by Gary Gibson
Tarrant ducked around, catching hold of him before Bash landed on the floor.
‘He’s gone into cardiac arrest,’ shouted Tarrant. ‘We need to get him in a medbox immediately.’
Megan pushed past Schelling and Sifra, took one of Bash’s arms and draped it over her shoulder, then helped Tarrant drag him back out and along the corridor towards the medboxes they had passed earlier. Tarrant held on to him while she cracked the lid of one of them open, then they both lifted him inside before closing it again.
‘Dear God,’ said Schelling, stepping up beside them. ‘I have never in all my days seen anything like that before.’
Sifra arrived at that same moment. ‘Nor me either. The damn thing’s never talked to us directly before.’
Schelling turned to Megan. ‘You’ve just proven your worth, Miss Jacinth,’ he said. ‘If I hadn’t seen that with my own eyes, I wouldn’t ever have believed it.’
Megan nodded wordlessly, feeling too tired to care what he wanted to say.
It’s all over, she realized; everything she had fought for. She had managed to escape from these people, then all too easily walked back into their arms. Perhaps, she thought, she deserved nothing better than whatever fate waited for her now at Schelling’s hands.
Before long the guards returned to lead her back out and across the courtyard, the bioluminescent algae clinging to the roof of the cavern still shining down on them. It felt wrong, somehow, to witness such beauty under such dreadful circumstances.
Megan’s despair only increased as they locked her inside a windowless room. Despite her fatigue it took her a long time to fall asleep, and when she finally did, curled up in a foetal position on the floor, she dreamed of that moment she had been reborn, on an examination table, over twenty years before.
TWENTY-FIVE
Megan
2742 (twenty-one years before)
Megan remembered her first ever breath with razor-sharp clarity. She had opened her eyes, her last memory being that of dying, and found herself strapped to a table. Half a dozen faces, all of them entirely unfamiliar, stared down at her with cold and calculating gazes.
She had died when a star, in its final death throes, had torn apart the Magi ship she had piloted to the very edge of the galaxy, in the hope of finding some way to halt the Nova War then threatening life throughout the Milky Way. Her search had led her to a Maker Swarm, a cloud of interlinked alien machines whose sole purpose was to prevent the rise of other interstellar civilizations, only for it to cripple and then destroy her precious ship.
As she lay immobilized on that table, she knew herself only as Dakota Merrick. She did not yet know that her thoughts and memories now occupied the body of a young woman who had, until only a few hours before, been the Speaker-Elect of the Demarchy of Uchida.
One of those gazing down at her – a fresh-faced young man who introduced himself as Thijs – took it upon himself to explain to her, in precise and laborious detail, exactly how she had come to be where she was – and what they wanted from her. She had actually died, he explained, more than two centuries earlier, and had subsequently been resurrected by yet another Magi ship. And if she wanted to live for more than just the next few hours, she would do exactly what was required of her.
She had died. Then somehow the same Magi ship that had transported her to the Maker Swarm had, in its last moments of existence, transmitted her memories and thoughts to others of its kind. And one of those others had subsequently come to crash, burned and crippled, here on Redstone.
If she only cooperated, Thijs explained, she would be allowed to live. Failure to cooperate, however, would cause her to be tortured until she divulged the information they wanted – information she could already sense looming large in the data-repositories of her machine-head implants.
As she had stared up at those callous and overfed faces, she knew deep down in her gut that they were lying to her. They had no intention of letting her survive, whether or not she cooperated. They had brought her back to life just so they could murder her all over again once she was no longer of use to them.
She had refused to cooperate, in the strongest terms possible. She kicked out with one foot, catching one of them under the chin. He staggered away, clutching at his throat. It then needed all of the rest of them to hold her down on the table.
She watched, helpless, as the one called Thijs stepped over to a trolley carrying a variety of instruments, some of them razor-sharp, arranged in neat rows on its surface. He had lifted one up, and it glittered as it caught the light.
A dreadful eternity passed for her on that examination table.
After a few hours, they left her still strapped to it, bruised and bleeding and half mad, with the promise that they would return soon. And, when they did, Dakota knew she would tell them anything and everything they wanted to know.
And then, she also knew with equal certainty, they would kill her.
She lay there for a long time, whimpering and sobbing beneath the mercilessly bright lights, until she heard the sound of approaching footsteps, a steady rhythm like the ticking of a clock measuring out the last seconds of her life.
But the young man who stepped through the door of the chamber moments later was not one of her torturers.
‘Esté,’ said the stranger, his face full of alarm and shock as he stepped further into the room. He dropped a heavy backpack onto the floor next to the examination table on which Dakota lay strapped. ‘Esté, what have they done to you?’
He hurriedly undid the straps holding her down, then reached out his fingers to her cheek. Despite herself, Dakota flinched from his touch.
He frowned and withdrew his hand. ‘I came for you,’ he said. He wore a military uniform of some kind. ‘Just as I told you I would.’ His eyes passed over her bruised and torn flesh, as if seeing her injuries for the first time. ‘But I never imagined this . . .’
She sat up carefully, unsure of how she should respond to him or what she should say. Glancing past him, she saw to her dismay that someone else had now entered the cell behind him. It was a girl with large, dark eyes, her head cleanly shaven, and wearing a plain paper smock identical to the one Dakota wore.
She returned her gaze to her would-be rescuer. Whoever this young man was, she felt sure he was suffering from a case of mistaken identity. She was in no mood to correct him, however.
‘Esté?’ she echoed, as he helped her down from the table. She found it difficult to stand at first, and had to grab hold of the edge of it with both hands. ‘That’s my name?’
He frowned, his expression now becoming deeply confused. ‘What the hell are you talking about? It’s me, Malcolm, and we need to get you out of here.’
‘I’m having trouble remembering things,’ Dakota said carefully.
He put both hands on her shoulders and stared into her eyes. ‘Esté, for God’s sake, you don’t seriously mean to say you don’t remember me?’
Esté, she realized, must be the name of the Speaker-Elect – the girl who had formerly occupied this body. And this man Malcolm, she guessed, had been her lover. Somehow, either one or both of them must have discovered the truth about what would happen to her once she became merged with the Magi ship.
Or rather, she suspected, they had uncovered part of the truth as it had been explained to her by Thijs. It was obvious that Malcolm had no idea that the process Esté had undergone mere hours before had driven all of her thoughts and memories into oblivion.
She stared at Malcolm with a mixture of pity and horror, wondering how she could possibly tell him his sweetheart was gone forever, and that someone else entirely now resided within her skull.
But if she did, she reminded herself, he might not feel so committed to rescuing her.
‘Yes. I remember,’ she said, reaching out with one faltering hand to touch his cheek. ‘Malcolm, it’s just . . . the things they did to me make it hard to think straight.’
He stared at her for another long moment, then knee
led by his rucksack, pulling out clothes, a pair of boots and some breather masks.
‘Get dressed,’ he said, handing her the garments and one of the masks. ‘We don’t have much time.’
The clothing proved to be a uniform similar to Malcolm’s own, and was clearly tailored for a male wearer. She tore off her paper smock and hurriedly pulled it on. The uniform hung loose on her, but it proved a great deal warmer than the smock.
She glanced up towards the girl standing shivering by the door, looking dejected and frightened.
Malcolm turned to the girl, too. ‘Get on the table,’ he told her. ‘And, remember, tell them nothing.’
She nodded and stepped forward, taking care not to even look in Dakota’s direction. She climbed wordlessly onto the table and lay back, as Malcolm secured her ankles and wrists with the same straps used before.
‘What’s going on?’ Dakota demanded. ‘What the hell are you doing to her?’
‘She’s our decoy,’ he replied. After securing the final strap, he grabbed hold of Dakota’s wrist and pulled her towards the door. ‘They’ve been sending guards to check on you every half-hour, so we need to go now, before they return.’
Dakota reached up and touched her own scalp for the first time, only to discover, with a shock, that she was just as bald as the other girl.
‘My hair,’ she exclaimed, ‘what happened to it?’
‘They shaved it off, remember?’ he said. ‘To “facilitate the bonding process”?’
She studied the girl again, looking so young and so very frightened. ‘We can’t just leave her here like this,’ she said. ‘They might—’
‘Her family’s been very well compensated,’ interrupted Malcolm impatiently. ‘She’s not here against her will.’
‘But she’s not even bruised or scarred,’ said Dakota. ‘Surely they’ll figure out what you’ve done, the moment they see her?’
‘The guards are simply expecting to find a bald girl strapped to a table,’ snapped Malcolm. ‘Thijs himself won’t be returning for at least another hour, and that’s all the time we need. Now hurry!’
‘No, wait,’ she said. ‘We can’t—’
‘For God’s sake, Esté,’ he exploded, raising his voice for the first time. ‘We discussed this already and we agreed. It’s either you or her, except she gets a choice in the matter. Now come on.’
She felt too weak to resist as he dragged her out of the room and along a passageway. They descended several flights of steps before arriving at an airlock, next to which lay the bodies of two men in uniforms identical to Malcolm’s own. One of the men had a dark stain spreading across his chest, while the head of the other seemed to be twisted at an odd angle.
Dakota studied Malcolm with new respect as he hauled the airlock door open, and she wondered what kind of woman Esté must have been to inspire such fierce, and deadly, devotion.
Inside the airlock, a pair of cold-weather jackets and matching over-trousers hung on hooks. They quickly pulled them on.
‘Here.’ Malcolm handed her a thick, knitted cap, which she looked at questioningly as she took it from him. ’To help keep you from being recognized,’ he explained, then nodded to her head. ‘And to hide those.’
Dakota reached up again to feel the bumps and contours of the implants beneath her scalp. Clearly Esté had been a machine-head as well. The cap, when she put it on, fit warm and snug around her ears. She next pulled on her breather mask and followed Malcolm out into a crisp, cold night.
Glancing behind, her gaze moved up along the broad curve of a Magi ship’s hull, looming above the building from which they had just emerged. It looked like some vast leviathan of the deep, washed up from unknowable depths and towering over everything beneath it.
She looked further to see that the ship actually leaned against the broad face of a cliff. Dozens of other buildings circled the base of the ship like watchful guardians, and were interlinked by a tangle of metal walkways and stairways.
Turning the other way, she saw a three-metre-high wall, illuminated by tall arc lights, standing perhaps a hundred metres away. She followed it with her eyes and realized that it ran all the way around the Magi ship itself and the various buildings surrounding it.
Malcolm pulled her in the direction of a row of half a dozen structures close to a gate set into the perimeter wall. They were moving so quickly that Dakota, with legs shorter than Malcolm’s, almost had to break into a run to keep up with him. As they came abreast of what she now recognized as warehouses, Malcolm drew her towards a vehicle parked in the shadows between two of them.
It consisted of little more than an open chassis mounted on a set of bulbous wheels. A man in the driver’s seat, his face half hidden by a breather mask, nodded a greeting to Malcolm.
Malcolm pushed her into a bucket seat in the rear before climbing in next to the nameless driver. ‘Strap in,’ he instructed her, ‘in case we have to make a break for it.’
The car slowly drove out from between the two warehouses, then headed straight for the gate. Two large steel-plate doors slid apart automatically at their approach.
Sirens began to sound through the night air, echoing off the face of the massive cliff. The sliding doors suddenly came to a halt, then began to close again, fast.
‘Go,’ yelled Malcolm, grabbing his companion’s shoulder. The vehicle shot forward, accelerating hard. It spun to a halt on the other side of the gate, having only narrowly avoided being sliced in two.
‘Close,’ said Malcolm’s friend grimly. Malcolm merely nodded, looking shaken.
They got under way once more, rapidly picking up speed. They were soon racing downhill along a nearly deserted access road, with the sound of sirens still wailing behind them. At the bottom of the hill, a city brilliant with light stretched out before them. Beyond it she could just make out the dark expanse of a mighty river or ocean.
Something buzzed overhead, shining a light down onto the road ahead. Their driver reacted by swerving violently into steep undergrowth, sending the vehicle crashing and bouncing down a vertiginous slope at such speed that Dakota felt sure it would flip over and crush them beneath its weight. Instead they bounced out onto a switchback road level with the rooftops of what looked like residential buildings situated near the base of the hill.
The driver swerved again, and suddenly they were passing along a narrow street. Dakota saw businesses and homes on either side, the machine that had buzzed them – probably a drone of some kind – now lost in a haze of light and noise.
The driver wove through another series of tight turns, before taking them down a steep ramp leading underground. Passing through an atmospheric containment field, they entered a brightly lit space that was broad and big and busy enough to constitute a whole subterranean city in itself.
Dakota pulled her mask down and breathed in air that tasted of sweat and smoke and a thousand other flavours that made her very, very glad still to be alive. After the freezing temperatures of the Redstone night, this underground community felt shockingly warm. She even began to sweat under her heavy coat.
Malcolm’s friend had barely slowed down. They careened along a thoroughfare with a bustling open market on either side, huge stone-and-steel pillars supporting the city streets above ground. Dazzlingly colourful images shifted and morphed above a warren of stalls and businesses.
‘Put your mask back on,’ said Malcolm, looking back over his shoulder. She saw he was still wearing his own breather mask. ‘It’ll reduce the chances of you being recognized, especially with all these pilgrims around. And besides, we’re not staying down here much longer.’
She pulled the mask back up, just as the car ascended another ramp, passing once more through a pressure field as they emerged on the surface. At that moment, Dakota caught sight of industrial docks situated just a few blocks away.
They began driving much more slowly, merging with any other traffic. The streets and squares were crowded with an enormous number of people, tens or perhaps eve
n hundreds of thousands of them jostling together. She decided these must be the pilgrims Malcolm had mentioned.
The two men turned to each other, laughing and grinning. ‘I’ve got a safe house ready for both of you,’ explained Malcolm’s friend. ‘You can hide there for the next couple of days at least, but after that they’re going to be searching for you through every inch of the city. Fortunately, having all these pilgrims around makes it easier to smuggle both of you out, once we’ve made arrangements.’
‘Something’s different about you, Esté,’ remarked Malcolm, turning to study her closely. ‘I can’t figure out what it is, unless they hurt you a lot worse than I feared they might.’
She reached out and took his hand, which was draped over the back of his seat. ‘Thank you for saving me,’ she said, with as much earnestness as she could muster, which wasn’t hard. ‘I owe you my life, Malcolm, but you shouldn’t have used the girl like that. It was wrong.’
Malcolm’s face clouded. ‘She was nothing,’ he said, his tone suddenly terse. ‘A nobody. Besides, she’s almost certainly dead by now. You should put her out of your mind.’
What kind of girl were you, Esté, that you fell in love with a man like this? She could hardly believe that someone who shared identical genes to her could ever fall for such a callous man. She wondered what Malcolm would do to her once he realized who and what he had rescued.
‘Tell me one thing,’ said Dakota. ‘That girl, what was her name?’
‘For God’s sake, Esté, what does it matter?’
‘Please,’ she said, fighting to keep the tremor out of her voice. ‘I really want to know.’
Malcolm looked away and shook his head, his nameless companion grinning with apparent amusement.
‘Jacinth,’ Malcolm finally said. ‘Her name was Megan Jacinth. Satisfied now?’
Megan Jacinth. She silently shaped the two words in her mouth.
The car was slowing as it came to a crowded crossroads, and Dakota now saw her opportunity. She reached down and unbuckled herself from her seat while Malcolm was looking the other way, then threw herself sideways out of the vehicle just before it began to accelerate once more.
