Augment

by C R MacFarlane

  He threw a lazy jab that was easily blocked. Sarrin replied with the customary cross, letting him dodge.

  And so it started, give and take, punch and block. Grant threw a kick at her side, she returned an elbow strike. He grinned, speeding up.

  Still, they were moving slowly, upper cuts and spin kicks hovering in the air.

  The next gear was a familiar one, the speed that Evangecore demanded. Grant started to miss his targets fractionally, not enough that anyone but her would noticed. He pushed faster. Fists flew at her like hologram targets. And each of them sounded a quiet ding against her arm.

  A ragged breath.

  Arms and legs faster and faster, time started to slow.

  Fear blinked in his eyes. Grant’s movements became stiff, reactive. Sloppy.

  Time to stumble, she thought. But she was a machine hunting a machine, and the monster danced with joy. Where Grant faltered, she was sure. Her core hummed with the sheer glow of power.

  Grant clutched his head, suddenly thrashing in pain. The second skin erupted from his back in slow motion, pouring like a river over his body.

  A final jab, Sarrin reached out and grabbed, ripping a piece from his head. Fury, hot and blind. The monster would not be denied. She smashed his head-target to the floor. Through the suit, no way to know if he was alive or omega. Her lip curled, baring her teeth.

  “Sarrin! Sarrin!” She turned slowly to the noise, to the familiar set of syllables. A voice pulled her from her carnal instincts. Who was she if not a machine? On the floor, Kieran gripped the edge of the mat, begging her, “Sarrin! Calm down. You’re gonna kill him.”

  Why was he looking at her like that? With fear?

  Confused, she looked behind. Grant lay on the ground, deathly still. His mottled brown suit covered his body, except for a jagged hole over his left eye.

  A chunk of flabby brown skin wobbled in her own hand.

  She stared at Kieran, at his green eyes. What had she done? She threw the skin away and dropped to her knees. She gasped and fought for breath that wouldn’t come.

  Kieran reached for her, his face distorted and bloody. “It’s okay,” he said.

  Behind him, a raucous cheer sounded, men clapping and yelling. Grant wobbled, rising on unsteady legs as his suit retracted with a wet slurp. “She’s still got it,” he wheezed, grinning, laughing with the crowd. “We’re going to go to Junk. We’re going to get everyone else out. With you there, it’s going to be a breeze.”

  Kieran’s gaze met hers, his eyes reflecting the same fear and worry she felt pound through her soul.

  FIFTEEN

  A NERVOUS HUM BUZZED THROUGH the small shuttle. Sarrin shut her eyes against the anxious shuffling of men, their heartbeats clattering around in side of their fleshy bone boxes. The memory of Kieran’s departing words echoed in her head, mixing with the din: “Is this smart? You and I both know what almost happened in the cargo bay. What happens if… if…?” He left the last unsaid, the silence ringing more loudly than anything else.

  What if? What if?

  She pulled up a mental image of his eyes, green orbs that danced and left her with an entirely different jittery sensation.

  From the pilot’s seat, Grant’s gaze shifted from the route ahead to her. He warily tracked her every move, the feel of his gaze making her fidget. He had been the one to find her after the near-calamity at the training session, mistaking his own near-miss for a controllable unstoppable power they could use to their advantage. He reminded her there were others who needed help, insisting she come. But he didn’t look at her the same.

  Rayne sat on the other side of the shuttle. Kieran’s voice echoed around her again: “Keeping an open mind, I guess.” Face to face, the first officer had been nothing but professional, intent on the logistics of the mission and the tactical points related to the layout of the building. But her devotion to the Speakers rooted deep, and Rayne’s wide eyes scanned her while practiced fingers worked over her laz-rifle.

  Still, Sarrin wanted to believe Rayne could overcome her upbringing. After all, the UECs had pounded her into their mould, the same as they had done Sarrin. If not quite the same, not that different either. If Rayne could be something other than what she had been made, maybe Sarrin could do. But a dark cloud niggled at her, reminding her that she would never escape it.

  Three of Hoepe’s men sat quietly, nervously, occupying the remaining seats in the shuttle. Not Kieran. She shut her eyes and tried to pretend he sat beside her, that someone who understood the monster was there. But she felt glad too that Kieran and Halud were on the freightship, safe. Kieran’s combat skills were abysmal, and she couldn’t help but feel that none of them were coming back from this trip.

  Ahead of them loomed a dark cloud, a black hole that sucked, drawing in everything. A trap unwilling to relent, impossible to escape. The zing of charging laz-rifles in the shuttle around her brought her back from the event horizon.

  Grant set the shuttle down in the empty hangar. They braced for attack, but it didn’t come.

  Gingerly, Sarrin reached for the two laz-pistols holstered against her thigh. They zinged to life at the feel of her pulse, and her vision crowded in a little around the edges. Grant had insisted she take them — infinitely more deadly with two weapons than none.

  “It’s been a long time since we’ve done this, hey, Sarrin?” Grant flashed her a smile, false bravado painting over his fear.

  The shuttle door opened, and they filed out into the empty shuttle bay. Still no guards. They crossed the bay quietly, pulling a panel off the wall and sliding into the space in the ceiling. Danger crowded at the back of her brain. Why was the hangar unmanned? Why did alarms not sound the instant their shuttle crossed into the base?

  Grant led as they crawled across, then slipped down the walls until they were three floors underground. “Nothing to it,” he whispered, coming too close to her ear in the small space. He lead them through the maze. Over walls, under floors, across internal support beams. Finally, he stopped and motioned for one of the men to help him lift a panel beneath their feet.

  The room below was small, only an anteroom. Two guards stood at attention — Sarrin could hear them breathing. Silently, Grant slipped down. Two flashes of laz-fire, and he came to the hatch and motioned them all through.

  The guards were slumped behind the control panel. A heavily fortified door sat beside the control panel — the entrance to the cells. Grant handed her the toolkit.

  She assessed the door, mechanical schematic drawing itself quickly in her mind: Magnetic lock. Retinal scanner. Failsafe wire.

  The men pulled the panelling off the walls at her instruction. Grant cleared the bodies from the console, while Sarrin accessed its programming, preparing to deliver an appropriate positive pulse.

  “What’s taking so long?”

  Sarrin looked up from the console, frowning at Grant. To answer, she pulled two more panels from the wall. The failsafe wire, now fully exposed, ran to the door, but also to the walls where it rigged into a series of explosives.

  Stepping back, Grant muttered, “Oh.” Then, “Hepta-nitrate. Enough to blow us all to the next circle of stars. Take your time.”

  Splicing the wire, she resected it from the main console, disarming the explosive trigger. With steady hands, she plugged her hand held into the retina scanner and delivered the override signal.

  The door opened with a pleasant chime.

  She frowned. Too easy.

  A quiet hiss started in the room, gas being pushed through the air vents. Hoepe’s men and Rayne fell to the ground instantly. Grant’s eyes met hers, big and wide and scared.

  * * *

  Halud watched large viewscreen on the freightship’s bridge for far too long, staring at the spot where the little shuttle had disappeared into the dull grey planetary background.

  The soft chimes of consoles murmured in the background, and Kieran shifted uneasily beside him.

  “She’ll be okay. She’s trained for
this. A simple mission,” said Halud, but his voice came out too loud, too firm.

  Kieran lips turned up, an attempt at a smile. “Yeah.”

  Halud took stock of all his jittering limbs and tight drawn expression. Sarrin spent more time with him than anyone else. “Will she be?” he asked suddenly, “Okay, I mean.”

  The half-smile faded. “You know how she is.”

  That was the problem, wasn’t it? “I’m afraid I don’t.”

  Kieran tore his eyes from the screen, concern woven across them. “Whaddya mean? She’s your sister.”

  It gripped him, squeezing all the air out of his lungs. “I don’t know her, not anymore.” It was hard to admit the truth, even harder out loud. “I saw what happened in the cargo bay. She only stopped because you were there. I couldn’t do anything.” He waved his hands wildly. “She talks to you. Why? No offence, but you’re a stranger. I’m her brother. She should be talking to me.”

  After a silent minute, Kieran shrugged. “I dunno. Maybe it’s easier.”

  “Easier than her brother? Sarrin was always this chatty, charming, cute little girl. I don’t understand what happened.”

  The engineer dragged a hand over his stubble-covered jaw. “Maybe that’s the problem. I’m a blank slate. No expectations. She doesn’t care about me or what I think. Not like she cares about you. That has to be easier.”

  “What happened to her in there? What happened to my little sister?” His voice cracked.

  “I don’t know.” Kieran turned away, giving him the decency of privacy while tears started to pool in Halud’s eyes. “A lot, I think.”

  “What should I do?”

  “Maybe, wait for her. Give her space. Support her. Let her figure it out. She will, I’m sure.”

  A hiccough caught in Halud’s throat.

  “She cares about you. Of course she does. But everyone changes. And she changed in a way she didn’t have any say over. That has to be hard.”

  “None of this has gone the way it was supposed to.”

  A sharp laugh rang out. “Things never do. Sometimes that’s a good thing. Look at me, I was supposed to be transferred when we got back to Etar — to the Comrade, believe it or not. Instead, I’m out here with you guys.”

  “I am sorry for that, Lieutenant.” Another life ruined by his mission. “You were never supposed to be on the ship. You or Rayne.”

  Kieran laughed again, grinning. “Call me Kieran. I don’t think Lieutenant quite fits anymore. And I’m glad I’m here.” He turned to Halud, eyes bright. “Can I ask you one thing?

  “Certainly.”

  “Why in the stars would you choose this ship — choose Gal for this? You had to know he would be stubborn as hell.”

  “I thought Gal was someone else. Someone I used to know.”

  Both of Kieran’s eyebrows shot up. “What do you mean?”

  Halud laughed in spite of himself. The idea was ludicrous when he thought about it now. “I thought he was John P.”

  But Kieran didn’t laugh. His gaze bored into Halud so intensely it made him draw back. “The rebel? Why?”

  Why had he thought it? Why could he not stop thinking it? How could the captain — so drunk, he hadn’t been seen in days — be the same man that rallied thousands, that forced the Speakers into late-night damage-control meetings, the same man that nearly won a revolution?

  Am urgent ping sounded from a console on the opposite side of the bridge.

  “What was that?”

  “I don’t know.” Kieran vaulted over the console they were sitting on, jogging to see the warning coming from Tactical. His face grew dark, disbelieving. “It’s the warship.”

  “I thought there was no one around.”

  Kieran slammed his fist down as he studied the read out in front of him. “We only did a quick scan — Grant was so anxious to get down there, and we figured the sooner they went down, the less likely someone would find us.”

  “Have they seen us?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Is Sarrin safe?”

  “Safer than us, probably.”

  * * *

  Sarrin exhaled completely, the gas misting around her. With pre-oxygenation, she could hold her breath for eight minutes. Surprised like this, it was more like four and only for low-exertion.

  Grant glanced her way, the only ally still standing.

  It took her eyes a second to adjust to the dimly lit room beyond the door. A huge, open space, ten times the freightship’s cargo hold. Along the centre ran neat rows of individual cells. More like cages, the walls were made of criss-crossing black metal-alloy bars. A low humming told her they were electrified. The people inside didn’t spare them a glance. They hung their heads in their sorry cells, or lay down in sleep. Augments all — what happened to their fight?

  She flinched when Grant took a step toward her. He pointed to the nearest corner where low light shone out the windows of a raised observation room. There were guards inside, laz-rifles in hand, pulling breathing masks over their faces. The first came out of the station, aiming his rifle from the top of the stairs. Sarrin slipped the laz-guns into her hands, forgetting for a moment what it would do to her.

  Ding, omega. Ding, omega on the second one who appeared half a second later. The two guards fell, tumbling down the full flight of stairs.

  “Don’t lose yourself,” the engineer’s voice rang in her head, and she tucked the laz-guns back into their holsters.

  Grant ran to the guards and pulled the respiratory filters from their heads, tossing one to her. Her starving lungs sucked in the stale, filtered air. The thrumming pulse in her head eased.

  The few Augments who were still awake in their cages watched them with hesitantly curious expressions. They would be running out of oxygen too. As if on cue, one of them slumped to the ground.

  “The commons. The gas,” she said to Grant, words muffled through the ventilator as she pointed behind them. “They’ll die.” The caged Augments had dropped incredibly fast to the sedative gas, even Grant stumbled slightly. She couldn’t imagine what it would do to the others who didn’t have the benefit of the heightened Augment systems and rapid metabolism. Hoepe once told her he estimated normal Augments needed at least fifty times more drug compared to a common human. She needed one-hundred-and-fifty times.

  Grant shrugged, slapping his legs and arms as though trying to get feeling back in them. “They knew the dangers.”

  Her breath caught, and she stared at him. He would abandon them the same as he had abandoned their friends in the war. Ruthless, reckless, uncaring.

  “What?” he said. “They’re just commons, Sarrin. Let’s get our friends out.”

  “They’re helping us,” she said coldly.

  His stare locked onto hers, but she wouldn’t back down, not this time. Finally, he huffed and left.

  More Augments dropped to the floor; they were wasting valuable time. Seconds ticked away. She ran up the stairs into the guard tower, hands flying immediately to the controls. In the far corner, lights came on, outlining windows from another guard tower.

  Footsteps climbed the stairs to the sealed room, the sound clanging around her. She tapped commands, the computer lagging slowly. Or she was speeding up?

  The first guard pushed through the door.

  She grabbed her laz-gun, fear slamming her into the trance.

  Ding, ding, ding. A laz-bolt burned across her shoulder, barely notable. A hit on the target: ding.

  It fell back, stunned, but it kept moving. A familiar voice, pained, reached her ears: “-rrin, Sarrin, Sarrin. Stop.”

  Her laz-gun clattered to the floor, and she pushed the monster away with a grunt.

  Grant crouched in front of her, mottled grey-brown skin covering his body. His suit retracted from his body as he stared at her. “What in the Deep, Sarrin?”

  She stared at him. What a pair — him with his suit and her with her monster.

  He bent, his hands on his knees, grimacing as the
last trails of the suit disappeared into his own flesh. He held up a small device that she had seen Kieran give him earlier. “I don’t know if this single jammer works or not.” He batted it a few times, as though foolishly trying to knock a circuit back into place, the looked at her. “Why did you shoot at me?”

  Gulping, she struggling to find the words to explain and warred with the idea of telling him she hadn’t wanted to come in the first place.

  But he continued, stepping next to her as though nothing had happened. “Did you think I was a guard or something? Gods, this place makes my skin crawl too.”

  Silently, she pointed to the other towers.

  “More guards? How many?” He pressed his five fingers into his chest, praying. “Have they seen us?”

  Her head shook in answer. There were too many people in the cell block to identify, and she didn’t want to risk trying to go deeper, ask the monster for help, in order to find out.

  “I put the men back in the ceiling and closed the panel. That should at least slow their exposure. Let’s turn the gas off.”

  Sarrin focussed back to the console. Guards moved through the main room, but it would be a few minutes before they crossed the huge cell block.

  “Oh no,” Grant muttered. He stared out the window, Sarrin followed his gaze.

  Beams of laz-fire shot lit up the dark room below. Not a fight, the guards fired through the bars of the cells one-by-one, the sedated Augments inside defenceless.

  Grant took off at a dead run, his own laz-rifle in hand.

  * * *

  Halud clutched desperately to the console in front of him. The warship released a flash of laz-cannon fire that streaked through space, landing on the freightship’s hull. The viewscreen flared with the impact as the floor rocked under them.

  “That answers whether they’ve seen us or not,” grunted Kieran.

  Hoepe and two men charged onto the bridge. “Shields at maximum,” he ordered.

  “They’re powering up,” replied Kieran. “I don’t understand how the warship keeps finding us.”

  “I want to know why our scan didn’t see them. We never would have sent the shuttle down if we knew they were out here.”