by K. Gorman
Gods, she hoped the thing was a direct mirror. She had, very purposefully, not been looking too hard at it. But even her few trips to the sani room had been fraught with second-guessing, wondering if this or that smudge had been in the real Nemina, or if the slight bend in the ceiling leading to Cargo One was at the same angle as it was in the real one. Things she would have never questioned—or even noticed—on the real Nemina were now popping up like weird brain ticks.
It was flying, at least. But she doubted she’d ever fully trust it to not just randomly stop. Which was probably why she had fallen asleep in the pilot’s chair. And hadn’t slept for very long.
“So,” he said. “Does this mean I have two ships, now?”
Another snort from her, though this one only resulted in a puff of air. “I suppose it does.”
He leaned his head against her arm and murmured, “You could make a killing on cross-dimensional resource extraction.”
“Or smuggling.” She glanced down at him. “That’s probably less effort on my part.”
“Mhmm.”
He took a deep breath and exhaled it out on her arm, his shoulders sagging as he relaxed toward her, as if her direction gave him comfort. She watched him for a few minutes, enjoying the intimate gesture. His eyes had closed, but she could tell that he wasn’t asleep, just resting. An ache started up the side of her back in response to her awkward, half-seated perch on the armrest, but she ignored it.
After a few moments, she also closed her eyes. She felt the rhythm of his breathing, felt the way his hand tightened where it still held her right hand—carefully around a piece that showed bruising.
Somewhere in the back of the ship, Soo-jin gave a disgusted yell. “Auuurgh! What the fuck is that?”
Karin opened her eyes.
What the fuck?
She and Marc exchanged a look—and huffed a laugh.
“You think Baik stripped naked and she walked in on him in the sani?” he murmured, keeping his tone low.
Karin groaned. “I did not need that image in my head.”
He snorted and patted her arm. “You and me both.”
The same disgusted yell came again, louder and more drawn-out, and this time followed by a lot more swearing.
“Sol’s fucking child. Is that seriously a dead baby?”
Karin froze, her mouth half open. Both eyebrows shot into her forehead.
Dead… baby?
As Soo-jin’s voice turned into a series of unintelligible grumbles, they both twisted back, switching their attention toward the aft of the ship.
“You know, half of me wants to go and see whatever the hell is going on back there,” she said, her chest taut. “The other half, however, wants to stay right the fuck here and pretend I didn’t hear any of that.”
“I definitely know what you mean.” By the wideness of his eyes, and the way his mouth, too, hung open, he was just as shocked as she was.
A clunk came from the back of the ship, along with more swearing. Unfortunately, it sounded like it came from past both the crew cabins and the Mess and toward the area the two doctors had set up in, which eliminated the possibility that they were playing a weird video game.
After a few moments, Marc’s head turned back to her. They exchanged a look.
“I guess we’re going back there, huh?” Her tone was flat. She blew out a breath and leaned her head back, resting it briefly on chair’s top cushion. Then, she grabbed onto the edge of the dashboard and extricated herself from the chair with a groan. “I’m going to regret this.”
Chapter Thirty-One
She was, unfortunately, correct in her recent deduction. They were not in Soo-jin’s room, nor in Cookie’s, which he shared with Marc. They weren’t even in the Mess, which would have made sense if Cookie had set up some video game to play. Instead, they were in the room on the left of the first junction, opposite the Med Bay, where Drs. T-Squared had set up their makeshift lab.
The space had an oblong pentagon shape, taking up an odd corner that followed the Nemina’s hull as it made its outward bulge into the back. It was marked as a Rec room in the original Scout-class blueprints, but had obviously been gutted before Marc took over, and they’d used it as storage on their scrounge missions.
Now, it housed several mismatched, partially-used piles of renovation materials, courtesy of Marc’s attempt to restore its rec-room function during their long stay on Chamak. A pile of prefab boards and warp-patches sat in the far corner, bookending one side of a wooden, wall-backed couch skeleton that he’d fitted to the room’s curve. A roll of faux-leather upholstery had been strapped in place underneath the frame, its rich teak color matching what she’d seen of furniture in Fallon archival photography.
The rest of the space had been taken over by three machines, the doctors’ gear packs, and the large, bulbous shape of the Cradle. Its lid had been pried off and rested on top of another machine, and there, right smack in the middle of the thing’s concave bottom, was a dead baby.
It—she—was tiny. Less than the size of a standard Novan gravdisc. Her skin tone had a rich, brown base to it, and her wrinkled, pug-like face, as if someone had flattened her nose and smooshed the rest of her features into the side of a box, was typical of newborn baby pictures she’d seen.
Nausea welled up through Karin’s gut and into the back of her throat as all the details registered—the wrinkled skin on her back, the mottled tint of her shoulders, like they’d been in water, the way her eyes seemed permanently closed as if she were a puppy and not a dead human child. Her hair was dark brown, almost black, and stuck to her head in soft tufts. Her hands and feet were curled up, less like fists but turned in awkwardly like someone with a muscular disorder, or who was in pain.
The sick feeling rose inside her, feeling like a thick, acidic eel churning against her diaphragm. The entire room was silent, staring, a mixture of abject stoicism, disbelief, sickness, and disgust on each face. Everyone was there—Nomiki just inside the door, with Jon next to her. Baik sat on the crossbeam of the couch, leaning forward with an expression of unrestrained disgust. He looked a little paler than normal, but not as much as before. Despite the exhaustion that cut two heavy lines under his eyes, and the raw, angry remnants of the knife wound visible on his neck, his eyes were bright, sharp, and alert. Cookie was on the floor in the corner next to him, half-hidden between leftover renovation debris with the shivering display of a netlink open on his lap. He carried the same raccoon-ish exhaustion as Baik, and she spotted a Hyperspace Mouse canister on a box beside him.
Soo-jin and Shinji stood next to the Cradle, clearly the ones responsible for removing its lid. Takahashi was farther back. A trace of bruising still darkened his wrist where one of the Centauri had manhandled him, but he’d changed clothes, and it looked as though he’d been to the sani room. Though some stubble had begun growing in patches along his jaw and neck, his hair was soft and clean, brushed. Shinji’s, by contrast, had an oily sheen to it, and she could still smell the bomb smoke from the field. The right side of his forehead had a smudge of dirt that he hadn’t cleaned off yet.
“Are those cords… coming out of her?” Nomiki asked, tilting her head for a better look.
Karin spotted the spill of black cables that, yes, were coming out of the baby’s back—there were at least three of them, all plunging into holes in the Cradle’s interior surface—but her brain refused to register it. It felt as though every ounce of air had left the room. A ringing rose in her ears. Her knees wobbled, weak, and Marc’s arm went around her. She relaxed as he drew her into a hug, trying to draw strength from the warmth and stability of his presence behind her, to breathe in the soap and sweat scent of his body—but the cold of the room, and the stark, cracked-open truth of the Cradle had hit her chest like an electric shock.
Lords, Cradle.
That name had certainly taken on a much larger implication.
She shuddered as a second bout of nausea flew up her gut.
Fuck me, we
should have stayed on the bridge.
“They are,” Soo-jin confirmed.
Karin turned her disgusted expression on Takahashi. “And you knew nothing about this?”
“No, I had no idea. This is…”
His jaw tensed, along with his neck. By the slip of expression on his face, he was battling a similar nausea to her own. It was satisfying, in a way, to see the realization click within him. They’d had arguments before about the Eurynome Project, with him insisting that it was not as evil as it seemed. That people— like Lenora Pliska, Program Skogul—had gone on to live happy and successful lives.
Of course, Lenora had been raised on the Sirius side of things, in a different lab, and under a well-tested Super Soldier program.
The Earth-based project she and Nomiki had gone through had been radically more experimental, and much more deadly.
Even though he’d known about the death rate, he’d had a hard time admitting that the Eurynome Project was, inherently, a bad thing.
Seeing it, she thought—actually seeing a child dead in front of him—had impressed the situation into his mind with a strength that she, over many, many arguments, had not been able to.
She relaxed into Marc’s hug and took a breath. The scent of newly-opened prefab slipped into her nose, the chemical taste making her stomach churn. She shoved it back with a shudder, shrugged out of his grip, and stepped toward the Cradle. “Okay, so there are cords. What are they doing? Keeping her preserved?”
“Whatever it is, it’s using a charge.” Cookie made a gesture to the bottom of the Cradle, the screen of his netlink blinking as he leaned forward. “There’s a battery pack in there that’s been feeding it.”
She scowled. “I thought this thing was supposed to be empty.”
“So did we. Then we took off the lid.” Soo-jin’s lip curled. Her arms crossed over her chest, but there was a tension to them Karin didn’t often see. And she had yet to take her eyes off the child.
It had unsettled her.
And for good reason. It was a fucking dead baby.
She swallowed, her mouth and throat suddenly dry. Fingers of cold tapped up the sides of her back. A pause filled the room, everyone frowning down at the baby, deep in concentration.
Ever so slightly, the baby’s hand twitched.
Nearly every person in the room jumped back with a yell—and several very colorful swears.
“Sol’s fucking child.” Soo-jin caught her breath with a grimace, having whacked her hip into the diagnostic machine behind her—apart from Shinji, who also stood next to the Cradle, she had been the closest person. “She’s alive? Or was that a nerve thing?”
Karin’s jaw dropped open.
No. No way was this baby alive. The compound had been abandoned for… well, probably not the seven years since she and her sister had escaped, but likely close to it. Even the other lab, back on Nova Earth, had been abandoned for two to three years at the most if Soo-jin’s guess on that radiometry machine was accurate.
It had to be a nerve thing. Maybe that’s what the cords were for?
Soo-jin bent forward in a halting, hesitant matter. One hand paused, then peeled out from the tense armhold she’d made of her chest. When she reached forward to touch the child, the entire room went still.
The baby twitched again.
Karin avoided flinching. Just barely. But she narrowed her stare.
“Check her eyes,” Marc said from behind her.
She frowned, processing that.
Then, when she did, the blood drained from her skin.
Oh, ten hells.
By the grim, unhappy expression on Soo-jin’s face, she must have had the same realization. Without a word, she reached over and pressed an eyelid open.
The eye was pitch black.
The baby was Lost.
But… how? With the lab abandoned, she would have had to become Lost seven years ago—well before the Shadow attacks.
Then again, both Tylanus and Sasha had been there at the time. And Tylanus had demonstrated his darkness powers to her and Nomiki before then.
“Suns,” Cookie said.
“Suns,” echoed Shinji.
By the end of the room, Takahashi looked like he’d swallowed a slug.
“Stem cells.” Shinji snapped his head up to meet the other doctor’s eyes. “Would they have been keeping her for stem cell purposes?”
“No. No need to.” Takahashi’s voice cracked, raw. He cleared his throat. The expression on his face was still mixed. Shocked to the very core. “She’s a Lost?”
He seemed unsure, distracted. Disbelieving.
“Yes,” Karin said, feeling the snarl on her lips. “She’s a Lost.”
“A freakin’ zombie baby,” Cookie said. “At least she’s not… suffering?”
“We don’t know that,” Soo-jin said, her nose crinkling and her voice growing stronger. “We don’t know what happens when someone’s Lost.”
“Weren’t you Lost?” Cookie asked.
“Yeah, and so were you. You remember what happened to you? How about how we felt? No?” Soo-jin dropped her tone. “We don’t know shit when someone’s Lost. Not remembering doesn’t mean that we didn’t suffer. We just don’t remember it.”
“It doesn’t mean that we did suffer, either.” Cookie lifted his hands in a defensive posture when she rounded on him. “Look, I’m just trying to look on the bright side of this.”
“There’s an undead baby in a mad science capsule on our floor!” Soo-jin said, making a violent gesture toward the Cradle. “I don’t think there is a bright side to this.”
Soo-jin paused for a moment, eyes closed, body tense. Then, she took a breath and lifted her hand toward the two doctors. “You were saying something about stem cells?”
“No, you wouldn’t need to keep an entire child alive just for stem cells. There are different, more convenient ways of storing them. Genetic material, on the other hand…”
“As in, they needed genetic material from this child?” Karin cast her gaze down at the baby, doubt lifting her tone. “To make the Eurynome Project work?”
Takahashi threw his hands up. “I have no idea. I was just a brain surgeon.”
She was breathing faster now, aware of her chest expanding and contracting, staring at the child, trying to come to grips with the situation.
Her gaze latched onto the cables. Her lungs stopped dead.
“You… you said, when you were examining the laser-injector, that it and the Cradle were made for organic computing?”
Sol’s fucking child. Was this what Tia had meant when she’d talked about Cradle bases?
She closed her eyes, shut the image out.
Gods, this can’t be happening.
“She… she looks a bit like Dr. Sasha,” Soo-jin said, as if reading her thoughts.
Karin’s stomach churned like a clot of lead. Her eyes flew open, examining the baby once again—though her hair lacked Sasha’s voluminous quantity, the color certainly looked close to the doctor’s natural shade, and her skin tone was a close match, as well.
The rest—body structure, facial features—was hard to tell at such a young age.
Gods, she’s so small.
Her tiny hand gave another jerk, along with part of her chest this time, as if she were sleeping.
Karin hunched her shoulders, tightened the grip on her arms across her abdomen, and gave a dry swallow.
“Tia talked about Cradle bases. Said Sasha was one.”
The room went silent. She felt eyes on her.
Soo-jin sucked in a sharp breath. “You don’t think—”
“No.” Cookie’s tone was too loud, short. Choked.
“She’s hooked up to a machine.” She brought her eyes up to the two doctors, pinning them with a wavering stare. “You said it yourself—organic computing.”
“Gods and saints,” Soo-jin muttered, covering a hand over her mouth and hunching. “Clio.”
“That’s absolutely horrific. She
’s alive.” Cookie’s mouth snapped shut. He sat up, spine erect, the shock, fear, and sickness flashing to anger. “Karin, could you… fix her?”
Make her un-Lost, he meant.
“I’m not sure that’s such a great idea,” she said, glancing down.
“No, it definitely isn’t.” Soo-jin gestured down, the movement too fast, violent. “There are cables coming out of her head.”
“Mother of God,” Karin swore, slipping back into her old, English-speaking roots. Her stomach rippled again. She caught Shinji’s gaze. “Well, that’s biomechanical, right? Your department?”
He threw his hands up. “And I’ll work on it, trust me, but as of right now, we have zero idea what is happening with this child. We need time.”
The room quieted. Everyone stared at the baby.
“Okay.” Nomiki straightened off the wall. “Let’s put the undead baby aside for a moment. That shitfest with the Centauri fucked up our plans. We need to regroup and come up with a new one. Starting with you, sis. Your bone and muscle density have increased since your last scan.”
Karin’s head whirled at the sudden change in topics. She dragged her gaze away from the child as Nomiki rounded on her. Her eyebrow twitched, then smoothed, uncertain at the sharp, careful expression on her sister’s face.
“Is… is that an elaborate way to tell me I’ve gained weight?”
Her gaze flitted around the room. By the mix of guilt, caution, and concern on the others’ faces—and the way Cookie ducked her stare—it was clear that they’d already discussed this.
Fuck.
“No. Well, yes,” Nomiki amended. “You’ve gained a kilo of muscle since your last scan. I didn’t notice it at first, since I was looking for other things, but—”
“It’s an alarming change in your body constitution,” Takahashi put in, his tone delicate and precise.
A kilogram of muscle… She frowned and resisted the urge to look down at herself.
“That’s definitely alarming. My last scan was, what, yesterday?” With the fuckery of changing timezones across planets, it was hard to keep track of where, exactly, they were in the standard cycle. “Less than forty-eight hours ago? Takahashi, did you—?”
