World Shift

by K. Gorman

  “Will do.”

  With one last waggle of their fingers, they parted ways.

  Chapter 3

  Halfway down the flight, Karin heard the door close behind her, its sound softer than it had been before, and the hush of the stairwell fell over her again.

  Well, that went well. Her first proper introduction to one of the new Eurynome Project survivors, and it had turned out friendly. There was something to be said for facing one’s… well, not quite fears so much as uncomfortable situations that she wanted nothing to do with.

  She’d never been good at socializing.

  The light changed as she descended, and the smoothed sides of the hall switched to a kind of stubbly, painted concrete with a stark box light that sat partway up the wall—a signal that she’d gone below ground. The switch was a common theme in buildings on the base, she’d found. Almost like the other cues she could read in the designs now, here a patched modification to remove ductwork or rescale pipes, there a static remnant of Alliance-era relics covered over with paint. They’d had—and technically still did have—an entire hardwired communications system throughout most buildings in case of lockdown or a need for added secrecy.

  Here, only a set of three slender pipes disrupted the smooth continuity. Painted a chalky white, they lowered from the ceiling and bent at a ninety-degree angle to funnel into the wall where a portion of quick-fix cement had been smoothed over to cover the patch.

  Her footsteps made quiet taps on the stairs as she descended. At the bottom, it felt even quieter, as if all the hush in the stairwell above collected there. When she pressed the right-hand bar of the double-door, the resultant click startled her with its loudness. Warm, dry air blew against her face from the overhead vent. She paused to shrug off the light jacket she’d been wearing, added it to the rain-proof she’d kept draped over her right arm, and gave the hallway a quick skim.

  She’d never been the greatest at directions. A strange thing, considering her chosen career as a licensed navigator, but outside of the cockpit and without course-plotting software, her skills were strictly standard. Especially compared to Nomiki, who seemed like she had a built-in, instinctual GPS-locator-tracker hybrid attached to her brainwaves.

  Growing up with a sister like that tended to skew one’s perceptions of what was ‘normal’ in terms of human ability. Karin, could, for example, find the restrooms in a mall all right, but Nomiki could find the ones that weren’t busy, in half the time, and without looking for signage. Not magic, but just the result of her brain absorbing every little detail of their environments and organizing it in the back of her thoughts. If they were lost in a forest, Karin would probably pick a direction and follow it until they got out. Nomiki would spend a minute or two listening and smelling and looking at the trees, then lead them to a road.

  After a minute, she picked a direction—left—and struck out.

  For a place that supposedly held the most dangerous of the new Eurynome subjects, it looked more like the basement of her old university rather than a containment center—plain white walls, well-worn-but-clean brown Alliance-era flooring, wooden doors—but looks could be deceiving. She passed more than one door with a bold red square on its panel, a surefire indicator that it had been locked down, and as she followed the numbers down, two armed guards appeared around one corner in a casual stroll. Their polite smiles and friendly nods didn’t quite offset the presence of the blasters strapped to their sides.

  She found Nomiki, of course, in the viewing room outside the containment area of the man who had been deemed the most dangerous of all—Jon Patrim, aka Project Ares, fully grown and, by the files they’d pulled off of Sasha’s computers, well into the fourth stage of his treatment schedule. Which meant that he was further along than both Karin, who’d only started her third stage, and Nomiki, who’d only begun the fourth when they’d left the project behind them.

  But Nomiki and Ares weren’t the only ones she found. There, pressed against the door wearing a set of light pink pajamas, peering through the window with her fingers inching toward its sill, stood her clone.

  Ione Kalivas, aka Project Eosphoros, was eight years old, which meant that Sasha had either begun her new experiments before Nomiki and Karin had made their escape, or the age discrepancy was a result of the time difference between this reality and Sasha’s pocket dimension. Karin had first seen her there, encapsulated in a life pod inside a mysterious, sealed room that had been labeled ‘The Forest Room’—no doubt the direct result of Sasha’s more hallucinogenic drug trials—where seeing Ione’s sleeping face had been like looking into a time-skipped mirror to her childhood. Even now, watching her, it was hard not to see the echoes between them.

  With her dirty blonde hair pulled back into a rough ponytail, the girl’s grim, neutral frown seemed to almost reflect her own. In her peripheral vision, she became aware of Nomiki in the backdrop of the room, stretched across the table, outlined by the light from the window with her head turned toward her. She made to meet Nomiki’s gaze, but the second she started to move, Ione gave a start and jerked around.

  The girl’s eyes went wide for a brief moment before her expression returned to the stormy frown she’d had before.

  Yep. Definitely my clone.

  It was a weird thing to process. Was she supposed to be like a mother? Sister? Aunt? Stranger? They both knew who the other was. It was obvious just looking at each other’s faces, but solidified as they recognized their mannerisms, as well. Karin felt stiff and unsettled, her expression threatening to mold into something similar to Ione’s.

  Instead, she forced a smile and stepped forward, reaching out a hand. “Uh, hi. I’m Karin.”

  Ione stared at her outstretched hand as if it were a cockroach, her upper lip beginning to twist back from her teeth. After a few moments, her gaze flicked back up to Karin’s face. “I know.”

  The good thing about hearing one’s own voice was that, unless you were listening to a recording of it, its precise pitch was tempered into a deeper version by the flesh and bones of your skull. Which meant that, if Ione did have the same voice as her younger self, Karin would be saved the creepiness of that recognition.

  This is going well.

  But, despite the sarcasm of her thoughts, she persisted, bending closer to Ione’s height and pushing her hand forward in a way she thought was friendly. “How are you?”

  This time, Ione’s lip did twist. After a quick look to the side, she stiffened straighter. Her hands curled into fists by her sides.

  “Fine.”

  She followed Ione’s glance to Nomiki, who still hadn’t said anything. “You don’t have to be afraid. She’s our sister.”

  Ione’s face twisted, suddenly dead cold.

  “I don’t have a sister.”

  And with that, she squared her shoulders and strode forward. Karin bumped to the side as she rushed past. The slaps of her running feet echoed in the hallway outside.

  Nomiki started laughing. “I don’t think she likes me.”

  Karin snorted and strode over, throwing her jackets on the table as she joined her sister. “Christ, Miki, I wonder why. Here you are, hiding in the dark, being a complete creeper to this poor man…” She trailed off, distracted by what she caught sight of in the window. “Oh. All right, then. Now I can see why you’re being a creeper.”

  To be fair, the first and only time she’d seen Program Ares, he’d been naked and unconscious on a table—so seeing him with clothes on was an improvement in dignity, at least. The Fallon military had given him a matching gray sweatpants and sweatshirt combo, but it appeared that even the military hadn’t been quite ready for his sheer bulk. He gave the impression of a slab of pure muscle, especially with the way he currently slouched over. They’d also given him what looked like a large-sized cell, possible compensation for locking him up so tight. From her basic skim of the room, it looked like he’d been put in a metal and concrete box. He hunched over on the bed with his bare feet planted on the f
loor, watching something on the screen of the netlink they’d given him.

  Er—reading something, actually. Which somewhat detracted from the musclehead synonyms they’d been using to refer to him.

  Nomiki snickered. “Now who’s being the creeper?”

  “Can he see us?” Karin asked. “I mean, not that I want to actually be a creeper—”

  She was still waiting on Marc, her technically-former boss and the owner of the Nemina, to make a move. Or for herself to make a move on him. Or at least a prolonged length of time where they sat down and had a discourse about the sexual energy that had grown between them in the past two… no, three months.

  Gods, had it really been three months? Okay, it was definitely time for her to make a move.

  Nomiki lifted an eyebrow, and she realized that she’d stopped mid-sentence, distracted by her thoughts of Marc.

  “Uh huh,” her sister said, then moved over and patted the surface of table next to her. “Well, hop on up. We can creep him together.”

  Karin lifted herself onto the table. Doing a little jig to scoot her butt into place, she leaned back and stretched her spine and neck as she took another survey of the room. Ares—she couldn’t stop herself from calling him that in her head, even though she knew his proper name—hadn’t moved except to scroll up on whatever he was reading.

  “I assume you’re creeping him in a tactical manner.”

  “Oh, definitely.”

  Karin waited a few beats. When her sister didn’t elaborate, she pulled her head in Nomiki’s direction with an eye roll. “And have you discovered anything?”

  “I’ve discovered that I’d rather not let him go loose.”

  Now that startled her. She straightened, her brows pulling together as she gave her sister a deeper study. Nomiki didn’t have many tells—it was part of her nature to not give anything away—but, over the years, she’d come to notice the small things. Nothing concrete or obvious, but things that, when put together in a certain mood, set little flags for Karin to follow.

  Nomiki had relaxed when Karin had sat next to her, at least outwardly, but her spine still had a stiffness to it, as if at least part of that relaxation was a feigned effort, and she hadn’t taken her eyes off of Ares. They were wider than normal, searching, calculating his every move and shift.

  Karin’s jaw slackened. “Are you afraid of him?”

  “No. Fear is the wrong word.” Nomiki’s eyebrows also drew down as she turned inward, a quick calculation for the right phrase. “Wary, I suppose. I don’t feel fear.”

  For many, that last statement would have been a lie. Not for Nomiki. Her program had taken care of that. And she’d said it as an after-thought, a gentle reminder to Karin that her mind was different and couldn’t be framed and measured in the usual ways.

  “Okay, then, so it’s your tactical opinion that he should be locked up forever.”

  “Well… yes and no. I mean, ideally, it would be awesome to get him working for our side. That would be the best tactical decision. But I am not sure if I can trust him for that. He’s too much like me.”

  “Have you talked to him?”

  “No.”

  That sparked a laugh out of Karin. She reached over and clapped a hand on her sister’s shoulder. “Well, just a thought, maybe you should try.”

  Nomiki shot her a dirty look. “Oh, fuck off.”

  “Just a thought,” she repeated, her voice full of laughter—laughter that must have carried through the wall because Ares glanced up in their direction. “I mean, maybe instead of sitting here in the dark, staring at him, you could ask his opinion. I bet you’d form even more in-depth analysis from that.”

  “You know…” Nomiki wrinkled her nose. “I actually believe that you mean that last line literally and not as an innuendo.”

  “I do.”

  “Yeah, well…”

  “I’m serious. Talk to him.”

  “I need more information first. I need to know what he can do.”

  “Oh, for the love of Sol.” Karin rolled her eyes and slid off the table, her hands going to her hips as she looked around. “Is there a microphone thingy in here? I’ll do it.”

  But, before she got more than a step in, Nomiki caught her elbow in an iron grip. She jerked to a stop.

  When she turned, all the mirth had gone from her sister’s face.

  “Karin, you have to trust me on this. He’s dangerous. Maybe more dangerous than me. We have to assume that.”

  “Dangerous does not mean homicidal.”

  “No, but it would be stupid to embrace him as a friend without knowing who he is first. And he knows that, too, which is why he’s been so patient. That’s a plus on his side.”

  “So talk to him. Find out.”

  “I will.”

  “Tonight?”

  Nomiki hesitated. “Maybe.”

  That hadn’t been a lie. Karin paused, studying her sister. Nomiki didn’t flinch from her—she never did, not from anyone. Where before her gaze had been playful and human, now it locked onto her with an utter focus, her brown irises not moving from Karin’s face.

  “Good,” she said. “Let me know what he says.”

  “I will.” Nomiki paused for a moment, her tongue pressing between her teeth as her eyes narrowed, and Karin sensed a change in the conversation. “There’s something else, too. That you should know about.”

  “Oh?”

  Her eyebrows twitched. She and Nomiki had regular chats, but her sister didn’t bring up her job much or what she did with the military while Karin was out healing. Most of it required a level of security, which she could understand. Plus she had the impression that Nomiki hadn’t wanted to burden her down with military stuff when she was already running around with the complication of multiple science stuff and a planet travel schedule that surpassed even the most hardcore of pop star singing tours.

  “We’ve been detecting some weird energy coming from Nova for about a month. It’s been growing steadily for about a month, but the Alliance has been shutting down all our inquiries to find out what it is. They even disabled a few of our spy satellites.”

  “Sounds like you guys weren’t hiding them very well.”

  Nomiki snorted. “Not my department. And—I did say some satellites, not all. Anyway, the feed traffic from the planet and its surrounds had roughly halved, so we think there’s some censorship going on there.”

  “Oh. That sounds fun and dictatorly.” She hesitated, a frown creasing her brow. “I didn’t even know they could do that.”

  “Their networks aren’t like Fallon’s—or Old Earth’s, for that matter. They were built on a security mindset, ostensibly for controlling the tiered subscription to networks, but…” Nomiki shrugged. “That’s not important right now. What is important is that they’re hiding something. The weird energy’s been growing, and there’s now a huge Alliance cruiser on its way to discuss terms of peace and cooperation. It’ll be here at like three or four A.M. local time.”

  “Oh. Wow.” After more than a month of the two system governments being in technical war with each other—technically four months, since the Alliance had declared war at the outset of the Shadow attacks, but she was only counting from the clash between Fallon’s Agni and the Alliance’s Enmerkar where things had gotten serious—and the Alliance largely refusing to coordinate anything with the empire, the timing was suspect. Especially since Nomiki was telling her now. “You think they got something else going on?”

  “Yeah. I recon I’ll find out at the meeting. I’ve been invited. You haven’t.”

  “Ah. That’s fine. I’d rather be sleeping. And I trust Brindon and her other General and Commander friends have it well in hand.”

  Nomiki gave her a deadpan stare. After a moment, she raised one hand, her index and ring finger twitching in the universal ‘quotation’ mark sign. “‘General and Commander friends.’ One of these days, you and I are going to have a sit down, and I’m going to educate you about military
hierarchy systems.”

  She flashed her sister a grin. “Good luck on that.”

  Her netlink buzzed in her pocket, and she pulled it out to skim the message. Marc, wondering when she’d arrive. She let out a breath and glanced up to Nomiki, who’d also read the message.

  “Go,” she told her. “You need to get back to your crash pad, anyway. You been gone for, what, ten hours now?”

  “Just about, yeah.” She stopped and squinted. “Wait, are you implying that I stink?”

  “No, I’m implying that you need to get away from anything resembling work and do whatever the hell it is you do in your spare time.” Nomiki patted her shoulder. “Mental health and wellness is important.”

  “Thanks.” Karin gathered herself up to leave. She’d only been here a few minutes, but it felt as though their meeting had come to a natural end. “And promise me that you’ll talk to that guy, not just stare at him.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” Nomiki waved a hand, her face looking like she intended to do nothing of the sort. “I’ll take it under advisement.”

  As Karin walked out the door, Nomiki had returned to her previous position, staring through the window. Only this time, she had a slight forward hunch as she did so, and her right arm had come up under her chin, giving her a look that was a cross between the famous historical ‘thinking man’ statue and that of a high school girl sitting on the bleachers with her chin in her hands. Inside the room, Ares hadn’t moved from his original position.

  Karin rolled her eyes.

  Gods. I hope she does talk to him. He looks bored to ten sorts of hells.

  Chapter 4

  The Nemina sat to the side of one of Fallon’s lots like a large, stray, prehistoric insect. Although Karin had become its pilot on Enlil, operating in Alliance space, the ship was a former Fallon military scout hybrid—which meant that it didn’t look too out of place on the Nova Kolkata base. More like an ancient relic, perhaps, with the more awkward, outdated points of its design sticking out like flags to any who had more than a passing knowledge of Fallon fleet ships—here an odd flare of the wing, there a smoothed-over nub that bumped up its neck where a telecommunications array could be installed.