by K. Gorman
Marc. That was not someone she wanted to talk about. Or think about.
Things were going sideways between them. Not in a dramatic way, but slowly. Like watching a satellite swing off its orbit. Every day, she felt more and more like she didn’t need him―and, every day, she wanted to be around him less and less.
Which was fucked. He was her boyfriend. Her partner.
And I can’t feel for him anymore.
Sometimes, it felt like her psyche dipped back toward being the person she had been―the feeling, empathetic Karin that loved him and had romantic feelings for him―but it was like watching a butterfly flutter on the other side of glass.
Interesting and beautiful to look at, but not something she could touch.
And she didn’t have time for it.
I have a job to do. And a certain amount of genetically engineered psychopathy with which to do it.
The air grew warmer as she climbed into the parking lot, the tinge of exhaust mixing with the residual heat and humidity that was Brazil. The camp bustled, people walking to and fro, jogging in some cases, with the parking lot filled with more ships and tents than she thought would fit.
The Nemina sat off to the side, half of it tucked into the overhang of the jungle.
She hadn’t parked it, but she appreciated whoever had. The small window in her room now faced nothing but green foliage, and the near-constant ruckus of the camp wasn’t quite so obvious.
Her feet clunked on the ramp as she walked up and let herself in.
It was a smaller ship. Although officially classed as a Scout vessel, it also had two cargo containers that could be detached from the back for drops, which made it an incredibly useful, quick ship with decent scanning technology―perfect for a scrounging operation, and even more perfect with the addition of an aftermarket C-Class Laser cannon hidden between the landing gear spots.
The interior was dark, the lights off and only the basic power running. Terrestrially, they didn’t need to keep the full life support cycling, and Marc had powered down most of her drives. The Nemina’s normal insulation, meant more to help hide her signature and prevent vital heat from leaking out into the vacuum, kept most of Brazil’s heat out, helped along by whoever had managed to duck her nose and wing into the overhang of the trees.
Her footsteps made light taps on the metal flooring as she turned left at the main hall and made for her bunk. As she passed the Mess, the smell of last night’s barbecued pork hung in the air. A dark smudge lingered where the auto-scrubber hadn’t quite cleaned Baik’s blood stain off the floor.
Her door panel flashed green when she hit it, the door hissed open, and a shuffling sound came from the front of the ship.
“Karin?”
She didn’t wince when Marc’s shadow stretched across the back of the manual override wall that led to the ship’s small bridge, but her jaw did tighten.
She’d hoped he wouldn’t be here. That he would be somewhere else in the camp.
It was a shitty thing to think, but there it was.
Maybe I haven’t lost all of my emotions, she thought, a dark sarcasm dripping through every syllable. I can still feel enough to turn into a really shitty person.
If she had any balls, she’d confront him. Break it off.
But something was stopping her. And, instead, they now had this awkward, hesitating mess.
She schooled her features and turned to face him. “Hey.”
He was tall and muscled. Lean. In the light from the bridge’s windows, he cut an impressive figure. He’d been working out, too, likely taking his frustrations out on the gym equipment he’d relocated back into the spare rec room, and probably recently. Though the Brazilian weather had them all digging for their summer shorts and sleeveless tanks, the scent of sweat from him held more effort behind it than simply standing in the sun.
Gods. She had a new, enhanced smell range, and her brain used it to differentiate between Marc’s workout sweat and his normal sweat.
There’s also fear sweat. And pain sweat. We haven’t smelled those on him yet, though I think you have them in memory.
She gave Tia a very careful, inward side-eye.
I don’t think I need to remember those right now.
“How are you?” she asked, trying to inject some cheer into her voice, and pulling a smile across her lips.
The smile had been a bad idea. His gaze dropped to her lips, and his body tensed up.
He could see right through that puppet show.
“I’m fine. It’s been quiet. I see they’re keeping you busy?”
“Yes. Just came back from a mission, and I think there’s another one lining up―Nomiki asked me to meet her somewhere.”
So, I really have to go. Just came to grab my netlink charger.
Though, now that she thought of it, she could probably borrow any number of netlink chargers on the Courant. Hells, they’d probably hand her one in a gift-wrapped package if she so much as gave an indication that she was looking for one.
They went to many lengths to make her happy. They just…weren’t telling her some things.
He took a step closer, swinging a small, worn towel over his shoulder. “How was the mission? Did you find anything?”
His baritone, and the way he ducked his head when he stepped closer, struck something in her. She clasped her fingers around the edge of the door.
We terrorized the families of an innocent settler colony. Shot one of them. Yelled at them in languages they didn’t understand. Busted through their doors in full armor and ripped their weapons apart. I doubt any of those kids will forget that.
“Fine,” she said. “It was fine.”
By the sudden stillness to his expression, she guessed that he saw through the fake words as deftly as he saw through the fake smile. A storm of emotions flicked over his face, then condensed into a wary frown, before he gave her a good looking over.
He stepped forward, his arms lifting.
“Karin, I―”
She stepped back with a loud gesture. “Look, Marc. I don’t want to talk about it. I just want to get my charger and go.”
The ship’s silence bled between them. His eyes darted between her face and body, the gesture not so much sexual as reading the language she presented.
It also felt like a memorization. As if he thought he was losing her.
Which he was.
“Karin,” he said. “Are you okay?”
This time, she knew he wasn’t asking about her general health, nor about their relationship.
He was asking how she was. Whether she was happy or not. Whether she was stressed. If there was anything on her mind bothering her.
She closed her eyes.
Gods, this is not how I wanted this to go.
“I’m fine,” she told him―truthfully, this time. “By the literal definition of the word, I’m fine. There’s a lot of stuff going on, and I’m concerned about some things, but I’m still keeping my head above water.”
“You’ve always been a strong swimmer,” he commented. “As long as I’ve known you.”
She doubted that. When they’d first met―officially, in-person met, not over a netlink call―she’d been a skittish, doe-eyed, freshly-graduated navigator with bouts of anxiety and paranoia and a habit of walking into inanimate objects.
But the compliment was nice.
“You’re concerned about some things?” he asked.
She hesitated.
He read the expression on her face, and his eyes darkened. “Are you okay? What is it?”
That was the third ‘are you okay’ in as many minutes, and each of them had held a slightly different meaning.
She hesitated again, glancing over her shoulder to where the open ramp spilled light into the intersection behind her and the occasional background shout and clunk and engine roar came.
“Are there bugs in here?” she asked, then shook her head―of course there would be. If she were Fallon, she would definitely bug the te
n holy hells out of the Nemina. “Never mind. I don’t care.”
“What is it?” Marc repeated.
“Fallon’s acting kind of weird―or at least I think they are. All these missions―Hells, I’m probably not supposed to talk about the specifics, but sod that―they’re just basic combat stuff. Usually, they have something to do with the Shadows, or some angle that makes it more logical to involve me, but these last few were for gravitational anomalies on the ship scans. The first was a gunship and a large bomb, but the second was an old grav-based electrical generator, and we terrorized a group of settlers to get to it.”
She took a breath, shaking her head as a puzzled expression turned her face, bringing her eyes back up to meet his. “I don’t know. It just seems…It feels like they’re giving me busywork. Stalling for something. They haven’t even touched my other powers.”
He raised his eyebrows. “You haven’t been in the Shadow world?”
“Not unless I was ducking in for combat.”
“That’s…” He frowned. “Have they given you any reason for this?”
“No.” She gave him a small smile―a genuine one, this time, full of teeth and sarcastic emotion. “In fact, General Crane avoided my questions at the last briefing. Something about ‘let the scientists figure it out, we’ll just keep swinging these combat missions until then and, hey, maybe we’ll find Sasha that way, despite her having not been on this side of the gate in at least seven years.’”
A smile flickered over his lips. “That’s quite specific.”
“It was a creative paraphrasing,” she said. “Oh, and there’s possibly something hinky going on with the Centauri. Soo-jin’s on it. Also, my muscles keep growing.”
She flexed, showing off the new bulges of her shoulder, bicep, and forearm. Underneath the skin, the muscles felt like bridge cables.
His teeth flashed in another smile. “Well, I never did mind a strong woman.”
Her buoyant mood fizzled out like a popped balloon. The smile dropped from her face.
“Look, Marc, I―”
“No, I know―you’re selectively psychopathic. But, Karin, you’re still in there. You aren’t a different person, and I still love you.” He paused, and a small, comfortable silence passed between them before another smile flitted across his lips. He ducked his head and opened his arms. “Can I hug you?”
She smiled. “Yes.”
She sank into him as his long arms wrapped around her, closing her eyes and drawing in his familiar scent. Though the smell of sweat was strong, it wasn’t overpowering, and it was a clean sweat, not one that had been left to the microbes for a few hours, and she caught the familiar hint of soap in its undertone.
Slowly, she felt herself relax. A rare moment, these days.
But, after little more than half a minute, she began feeling restless. Her mind was moving again, exploring other paths, and her muscles were itching to duck into her cabin, get her charge cable, and go.
She pulled back, sliding free from his gasp.
“Thank you. I think I needed that.”
A white lie, and he might have caught it, but his features schooled themselves.
She stepped away, putting a distance between them, and turned to her cabin.
Charge cable. Get it and go. Nomiki’s waiting.
But, just as she was about to head through the doorway―the door was still open, waiting for her―the light flickered at the end of the hall, and a shiver of power raked through her skin like static.
A psychic voice spoke in her mind.
‘Karin?’
She stopped dead, eyes going wide. “Tylanus?”
The dimensional boundaries rippled. She felt them go through her skin like a cold rain. The light fluctuated again, playing at the edges of her powers. Something spiraled up through her.
He stood at the end of the hall, flesh and blood for all appearances. His hair was shorter than she remembered from a few weeks back, gathered in a loose ponytail at the base of his neck, and she detected something different about him.
He looked older.
He watched her, his eyes as pitch-black as the Lost she’d healed.
She took a step toward him. “Tylanus? Are you really here?”
Her gaze darted around. The dimensions were still in flux around him, their undulation reflected physically on the Nemina’s center wall. They looked like splotches of light refracted through water.
A few seconds later, they were gone.
But he wasn’t.
Behind her, Marc sucked in a startled breath.
He could see him, too.
The breeze picked up, rippling through his shirt. Like before, he wore a T-shirt and jeans combo, but this one looked far more worn out than his last one. Threadbare, with holes dotting its collar like they’d hosted a couple of moths.
His eyes found hers, a subtle shifting. A jolt of electricity went through her as they met hers. A small frown pressed down on his brow. His arm twitched, lifting.
“Karin? Is that you?”
Then, his eyes rolled back into his head, and he fell to the floor, unconscious.
Chapter Eleven
“He’s still out,” Nomiki said. “Takahashi’s monitoring him, along with that Alliance scientist―Adamiak, that’s her name. They’ve got him on saline and something. And a sedative.”
“A sedative?” Karin questioned.
Nomiki lifted an eyebrow in her direction. “He’s an enemy combatant with unknown, likely dangerous powers. Of course they’re going to keep him sedated.”
It made sense. She knew that. But, still, something pulled wrong at her mind. She paced a small circle, fingers rubbing next to the bridge of her nose.
“Will I get to talk to him?”
“Too early to tell. They have a special team coming out from Nova to look at him.”
Oh, now they could spare the resources? She rolled her eyes and crossed her arms. “They should have arrived a week ago.”
“Agreed.”
She shook her head. “Well, what did you want me for earlier? Something to do with the tank?”
“Ah, yes, right―” Nomiki bounced off the wall, immediately striding for the nearest staircase. “Had something to show you. Tia will be interested.”
If it has to do with my disembodied brain, I am always interested, Tia thought. Are you going to tell her your suspicions about Fallon?
No, Karin answered. Not yet. She shut down that topic last time, remember?
“You know how we got that cybernetics specialist in from Tala?”
“The one Shinji was gushing on about? Yeah.”
Shinji Tasuhada, originally of Ajin Pharmaceuticals on Chamak Udyaan, was their on-the-spot biomechanical engineering expert. He’d been looking into the cybernetics installed on Tia’s physical brain.
“She came with a bunch of hardware. They’re looking into potentially replacing some of Tia’s cybernetic components with upgrades.”
A dead stillness entered the back of her mind. Suddenly, Tia was paying a lot more attention.
It wasn’t a happy kind of attention.
They’re doing what?
“Is that smart? Upgrading something so…” she hesitated. “Unique?”
As far as she knew, Tia was the only disembodied brain successfully being kept alive by cybernetic technology.
“They’ve been communicating with her on the interface, apparently.”
Huh.
Sounds like they’re asking permission, she thought to Tia.
Goodie for them.
“Has anyone asked the Centauri about it?” she said. “They seem to have the reigning knowledge on cybernetics around here.”
“They’re also enemy soldiers who are prone to retaliation.” Nomiki shrugged. “You did kill their leader.”
“Yep. That I did. So, I take it that no one’s asked them about it?”
“It was debated, then decided that allowing them to examine the Cradle would give them too much acc
ess. It’s invaluable. If they damage it, we could literally lose the universe.” Nomiki looked over her shoulder, catching her gaze with a little smile. “Plus, you know, I’d lose a sister.”
Right. My own mind is also in there. Part of it, anyway.
They descended to the third floor down―the compound was built into the face of a small cliff, and with the way the slope worked, the main floor and entranceway was actually at the top―and wound their way through the hallways. Parts of the compound had been stripped. She wasn’t sure how much stuff Soo-jin had managed to secret away in the Nemina’s cargo when Karin gave her permission to loot the place, but she thought of the woman every time she saw a large blank spot where a machine had obviously once stood, or the empty panel where one of the screens had been. Fallon and the Alliance must have taken more, because the hallways were a lot emptier than a rushed scrounge run could accomplish. The halls crawled with people, a mix of scientists and the soldiers assisting them.
She glanced around, remembering the Centauri she’d fought here.
Well, ‘fought’ was the wrong word. ‘Slaughtered’ would be a better descriptor.
It had been no contest. She’d literally spliced their troops between dimensions. Fresh out of the Cradle’s tank.
The busyness of the corridor petered off the closer they got to the Cradle. By the time they reached the hall, a noticeable pocket of quiet had formed around them.
Guess that, once the novelty had worn off, few wanted to share a space with a living cybernetic brain in a tank. No matter how cool it was.
Takahashi was in the room, poring over notes―both paper and holo―in the far corner. Shinji was there, too, along with the Alliance scientist, Bella Adamiak. Both looked equally bedraggled, their black hair rough and taking on an oily sheen. Five temporary tables had been moved into the room, three of them covered with fine, expensive-looking machine parts. A box of varying fiber optics lay half-open on the closest one, along with a closed technician’s repair kit.
All three of them looked up when they entered.
“Ah, Makos squared!” Shinji said, referring to a moment in the Macedonian compound when Soo-jin had slurred the two doctor’s names together and Nomiki had voiced a desire to refer to them together as ‘Drs. T-Squared.’
