by K. Gorman
Everything felt different. Being out of the suit simply made that more apparent. Inside the suit, her brain could explain it away as part of its strength, speed, and balance augmentations―but in regular clothes with no augments? There was no ignoring it. She was stronger than before, with noticeably thicker musculature and denser bones, and her brain worked faster―as if she had a higher processing speed than those around her. Thoughts came quicker and more numerous, and with a laser focus she had only experienced during times of either deep study or on the edges of panic.
She noticed everything. And could process and react to it within the span of a heartbeat.
Unfortunately, she was having trouble turning it off. Most of the time, she couldn’t help but notice everything, which meant that her mind was in a constant, high state of processing. Especially in the halls of the compound. They grated on her like a pressurized tube, too constricting, loud―gods, the sound of the lights made a physical sensation on her skin.
It was like her head was being simultaneously smothered and squeezed.
Then, there was Tia.
The second personality who occupied her mind was not precisely the doctor whose brain and brain stem hung in a tank downstairs. They’d both undergone changes. As part of their deal, Tia had copied a stripped-down version of her knowledge, memories, and personalities, cutting away extraneous parts of Karin’s psyche to fit.
New memories, not Karin’s, flitted through her head along with new knowledge. She suddenly had random chunks of data and expertise on subjects she’d never studied, some of it so ingrained and second-nature that she had to remind herself that, for example, she had not been an expert on genetics and gene sequencing before last week.
The crown on her head beeped, and a data chart appeared on the screen of the netlink in Takahashi’s hands, but the doctor didn’t move. A new urge to get up and go somewhere flashed across her mind, almost dragging her with it, but she forced herself to remain put, clenching her teeth until the muscles along her jaw had grown rock hard.
As much as she’d like to pretend she was now invincible―that she was fine―she knew that was wrong. On the first day, the headaches had seemed normal. She’d just heavily modified her brain in some outdated mad science lab. A headache had seemed a small price to pay.
But then, it became more than that. It felt like her brain couldn’t shut itself down. She slept for three hours at a time, and would wake up like clockwork. Her muscles always had a stiffness when she woke, and she had to do stretches before it would go away. Once, she’d woken up with a charley horse. She’d bit into the blanket while watching the muscle move, then limped to the Med for a relaxant.
And, already, her memories were beginning to cross-wire.
Sometimes, she’d catch sight of a tuft of hair out of the corner of her eye, and it’d be black instead of blond. Once, she’d caught a brief glimpse of brown skin instead of her usual space-pale white―too fast for her to be sure whether it was a memory or not.
She knew why, too.
The brain filtered everything that the eyes saw. Unless they were working overtime, it filled in a lot of the scenery, and it did so with what it expected to see.
And now, she had Tia’s thoughts and expectations overlapping her own.
It made her feel loose, fragmented.
But, somehow, also complete.
It was a confusing time.
Which was why she’d agreed that daily checkups were a good idea. Checkups from an unbiased, third party source like Takahashi, as opposed to the memories and expertise of the Old World geneticist she currently shared her brain with.
A flash of a brain in a tank came to her…the shivery undulation of fiber-optics and circuit-wires that had fanned out from it.
Cybernetics.
Christ on a fucking cross.
A new urge to get up and go flashed through her mind. She resisted it, digging her fingers into the prefab of the crate she sat on.
The diagnostics crown beeped again. She glanced up just in time to watch Takahashi’s normally-pensive expression shift into a contemplative frown.
“You’re running a little hot. Five degrees.”
She grimaced. She was no expert, but five sounded like a lot. “You think it’s from the changes?”
“Considering the fever is confined to your brain and brain stem? Yes, I think that’s likely.” An eyebrow arched upward. “I’ll remind you that most of this defies modern neuroscience. I find it worrying.”
“Yes, well,” she grunted, slipping the diagnostics crown off with a grimace and placing it on a nearby supply crate as she made to stand. “I find the imminent peril of being replaced by an alternate universe on the whim of a madwoman more worrying, so let’s continue to call it even, shall we?”
She’d said it with no small amount of bitterness―Gods, the whole entire thing was just so fucked up―but she couldn’t help the slip of fear that wavered into her tone.
For once, though, he actually seemed to notice. Dr. Takahashi paused, and his gaze slid from the diagnostics screens. Dark eyes, lined with thin wrinkles, met hers.
“You’ll get through this, Karin. You will. And I am here to help you do so.”
She tightened her jaw at the depth of his tone.
Something had changed in him. At some point in the last week, he’d acquired skin in the game. They all had, at one point or another. The crew of the Nemina had grown in number, but they had all fallen in to support her and figure out an end to this. Even when she was off on missions, they were still here on the ground, doing what they could to help.
There had to be a million other things Takahashi could be doing right now, yet he’d worked tirelessly to analyze what they had, and he always took time away from what he was doing to check up on her. Even when she was being such a crank.
A flutter of emotion churned in her gut. Grief, sadness, despair―but, almost as soon as the feeling crept up, it flitted away. What replaced it wasn’t cold, per se, not like she had envisioned it being. Instead it was just…absent. As if her emotional palette had simply grown smaller, and some of the colors had been cut out.
Her shoulders relaxed down, each muscle group precise in its movement, and she felt a breath slide out of her.
Selective psychopathy. She couldn’t feel some of the things she’d felt before, but she could certainly recognize their absence.
And it was eating at her like a hole.
But, slowly, that hole was filling in.
She still felt rage, after all. And bloodlust. And she was still capable of happiness.
Fuck me. That is not the combination I want.
A low reverberation caught her attention in the air. She lifted her head to the sky, recognizing the sound of a ship’s engine just as the Nemina’s new contact alert buzzed on her netlink―the Avius, a short-speed cruiser with part of the UN delegation on it. Even from a distance, she could see the difference in technology levels. Whereas the Alliance and Fallon vessels tended to float and flutter in the air, the Earth ship seemed more battered by the wind.
Odd, she thought. Earth wasn’t that behind on technology. They just didn’t have as much…success as the other systems.
The ship slowed as it approached, putting a shadow on the parking lot. She squinted against the rush of wind that buffeted the terminal, feeling the sweat dry on her skin. It landed just beyond the next vehicle, its exhaust leaving ripples in the air. Within seconds of landing, its engines were winding down, and there came the clunks of magnetic locks releasing on the ship’s doors.
“The Earth delegation?” Takahashi’s brows furrowed as he analyzed his guess, no doubt having read the ship’s identification number on the side panel: UN-1094-AVI. “I thought they were already here. Was I mistaken?”
“Most of them were here. We were waiting on representation from one of the northern spheres.”
“Ah. I had heard that they still used a multi-partisan system. How is that possible? It seems so…” His
mouth worked, and she recognized that he was both thinking of the problem while trying to find the correct wording for it. “Extraneous,” he finished. “Less decisive.”
“It’s historical, I expect,” she said. “Back when Earth was just warring factions. You can’t just change that after millennia.”
“We all came from Earth. We evolved and adapted. Did they not unite to form countries?”
She shook her head. “It’s…complicated. You need to look at the history. It’s not as cut and dry as it is in the Sirius system.”
“Sirius isn’t so cut and dry, either. We just overcame. We evolved.”
“Yes. And I hear that the Independents are very happy about that.”
The Independents, Sirius System’s technical third government, lived on the peripheries of the two system’s main governors. Where Fallon and Alliance failed to patrol, or failed to keep under control―or, likely, failed in many ways―the Indies stepped in. They lived largely in the Belt beyond Clemens, where the system’s two suns were merely stars, though there were pockets of Independent governance throughout the system. Small, ragtag communities that fell between the two empires’ cracks and had declared autonomy for themselves.
Mostly, Fallon and Alliance ignored them.
But they’d been gaining strength. And if you went at all into the Belt, they were the only ones who would help you.
Their main business, however, was piracy.
She shook her head, brushing the topic aside. “You’ll have to read up on it yourself, I expect. I’ve been a little too brainwashed to explain it properly. And have it make sense. Thank you, Doctor.”
He gave her a nod. “You’re welcome, Karin.”
She didn’t often thank him, but their conversation had felt a touch more intimate today. And he did do a lot of work for her. She pushed off, striding out from under the armpit of the Nemina’s wing where they’d stacked the excess cargo. Fallon had transported the Nemina from where they’d left it in Macedonia, then taken the Shadow Nemina―the ship she’d brought over from the Shadow World and used to escape the Centauri and fly to Brazil―into their custody.
It was currently under a series of tents and tarps, surrounded by scientific instruments, and being slowly picked apart.
The Avius’ engine still whined, audibly ticking as the components cooled, and she took a moment to listen to it, losing herself in the sound and the brightness of the sun on her face. She took a deep breath, shoulders slipping down. Voices came from the other side, as well as a few rumbles and bangs―people offloading something. The engine continued to cool, the noise slightly too high a pitch compared to the rest of the ships around them.
An old carbide engine block, she suspected. Soo-jin would know for sure, or perhaps Marc. Even if she hadn’t noticed the odd whine, the ship’s plating would have given it away. No one used rivets anymore, unless in deliberately vintage decoration, and though the bulbous, curvy design had come back into fashion, as was visible on the Alliance’s landed ships, the Avius’ profile was just too vintage to blend in.
Ah, Earth. Always lagging behind on the spaceflight tech.
Then again, most of its battles and wars had been terrestrial. It hadn’t needed the addition of a military space fleet for defense. Not even in the last war, when major nuclear damage had been dealt, did they extend into space. Mars wanted nothing to do with them, for one, and the only thing Sirius or Centauri were sending back through the gates were trade envoys and tourists.
She blew out a breath and gave herself a small shake.
Gods, she was tired. But she felt too restless to sleep. And she didn’t feel like going back to the Nemina right now.
Marc was in there. She didn’t want to see him just now. Her psychopathy was a giant bull of an elephant squeezed between them, and she had little intention to hash it out.
Either they would work, or they wouldn’t. And she didn’t care which way it went, which was a problem.
As if on cue, her netlink beeped. FSS Courant, notifying her of a mission briefing in the war room.
Her eyebrows dipped down into a frown, and she stopped walking, staring at it.
Another mission? She’d just come back from one.
Then again, they had been doing a near-constant stream of missions, lately. With her new modifications, she had something closer to Nomiki’s stamina with these things, and using her dimensional powers put a lot fewer soldiers in the line of fire.
Given that the Shadow attacks had kneecapped the Sirius systems’ military and civilian responses, and the fact that they were currently dealing with another Centauri nation in orbit―Finlai Center Core, who had not surrendered like the ones on Earth had―keeping the normal, non-magical troops out of the line of fire was a good idea.
But…
We need to find Sasha.
She let out a breath and closed her eyes, feeling the weight behind them.
“Fuck.”
She stayed like that for a moment, bringing a hand up to rub along the bridge of her nose.
Gods, she was tired. And another headache was starting to inch its way in.
She switched directions and headed for the long, elegant lines of the FSS Courant that was parked in a slant at the front end of the parking lot, dwarfing the trees and building beside it.
She had a job to do.
Chapter Three
She popped a quick-acting painkiller down her throat, snapped up a coffee pack from the Courant’s break room, and headed up the hall toward the war room, waving her fingers at a few soldiers and techs she recognized in the corridors.
She’d come to know the regulars fairly well over the past few days. Though the crew members rotated out more than she did―normal humans, as it happened, did not function well on little sleep and back-to-back missions―many of the faces had grown familiar.
The Courant was the main ship they’d used for missions.
She was just sipping her coffee and waiting for the doors of the lift to close when a shuffle of running footsteps came from outside. Eric Kalinsky, the UN representative from the United States, darted through the closing doors, giving her a smile as he positioned himself next to her.
At around six feet, he was a conventionally attractive man in his late forties with a thick ruffle of wavy blond hair, blue eyes, and a smile that was deliberately disarming. But, like most of the higher-level military politicians she was getting to know, the face masked a boatload of hidden goals and motivations.
She lifted an eyebrow as his late entrance made the doors beep a warning and shuffle back on their track again.
“Sorry,” he said, leaning forward to press the ‘door close’ button on the interface. “Thought I was a bit quicker than that, but by the time I started running, it was too late to save face and I was committed.”
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is a lie, Tia thought dryly.
Karin focused on him with a tired eye, not buying the excuse. He’d wanted to get her alone for a reason, and she doubted it had anything to do with the wait for the next elevator.
I haven’t had nearly enough coffee for whatever crap he’s about to serve.
Sure enough, when he turned back to her, his expression had gone from apologetic and joking to apologetic and serious.
“Ms. Makos―I was wondering if I could have a word.”
She gestured to the floor monitor at the top of the door. “You have about three levels. Go for it.”
He grunted. Then, to her surprise, he glanced over and pressed the emergency stop on the elevator panel.
The car halted abruptly between floors, and a small warning chimed from the panel.
‘Emergency stop detected. Maintenance notified. Please wait.’
Huh. Maybe this would be a more exciting conversation than she’d thought.
She lifted an eyebrow at the closed door. “Skating pretty close to the edge, aren’t you? You know they can hear us on the feed?”
“Yes, I’m aware.” This time, the s
mile had dropped some of its charm. He’d likely realized it was a wasted effort on her. Instead, a grimness set in, along with a slight frown. “They’re always watching you.”
She took a sip of her coffee. “I uploaded an unknown personality into my head and became a psychopathic killing machine a week ago. I’d be watching me, too.”
“It doesn’t bother you?”
“So long as we find a way to get to Sasha and they let me deal with it, I don’t give a shit.” She sighed. “I have to admit―I do think it’s a waste of resources.”
“Do you trust Fallon?” he asked. “The Alliance?”
“The Alliance? No. They burned that bridge when they kidnapped me. Fallon, yes.” She shrugged. “Every government has their secrets, and I expect Fallon is just trying to cover its ass with this surveillance thing.”
“And the Centauri?” he asked.
“What about them?”
“Do you trust them?”
That earned him a skeptical eyebrow. “The Centauri are not my problem. As far as I know, they’ve surrendered.”
“Half of them did,” he corrected. “The Menassi Tri-Quad Alliance, whose leader you defeated last week. The other nation, Finlai Center Core, reached a tentative ceasefire and is still active in orbit.”
“Good for them,” she said.
“Yes.”
He was giving her an odd look, as if trying to gauge her reaction. She met his eyes and, very deliberately, took another sip of her coffee.
“The Centauri have been watching you, too,” he said. “Just yesterday, Fallon shot down a Finlai spy drone over camp.”
“I’m a very popular person,” she said.
What was his point?
“I tried to speak to the Tri-Quad’s Commander Tillerman,” he said. “She referred me to you.”
“She should have referred you to General Crane. He’s the one in charge of all things Centauri.”
And he should definitely know that. He was a UN delegate, someone whose job it was to know who was who and what was what.
So, what was his point?
“Are you sure about that?” he asked quietly.
Her mouth dropped open, and she gave him a suspicious look. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
