Augment

by C R MacFarlane

The nurse — Rebecca, who had brought her books as a little girl — reached out to her, holding her hand. It was warm and loving, and Sarrin drank in the sensation hungrily. And the nurse had fallen, before Sarrin could even realize what was happening, or why she had felt so suddenly so much more alive.

  “You pulled all of the life-energy out of her,” said Guitteriez, watching her closely. “You drained hers to feed your own. Absolutely fascinating.” He clicked his tongue as he walked around the far side of the bed. “It was then we learned about your extreme sensitive to energetic fields, especially those of others. And yet you never showed any of us that ability again, not even after we changed your hands. But I started thinking about you, and about energy and emotion and this fabric plane we call reality. And I think there’s more you can do.” He whacked the table with his walking stick, the clang making her jump. He snarled, “You’re going to show me everything, no matter what it takes. You’ll have no choice. I can make you feel such pain that your body will take over and try to save itself.”

  She kept her eyes firmly shut. Don’t lose yourself.

  He waited, watching for a full minute.

  The fire engulfed her body again, making her cry out.

  “This device emits concentrated negative energy. For the rest of us, it’s nothing more than an annoying little buzz, but for you… I can’t even imagine what that must feel like, but you must want it to stop. I can stop it, if you want.”

  She clenched her hands, futilely trying to hide them. They had not been changed for strength or precision, no. The alloy was a superconductor, designed to transfer energy, uninhibited. And they had designed a weapon that her super-conducting hands were unable to resist. She felt it all, bare to the desperation and misery the weapon emitted.

  “Show me what you can do.” The doctor grinned, made sinister by his scar.

  She shook her head.

  The table jerked and lifted her up. Suddenly, the gravity-well turned off, and she collapsed on to the floor. The fire-pain started anew, and she curled into a quivering-heap. A circle of pulsating blue-orbs surrounded her.

  She threw an arm out, desperately dragging herself away.

  Two guards approached, unfazed by the ring of devices. They lifted her with gloved hands — muscles too limp to resist, her body too exhausted to even try — and tied her arms to a hook that dangled from the ceiling. The restraints dug into the bundle of nerves that had been stripped from her hands and bunched carelessly at her wrists. The physical pain was welcome relief.

  Guitteriez approached again, stopping to look in her eyes. He laughed. “You know, in all the years, this is the most docile you’ve ever been.” A sick and twisted emotion rolled off him: glee. Lifting his hand, he showed her his thick, black gloves. He threw a fake punch, stopping short of her nose, then a few playful jabs, and laughed again. He placed his hand on her face, and caressed her cheek

  With what little strength she had, Sarrin rolled her head and chomped.

  She missed his hand entirely, but it still made him jump, and he pulled his hand back, checking for damage. Anger creased his forehead, the scar knitting into a ferocious hook. He motioned and two assistants came forward. A new machine carried between them, long wires spilling off the back.

  They attached sensors to her fingers and an imaging halo to her skull with their gloved hands.

  “Level 1,” instructed Guitteriez. The others stepped back, but he stayed.

  A white hot current of energy seared through her. Images and charts flashed on the screens. Guitteriez nodded, motioning for it to be done again. Over and over.

  Lights and colours danced in her eyes. The edges of her vision clouded. Don’t lose yourself. But what was she — what was herself — to lose? Nothing was concrete, somewhere between awake and unconscious, alive and dead. A vast emptiness opened deep in her abdomen, horrible and hollow.

  She clenched her jaw, fighting against the monster inside herself even more than she fought Guitteriez. What secrets were buried there? What was inside her? What if she showed him? What would he do to her then?

  The machine stopped. A reprieve. Everything collapsed until only the ties around her wrists held her up. The physical pain grounded her, and she blinked, seeing her surroundings once again.

  “Stand up.” Guitteriez hit her with his stick. “Stand up!”

  She managed to look up at him, hopefully feigning a look of defiance or hate. Anything to cover the utter desperation.

  He scowled. “Level 2.”

  New found pain arced through her body, pulsing again and again. Strong muscles went into violent spasms, threatening to tear her apart from the inside.

  “Oh, I wish it wasn’t you.” Guitteriez grabbed her between shocks, yanking on her jaw, forcing her to face him. “You made me look foolish, Sarrin. All those years I spent working on you, and you’re so stubborn. But you were always special, always the one. I’ve tried pushing the others, but no one can do the things you do. We’re stuck with each other.” He shook her, hard. A sliver of his exposed skin touched her, and she felt cold tendrils crawl into her skin. “The way you fight. They way you think,” he continued, cold tendrils growing more and more desperate. “There is more, I know it,” he shouted. “Show it to me!”

  Another jolt ran through her, blinding her. Her mind went far away, walling itself off from the pain.

  NINETEEN

  KIERAN SWALLOWED DOWN THE BILE that crept up the back of his throat. He was staring to get used to the low gravity — point-two-one g’s, he’s been told — but he still clutched the edge of the engine room’s doorway to steady himself.

  It was a good thing the gravity was so weak, or he would have fallen, his knees buckling at the sight of his beloved engine. Everything had melted together, all the wires and computer chips ending up in one solid chunk. The relays in the exposed floor were still smoking. The ion chambers were empty. And the FTL laid in three scattered pieces. The damn Kepheus Drive had come loose, and he couldn’t even see where it had gone in all the mess.

  He kicked the stupid engine out of sheer frustration. The impact sent him flying back in the low gravity, floating through the air and bouncing down on his rump.

  “That bad?” Rayne stood in the doorway looking him, a data tablet in her hands.

  He sighed, carefully maneuvering back onto his feet. “Yep,” he said, forcing a smile.

  “You’ll fix it. I know you will.”

  He could only grunt in response. He had to fix it, there was no other option. But all he wanted was to scream and smash everything on the stupid ship with his stupid hands.

  “Hoepe wants you to drink this,” she said, holding out a small cup. “For the nausea.”

  He eyed the thick, green liquid, plugged his nose, and downed it in one gulp. Apparently, his stomach hated low-gravity even more than it did during zero-g training at the academy. The sticky, foul medicine smeared down his throat, making him gag, but at least it stopped his stomach rolling. “Thanks,” he said.

  She nodded once. “How does it look?”

  “Bad.” He rested his hand on the engine casing, taking in as much of the damage as he could. Something about the action made him think of Sarrin, of the way she ran her wrist across the smooth surface, leaning her ear down to hear its vibrations. His breath caught and he coughed, sputtering up some of the green liquid. Leaning on the engine, he gasped, “What are you doing here, Rayne?”

  “Facilitating.” Her hands clenched on her tablet. “I don’t know what else to do.” They stared at each other for a moment, until Rayne cleared her throat primly, expression molding into well-practiced, professional attention. “I’m trying to assign work crews — what do you need help with?”

  “Everything.” Earlier, he had gone for another spacewalk, assessing the damage to the hull. Magnetic lunar dust buried half the ship. The entire port-aft wing complex had been torn off, including the thrusters and landing struts. What hull plating he could see had ripped off in huge patches, maki
ng atmospheric entry dangerous if not impossible. “Two of the Augments are trying to figure out how to fix some thrusters to replace the ones we lost. Someone else is figuring out how to unbury us from the dust.” He had no idea how they were doing — they’d sent him in when he vomited in his spacesuit for the second time, and Hoepe had forbidden the use of communication devices, lest the warship pick up any of their signals.

  It had been three hours since they had crashed the ship, faking their deaths on the moon. So far, the warship hadn’t arrived to finish the job, but they had no way of knowing where it was or what it was doing. For all he knew, it hovered over them, watching and having a good laugh.

  A rough knock sounded at the doorway, and one of the Augments leaned, back from assessing the thrusters. She rubbed her arm through her spacesuit. There were some pretty significant looking laz-wounds on her arms, but Hoepe had bandaged them and cleared her for duty. Kieran hated to think how the others looked, considering most of them were still being assessed and treated in the infirmary. She beckoned him into the main engineering bay. “We have an idea.”

  Kieran followed her to the central console, Rayne close behind. Three others moved around slowly, cleaning up the debris from the deck. One of them limped visibly, another had their arm in a sling. “How are your burns?” he asked.

  “Minor,” she said. She triggered the basic display, touring him around a schematic of the ship as she explained. “We’re planning to move some of the thruster banks from the other arms and tie them in on what remains of the post-aft wing. We’ll be able to balance the thrust then.”

  Kieran frowned at the schematic. “Is this all that’s left?”

  “We haven’t seen the starboard thrusters, but we were able to access and assess the other wings. It looks like a little less than half survived the impact.”

  “Half!” His legs wobbled again. He slammed his hands on the console. “There has to be more than this!”

  She leaned back, eyeing him warily.

  “Sorry.” Suppressing the urge to scream, he reached for the console’s controls, elbowing the Augment out of the way. His quick calculations confirmed what he suspected. “We’re not going to have enough lift to get off the moon.”

  “It’s all we’ve got.”

  “We need more.” He looked to Rayne, silently pleading she had an answer, but she could only shrug. He tried another calculation, and another, slamming his hand on the console when they kept returning the same answer. They were stuck on the planet.

  Rayne laid a light hand on his shoulder. “We’ll get her back,” she said softly.

  His chest crumpled, and he leaned agains the console, no longer able to support his own weight.

  “What if we salvaged some thrusters from the debris field?” Rayne asked hopefully.

  Kieran shook his head.

  The other Augment added, “Hoepe won’t let us take a shuttle out, the warship would see us for sure.”

  His breath started to come back to him. He pressed his palms against his eyes, wiping away moisture that collected there. “We don’t have days to wait around for the warship to leave.”

  “Well, what do we have?” asked Rayne, her tablet poised. “You’re the best engineer I’ve ever met. You’ll think of something.”

  Kieran frowned. He was not the best engineer he’d ever met. No, that honour went to a girl currently captured on the planet, terrible things happening to her. And he had let her go, even when she didn’t want to. He’d just let it happen.

  And their ship was buried on some unknown moon. That was his idea. He’d gotten everyone into this mess. Sarrin was going to die, just like the rest of them. Some observer he turned out to be.

  “The Gods always have a Plan,” said Rayne. “Faith, and Strength, and Prudence, Fortitude, and Knowledge.” She listed the Gods, bringing her fingers together one by one and then tapping them on her chest in supplication. “There must be something we can use. Some spare part, some connection, some obscure piece of machinery…. Anything? Something about the moon, itself? I don’t know. Think, Kieran!”

  But he couldn’t. Instead, his mind flashed pictures of Sarrin: Sarrin crawling through the engine, Sarrin freezing and escaping into the wall, Sarrin smirking as she handed him the weapons she had collected.

  He shook his head, trying to pull it together.

  He needed to write a letter home.

  He needed to sort through this mess.

  He needed to rescue Sarrin.

  * * *

  Hoepe sighed and looked down the line of Augments. He’d worked hard to find them, but he had never imagined it would be like this. They braced themselves in the still-sideways corridor outside of the infirmary. Many clutched arms or legs. Some lay unconscious on the deck, worn out after the adrenalin of escape in their weakened states. He’d already treated or discharged half, but the line remained long.

  He beckoned the next one into the infirmary, rubbing a hand over his exhausted eyes. The fight with the warship and the worry of rescuing everyone had weighed more heavily than he thought. And while he should be excited at seeing so many of the Augments safe, he felt nothing but an open pit of longing and a desperate urge to run screaming. As though he had been looking for something his entire life, and it seemed so close but never found.

  The short and stocky Augment entered and climbed onto the examining table. A deep laz-bolt wound seeped across his upper arm, cutting through the deltoid muscle, the arm hanging limp by his side.

  “It’s not that bad,” he said through gritted teeth, “but you told me to wait. I suppose I’m not that useful with only an arm and a half.” The man shuffled back and forth where he sat.

  Hoepe nodded, injecting local anesthetic as he held the arm to keep it still. He opened the skin with a 10-blade steel scalpel, extending the wound so he could visualize the muscle fully. The wound was deep, and the man flinched when Hoepe probed it. “Sorry. I need you to hold still.”

  The man gave an apologetic smile, which did nothing to reassure Hoepe that he would actually sit quietly.

  He sprayed a numbing agent into the wound and proceeded to dissect the burnt bits of muscle from the healthy tissue, testing and stretching it across the gap. He frowned, “It will be tight, but I can appose the edges — I don’t have any artificial mesh.”

  “Sure, Doc, whatever you say.”

  “It’s going to hurt for a few days until the muscle stretches.”

  The man shrugged.

  “Don’t move.”

  “Yeah, I heard you the first time.”

  Hoepe took a heavy suture and pulled the edges together, working the muscle until it connected across the missing chunk. Satisfied with the apposition, he used a smaller gauge and sewed it together.

  The Augment fidgeted, shimmying his entire body but thankfully leaving the arm in one place. He let out a pain-filled sigh. “Hey, you remember that time that we broke into that training facility in Northcott?”

  “Pardon?” Hoepe’s hand stilled as he looked at the man, wondering if he had forgotten some key event or person in his life, but he remembered everything — they all did.

  The Augment looked at Hoepe, flailing his good arm expressively. “Yeah, you remember. You, me, and Donovan. You wanted to try the combat plexus, and nearly shot Donovan’s foot off.”

  The suture snapped in his hand. “I did no such thing.”

  The man gave him a hard look. “Come on, Leove.”

  “Love what?”

  Hoepe felt himself under intense scrutiny as the man stared at him. His heart leapt irrationally.

  A smile quirked on the edges of his lips. “I thought you were someone else.”

  Hoepe continued his suturing, but the man wouldn’t stop staring at him. He wiped a liquid adhesive over the skin wound, tapping the man lightly on the back. “That’s finished. Any other injuries?”

  The man shook his head.

  “Good.” Hoepe ushered him off the table, calling out instructions to rest
at the same time as he beckoned the next patient in.

  Hurried footsteps and anxious voices caught his ear, and he paused in the doorway. Three men rushed down the corridor, a fourth carried between them unconscious, his breathing shallow. Boiling blisters covered half his face, and his sleeve had melted into his arm. “What happened?” shouted Hoepe.

  “He was decompressing the ion overload,” Kieran said. “Forgot to open the pressure valve.”

  “Ion burns,” said another voice, deep and tauntingly familiar. Hoepe looked up.

  Kieran continued, but Hoepe had stopped. He and the other man stared at each other. Both unnaturally tall, both with long, hooked noses and dark features. Each a perfect mirror of the other.

  The other man grinned, and then hurried to catch up. Hoepe followed as Kieran and the other man laid the injured on the table, and his twin started a rapid medical examination.

  “I shoulda been paying attention,” said Kieran. “I’m sorry. I didn’t see what he was doing.” He pressed his hands against his jaw, stepping back. He looked between Hoepe and the identical stranger. “Oh yeah, there’s two of you. Hoepe meet Leove.”

  The stranger looked up at him. A brother. A twin brother. Another half of himself. “Do you have a low-frequency electron lamp?”

  The fast moving hands of his brother snapped Hoepe back to attention, and he stepped forward, starting his own medical palpation. “No. I’ll start colloids for the shock. We can fashion a cold poultice. The bandage material is” — he kicked the floor, still strewn with medical supplies —“on the floor.”

  A wry grin twisted his brother’s features. “I see.” Hoepe’s soul sung.

  Kieran and the other man returned to Engineering, leaving the brothers to work in the tiny infirmary. Together they healed, side by side, each action anticipating the other’s. With their patient stable, they moved him to the low bench to recover.

  “It’s too bad he was injured on the ship,” said Leove. “It is unlike Ramirez to miss a simple step.”

  Hoepe frowned. “They are exhausted and malnourished.”