World Shift

by K. Gorman

  Looks like we’ll be getting really cozy in here.

  “Indeed,” Marc said, looking around. “So… ship or not ship?”

  She gave the room another scan. “I vote not ship. Too much concrete on the way over—plus no emergency stations.”

  Not definitive evidence, but odd enough considering the tech they’d used to get her over here in the first place. If they really had transported her here somehow, she doubted they’d use the Alliance equivalent of a space slop to do so. She bit her lip, brows drawing down again as she considered. “Maybe a station?”

  Some stations had concrete—well, actually, most of them did. Not a lot of the stuff, but enough.

  “I’m gonna go out on a limb and say no,” Marc said. “But only because the gravity feels solid.”

  Again, not definitive evidence, and they both knew it. Karin blew out a loud breath between her lips, put her hands back on her hips, and narrowed her gaze at the room’s sparse furnishings, as if they would somehow give her the answer. “Closest Alliance planet is Belenus. Think we’re there?”

  “Honestly? I have no idea. Transport tech isn’t supposed to exist—and even if it is supposed to exist, I would have thought any planets would be too far out of range based on the range of live feeds.”

  To have a live feed from one ship to another, they had to be within one light minute of each other, and even then, they’d have a minute’s lag in the transmission. The best feeds were within one light second.

  “Yeah.” She shot him a grin. “All the netfiction I’ve read put a definite limit on transport range.”

  He snorted. “And with friends like Soo-jin and Cookie, I’m sure your netfiction knowledge is near-encyclopedic now.”

  Yes. Long trips through space tended to do that. On the plus side, she was caught up on all fifteen seasons and five mini-series of Moon Sailor. On the downside, the other thirty shows she’d been watching had stopped updating after the Shadows had attacked.

  It was one of the most minor inconveniences to occur because of them, but still…

  “So,” she said. “Escape plans?”

  Rescue was her number one escape plan. About a day after the shitstorm of a raid on Dr. Sasha’s pocket dimension, her sister had come up to her with a small smile and a long syringe. The tracking nano she’d inserted—one of three—had wedged itself somewhere between her thigh muscle and her femur, cloaking itself with her biometrics. Nomiki would be able to find her.

  Getting her and Marc out, on the other hand…

  “If we come up with any, we probably shouldn’t discuss them in here.” He nodded toward the corner where a small camera sat in the ceiling.

  She wrinkled her nose. “Such an invasion of privacy. You now, I think I’ve stopped feeling bad for Saia. Do you think he really has a family?”

  “He probably does. If he was on that bridge, then he’d earned his trust with Fallon. Alliance must have got him after.”

  “Yeah. I bet his rent has been paid.”

  “It’s probably been paid for the next five years, and then some,” Marc said. “Betrayal like that doesn’t come cheap.”

  “He’ll be in a jail cell right now, though,” she said. “If Nomiki hasn’t killed him yet.”

  “She won’t have. They’d need to get any information he has out of him and then confirm it. And I’m guessing he had something lined up to take care of things before he did this.”

  “You know, if he’d just told me he was being blackmailed, we probably would have healed his family sooner. Now, he’s going to have to wait.”

  “If he’d done that, he wouldn’t have gotten the money.”

  She shook her head. “Right. Money. It’s always about the money, isn’t it?”

  “It does make the system tick.”

  Maybe if she’d had more of that, and people had known she had it, Saia would have come to her with a counter-bribe offer. She squeezed her eyes shut, one hand coming up to pinch the bridge of her nose as she bowed her head forward, her mind spinning back to refocus on the topic.

  Escape.

  “Do you think they’d let me out if I asked nicely?”

  That earned her another snort. Marc had reached the end of the room, stooping to fiddle with the edge of the counter. A tube light in the ceiling cast a thin glow overhead, but the under-counter bulbs provided a stronger contrast.

  “You could certainly try. But I don’t think we’re escaping. If you were a murderer, and this were a regular prison, we might have been able to get out, but…”

  “But I’m the system’s most-wanted and most-valuable person. There’s no way they’re letting me go. I’m lucky they didn’t keep me in that glass cage with twenty-seven-hour surveillance.” She lifted her head, her fingers coming free from pinching her nose to make a gesture. “Sometimes, I wish I were more like Nomiki. She could get out of this.”

  “But, if you were, the rest of us would have been hooped,” he reminded her. “Don’t forget that both Soo-jin and I were once Lost. Without you, we’d still be drooling into our cereal.”

  “There is that, I suppose.” She gave a small snort, but the tremble in her voice betrayed her. “You know, when I thought of spending more time alone with you, this is not how I imagined it going.”

  She’d meant it to be lighthearted, but the tremble in her voice betrayed the raw stream of emotion that cinched around her chest. She drew a ragged breath and ducked her head, hoping to cover it, but the itch of Marc’s stare, and the way he’d gone still, a silent, contemplative sentinel in her peripheral vision, made the shame burn against the inside of her skin.

  She hated feeling vulnerable.

  He didn’t answer, but she heard him shift. His footsteps made a light scrape against the floor, then he’d covered the distance and his arms were around her, wrapping her into him. The warmth of his body pushed through to her skin like a radiator, and she half-froze, half-melted into it. He dropped his head to her neck, giving her a light, awkward kiss, then spoke into her ear, rocking them from side to side as her tears slipped down her face.

  “We’ll get through this. You’ll get through this. It’ll be all right.” His arms squeezed tight around hers. “Everything will be all right.”

  It took her a moment to unstiffen—human contact was never something she was good at, especially under stress—and relax, but after a few minutes of rocking and feeling his arms around her, she leaned her head back and rested it against his chest. He was tall enough that she could nestle her face in the groove next to his collar bone. “If you say so.”

  “After all,” he added. “It’s not like you’ve killed anyone.”

  He’d meant it as a joke, his voice turned toward levity, but she sucked in a breath as a memory—not a pleasant one—crashed through her.

  “In the eyes of the gods’ justice, I meant,” he added a few beats after, his tone flattening as he realized he’d said something off. “Shit, I’m sorry.”

  She gave a laugh and flicked at his knuckle with her thumb. “Hey, weren’t you just saying it’d be easier if I were a murderer?”

  “I was doing a bad job of looking on the bright side.” A puff of air blew past her ear as he gave a sigh. “I mean—they haven’t hurt us, and our jail cell is halfway decent.” He turned them back around to view it. “No bars, flushing toilet, a bed. And they won’t hurt you because they need you to function.”

  “And they won’t hurt you because they need to not piss me off,” she said.

  “Conversely, they may hurt me to ensure you cooperate.”

  She froze. The rocking stopped. As she shifted her head back to him, her lips curled back from her teeth. “I thought you were supposed to be looking on the bright side of things?”

  “Sorry.” He gave her a little squeeze.

  “So, again—escape?”

  “We’ll have to figure out whether or not we’re on-planet first. That’ll be up to you. I doubt they’ll take me on any tours.”

  “Yes, I’ll
use my incredible pilot senses to deduce if this is a ship or not.”

  Her tone had been dry and spare, but he ignored it as if she hadn’t spoken. “We’ll also have to figure out how to open that door. It’s not like it’ll open itself for us.”

  As if on cue, a heavy thunk rumbled through the metal at the front of the room. The door panel flashed green.

  Karin’s eyebrows shot up. “Wow. That’s impressive, Marc.”

  “Yes.” He pulled his arms back, extracting himself a few steps as several soldiers came into the room, two of them lifting their weapons. “Though I think they’re here for you.”

  “So it would seem.”

  Cold air filled the space where he’d been, making her spine stiffen. She crossed her arms in front of her chest. When one soldier, a man in his late twenties with a close-shaved head and narrow, watchful features beckoned to her, she stepped forward, trying to keep the tremble out of her voice as her fears returned.

  “I’ll see you on the flip side, then.”

  Chapter 10

  It felt odd, walking down the hall without him. Vulnerable, as if she’d walked out naked, and the hole inside her chest squirmed with anxiety. Her hands had begun to shake again, along with her jaw, and her breaths came slow but shallow, trying to hide her nerves.

  She kept her head still, locked ahead, but her gaze darted through the air like a panicked moth—the smooth, tan-colored walls, the marbled pattern of the well-worn pre-fab floor, also brown, the tube lights in the ceiling, the creases in the uniform of the guard in front of her. Eight soldiers accompanied her, far more than she expected they’d ever need to take her and Marc on, but they’d toned down their weaponry from before. Hand-blasters tucked into hip holsters instead of assault blasters aimed at her head.

  She swallowed, trying to force the lump of fear back down her throat, and took a breath. “So… where are we going?”

  To her ears, her pitch sounded too high, too false, the tremor too obvious. The soldier next to her, a man in his mid-twenties with a tanned, Caucasian complexion and a flat face, glanced over to her, his dark brown eyes flinty and wary. After a few seconds, he looked away again.

  Only the clicking taps of their boots and the rustle of their uniforms answered her question.

  “A surprise, then.” She swallowed again, ignoring the way her chest and jaw muscles threatened to tighten. “That makes me assume that I’m not going to like it.”

  The corridor came to an intersection, and each adjoining hall was so nearly identical to each other that, in a flash of panic, she had the thought that she was back in Sasha’s pocket dimension with its imperfectly aligned hallways and identical doorways. The air held still and quiet, with a warmth that hinted of mugginess. Farther down the hall, a series of windows shone a cool gray light onto the walls and floor, with three dimmer squares that rippled on the ceiling, as if they were reflected from a puddle outside.

  Not a ship, then. And probably not a station, either, though that was still in the air—many stations had internal windows that looked out over other components, so that they didn’t seem so cramped and crowded. Unless, of course, the people who’d captured her were playing an elaborate ruse involving screens and projections, but why would they go through the trouble?

  She didn’t get a better look. The soldiers in front of her stopped at a door midway down the hall, gave a short couple of knocks, and let themselves in. Cool air washed over her, goosebumps rising on her arms and neck, and as she caught a glimpse inside, her last statement echoed back through her.

  No, she definitely didn’t like it.

  The laboratory was state of the art—she’d give them that, at least. Although not much to look at aesthetically, it had been loaded with enough gear, equipment, and various scanning machines to keep many branches of scientists happy for a good portion of time. The white pre-fab walls stretched up more than three meters, closed in by many patches and remodel, many recent-looking, and met a flat ceiling that had been modified with at least ten different sets of pipes and ductwork. Fume hoods and disposal units rose like garbage chutes, three of them bookended together at the end of one wall, accompanied by the nest of cords and wires from a weird, scanning construct that she’d never seen before but which looked human-shaped.

  As her gaze scanned through the place, she picked up bits and pieces she recognized—here a centrifuge, there a massive, hardwired multi-spectrum scanner, and a full computational work station. They could probably tell the BMI of every single part of her body down to the nanometer and track every blood cell right down to the capillary.

  The stiffness in her shoulders strung tighter as she noticed just how many human-sized apparatuses there were in the room. Twelve, at least, not counting the three active life pods at the side of the room.

  Gods, are there more people? Her mind flashed to the life pods they’d seen in Sasha’s pocket dimension. Do they have more Eurynome Project survivors?

  A scientist, one of three in the room, who’d been working on some sort of cleaning project involving scalpels—Gods, why?—at a counter close by, dropped the knife he’d been holding into the tray with a clatter and rose as they came in, stripping off his glove and striding toward them.

  A giddy grin took over his face as he reached out a hand to her. “You must be Karin Makos—I’ve heard so much about you. It’s going to be a pleasure working with you.”

  She frowned at his outstretched hand. Had she missed a memo? Working with her was a bit of a stretch. Working on her seemed more appropriate.

  She crossed her arms over her chest, ignoring his offer. “Who are you? And where am I?”

  “Oh—” He sucked in a breath through his teeth as he straightened, the action making a small hissing sound that she didn’t like. “I’m sorry. I forgot, they won’t have told you.” He cleared his throat, lowering his hand. “We’ve received your files from Fallon, as well as the data on your light, but we need to run some of our own tests.”

  “So I gathered,” she said, her tone as dry as summer wheat.

  “Uhh… My name’s Pranav. I was just a student at the polytech—Master’s degree student, mind you—before the Shadows came. Was studying plasma before. Light-type plasma, not the stuff in your blood.” He gave her a sheepish grin, his hand dropping several seconds too late to adjust the second-bottom button of his shirt. “Only sort of related to what you can do, but I guess it qualified. Uhh… They are Dr. Lang and Dr. Ma. They’re in charge of things.”

  The other two scientists had looked up when they’d entered, and one of them, the man closest to them, was still staring. Both appeared of East Asian descent—Chinese, she’d guess by the way Pranav had said their names—with black hair and tanned, olive skin tones. Dr. Ma, standing farther back in the room, had an elongated look to her face and shoulders, with a stronger and more pronounced body structure, and this close, she could just make out the smattering of silver in Dr. Lang’s hair. After a moment, he stopped staring and turned his attention back to his job. Several instruments were laid out on the counter before him, and a strip of light backlit what appeared to be a series of slides and petri dishes that lay on top of it.

  Pranav cleared his throat. “They’re, uhh, also excited to get to work.”

  Her eyebrow twitched. If the two scientists were excited, they hid it well. Not even a twitch of a smile factored onto their faces. Instead, both had gone straight into neutral with their expressions, the muscles in their face slack as they went through the motions of her work, with Dr. Ma’s face being just a slight bit more intent on it than Dr. Lang’s. As she watched, the doctor lifted a scalpel and cut a slice of something from the petri dish before transferring it into another one.

  Well, at least they weren’t using them on people. Yet.

  With a quick glance to the soldiers still surrounding her, she turned her gaze back to Pranav. “You know, I kind of expected to be healing people first. Thought that would be a bigger priority than sticking me with needles.”<
br />
  “Er… ah, well—you’ll be doing that, too,” he said. “They’ve got a room for that. Er…” He, too, glanced to her guards, none of whom offered advice or traction. “It’s, ah, probably still being set up.”

  She didn’t need Nomiki’s lie-detecting skills to figure there was something he wasn’t telling her—a big something, she suspected. But then, there were a lot of big somethings that the people here weren’t telling her. Hells, they still hadn’t told her where she was yet.

  She wondered if she’d manage to find that out before her sister came to get her.

  “Sounds good,” she said. “It’s what I’ve tried to do for you people before.”

  By the confusion on his face, she gathered he hadn’t been apprised as to her history with the Alliance and her efforts on Caishen Station. She shook her head and waved her hand. “Never mind. Let’s just get started.”

  “Er… umm… Right. This way.” Pranav hesitated for a moment longer, then turned away, the motion stilted and awkward.

  As he led her away from the soldiers toward what she suspected was the first of many scanning machines, Dr. Lang broke away from his station, scooping up what looked like a packet of syringes along the way.

  Her jaw tightened.

  Sol, this is going to be a long day.

  *

  Poked, prodded, and with a sour mood putting parts of her face into a bitchy downturn, Karin pulled the blanket closer as a draft pushed up through the large gaps in the thin hospital gown they’d given her—this one tied at both sides like a poncho instead of wrapping around like the ones she was used to—and wrinkled her nose at the air.

  She didn’t know why they kept it so cold. At first, she’d thought it a simple effect of the room, the large amount of space with only a few humans and machines to heat it up, but then, she’d wandered past one of the cold-blasting air vents in the walls and connected it to the climate control panel she found on the back wall. They were chilling the air on purpose.