I approached Tev, trying to get her to look at me. “What’s she talking about? Why won’t you tell us what’s going on? Please.”
“Ovie.” Tev ignored me. “Now. Any stream, all of them—I don’t care.”
He looked at her for an extra beat before bending his arm and using the implanted touchscreen to link up to the ship’s comm system. Seconds later, a projected holographic view hovered above his skin. He pinched it with his other hand, then expanded the view window so it was large enough for all of us to see. The screen wobbled slightly when he moved his arm, but otherwise the picture was clear.
System report networks flashed by at ten-second intervals. Some were text-only reports beneath looping recordings of Adul’s destruction. Others featured fresh-faced, well-known independent reporters beeped in from political or media outposts, peppered with vids of the planet disappearing, feeds of the Tangled Axon, and old photographic imprints of the crew. Words from the feeds buzzed around us, puncturing the tense silence in the infirmary: Kidnapping of respected spirit guide, Nova Quick. Suspects. Murderers. Terrorists. Genocide.
There were images of me in there, too, as if I were part of the crew—imprints and recordings taken from old net uploads. Records of my service with Lai’s shop. Pix of me with Kugler at a night club in Heliodor. My parents, looking particularly overworked. Every image was a sickening reminder of what had happened. At the end of one of the feeds, they showed a recording of Lai, which then rolled over to the next report in Ovie’s queue. Nova gasped and grabbed my arm at the sight of her. “Alana—”
“Wait!” I shouted, putting my hand over Nova’s. “Ovie, can you go back to the last one? Please?”
Mercifully, he obliged.
No one spoke.
“—do that,” Lai said in the feed, shaking her head. Worry twisted her features, twitching with suppressed sadness as she spoke. “She’s a good girl. She loves her family and worked hard growing up. Still does.”
The interviewer’s voice came from off-screen. “Then what is she doing aboard a terrorist vessel? Why would she help murder her own parents?”
“She’s a good girl,” she said again. “That’s all I know.”
“That’s enough,” Tev said.
Ovie cut the connection. Dread pinched my throat. They were accusing us of genocide. What if the enforcers detained Lai and interrogated her? What if they didn’t believe her when she told them she didn’t know anything?
“How can they think we did that to our own family?” Nova practically shrieked. “I have nothing to do with it! I don’t kill things! I don’t even eat anything that wasn’t artificially generated!”
“This isn’t about you,” I said gently, reaching for her flailing arms. “Don’t worry. Did you hear them? You’re a hostage. They’re just after me. The rest of us.”
She twisted in my grasp. “Alana, you can’t let them do this to us!”
Tev indicated the exam tables again. “Ovie, Alana. On the tables. No one is going to be counted as a hostage or criminal or anything else, because they’re not going to find us.”
“You can’t run!” Nova’s eyes were huge. “No, no, no.” She shook her head, chanting the word as if it would manifest her desired outcome. “I can’t be seen with fugitives! I have clients. I have a reputation! I’m a graduate of—”
“You don’t have a say in this,” Tev said. “You can’t contact anyone without our help, so you might as well relax.”
Nova collapsed into a chair near the corner of the room, somehow avoiding any unseemly bunches in the gauze draped around her slim form. Even so, she smoothed the fabric of some imaginary wrinkle violating her appearance, soothing herself compulsively. I could see the genuine distress in her eyes, the sadness breaking over her features, lips trembling with the weight of it. I wanted to comfort her, to rest my head in her lap and be comforted, to take mutual refuge in family.
Part of me was afraid she’d turn us all in out of sheer panic, but Tev was right—there was nothing Nova could do. She couldn’t contact anyone without the crew’s cooperation. She had no implant with which to contact the outside world, neural or otherwise, because they were thought to interfere with guide work. She relied on older methods of comm linking. The most she could hope for would be an interface contact over her eye, but even those—
Oh, shit.
I clamped my hand over my implant and glanced at Tev, who spoke with Ovie and Slip in hushed tones. His arm was stiff between them, hovering like it didn’t belong to his body. Slip’s hand gently touched the place on Tev’s neck where her own interface lived.
The captain wanted to take our implants.
Even with the external comm link severed, those of us who were implanted posed a threat—a risk we couldn’t take when we practically had a price on our heads. I imagined my neural interface conspiring against us, transmitting our location to the system nexus with each heartbeat, the signal surging out from me in invisible waves. Disarmed by something so small.
When they removed it, I’d no longer have access to Lai. Not that I’d been able to get in touch with her since I’d left, but at least the possibility had been there, and that had comforted me. When my body ached under Mel’s heavy hand, the implant had persisted—precise and tireless in its inorganic way, connecting me to the world when my muscles refused to cooperate.
I moved toward the closest exam table and threw myself on top of it, closing my eyes against the grief. There was no real choice. Either I let them remove the implant or I’d be off the ship, and then I’d have no chance to see whether Transliminal could help me and Lai when they helped Marre. No matter how hard it was to admit, keeping my implant wouldn’t bring my parents back, and it wouldn’t save the Adulans. They were already gone.
I pressed the heels of my hands to my eyes. Deep breath.
“I’ll go first,” I said. “Get it over with.”
Even from across the room, I heard Nova sigh and shift her weight, fabric rustling. “Alana, I don’t think you should help these people.”
“These people are the only way we’re getting out of this.” I just kept rubbing my eyes, trying to keep my emotions at bay.
Some footsteps and a series of clicks. Tev’s low, accented voice. “Trying to be a hero?”
I opened my eyes to find Tev standing next to me, close enough that I could smell the rosemary. Her hair was tucked behind her ears, highlighting her soft features and wide-set eyes.
“No.” I swallowed, wiping my palms on my shirt. Suddenly I was acutely aware of how badly I wanted to shower. “It’s going to happen one way or the other. Might as well cooperate. I don’t want to be arrested any more than the rest of you.”
She placed a hand on my upper arm, squeezing gently, startling me.
“You’re in good hands. Slip knows what she’s doing.”
My heart sped up. The warmth of Tev’s touch radiated through my arm and shoulder and into my chest, heating me from the inside out. I had to exert great control over my fingers; they wanted to betray me, to touch the back of her hand, to find solace in even that small part of her. Until now, I hadn’t realized how badly I craved the comfort of touch.
Instead, I nodded and offered what I hoped was a casual, vaguely friendly smile, but I’m sure I looked more like I was about to piss myself with anxiety. Maybe that was better.
What a mess I was.
Patting my arm, Tev quirked the corner of her mouth into a half-smile—not helping my effort to ignore my attraction—and tilted her chin at Slip. “Okay. You heard her. Let’s get this over with. Nova, you’re with me.”
When she removed her hand, the cold infirmary air rushed in to steal the warmth she’d left behind. Nova complained all the way out the door, citing fines and blacklists and imprisonment and other probable consequences for even having appeared to kidnap a spirit guide. Beneath it all, a thread of fear pulled her voice tight.
I heard metal scraping metal as Tev closed the door.
A square
device moved into place above me, near the ceiling. A series of dim flashes flickered around us, and we were alone in a box of black. A mobile sterile containment unit. At least there was that.
Momentarily, Slip looked down at me, smiling and patting me with a gloved hand. I felt like a child as she configured the room’s settings, glancing at me between tasks.
“Thanks for cooperating.”
I laughed. What else could I do?
“Yeah, I know. Not much choice.” She eyeballed a pharm-injector, checking the amount of sedative in it. “Ready?”
“Will it hurt? After, I mean.”
“About as much as you’d expect. Turn your head to the left.”
There was a pinch at the base of the implant. A heady, heavy sensation at the back of my skull. Slip’s hands on my arm, motherly.
After the day’s exertion, I welcomed unconsciousness.
Chapter Seven
Pain throbbed along the back of my skull. My mouth was dry. A dull chill had taken root in my body. Even the dim light of my quarters hurt my eyes, so I closed them again.
Reality trickled in: no more implant. I tried lifting a hand to touch my neck but my limbs were weak from the anesthesia. Not worth the effort to confirm what I already knew.
Nova and I really were alone now.
I couldn’t help imagining there was a gaping hole in reality where the implant used to be—a part of me now resigned to non-existence. I could no longer reach out to the system with a flick of a switch. It may have been synthetic, but part of me was gone. A deep sense of loss swept over me, and I struggled not to cry.
Damn drugs, making me oversensitive.
Fabric rustled somewhere to my right. An intake of breath. A yawn. Nova must have stayed with me. Gratitude swelled in my chest, mixing with my grief, and once again my eyes pricked with tears, which just frustrated me, which in turn made me more emotional, which frustrated me more.
How long until the sedation wore off?
The metal legs of a chair screeched slightly. Probably Nova standing up. Wait. No. That isn’t my sister, I realized. Nova wouldn’t click when she moved. Her footsteps wouldn’t be heavy with booted soles as she walked the few steps from the chair to the bed.
“How do you feel?” Tev said, voice soft. I could tell she was crouching down next to me but I didn’t want to open my eyes.
“Need my meds,” I croaked.
She laughed a little. “It’s okay. Slip administered them while you were out.”
I opened my eyes anyway, but couldn’t make out her features through the haze. I just saw a halo of dirty blond hair around the fuzzy image of a face. Backlit by the fixtures above us, low-lit as they were, she looked iconic.
I giggled and batted at the air. “You’re no angel.”
“What’s that you said, love?”
I laughed, waved my hand. Giddy in my insobriety. Every movement hurt my incision, pulling at the skin so delicately held together, and beneath the lazy giggling I could feel anxiety rising. Each pinch at the surgery site was a painful reminder of what I’d lost. I was completely cut off from the outside world now, and it was sinking in. That awareness of my isolation clawed at my mind, sharp and relentless. Isolated, and wanted for genocide.
Tev touched my arm, soft pink lips smiling at me. At least my visual acuity was coming back. “Ovie and Slip moved you to your quarters. You’ll have some privacy here. I’ll let you rest—”
I put my hand on hers and lifted my head, but it was too heavy and unwieldy to stay up. “Hey, beautiful.”
At least the drugs freed me from self-consciousness, pruning my mind of the pesky bits that kept me in line with social mores. Part of me already knew I’d be embarrassed later, but I couldn’t bring myself to care.
She didn’t say anything, but her eyes flicked toward our hands, then back to my face. I couldn’t tell whether she was confused or irritated or both but, well, whatever. There in the dim light of my quarters—the brig, I thought, with another lazy laugh—I wasn’t intimidated by her. She was too beautiful and I was too high.
“Remember this later.” My voice slurred. I patted her hand, nodding as if I’d said something sage and unquestionable.
She laughed. “Okay, you need to get some sleep and I need to get my own implant out.”
I closed my eyes and smiled. Yes, sleep was a good idea. My head throbbed. Staying conscious under the weight of the lingering sedatives was a constant struggle. I patted her hand again, then let it go.
“Remember this later,” I said again, yawning around the words. I mumbled the rest. “Remember how I let you cut into me so I could be alone with you in the silence.”
After stowing away in a crate, being barked at by a man/wolf/dog, watching someone’s flesh disappear, witnessing the destruction of an entire planet and its inhabitants—including my parents—going on my first spacewalk, and having a twelve-year-old implant that may as well have been an eye or an ear surgically removed, there was only one cure for the inevitable ache that followed.
A shower.
Never underestimate the sheer ecstasy of hot water—a luxury I’d come to appreciate more than I’d ever imagined now that I was on the lam and homeless in the black. Water, hot and clean, beat against my back, my calves, my stomach, my face. I hoped the heat would sear off all my sweat and sadness, vaporizing it before the water could hit the floor. Every droplet was so exquisite I didn’t even care that my arms and legs bumped the walls with each movement in this cramped facility. I didn’t care that, despite the water-resistant sealant on my incision, the heat of the shower hurt just as badly as when I turned my head.
Pain meds only did so much. Even breathing moved my skin just enough to pinch at the piece of me that was missing.
I could almost feel its absence tugging at my confused brain: Where has my implant gone, where is my companion? Where are her wires? Where is her metal? Where is the “we” we have come to know? I was mapped onto her, and she onto me, and now she’s gone and I am alone.
The water cut off.
The door flew open and I scrambled for a towel, fingertips missing it by mere centimeters.
“Oh girl, you’re going to have to get over that,” Slip said, laughing. I looked around to see if anyone else could see me, but she was alone. “Privacy is just about meaningless up here. And get over the idea that you can take those long showers you dirtheels are so used to. You think the Tangled Axon carries an ocean in her belly or something?”
“Sorry,” I muttered, then nodded at the towel on the metal bar just outside the stall. “Could you?”
She tossed it at my face. I grabbed it and wrung out my hair. Had Tev told her what I’d said about being alone with her in the black? I was high, she couldn’t hold that against me—
“Your sister is asking for you. Also, here.” She shoved more fabric at me and I grabbed it, feeling ridiculous—cold and naked and dripping pools of water all over the bathroom floor, with laundry in my arms.
“Don’t look so pathetic,” she said. “They’re clothes. To wear. On your body. We figured you’d want something other than the greasy things you’ve been wearing. The pants are mine, so they’ll probably fit. The shirt is Tev’s, so don’t ruin it by stretching it out.”
“Right. Thanks.” As if I could tell my body not to stretch out a shirt that fit snug around my curves. I toweled myself off, ignoring the nagging sense of shame in the back of my mind. They might not have been a military crew, but obviously there was a similar no-modesty culture here that I’d just have to get used to. It was never like this on the station. So much room, all those empty corridors. Kugler’s laughter sounded infinite up there.
“Nova wants to see me, huh?” I tried focusing on anything other than my memories, made all the more difficult to suppress by the lingering pain meds. Of course, the tiny, cramped shower stall made it a little easier to ignore my thoughts when I was too busy being self-conscious and trying not to fall over while I dried off. If I stepped out t
o get dressed, I’d probably end up brushing against Slip while I pulled up the pants. That wouldn’t be embarrassing or anything.
“Won’t say what she wants,” Slip said. She leaned against the door. “She’s not the most down-to-earth person I’ve ever met.”
“She can be friendly.” The cargo pants were a bit baggy, but not so bad they’d fall down. I pulled the tank on and tried not to think about the fact that I was wearing Tev’s shirt and her girlfriend’s pants. Tried, and failed. “Nova’s just been through a lot.”
Sliding the bathroom door open, Slip gestured for me to follow her down the corridor. “Yeah, so have you, and you’re not acting like you’re too good to drink our water.”
I wanted to tell her to ease up. I was hard on my sister, but she was my sister, after all. I was allowed to be.
“Anyway,” she said, pausing at Nova’s door two units down. Just next to the entrance was another of those silver charms. “Tev wants you to talk to her about the othersiders while you’re in there. Feel her out, see if she’s up for helping us. This whole thing will go a lot smoother with her help. Especially now that we have to fly under the radar.”
Fear twisted my stomach into a knot. If the enforcers caught up to us, they’d never believe we weren’t guilty of the massacre. We’d spend our lives on a penal colony with no sky in sight.
“I’ll do what I can,” I said.
“Tev would tell you to do more than that.” She looked at me pointedly. “I’ll just say ‘do your best.’”
I smiled a little, then knocked.
“Come in,” Nova sang.
“Oh, and don’t wander around the ship,” Slip said, then left.
Inside, Nova was curled up on her bed, knitting with what looked like tendrils of light, dress pooled around her in a sapphire lake of silk. Her fragile fingers did the work without the aid of needles. A small diamond of woven brightness, like a mote of starlight, dangled from her moving hands. Instead of the end of the thread disappearing into a skein of yarn, it simply vanished into the air.
Ascension: A Tangled Axon Novel Page 11
