts still, but when the door slides open there are only humans on the other side.
"This is it?" The voice is soft, the mind ordered.
"Yep. Both survivors." Eirlys recognizes the second voice as the captain of the ship. "Where do you need them?"
"On the bottom level of the carrier, for now. Our own ship is docked and refueling."
"Will do." The footsteps come closer, and Eirlys panics. She lunges forward from her pretend-asleep posture all at once, so the captain doesn't see it coming, and she nearly knocks him over. He regains his balance at the last second, and then the first voice—a woman, standing in the doorway—flips a switch on a box in her hands.
Eirlys scatters.
