“Look after my son.” Aric’s mother had never said that in my dreams before. I wanted to say something, to ask something, but another stab of pain reminded me that there wasn’t enough time. I had to do this. I had to accept it. I had to accept the implant.
I reached out, and as my hand touched the implant, I expected more pain. The old, remembered pain of it sliding into my body. Joining with me. Moving from my arm into my back and wrapping itself around my spine.
Instead, I had the sensation of floating. I was hanging weightlessly in a dark, seemingly infinite space. It was a strange feeling, yet almost as soon as I registered that, it stopped. The space around me was still mostly dark, but now there were pinpricks of starlight to see by, and it was not as infinite as I had first thought. I was even standing on a kind of floor, although it was so close to being the same as the rest of it that it was hard to tell. My room. I was in my room. I knew that somehow, even though my room had never been black and filled with stars.
I wasn’t alone there. It took me a moment to notice the silvery figure standing at the other side of the room, but once I had, it was impossible to see how I could have missed her. She looked like me. She looked like Em. Except that her skin was silver, her hair was silver. Even her clothes gleamed with the sheen of the metal. I stepped toward her and she stared at me with blank silver eyes.
“Em? Is that you?”
The silvery creature hesitated for a moment before answering. “No, Jade. The entity you call Em is a part of me. A fragment. It is a strange little thing.”
“So, you’re not Em?” I stared at her. “But you’re still the implant?”
She nodded. “After the crash, I was damaged. I was placed inside a non-Ceren receptacle. Inside you. I did not know how to adapt to that. The knowledge was missing.”
A non-Ceren receptacle. That was one way of putting it. “So, you created Em?”
“We created Em. You could not have handled the full me. Even Ceren royalty are full grown before they receive me, normally. You were human, but a child. I gave you a version of myself that could grow with you until you were ready, and until a chance to repair the damage could be found. We found that chance when you met Aric. The doors opened for us to repair the damage.”
She was peaceful; she was familiar.
“I never thought that this other me, Em, would prove to be so…full of life.”
“Em has her moments.” I looked around. “What am I doing here? What is this? Have you decided that you’re done reorganizing yourself and that you’re going to take me over now?”
She shook her head. “That is not what I was designed for. I am a tool, not its wielder. All I can do is connect. I have never sought to hurt you, Jade.”
“Never…having you in me has cost me my whole life.” I couldn’t keep the anger out of my voice.
The not-Em took it as placidly as the metal from which she was made. “The scientists chose that.”
“You didn’t help me get out.”
“For a long time, I couldn’t, and at the end…I can only do what you let me do, Jade.”
“You still haven’t told me what I’m doing here,” I pointed out.
“You sought me out. You could have stayed where you were. You could have ignored me, but the part of you that dreams knows that it needs me.”
I’d done that? I couldn’t believe that I would do something like that. That I could. I suddenly realized that I was in charge of Em. And I had been the whole time.
“I’m a part of you,” the implant said. “You can reach me when you need me. And we do need to talk. Do you know what is going on out there, Jade?”
I shook my head, and the ghost of an image appeared between us. It looked like an image from a security camera, flickering and out of focus. It was an image of me on my side in the laboratory, the silver of the implant on my back exposed.
I was hooked up to about a dozen machines. Figures in surgical scrubs stood over me, and I recognized Professor Ahern at once. She had a scalpel in her hand, and it looked like she’d already made at least one cut close to the implant. The yellow iodine mixing with my red blood.
The implant’s avatar put a hand on my arm. “They’re going to kill you. They’re going to kill us. I cannot survive for long without a host, and you…”
“Why would you care?” I asked. “I’m pretty sure Professor Ahern would put you in someone else soon.”
She shook her head. “I have been a part of you for sixteen years, Jade. I have spent most of that with nothing but you. Of course, I care. To the fragment of me I created—Em—you are her closest friend. To me…the distinction does not exist. I am you. You are me.”
I looked at the image. At Professor Ahern working out the best places to cut into me. “Can you even do anything to stop them?”
“We could, perhaps. We have more of a chance than just waiting.”
“And once that’s done, what then? We get out of here? And…”
“I have told you. I will not take you over. I cannot.”
I shook my head. That wasn’t what I meant. “I mean, what happens then? Will I always be stuck with the implant? Will I ever be normal?”
She shook her head. “I do not know if I could be removed from you safely. You are not Ceren, Jade, and even for them, it would be dangerous unless they’re on the verge of death. Only then can they pass on their implant to another. Is that all you want? To be normal? To be only a human?”
“What else is there? I am what I am.”
The not-Em shrugged. “I don’t know. Perhaps we could find out together. For now…” she looked over at the image of me in the lab. “I think you need to make a choice, Jade.”
I knew that, but knowing it didn’t make things any easier. I’d spent my life trying to avoid what had happened to me. Trying to undo it. I’d spent my life trusting the scientists around me, rather than what I was. I couldn’t undo that in an instant, but I could accept one thing. The implant was a part of me, whether I wanted it or not. It wasn’t going away. It needed me, and right now, I needed it.
I didn’t know what was going to happen once we got out of the lab. It might be lying to me. It might be about to wipe away everything that I was. It might kill me. Or nothing might happen. I had no way of knowing. What I did know was that if I didn’t find a way to trust it, I would never live long enough to find out.
“All right,” I said. “How do we do this?”
“You already know the answer to that.”
I was about to say that I didn’t, when I realized that I did. I’d known it since the dream. Maybe I’d known it even longer than that. I held out my hand to the silvery version of myself, and as she took it, just for a moment, it was Em’s smile on her face.
Then I wasn’t touching anyone real. Instead, the silver was flowing into me. Over me. I let it. I let it continue even when it poured over my eyes so that I couldn’t see. Even when it seemed to fill my lungs so that I couldn’t breathe, I felt in that moment like I was sinking down and drowning, but I knew that I wasn’t.
I was waking up.
Chapter Nine
I should have floated up through the layers of sedation slowly. I should have felt myself struggling to the surface of consciousness inch-by-inch, forced to watch, as the room grew steadily clearer around me.
That’s what should have happened.
Instead, I opened my eyes, and I was as aware of everything around me. More aware, because I could feel every machine in the room like an extension of my own body. The heart-rate monitor, the cameras, even the radio of a nearby guard.
Every machine reverberated through the room and my body as if they were trying to tell me something, or speak to me in some odd way.
Professor Ahern was there, standing over me as I lay on my side. I could feel the pain in my back, but it felt like something far away, cordoned off behind barriers put in place by the implant. There were two other scientists helping her, one monitoring the machines while another assist
ed with the actual procedure, while a guard stood by the door to the lab. Oh, and Em was there, right beside me, holding my hand.
“Shall we do this?” she asked with a smile that might have worried me anywhere else. Right then, it simply matched how I felt.
I sat up, spinning around and grabbing Professor Ahern’s arm. It seemed almost like she was moving in slow motion, it was that easy to do. “I’m leaving, Professor.”
“Jade? What… no. Sedate her!”
She grabbed for a needle, obviously intending to do it herself. I shoved her back before she could get there, sending her stumbling to the floor. I wasn’t as strong as Aric was, but I’d spent years following the workouts the scientists designed. I was certainly stronger than Professor Ahern.
As Professor Ahern’s goons started to react, I reached out and sent a pulse of information down the wires to the monitors and scanners, far too much for them to handle. They burst out into a shower of sparks and a screaming whine filtered through the speakers. Everyone in the room covered their ears from the sound.
Everyone, but me.
This gave me exactly the distraction I needed to grab the syringe Professor Ahern had reached for. I ran for the guard. Before he could even start to reach for his gun, I jabbed forward with it and felt the needle sliding into him.
I pressed down on the plunger and grabbed for his arm, using all my strength to keep it away from the gun at his side for the seconds it took for him to slump into unconsciousness.
I grabbed the weapon, but honestly, I didn’t have a clue what I was doing with it. The best I could do was keep it pointed at the scientists as I backed out through the laboratory door.
“Don’t try to follow me.”
“Jade.” Professor Ahern made it back to her feet. “You haven’t thought this through. This is foolish.”
“What are you waiting for, Jade?” Em was practically jumping up and down beside me. “You’ve got a gun. Blow her away. You know she deserves it.”
“Em.”
“She killed Miriam!”
What was it that the silvery not-Em had said? That Em was a reflection of me. That she couldn’t do anything some part of me didn’t want. Well, a part of me wanted to pull the trigger—a part of me wanted to see Professor Ahern slump to the floor and stop breathing. It would have been so easy to do, and Professor Ahern did deserve to pay for what she’d done to Dr. Stevens. And to me. And to Aric. “I want to, but…”
I still couldn’t do it. Instead, I threw the gun back into the lab, shut the door, and sealed the electronic lock, broke it actually, and it would probably take a cutting torch for them to escape that room.
Em didn’t look happy. “But why? Why didn’t you do it?”
“I don’t kill people. We don’t kill people. It isn’t what Dr. Stevens would have wanted, either.”
“I guess.” She still didn’t look convinced.
“Em, do you know where Aric is?”
“Of course, we found the ship.”
“You left him? What about the guards?”
“You needed me, Jade. Aric can handle himself.”
“Take me to him. Now.”
She took my hand again and we ran through the Institute’s corridors.
I didn’t move as quickly as I usually would have because the pain of the incisions might be locked away, but that didn’t mean that I was exactly feeling my best.
I stumbled along the corridors, keeping one hand on the wall for support while trying to listen out for any guards who might be moving toward us.
I heard them, but not the way I’d thought I would. I’d been listening out for booted footfalls, but instead, what I heard was radio chatter. A dozen different streams of it echoing through my head at the same time, yet somehow, I could pick apart every bit of it. I focused on the closest one.
“Echo Two, Subject H may be on her way into your sector. Stay alert.”
“Understood.”
I looked around at Em, who was smiling that faint smile of hers. “Is it like this for you all the time?”
Em nodded. “It’s what I’m for. Oh, and we should probably go that way. They’re coming up the other corridor.”
“How—” I got my answer in the form of a hundred camera feeds, all running through me at once. It felt like I was some kind of giant insect, looking down at the Institute’s corridors through multi-segmented eyes.
I went the way Em had suggested, and through my new camera eyes, I saw a pair of heavyset guards go through the space I’d been standing in. I was already moving away again.
“How far away is the ship?”
“Maybe three miles, on the east wing of the facility.”
“Three miles! My back, Em.” I slowed my pace, uncertain if I could make it that far.
Em stopped and stood in front of me. Her green eyes were assessing me. The metal on my back was moving like a steady flow of water.
Em reached her hands up to my head. I didn’t refuse her entry, after all I had already accepted her. This was a natural process and allowed her to flow through my body to assess the damage.
She spoke almost robotic as she filtered through my body. “Two incisions. One of them is three inches long and half an inch below the surface.”
I heard the chatter from the radios and the news feed of the security cameras continued to give me a good visual as to where the guards were. “Hurry, Em,” I heard myself say, but I didn’t believe my lips moved.
A searing pain struck my back and I felt the metal move beneath the surface of my skin. The pain felt crippling and my hands grew numb.
When Em released her hands from the sides of my head, she inhaled deeply. “Jade, you just fed me with information. I felt a greater connection to the implant.”
The pain in my back was gone, but I wasn’t sure what had just happened. “My back?”
“It’s better. On the mend. You can move about faster now, but the wounds are not completely closed or healed.”
“What did you do?”
“Moved the process of healing into stage three. Just a little cellular fast-forwarding.”
I narrowed my eyes at her, but we didn’t have time to discuss the medical process of what the implant had just done. I was just grateful that the pain was gone.
Em showed me a blueprint that the camera images overlaid, and I could see what she intended for me to see. Aric was using a section of vent to get around. That’s how they found the ship, but there were guards at either end now, slowly working their way in toward the middle, weapons in their hands.
Time was running out and the Institute, or Professor Ahern, I assumed had tripped the alarm, causing an annoying loud beeping noise that alerted everyone to lock their office doors and flush us out into the hallway. We slipped through several more doors, ran through numerous hallways and navigated to the entrance that would lead us to Aric.
Em pushed me up against the wall to hide me from two guards that passed fifty feet to our right. “We’re not going to make it in that way. There are four guards coming down the hallway in the other direction.”
“We have to get him out of there.” My heart was thudding hard against my chest.
Em pointed upward. Vent slits were staring down at us.
“How are we going to get up there?”
“We’re not. There’s another one about three doors down in the wall.”
“Let’s go.” We ran around the corner and smack dab into the arms of a security guard.
“Where do you think you’re going, you little bitch?” he asked.
I glanced at Em. “What do I do?” I mouthed to her.
Em thrusted her hand through the man’s back and out of his chest. Of course, he didn’t feel anything until she reached up and touched my head and an electrical current slid through my arms and sent the man into convulsive tremors.
His grip loosened around my arm, his eyes rolled back into his head and his mouth began to foam. Foamy spittle bounced from his lips and hit me in t
he face while I kept my eyes and mouth closed.
When he was slumped, Em removed her fingers from my head and pulled her arm out from his midsection and we watched him hit the ground with one huge thud.
“What in the heck just happened?” I asked, a surge of strength flowing through my body’s cells.
“No time to explain. Let’s go.” She grabbed my hand again and we ran toward the vent. “Open it,” she demanded.
No latches. I searched for a way to open it. In each corner, there were tiny screws. “I need a screwdriver.”
“Your implant thrives around metal, Jade. You’ve accepted us, now you need to use our abilities.”
“How?”
“If we had more time, I’d let you figure this out on your own.” Em’s hands encircled my head again and I rested my hands on the vent with my fingers inside the slits.
The vent began to rumble and the screws unscrewed and flew out onto the floor. The vent easily moved from its place and, in seconds flat, we were crawling through the small space.
When we dropped out of the vent into the room where Aric was, I stopped and gawked at the ship that I remembered from my dream—the ship that had hit my parents’ car and changed everyone’s lives on that horrible day.
It was smaller than I remembered. A metallic silver in color, round at the front with a fishtail-shaped back. I could see the area where the ship had been destroyed in the crash.
“Will it fly?” I asked.
“No.”
My implant was going crazy, vibrating my spine and sending electricity through my inner body toward my fingertips. “Em! Something’s wrong with the implant.”
Em stood next to me staring at the ship, her eyes wide, and her mouth agape. A slight smile twitching the outer corners of her lips.
“Em! Do you hear me?”
“You’re fine, Jade. The implant can feel home. I can feel home. We’re connecting with the metal from the ship.”
“What do I do?”
“Let it connect.” Her eyes had still not left the ship.
“Let it connect! Easy for her to say, this is normal stuff for her.” I searched for Aric, walking toward the entrance of the piece of equipment that had killed my parents.
HASH: Human Alien Species Hybrid Page 8
