by Cindy Zhang
She knew that she would experience Sabine's dreams, in their own two-person network, but it was better than sliding into Ship's without permission. Sets don't dream by human definition, but their bodies usually need rest, and when that happens they usually drift up to the larger network. It's like what Eirlys had done earlier, to find Naomi, except that most sets can do it only when unconscious and they have no control over where they "go" when dreaming.
Sabine's dreams consisted mainly of sunlight and open spaces. The prevailing emotion was terror. (I told him to stay there and then I ran away.)
Eirlys still thinks it was worth it, but she needs a little space to sort herself out. She has to figure out which bits of her are herself, and which parts are remnants of the connection with Sabine.
Her back slides down the wall as she sits down to breathe for a few minutes.
*~*~*
When Eirlys goes back to the room, Sabine is sitting on the bed. She's half-changed, one arm through the sleeve of her shirt but the other clutching her pencil and scribbling fiercely on her notepad. The sound of Eirlys closing the door behind her makes Sabine look up.
Sabine blushes and struggles into the shirt. "I was thinking," she says by way of explanation, "about being fugitives."
"You had some ideas?" Eirlys walks closer, leans in to look at the page. She can't read the writing.
"Yeah." Sabine hops off the bed, tucking the pencil and notepad in her pocket. "Come with me."
They find Naomi in the cockpit, sipping her morning coffee. "Tracking devices?"
Sabine nods. "Did any of your employers ever come onboard Ship? They could've dropped listening devices, tracking devices, anything."
Naomi presses her lips together. "That could be a possibility. Get Tel to show you where you can go, and send her where you can't. Don't tell Ast what you're doing—they get protective of Ship. Bring anything you find to 38 to be destroyed as soon as possible."
Sabine's too busy writing the instructions down, so Eirlys nods for her. "Got it."
They find Tel in the kitchen. She helps them draw a map of the ship's layout, and Sabine marks the places that don't get regular traffic.
"This is what the current model looks like." Sabine sketches and labels diagrams for various trackers. "From what I can remember, anyway. This might not help if they're using unofficial brands, but since we're dealing with the government, I figure it might be a good starting point."
Eirlys squints at the tiny detailed buttons and little lines coming off of the drawing, pointing out what colour each component is. "From what you can remember?"
Sabine laughs, a little embarrassed. "Yeah. I spent a lot of my first week in space just in my room reading manuals and handbooks. And some catalogues once I ran out of those."
"Not a lot to do on your ship?" Tel quirks an eyebrow. "Well, it's a good start, anyway. You two can start checking drawers and shelves. I'll see if I can get 38 to go clambering over the boxes in the hold instead of me."
It takes a few hours, checking carefully—and searching with extra scrutiny after Eirlys finds the first tracking device planted under an old frying pan, proving Sabine's hunch right. They collect a small handful of trackers for 38 to crush and dispose of, but no recorders or cameras.
Naomi's working with Ast on recording the monster's last known locations and trying to find a pattern. Intercepted transmissions, official reports, and a few space cryptid blogs describe something chillingly similar to what Eirlys saw—felt during the attack. The map that they're compiling, though, doesn't give them any leads.
"There's no pattern to it." Naomi sighs. She beckons Sabine and Eirlys over. "I need a pair of fresh eyes on this."
She's right. There's nothing to show that the attacks might be premediated, or have any kind of goal behind them. An idea forms in Eirlys's mind, but Sabine speaks up first.
"How long does it take for sets to mature?"
"You think it could be a child." Eirlys makes her face carefully blank, not looking to see if Ast picks up on her reaction. "If it formed after first contact, or scraps from later skirmishes…"
"It wouldn't have many experiences to mature on, in unpopulated space," Ast adds.
"Then there's no predicting it. We'll set course for where it was last seen and hope for the best." Naomi folds up the map, tucking it under her chair.
"What do we do when we get there?" Sabine worries at her pocket button.
"We'll have to see the actual size and ability up close, first." Naomi's tone implies that she doubts their equipment will be up to standard in any case. "If it's after people, trying to feed off of connections and networks, we likely won't have much trouble finding it."
"It's after we do find it that I'm worried about," Ast agrees.
Ship, who's been navigating quietly all morning, suddenly flashes orange lights. "Message from 38 in the hold. Somebody planted a bomb."
Ast is gone in a matter of seconds. To Eirlys's dismay, Sabine follows on their heels. Ship shows them the quickest way with a string of purple lights set into the walls, and when they arrive Tel is already there.
38 points. "It started counting down when I moved the box in front of it." It's a little circular thing about the size of Eirlys's palm, blinking yellow. 3:21.
The general atmosphere of panic around her rockets up. In the still silence that follows, Sabine steps forward.
"I recognize it," she says, very quietly. "It was in the weapons catalogue."
"Can you do anything about it?" 38 still sounds calm, but Eirlys can nearly hear her heart pounding in time with the waves of fuck fuck fuck coming from her direction.
"Can we take it off and chuck it out the airlock?" Ship suggests. "I can do cool flips to get us out of blast range."
3:04.
Tel shakes her head. "It's fixed right on there."
"I can try," Sabine says, in answer to 38. "Should I try?" Her eyes are wide.
"Not getting blown up would be super nice!" Ship contributes.
Naomi nods sharply. "Everyone back up, give her room." Ast doesn't want to move, but Ship blinks the overhead light green-blue-green and they relent. Everyone backs up a few paces, and Sabine crouches down. Eirlys wants to back up, too, put as much space between her and the threat as possible, but she tells herself that if it goes off it doesn't matter how far away she is.
She kneels next to Sabine, instead, and puts a hand on her arm where the sleeve is rolled up. Eirlys tries to send calm through the link. Sabine flicks her gaze up and nods in gratitude. The next two minutes are the quietest in Eirlys's life.
There's a plink and a clatter as Sabine pulls something magnetic out of the workings and tosses it aside. She lets out a breath, and everyone in the room breathes with her.
"We're good!" She grins at Eirlys, scrubs her palm over her eye. "38, can you come unscrew this from the floor? Just don't get that magnet piece near the rest of it."
"Prepping airlock for ejection with extreme prejudice," Ship informs them. "Permission to do victory loops?"
Naomi laughs. "Maybe later."
*~*~*
"Where are we going?" Eirlys asks. She's looking out one of the windows in the cockpit where Tel and Naomi are enjoying morning coffee. She noticed that they're slowing and approaching something in the distance.
"We have to refuel and get more supplies. We're running low on food especially," Naomi explains. "We have enough money for a few more of these runs, at least, before we have to figure out the fugitive situation."
"Why do we have to refuel right now, though? Isn't it dangerous?" Eirlys makes sure to stand next to the door, even though everyone is being friendly in this room. At the moment.
"We don't make supply stops very often, so we're always cutting it a little close." Tel shrugs and tips back her mug to get at the last of her drink. "It's a thing. We didn't exactly make the last run thinking that we were gonna become criminals."
"It should be fine," Naomi reassures her. "We don't dock very often bec
ause some supervisors don't particularly like… people with some of our traits," she continues, anticipating Eirlys's next question. "Mercenaries, captains who associate too closely with their hired sets, people with a certain background. Things like that."
"By background she means race."
Eirlys blinks at Tel. "Is that allowed?"
Tel laughs. "It's never been allowed, but it's always happened. It's a human thing."
"Hm." Eirlys watches Naomi finish her coffee, too, and set down her mug. "So the one we're heading to has a positive opinion of you?"
"Some of our usual stops do, but others like this one just have too many go through in a day to care. So we still have to keep our heads down and make sure not to draw too much attention." Naomi frowns, a rare sight. "I don't know how fast news travels. It depends on how badly they want you gone, I guess."
"I wouldn't gamble on the government just letting us go." Tel laughs. "Keep your expectations low."
*~*~*
They have to all get off, because security for passengers is one guy in a swivel chair and security for cargo is a team of investigators with dogs. The man in the chair is human, with a wide face and a non-regulation toque in squashy magenta on his mop of dark hair. He waves them past with little issue, only stopping 38 to tell her that the gun strapped to her calf is obvious.
"I've seen your type, friend. You're gonna have to give me the eight knives you probably have on your person, too." He holds up a hand, palm up, eyes unimpressed. "C'mon."
38 relinquishes nine knives without protest, but Eirlys suspects that it's only because she has more. The security guy seems to know this, too, but he lets them pass anyway. Maybe he just needs to fill a quota of knives confiscated.
Naomi has them pair off. They're too conspicuous as a large group. Ast and 38 make sure that Ship's refuelled properly, while Naomi and Tel go find the trickier items on their list. Sabine and Eirlys are left to handle the bulk items. They follow some signs to the largest doors, which is as close as they can get to finding the storage area without having to ask anyone. It's not worth standing out or being recognized.
This was their first mistake.
When Eirlys eases open the door, she finds a recreational area filled with couches and a couple dozen people all spread out. It's not at crowd level yet, but it's clear that some of them are inebriated. "It looks like we've walked into a party," Eirlys comments. "Maybe we can ask someone too drunk to recognize—"
She notices abruptly that Sabine is standing very, very still in the doorway. She looks pale and her eyes are turned toward the floor.
"Sabine? Hey. Sabine."
Sabine doesn't respond. Eirlys realizes what's happening. The party is lit with the same artificial Earth sunlight that was in the room they were attacked in. Eirlys honestly barely noticed the physical aspects of that room, preoccupied with the emotional attack, but the dreams—nightmares—last night gave her a little more insight into what Sabine thinks was important.
Eirlys forgets all about staying under the radar. "Sabine." Fuck, what did Sabine do to pull her out of it earlier? She wastes a precious few seconds deliberating.
She yanks off her glove and lays her hand on Sabine's cheek. Hey. You're here. It's over.
Sabine blinks. "Eirlys?" It takes her a second, but as soon as she processes it, she says, "I'm sorry—"
Eirlys opens her mouth to tell her not to apologize, to ask if she wants to leave, to ask if she's okay, but she doesn't get to do any of that. All her empathetic senses were busy sorting through the tight knot of tension in Sabine's mind, sunlight open terror touch, that she only notices the needle after it's been stuck in her neck.
Honestly, she thinks as she goes down, she's getting tired of this.
*~*~*
She drifts into awareness a few times. Once, she's awake enough to hear Sabine being threatened with Ship's wellbeing. Nothing about her own physical senses works, especially temperature, but she still manages to get the gist of the threat: Ship won't leave without the crew, and this leaves all of them in a vulnerable position to be held hostage.
That's bullshit, Eirlys thinks, but it's not like she has any say in the matter.
*~*~*
The second or fourth time she's awake—her brain is insistent on the fact that it's an even number, but it could be the eighth for all she knows or cares—she's aware of someone peeling her off Sabine. She clings, forgetting everything but don't leave me behind, but her fingers betray her and she goes limp again once Sabine's out of her blurry field of vision.
*~*~*
The ninth time she wakes up, she's completely coherent.
Okay, that's a little bit of an exaggeration. She's incoherent with rage, but she's still clear-headed enough to see everything around her, and look there's her sense of temperature back again. It's cold. She hates it.
The room is a cube, stripped bare of any furnishings or carpeting. There is one door. The door is opening.
Eirlys launches herself at the guard who comes through the doorway, and the momentum of her jump slams his back against the wall of the hallway opposite the door, outside of the room. She snarls, and the guard yells, thrashing under her hold. All her teeth are showing. She knows he'd run if she let him go right now. Her fingers are digging into him, bruising him through his uniform. She knows because she can feel his pain like a spreading cloud. He's still fighting, trying to push her off him.
Another guard, brought running by the first one's shouting, comes skidding down the hallway and appears around the corner. She takes in the situation with wide eyes, one hand on the stunner at her side.
"Fuck this," the guard mutters to herself, and she runs back in the direction she came.
Good.
*~*~*
Eirlys finds Sabine. She's not as careful, this time, and dips in and out of random human minds. Some of them, especially the drunk ones, are left staggering afterward. Eirlys pulls up short the instant she recognizes Sabine, and it's only luck that keeps her from running into any more strangers.
The door opens from the outside, although it's a little hard to get proper purchase on the handle because her hands are slippery with blood. It's red everywhere, all over her front and down her neck, and she doesn't realize what that might mean to Sabine until she's already in the room. Sabine is awake.
"I fucked up," Eirlys whispers, and then she falls because one of her ankles crumples under her. She sits completely confused for a moment before all the blocked-out pain comes back to her, and she feels the bruising from the guard trying to fight her off and a throbbing in her ankle. She must have sprained it?
"Eirlys?" Sabine's standing over her, but careful not to hover, and Eirlys feels a wave of gratitude that she's sure she's projecting enough for Sabine to know. "Eirlys, talk to me. Whose blood is that? Are you hurt?"
"There was a guard." Eirlys touches her ankle. It's warm. "I hurt him. I hurt him really bad, and now I can't walk." A conclusion comes to her faster than any thought in the past few hours. "You have to leave me behind." She tries to sound firmer, like she's making this decision, but her voice wobbles on the last syllable and she can't help the terror evaporating off her from escaping her control.
"You idiot," Sabine says, and it takes her a moment to realize she doesn't mean about the guard. "Of course we're not leaving you behind."
"I hurt someone. We're gonna be in more trouble now. You're going to be in more trouble if you take me with you." She's not sure why she's trying to convince Sabine to do something she doesn't want Sabine to do, but she knows it's very important. "You have to."
Sabine sighs. "Is he dead?"
"No."
Sabine wipes Eirlys's face with a corner of her shirt. She pulls one of Eirlys's arms over her shoulder and stands up, and Eirlys has no choice but to go along with it. "Come on. We're going to go find Ship."
Eirlys stares at her.
"I can't find the others without you," Sabine explains patiently. "And it's my fault we're in t
his mess in the first place, so can you just help us get out of here?"
Eirlys wants to argue with so much of that, but it hurts again now that she's putting weight on her ankle, so she just nods and points with her free arm in the right direction.
They're getting close when they hear an incredibly loud crash.
Eirlys hears a laugh come from that direction, and then a voice saying "oops."
Before they can limp over there, Tel and 38 round the corner. "Don't worry about it," Tel announces. "Come on, let's go, Ship's waiting for us."
38 stares for a second at Eirlys's face, but before Eirlys can decide whether to bare her teeth or hang her head, 38 reaches into her pocket. Her hand comes up with a handkerchief, and she passes it to Eirlys.
Eirlys hangs on to it and doesn't use it, but 38 doesn't mention it. It crumples a little in her grip, and she hopes there's somewhere on Ship that she can wash it and fix it before she returns it. She hopes they make it to Ship and survive long enough for her to give this back.
Sabine's saying something. "Can you believe," she complains to Tel, "that she thought we would leave her behind?"
Eirlys isn't sure if Sabine's actually offended. It's taking too much effort to hold back from projecting all her confusion and distress already, and she can't discern what Sabine's feeling even though there's only one layer of shirt between her arm and the nape of Sabine's neck. It occurs to her, belatedly, that she might still have some of the drug in her system.
"That's ridiculous," Tel agrees.
They must have said something about where Naomi is. And Ast. But Eirlys didn't hear it.
*~*~*
38 only has to threaten three people with her unconfiscated knives to let them pass before they reach the docking area.
"This feels familiar," Eirlys says to Sabine, and Sabine looks at her, surprised. This is the first thing she's said since she tried to get Sabine to leave her behind.
"I hope we don't make a habit of it," Sabine answers eventually.
38 retrieves all her weapons from the same security guy, who's smart enough to not try to stop them. Naomi's standing at Ship's ramp, and somehow there are all the supplies they were supposed to get piled up behind her. How long were they out?
