“People don’t survive that. There’s no cure.” Miranda’s voice had the confident tone of someone who knew her illnesses.
“I know. I was like a medical miracle. Everyone gave up. Everyone. Even my dad, but I remember her taking me to get experimental treatment all over the world, fighting to keep me alive, sitting by my bed, holding my hand. She never left.”
“You couldn’t have known what would happen,” Simon said again, trying to make it better, trying to soften what she’d done. What she was.
“I abandoned her when she needed me most. My father would be ashamed of me.” Her heartbeat grew light like her heart had lost some of its muscle and couldn’t pump anymore, and her knees felt like someone had removed the tendons. Ionia teetered, and Den appeared at her side, holding her, edging out Miranda
Miranda’s hands fluttered nervously from Ionia to her own face and covered her mouth. “Ionia.”
“I have to go home.” The answer was simple and final and gave Ionia a small sense of release.
“You can’t. There’s the storm and do you want to see, to be where...” Miranda’s voice trembled, tears threatening.
But there was no reason for tears because Ionia knew something the rest of them did not. Her mother was too tough to die, and whether Feinstein believed her or not, there were places in the station her mother could hide.
“I’m sure I can talk my father into a trip there once everything settles down.” Simon maneuvered in front of her and cupped her hand in his, patting it on both sides. Den held tight to her elbow and pulled her closer.
“That won’t be soon enough. She could be dying.”
“Promise me you aren’t going to do anything crazy.” Simon looked unblinking into her eyes.
She looked right back, face stone still, unblinking. “Sure.” She instantly lied. Nothing was going to keep her here. Nothing. Her mother was in trouble.
“Patience is a virtue,” Den said.
“Still glitching, huh?” Ionia said, and she faced Den.
This time Den inclined his head and met her stare. His face showed frustration, harsh drawn lines, tight mouth, flaring nostrils as if he were fighting a gag. With a tiny jerk of his chin, his expression relaxed. He fixed her with his eyes and let the edges of his lips turn up. He squeezed her forearm, giving her support. It was nice having someone on her side.
Even a malfunctioning someone.
###
Back in Simon’s chambers, they tried to distract her. Played vidclips. Offered games and food and music. Nothing drew her attention. Nothing comforted her. The time stamp on the wall read 0600, and Ionia’s bones hung heavy like they’d been coated in metal, collapsing in on her, pulling her down into a tar pit of tired.
Miranda stretched and stifled a yawn. Simon’s eyes drooped. They were trying to be supportive, to be there for her, but what she needed was their absence. If she told them what she planned, gave any inkling that she wanted to leave, she’d be screwed.
They would have to tell their father or risk lying to him, and she wouldn’t ask that after everything they’d already done. Simon had already lost something precious to him. But how was she going to get out without them knowing? They both were just too damn supportive. She took the offensive.
“I don’t think there will be any more news tonight. I’m going to get some rest. Come on, Den.”
Simon and Miranda stood. “Are you sure, IO?” Simon asked.
Ionia pressed her lips together, rolled them in and bit them closed to stop her mouth from saying the wrong thing, or accidentally dropping a hint, or even begging them to come. The journey wasn’t meant for them. Too dangerous. She had to go. They didn’t.
Simon’s shoulders sagged, and Miranda dipped her head, one hand pressed to her face as if nursing a wound.
Ionia moved toward her guest room. She paused at the top of the stair and caught a glimpse of herself in a floor-length mirror. Her freshly washed hair medusaed in a hundred directions, and she wore borrowed soft, cotton nightclothes. They would have been loose on tiny Miranda, but fit Ionia perfectly, all pastels and ponies. She looked like a kid. Everything but her eyes. Her eyes looked older, tired, sad, determined.
She searched in her bag and changed into her warmest external clothes. The little naggy voice inside her head that sounded remarkably like her mother told her what a fool move it was to venture out onto the Wilds.
The weather, the craggy drops, the unstable ice sheet, waited like venomed beasts. Even with the protections and safeguards, people who didn’t prepare died.
And she was far from a survivalist. The storm that had blown up wasn’t guaranteed finished and could return at any moment. Ever since the turn of the century, the continent experienced super storms, rain, sleet, the whole gambit of weatheropia just like the rest of the world. She could be blazing into anything, from a dull, freezing wasteland to a small cyclone.
She pulled her hair into a low ponytail and yanked her thermal cap down. “Den, can you sense if anyone is on this floor?”
“I have a connection with the home security. All humanoids are accounted for within their chambers. The lower level is....is....need more data to process.” He looked mortified like a child who had been called on in enclass and didn’t know the answer.
“It’s okay. All your systems must not be fully working yet. We’ll just have to be careful.” She turned to face him and looked into his crystal eyes. “We can do it together.”
His mouth pursed as if to say something, his eyebrows crunched, his lips turned down and finally relaxed as if losing a silent battle. He nodded, more of a resigned head bow than a resounding affirmative.
They kept to the shadows and took the two flights of stairs to the garage.
The blazers waited in the half-light. The shadowed hunks of metal didn’t look capable of a cross town trip, let alone cross-continent. She wished she could hitch a ride with Cam, but even getting out of the Feinstein’s house would be difficult enough. And Ionia didn’t know how Cam would react to the attack, or to Ionia sneaking back home. She might just deliver her right back to the Feinstein house.
She had to do it. Easy or not. She had to get back. Her mom had to be there, hidden somewhere in the base, and she needed help.
“Can you override the lock and get us out of here?” she asked.
His cheek muscle flexed. “Easy as Sunday morning.”
She didn’t get the reference but watched as he unrolled his hand onto the panel. His palm glowed, and the panel glowed in response. The wide garage door clicked open, and the cold washed in like the waves on a beach. Her breath caught in her chest, stuck between an exhale of relief and a clasp of fear.
On the entry, wall hung a slew of ID key cards. She grabbed the card and scanned the garage. A cherry red blazer sat nearest the door. She took the staircase in three steps and swiped the tag against the startpad, but the engine didn’t fire. “Can you get this to start?”
“Requires bio identity to fire.”
Crap, crap, crap. Why did life have to be so hard? She couldn’t drag Simon or Miranda into this mess. But she couldn’t exactly walk over half the dang continent either. “Is there anything that you can do?”
“I have some of the male human’s DNA from when he invaded my chassis. Would you like me to clone it for access?”
“Damn, you are amazing. I just might make it to SPS in one piece.”
He stood waiting.
“Yes! Yes. Do it,” Ionia said.
A snap of blue electricity surrounded Den’s thumb, then a puff of smoke and the smell of burning flesh.
“Complete.” Den pressed his thumb into the ID pad, then swiped the template. The engine growled, then calmed to a purr. “We’ve got to get out of here fast. Set the GPS to the station and hop on.”
“I should guide the vehicle,” Den said.
“Uh, no.” Letting him have control of the vehicle so soon after having his issues wouldn’t be prudent.
Plus, she liked to
drive.
“I have sensory capability that would ensure your safety should the automatic global positioning fail to--”
“It will work. It always works.”
“Back in the colonizing days the settlers used dog sleds for transportation. The animals would sense crevices and drops, then due to new regulations limiting imports to only indigenous species, they were banned. No official agency has enforced the no canine rule in over forty-eight years.” He recited as if reading from a history DL.
His repair must still be messing with his function. “That’s the heat, but not while we are escaping. I will be driving with the help of auto pilot. I’m just as good as you.”
Den’s lips pressed tight until they lost color. His eyes avoided meeting hers directly.
Ionia chest squeezed, and a hot rush of blood spread to her cheeks. “I’ll show you I can drive. I’ll drive the hell out of that blazer.”
He may be an android, but he sure was a very male android.
She slid on the helmet, and then straddled the seat, with Den wrapped around her back.
Blazers came equipped with survival gear, warming equipment, and enough supplies to survive for a week, and it should only take a few hours to reach the station. The trip should be quick, uneventful, and painless. She pressed the garage door open and moved the blazer out of its parking space.
Sirens screamed, white lights flashed to red.
“Crap, the blazer has an alarm. Den, can you do anything?”
The garage entry started to close. Doors arose from the floor and slid down from the ceiling in some kind of burglar deterrent.
“Like now. Now would be good,” Ionia heard her voice squeak, and the words came out in one quick breath. She couldn’t explain this away. If they caught her, it would be bad.
He leaped from the blazer and placed his hands against the closing door. The mechanism groaned, but he stopped its downward motion. “Ionia.” Den pointed with his head for her to move.
Crap. She’d gotten so involved in watching him that she’d forgotten. She grabbed the handlebars and gunned the engine. The blazer lurched over the rough teeth in the floor and sped with a streak of fire into the snowy abandoned road. She jerked back from the force then fell forward until she realized she needed to release the hand control to make the blazer stop.
Her body felt wired and tight, and she made herself take a long, slow, deep breath to release the clinch in her stomach and chest. She swallowed and looked around. This thing was freaking fast! The blazer sat two blocks down the street. Den ran to catch up.
He reached her. Not even out of breath.
“Hop on.”
He complied and leaped onto the blazer in one smooth motion.
Most of the controls were automated, just press in the destination, and let the blazer do the work. She pulled up her facemask and was thankful for the droid’s heat against her spine. His arms snaked around her waist. “Ready?”
“No guts no glory.”
She tapped the hard display screen between the handlebars, and the Cortex screen appeared. She gave the final instructions and let the machine take over. Her stomach twisted, and she swallowed down the bile churning like an oil rig in her gut. She would get there in time. There was no other option.
Chapter Eight
Twilight glimmered at the edge of the horizon. It was sometime during the day, but she had no way to find out the exact time. Cortex access on the move was spotty out in the Wilds. All she knew was that with each heartbeat the chance of finding her mom alive shrank.
Faster. Faster. Faster. She pushed the machine to the max.
The blazer’s engine sputtered. The hand holds rattled as if they’d hit rough ice, then the blazer seized, jerked, and finally stopped. Her heart took a nosedive and only stopped when it crashed into her stomach. She and Den dismounted. “What’s wrong with the blazer?” She could hack a system all day long, but hard tech was Simon’s forte.
Den touched the screen. It glimmered for an instant, then fizzled dark.
“It would seem the fuel cells were damaged during our escape, and the lubrication is low.”
“It didn’t even warn me.” If it had, she hadn’t noticed but didn’t want to admit it to Den.
“I would have checked the fuel cells had I been piloting.” His tone danced dangerously close to an I-told-you-so.
She snorted and put up a hand to stop him from saying anything else that might darken her mood more. She needed to figure out a way to keep going. The world was all sky and snow as far as she could see. They were still on the ice sheet and hundreds of kilometers from civilization. The wind wiggled past her face mask and cut her skin. Not a great place to break down. “Can you get this working again?”
A low moan, unearthly and creepy, vibrated across the ice and sent fear spidering across her skin. “Is that you?” Ionia asked.
“No.”
Was she hallucinating? Cold-crazy already? Or maybe a shadow of things to come. The tundra would numb her brain until it finally slowed down and stopped.
The ice emitted a hollow groan. She grabbed Den’s arm. “What is that?”
“There is a disturbance below in the ice. Sixty decibels and it does not seem to be a threat. Wildlife.”
She thought back to one of the field trips her father had taken her on a few years ago. The sound suddenly made sense. “Seals! They sing to each other.” She knelt and put her ear close to the ice. Even though the material of her hood, she heard pulsing coos, alien as outer space, blipping in her hearing like old-fashioned radar. “It’s crazy. They can come so far inland now that the ice shelf is thinner. “
After all the stress and drama at the Feinstein house and the blazer breaking, this moment was a relief. Something she could savor. Like the time before all the crap, when she still lived in Mac Town. “How sanguine is this? Listen.”
“Ionia. We can not stay in this location. The residual heat from the blazer in one location is going to cause--”
A sound like wood snapping drowned out his voice. The sky swapped places with the ground. She slid and fell with the blazer into a fresh hole in the ice.
Faster than she could follow, an iron arm wrapped around her torso, dragging her back from the incline. Den pulled her against his body and leaped away.
Cracking, shattering, pieces of the shelf collapsed like paper mache. Den half ran, half skated and sprinted from the crumbling hole, holding her flush against him.
“We’re gonna die. We’re gonna die.” She couldn’t stop repeating. Her rigid body rolled in against him. She clenched every muscle, bracing for impact and shut her eyes.
Den stopped moving, and his arms relaxed. He placed her back on the ground.
“What happened?” She opened her eyes. The blazer hole was twenty meters away.
“We are far enough away to regroup.”
Her heart still slammed, stuck in high gear. Her hands shook. Den had saved her life. Again. “Thank you. Thank you. You really are a miracle.” She pulled him against her and squeezed. His body seemed warmer than normal but comforting.
He hugged her back, then pushed her away and met her eyes.
“My protocol says you must be returned to safety. Safe and sound. Safe as houses. Safehouse. Mac Town is safe.” He moved to grabbed her arm.
“No. No. No. Not again.” She scrambled away. She needed to take a pause and think, not a reenactment of protection protocols past. “Den your internal systems are malfunctioning. It might not be safer for you to take me to Mac Town.”
He paused. “I’m functioning. Perhaps not at optimum levels.” His voice sounded defensive, irritated even, but he didn’t advance.
Ionia let her breath slide out. At least now he could be reasoned with, not like when he’d first been activated.
“Let’s figure this out. How far away is the station?”
“We are 600 km from the station and 1000 km from Mac Town. There are better medical facilitates in the town.”
“How long would it take to walk to SPS?”
His face contorted, lips pressed together. “I have no connection to the Cortex, but before I lost connection…” He shook his head. “On foot……A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.” He stopped, squeezed his eyes shut, then reopened and focused on her. “Going forward, 122 hours, best estimate with data points given and average walking speed of 4.8 kph continuously.”
“More than five days without resting. Shit.”
“The next logical step would be to stay with the blazer. The constables will follow the path and locate us.”
“But the blazer has fallen to Timbuktu by now.”
“Impossible. The blazer followed a vertical path and Timbuktu is located on a different landmass.”
She sighed. “I understand. We can’t stay here, and going back is almost twice as far.”
“I have limited survival information. I stowed some equipment from the vehicle on my person. I suggest we continue. The storm is upon us, and the ice sheet will be extremely unstable with the breach.”
The ground groaned, not the friendly blip of seals, but something lower and more dangerous as if the ice had heard their conversation.
“Let’s find a more secure place.” Ionia pushed her voice high and light, but it dipped at the end, unsupported. Fake confidence was amazingly hard to fake.
Den lead the way, and they started their trek.
Ionia’s breath sucked in, ragged and raw, scraping her nose and throat. No matter how many layers and how self-warming her suit was, her hands and arms quivered, and she couldn’t seem to stop her teeth from chattering.
She coughed and could not stop. Wave after wave squeezed her lungs, doubling her over. Her eyes became twin balls of sandpaper and burned as if they had been scrapped against wood.
The jagged clampons treads on her shoes, even though they were made of metal grade plastic, made walking torture, weighting each step as if she walked in quicksand. But she had to wear them or slide into a crevice or down a slope. And once down, even with Den, it would be a lotto roll if she survived or not. Den had sensors to see in the darkness, so he stayed in front.
Frozen Hearts: The Ionia Chronicles: Book One Page 14
