Augment

by C R MacFarlane

  “I — I did. And you listened, but you didn’t hear the meaning.”

  Her eyes shut as she tried to reason through this situation that could not be happening. Not to her. “They offer us the Plan. The Augments are an abomination!”

  The Poet cringed, ducking his head in anticipation. At the last moment, she let him go, stepping back. He slid to the floor.

  When she turned, Gal had already disappeared, and she ran to the far end of the corridor. She caught up to him just as he turned into the hall where the officers had their quarters. “Gal, wait! What are we going to do?”

  He slammed his hand into the mechanism for his door, keeping his gaze fixed straight ahead. “We’ll go back to Contyna. Hoepe can keep you safe.”

  “What?” Pieces started to fit into place. “The Poet defected and brought an Augment onto our ship.” She took a deep breath. “My life is over. My career is over. If they think we defected… but we were just doing what the Poet said!”

  The door opened, and Gal paused at the threshold. He sighed, his head dropping low, still refusing to look at her. “Hoepe can keep you safe. That’s the deal we made.”

  “Deal?” She shouted. “Hoepe’s not working the Central Army any more than we are.” She gasped, realization dawning. “He knew she was an Augment. He’s always talking about resources. He’s going to sell her. And sell us!”

  “I have to believe he’ll keep you safe. What other option do we have.”

  “But you made this deal?” She stepped back. “You knew too!”

  He sighed again. “No, I didn’t know.”

  “Then why aren’t you more upset?”

  He stepped into his quarters. “I’m sorry, Raynie.” The door shut behind him

  “Galiant!” She slammed her fist into the control panel, but it was no use, he’d already locked it, already blocked her from overriding it. Panting, she fought to catch her breath. What was happening?

  The Poet stood at the other end of the corridor.

  Augments. What would her father say?

  Storming up to the Poet, she searched his face, but found only pity — no fear, no disbelief. Her fist clenched in anger, but he was still the Poet Laureate, the mouthpiece of the Speakers of the Gods, the man whom she’d been taught to always respect and obey.

  A false Poet. An enemy of the Gods.

  She punched the wall instead.

  Pain shot through her knuckles, and her hand recoiled, the grey wall totally unchanged. Her rage dissipated, replaced by an emptiness, a deep sucking hole that used to be her hope.

  She took a shaking breath, fortifying herself. “Sometimes the Path is hard. Sometimes it feels as though we are lost, but it only means we can be found,” she muttered. With start, she realized her mind had not remembered the words of the Gods. No, worse. With a groan she realized the quote came from the rebel, John P himself.

  What would her father say?

  Squeezing her eyes shut, she suppressed a scream, pulling at her hair instead. She could not give up, would not give in to her circumstances. She was a United Earth Central Army officer. She would make her father proud. She would uphold the Path of the Gods, even if no one else would. That was her duty, and she would rise to the call.

  * * *

  Gal slid down the back of the door, legs no longer able to support him. His brain ricocheted, spinning one memory flash to the next: a frozen battlefield, a girl climbing from ash, wailing cries, and the silent implosion of a planet through a viewport.

  The past hounded him, twisting and turning and jumbling.

  The Augment War destroyed the planet, that was fact. The rest? How was he supposed to remember the rest without cracking?

  An icy hand wrapped around his finger, sending a chill through his body. Cold sweat broke out on his back. A demon, grey and hairless and rotting. It had followed him through the locked door as though it wasn’t even there.

  The demon tugged on his arm, pointing. When he looked up, Gal had been transported from his quarters, finding himself in another grey place, another Central Army outpost.

  He shook his head, trying to clear the vision. He knew the corridor. His first year at the Academy, he had done a tour at the Army base at Evangecore. Before they knew what was happening at the facility below — he wasn’t supposed to see that at all.

  His supervising sergeant left him at his post. His first overnight watch. Not that anything would happen, Evangecore was in the middle of nowhere, the closest village over an hour away. The weather outside was freezing anyway, terrible and snowy.

  A scream pierced the air.

  He panted, looking for the source. There was no one.

  The sergeant had said the night could play tricks on you, especially the first time. It was nothing, had to be nothing. A scared boy’s nervous imagination.

  Another scream, more distant.

  Adolescent Gal gripped his laz-rifle.

  Gal could already see what would happen next, the long chain of events that would change his life. He begged adolescent Gal to stop, to stay at his post as he’d been ordered. But adolescent Gal looked down the long corridor in front of him and the long corridor to his left, and then turned and headed to his right.

  Another scream led him to a door. A locked door. There were places the cadets weren’t supposed to go on every base. Normally, he left it alone. If it wasn’t for him to see, it wasn’t for him to know.

  But another scream, and now a desperate wail called him through.

  He fidgeted with the lock, overriding it like he had done countless times as a boy growing up in a small, dull, farming community with nothing else to do. He stepped through, leaving the grey corridors of the base, and entered clinical white. His feet screeched on the polished floor, echoing around him.

  Identical doors lined the hallway.

  Gal tried to stop, willed the memory to change, but his feet carried him to the far end of the corridor, nearer and nearer to the wailing. His present and younger selves blended together, and he lived the memory first hand. He peered through one of the doors, through the window of fortified permaglass.

  There, on the bed, lay a shrivelled demon. It’s melted grey skin contrasted with the white walls. Blood smeared across the floor and up to the bed.

  They locked eyes. Crystal clear, brilliant eyes that held Gal to a promise.

  It started shrieking. They all started shrieking. Doors slammed open, and hundreds of them, millions of them poured into the hall.

  He threw himself back into the corridor, stumbling over the little bodies. They were on his legs. And his arms. Screaming, screaming.

  He pushed on, straining toward the door. His eyes burned, and he rubbed them furiously, trying to un-see what he had seen.

  Screaming rang his ears, and then his gut and his chest and his soul. Louder and louder, more desperate with each raising decibel.

  These horrid little creatures, tugging on him, asking everything from him.

  “Stop!” he yelled. He pulled one off his arm, peeling back it’s sticky, grey fingers, and slammed it as hard as he could against the wall.

  It fell. Instantly dead.

  And the others, as before, crumpled and died. Death radiated from Gal.

  Gods, what had he done?

  He yelled out, striking the air in front of him. And the whole thing shattered.

  Pain shot through his knuckles as shards of glass exploded in a cloud around him. He found himself in his latrine on the old freightship. Pieces of mirror tinkled to the ground. Blood seeped from his hand. What was he doing?

  He stumbled to his desk. Jin-Jiu. It wasn’t warm, but who cared. He took a drink, and then another and another. The past was in the past, where he had buried it.

  * * *

  Halud tapped his fingers to his chest compulsively. The glaring lights of the mess hall and the odour of overcooked rations caused him to feel slightly nauseous.

  Kieran watched him from across the long table made of several tables they’d pus
hed together, and that made him fidget even more. Kieran’s neck had already coloured purple, and he wore a plastic brace around his throat. Bruised and partially collapsed trachea, the doctor had said.

  His sister did that. His sister. Sarrin.

  Discoloured tendrils crawled from the blooming blood pattern on the engineer’s skin, the fingers wrapping across the flesh.

  Kieran opened his mouth, but he started to cough, a horrible gasping sound.

  Rayne sat beside him, straight and rigid as plasteel, nearly hovering out of her chair. She stared straight ahead, frozen and expressionless.

  At the far end of the room, Hoepe stood between his men, hand placating as he shouting over them: “The situation is not so dire as it seems. Someone with such skill is a very valuable asset to our team.” Two of the men had their arms in slings — one broken, the other shot.

  His sister. A sweet young girl of four who had nursed him when he was sick with fever. What had happened to her? He gritted his teeth. Evangecore had happened.

  The doors slid open, and the room turned silent. Gal stumbled into the empty chair beside him.

  Rayne swivelled her head to look at Gal, the sound of flesh burning under her glare nearly audible. “You’re drunk.”

  Gal sneered. “I’m not on duty.” He seemed to shrug, but his head and arms just flopped lamely.

  Halud’s stomach ached. His one hope, plastered in the chair beside him. How could such a man fall so far?

  Rayne hinged forward. “Gal, I am begging you. The Gods will have something to say about this. We should surrender her to the Army outpost.”

  Gal’s head lolled to the side, his mouth flapping open. “The Gods always have something to say,” he muttered, waving his hand in the air.

  “We have to turn her over!” Rayne stood abruptly her chair.

  “No!” said Halud.

  Drool pooled at the side of Gal’s open mouth.

  “The Path I make for myself is the Path of the Gods,” said Halud, “Isn’t that right, Gal?”

  Gal fell out of his chair.

  Rayne gasped, “The rebel! Why would you quote the rebel? You’re the Poet.”

  “John P said, ‘embrace your fear and you will become brave’.”

  “John P?” she spat. “Do you know how long my father spent looking for that cracked heretic. He caused chaos, rebellions, riots…. He hijacked newsfeeds and distributed propaganda viruses. They say he started the war. I went to a rally once, and you know what he told us — he told us to do what we thought. Just whatever we thought.”

  Gal sat up from the floor, grasping the edge of the table. “You did what?”

  “And do you know who spent the war reminding us of the True Path — you did, Poet. We need order, discipline, rules —.”

  Halud frowned. “I speak for the Speakers, they do not speak for me. Do not mistake the words I have said as High Poet as my own. They took my sister away sixteen years ago; they made her this way. My Path is to help her.”

  “You’re the Poet Laureate,” said Rayne.

  “You’re a mindless soldier,” Halud growled in frustration.

  Kieran started to cough. Rasps and rails grew louder, honking. It didn’t stop. Hoepe ran up behind him and hit pressure points on his back in rapid succession. Kieran gasped for breath, his face as purple as his neck.

  “She almost killed Kieran.” Rayne pointed her finger at the struggling engineer. “There is an Augment aboard our ship — a deadly child soldier. We don’t even know half of what she’s capable of.”

  Hoepe pinched the bridge of his nose. “Sit down,” he ordered, and wrapped a hand over both Kieran and Rayne’s shoulders, pushing them into their chairs. “My offer to care for Sarrin still stands. And there is a place for all of you with my crew, if you’d like, where you will be looked after and protected.”

  “You’re a Reaper!” Rayne accused.

  “I prefer the term Privateer and Provider.” Hoepe glared at her. “I knew of Sarrin’s past when I agreed to help Halud. I admit —.”

  “You knew she was an Augment, Boss?”

  Hoepe sighed and glanced at his men. “Her condition is a bit unexpected, but I suspect with treatment, a good diet, and some time, she will be functioning normally again.”

  There was hope, then, thought Halud, a fraction of the weight lifting itself from his chest. The doctor had been running tests, he must have found something. Sarrin was sick, not some deadly killing automaton. What happened in the airlock, that wasn’t really her.

  “Functioning normally? What does that mean — more deadly?” said one of the men. The others chuckled gloomily.

  Gal snorted, laying back in his chair with a soppy smile.

  Hoepe pressed his lips together, his gaze warning. “She is a person, just like any of us.”

  “A person?” Rayne scrunched up her nose and shook her head. “They destroyed the Earth. Maybe you don’t understand how dangerous these Augments are, and why the Central Army worked so hard to eradicate them.”

  “I assure you I do understand what she is, better than you.” Hoepe walked halfway around the table, clenching and unclenching his jaw. “When Sarrin is functioning normally again — that is to say calm and coherent — she will be looked after. You can all be here or somewhere else, but Sarrin will be looked after and protected. Is that clear?”

  The men at the far end nodded quietly.

  “This is spread-mad,” cried Rayne, bolting out of her chair again. “She’s an Augment. The enemy. They killed hundreds of soldiers, destroyed everything — the Earth, just gone. Now one of them is trying to kill us and you are talking about helping her.” She leaned across the table, staring directly at Gal. “We need to march over to the Army outpost — preferably before that thing wakes up from the sedation so she can’t kill us — and drop her off, into proper custody.”

  An uneasy feeling of dread settled in Halud’s stomach.

  Gal shut his eyes and turned away.

  “I want no part in this. I want to go home,” she said.

  “You can’t,” mumbled Gal. “You know that.”

  “What?”

  Hoepe answered, his words slow and direct, “Commander, if they discover any of us have knowledge of, or have come into contact with an Augment, they will kill you. Not Sarrin, but them, the Central Army. If you run to the outpost, not only will they torture you and hang you, but everyone else in this room will be dead by morning. Go to your room, get some rest — do as I say if you want to live. That’s not a threat. That’s advice.”

  Her jaw hung open. She lifted her head, turned abruptly, and left.

  Hoepe made a subtle movement with his hand, and two of his men followed Rayne out. He turned to Kieran and then to Gal. “You both need rest. We’ll figure the rest out in the morning.”

  The engineer and captain left quietly, each accompanied by their guard. Gal stumbled, one of Hoepe’s men carrying him out.

  Hoepe sighed heavily and slumped into one of the open chairs.

  “I’d like to see her,” Halud said.

  Hoepe inclined his head, exhaustion plain in his eyes. “I don’t know what condition she’ll be in when she wakes.”

  “She’s my sister.”

  “You’ve read her file. What did they do to her?”

  Halud paled. He hadn’t read it, hadn’t wanted to know. Maybe it would have told him this was all a very bad idea.

  Hoepe frowned. He leaned across the table. “You’re lucky she didn’t kill anyone. I don’t know what my men would have done. I don’t know what would have happened.” He stood up, rapping his knuckles in a random pattern on the table between them. “The captain is your responsibility. And Rayne. The last thing we need is her running to the UECs. The situation is already too messy.”

  Hoepe stood and left the room, leaving Halud alone to contemplate what he had done.

  * * *

  Sarrin came back to herself slowly, her body abnormally heavy as she laid on the bed. It felt l
ike she had been drugged, but she didn’t remember how or when.

  Something tight sat around her wrists, the pressure biting into the sensitive flesh. Her ankles were held down too. Someone beside her shifted in a chair: Halud — she knew it from his breathing.

  She recalled him shouting at her, desperate and scared. Why? The darkness. No, no, no, no. Her breath caught, dragging her down. Legs jerked and flailed, but her body was too heavy to move. She had fallen into the trance, let it consume her.

  Through slits in her eyelids, she glanced at Halud sitting in the middle of the cramped grey room. He stared blankly at something in his hands: an automatic syringe. Sedative. Pain seized her chest. Halud had given up everything for her, for his sister, but he got a monster instead. More than anyone, she had hoped to hide this from her brother. He deserved better. She had a chance to put away the past, but she cracked it. She was cracked. The whole thing was cracked.

  Darkness prickled the edge of her vision.

  Halud made no sign he knew she was awake. It was better that way. There wouldn’t be any questions, any awkward silences. What could she possibly say to him now?

  She closed her eyes and prayed. She would need all five Gods, Fortitude most of all.

  Her mind ticked the time as four hours and thirty eight minutes passed. Halud shifted back and forth in his chair, the auto-syringe rattling softly as he spun it in his hands. Once she heard him sobbing softly.

  The security pad in the corridor beeped, and the door opened. Hoepe entered, his long, smooth footfalls characteristic. “How is she doing?”

  Halud rubbed his eyes quickly. “Still asleep.” His rough voice sent a pang through her heart.

  If only she wasn’t so cracked.

  Hoepe would know she wasn’t truly asleep. But he didn’t say anything. “Go get some rest. I can watch her.”

  Halud’s voice shook, “No, I should be here when she wakes up.”

  “She’ll sleep for several hours. You may as well do the same. Collect yourself.”

  Halud sniffed, and a minute later she heard him shuffle away and the door hiss open and closed.

  “Sarrin, it’s just me. Stop pretending.” Hoepe’s voice turned gruff and direct, nearly comforting in its familiarity. She opened her eyes and saw him staring down at her, dragging a hand through his hair. “Gods, you almost gave us away.” He dropped into the chair with a sigh. “Well, no denying your talents now. They’re all spread about it, planning the best way to get rid of you.”