Even though this city had a great deal of light pollution, you could still see the stars glittering down from on high, and it was one of Carson’s favourite pastimes to stare up at them and indulge in their unique beauty.
Well, right now he didn’t have the time. And the only feeling he could indulge in was guilt. Guilt that he hadn’t seen what was happening. That he hadn’t figured it out. And that he hadn’t, importantly, stopped it.
Though he made it back to his apartment in short time, as soon as he walked in the doors, he was at a loss.
Though he wanted to take off his clothes, shower, and grab some food, he couldn’t.
He simply ground to a halt in the centre of his lounge room floor, within distance of his couch, but without the energy to walk over to it and flop face-first into the cushions.
So instead, he simply stood there and slowly surveyed his house.
There was artwork on the walls and on the tops of the furniture. Tribal masks, intricate boxes and vases, holographic pictures of alien planets. All souvenirs he had brought back from his travels.
They drew the eye, trying to distract him with their intricate and unique beauty, but again, there was nothing he could fix his attention on other than Harper.
. . . .
He closed his eyes. Pressing his thumb and forefinger hard into his eyelids, he watched stars cascade through the dark.
Though he wasn’t a child, and knew better, he kept on pressing and pressing until his eyeballs hurt and the flashes of light merged like glowing trails squirming in the dark.
It took a long time to force his hands to drop to his sides, and even longer to walk over to the couch.
Then he sat. He rested his head against the high back of the couch, eventually managing to close his eyes.
Now he would have to wait. It sounded like a simple enough task, but he was not naïve, and knew it would be almost impossible.
And so it was. He spent a restless, truly horrible night in his apartment until early the next morning he finally received a call.
Chapter 21
Cadet Nida Harper
She was awake now, if you could call it awake. The doctors were keeping her so drugged up, she could hardly slur a sentence together, let alone keep her eyes open long enough to assess what was going on around her.
. . .
And there was a lot going on around her.
Anarchy, in fact.
She had realised some time ago that she was back in the hospital.
With a brief stab of anxiety, she had worried they’d brought her in for being a hypochondriac. Perhaps the doctors of the Academy had finally grown weary of her constant visits, and had decided to admit her on psychiatric grounds.
Quickly that particular worry died. And hard.
All she had to do was look up to see the incredible, crackling, glowing force field in place around her bed to realise there was something far more serious going on.
She could feel the power of the field; it set her hair standing on end, and sent hot, dancing tickles crawling over her skin.
The force field flashed between orange and blue, and it was one of the most distracting sights she’d seen. Though she worked for the Academy, and had certainly viewed holograms of stasis fields like this before, it was her first direct experience of one.
. . . .
Which was just as unnerving as it sounded. For, even though she couldn’t remember her lectures on the technology of stasis fields that well, she could remember one fact: they absorbed enormous amounts of power, and you only ever bothered using them if you had to.
As dismay poured into her mind, clutching at her throat with a frighteningly tight grip, she tried to reason why she would be trapped in a stasis field.
Then the doctors came.
But not too close.
With a brief look around the room, she realised she’d never been to this part of the hospital. There was an enormous amount of equipment around her, and as far as she could tell, she was occupying the only bed right in the centre of the room. It was a cavernous expanse, too, and you could easily fit about 40 beds in here.
. . . .
She shivered, and as soon as she did, several of the doctors working on a console a few meters to her right looked up sharply. She could see them peering at her even through the crackling arc of the field. The oranges and blues and reds dancing over the surface of that energised bubble made the faces of the doctors colourful and garish.
It did not, however, obscure their expressions.
Grim didn’t even begin to describe how serious they appeared.
She tried to speak, but quickly realised she couldn’t control her tongue and throat. Everything felt limp and wobbly. But, nonetheless, she kept trying until she managed, “what . . . . What's . . . happening?”
She heard the doctors mumbling, but their voices were too indistinct, and the crackle of the force field was too loud to hear over.
She repeated her question, trying even harder to control her uncooperative lips and vocal cords.
They wouldn’t answer. They simply kept muttering amongst themselves, their voices quiet, but the tone of worry ringing through them painfully obvious.
If she wasn’t already nervous, she now became powerfully anxious.
The force field, the stern-looking doctors, the cavernous room with only her in it . . . . Something was very, very wrong.
Then she remembered.
In an excruciating, crippling flash that felt like a flare going off behind her eyes, she recalled the club.
She remembered Carson shouting at her, something about her taking off her wristwatch . . . . Then that pole. The TI pole that had shot towards her.
Shaking now, the memories came faster and harder, slamming into her as if they were more substantial than mere thoughts, and somehow had the force of fists and insatiable, groping hands.
She remembered collapsing on that park bench; she remembered Alicia saving her from the club . . . .
Then finally, Nida remembered the rest.
The dreams. The horrible, horrible nightmares.
The visions that had raged through her mind whilst she had remained unconscious.
In striking detail, she recalled everything she had seen, from how she had walked through the Academy crushing it, to the horrible destiny she had faced on Remus 12. She remembered every scrap of dust and rubble that had whirled around her like a tornado with her body as its eye. She even recalled the stars going out, only to reignite as they streaked through the sky, ploughing down on her as if she was the gravitational centre of the galaxy.
She shook more violently now, and she couldn’t stop it. Her body convulsed with terrible, involuntary shakes.
She heard the doctors speak louder, their tones coalescing into a collective note of panic.
Then she felt something dart up from the base of the bed. With wide, shocked eyes, she saw a robotic arm twist up with a syringe gun clutched in its metallic fingers. Without pause, it injected the gun into her neck.
Immediately she felt a powerful numbing sensation wash through her. It felt as though she had just been injected with detachment, in its purest, most distilled form.
Her body stopped shaking, and the horrible flashes of her nightmares no longer strangled her mind.
She simply lay there, her body forced into a false calm, induced by whatever powerful drug the syringe gun had injected into her neck.
She waited for unconsciousness to take her, but it didn’t. Only the numbness did.
Then, finally, she was aware of somebody walking up to the edge of the field.
She struggled to turn her head, and eventually managed it.
“What's . . . happening?” she tried again, and this time she had to put in herculean effort to force her numb lips to form the words.
The woman on the other side of the field didn’t answer. She simply looked at Nida carefully, calculatingly, and coldly.
“Please,” Nida managed.
The woman’s previously stony expression softened. “You are stable,” she answered.
Nida struggled to repeat the word, but she couldn’t. Instead, she stared imploringly through the force field at the woman.
“You’ve had an accident,” the woman said in a low, firm tone, “and you are being looked after.”
Despite how much energy it took, Nida shook her head.
There had been no accident.
She could remember exactly what had happened, and it wasn’t as if she’d simply tripped over her own feet and smashed her face into the pavement.
It was the light from that planet. From Remus 12.
Nida did not pause to wonder how she knew that, instead she shook her head again. “Take me home,” she now announced, her voice far more controlled, every note of fatigue dropping from it as if Nida had returned to full, vibrant health.
The woman on the other side of the orange and blue crackling field narrowed her gaze. “You must remain under medical observation.”
Nida shook her head repeatedly, and it didn’t matter that her ears and the side of her face kept bashing up against the hard edge of her bed; she couldn’t stop. “Take me home before it is too late. Take me home,” she demanded, her voice trilling with a certainty her addled mind and body should not possess.
“Cadet Harper, you cannot go home. You have been in a serious accident, and we must . . . do what we can to help you,” the woman paused, appearing to choose her words carefully.
“I know I wasn’t in an accident,” Nida managed, all certainty and command gone from her tone.
She felt like herself again.
“You need to rest,” the woman began.
“I have to go back to Remus 12. Now. Before it’s too late. I have to go back,” Nida repeated, again her voice brimming with energy and authority.
The woman’s eyes narrowed even further. “You are confused. We will do what we can to look after you. But you need to rest.”
“I need to leave,” Nida looked at the woman, trying to convey her desperation with every flicker of her dancing gaze.
“You need to calm down,” the woman countered, “there are only so many drugs we can pump into your system, especially with your . . . specific injuries.” The woman stared at Nida’s chest.
Nida looked down, following her gaze.
The implant.
She could remember the terrible rush of tingles like knife pricks in her skin. That horrible sensation had rushed up, pushing into her implant, and now she brought up her trembling fingers and placed them on the smooth metal surface jutting out from her neck.
It was dented, as if somebody had bashed it with a hammer or pounded on it with their fist.
It was also blue. A faint, persistent glimmer glowed across its surface.
Stranger than that, there were thin tendrils of glowing, bright blue light branching off from the implant, through her skin, up her neck, and down her chest.
She bucked with panic, clutching at her flesh, pulling down the thin collar of her hospital gown as she tracked the pattern penetrating further down her body.
“Calm down,” the woman pressed closer towards the crackling veil of the force field, her eyes growing wide.
“What the hell is this? What is this?” Nida clutched at those blue, glowing, branching veins, dragging her fingernails across them. But no matter what she did, no matter how hard she pressed or groped, the glow would not fade. In fact, at her frantic attempts to remove it, it only blazed brighter.
“Calm down,” the woman shouted, her voice pitching into a scream. It echoed around the room, and the tone of her sudden desperation was so clear it alone made Nida stop.
She turned and stared at the woman.
“You’re being transported to the Jupiter Substation,” she noted, incapable of blinking as she stared at Nida with a frightfully complex, calculating gaze.
“What?”
“As soon as we find some way to stabilise these fields, you will be transported,” the woman repeated.
“To the Jupiter Substation?” Nida finally stopped trying to rake the blue energy from her veins, and instead let her trembling fingers clutch into fists.
The Jupiter Substation was one of the Academy’s most secure facilities, and was used to house its most dangerous experiments.
“You need to calm down and let us handle this. We know what we are doing. Now just rest back, close your eyes, and try to go back to sleep,” the woman commanded, but there was a distinct pleading note to her tone.
“Sleep?” Nida repeated the word, flabbergasted it could be suggested.
She couldn’t sleep. She had to find out what was going on to her . . . . No.
No.
She had to get back to her home.
To Remus 12.
That thought impressed itself upon her with all the power of a supernova.
Yes, she had to get back.
With that certainty offering her a rare calm, she closed her eyes, lay back down, and waited.
She did not know what she waited for; all she knew was that sometime soon she would act.
Yet it was not Nida that knew that fact. Rather the certainty belonged to that overpowering sense that told her she had to return to a planet barren and devoid of life, yet one that held the key to everything.
Chapter 22
Carson Blake
When he received a call from Admiral Forest early in the morning, he answered immediately. He had barely slept the night before, and the little fitful slumber he had managed to take only served to make him all the more tired. Nonetheless, he managed to answer with a curt “hello.”
Admiral Forest did not bother with pleasantries; she told him immediately that his ship had been cleared, and that a priority-one transport lane had been opened up for him. True to her promise last night, she was going to send him to Remus 12.
Then Forest cleared her throat, and an unusual, hesitant silence descended over the line.
Carson stood there, ramrod straight, his hands clasped behind his back, staring at the computer panel in his lounge room.
“We are moving her to the Jupiter Substation,” Forest suddenly announced.
Carson lost all of his hard-won composure, and his hands fell hard at his sides as surprise slackened his features. “What?” he stuttered, all control lost from his voice too.
“We need to isolate her. We also need to study her properly, and the only way to do that is by taking her to the Jupiter Substation. We simply cannot run the risk that . . . she has been infected by something that can be transmitted to other telekinetic implants. It’s the safest thing to do,” Forest added in a firm voice that told him she would not compromise on her decision.
Slowly he clamped his teeth together, concentrating on the sensation of compression and tension rather than what Forest had just said.
“We must isolate this,” Forest repeated, but it was unclear what this referred to. Was it the situation as a whole . . . or was it just Nida?
They were treating her as if she was diseased, like the strange effects ailing her implant could be picked up by somebody else.
He wanted to tell Forest that was cold, almost inhuman, but he didn’t. Because deep down under his swirling and turbid emotions, he could understand her point.
The Academy could not run the risk of this spreading, so right now they were treating it like an infection. And the first thing you did with an infection was you isolated the patient. Hence the Jupiter Substation.
Still, the thought that Nida would be transported there made him cold with worry. The Substation was where the Academy took all of its most dangerous subjects. From unknown alien life forms, to confiscated technology, the Substation was built to withstand danger.
This was yet another signal that what was happening here was now deadly serious.
And yet, all Carson could think of was how downright innocent, if awkward, Nida seemed. She didn’t deserve to be at the centre of this. In fact, it just s
eemed plain odd that she was. Odd, and unlucky.
“Carson,” the Admiral abruptly used his first name, “are you paying attention?”
With a quick blink, he realised he had zoned out, and he cleared his throat and nodded his head. “When do I leave?” he asked, deciding to concentrate on the one thing he could achieve. He had absolutely no chance of stopping Nida from being transported to the Jupiter Substation, but he could return to Remus 12. He could look for that scanner, and he could bring it back and find out what secrets it held.
That thought alone strengthened his resolve more than all of the weapons in the United Galactic Coalition could.
“Whenever you’re ready,” Forest announced.
Carson nodded, then realised he ought to offer a salute, and snapped his stiff hand to his brow. “Thank you, Admiral. I will be in touch.”
“As will I. This is . . . ,” she trailed off, and briefly, she stepped away from the view screen, as if she no longer wished to be seen. Then, with a resounding sigh, she came back into view. Her eyes were hooded in shadow, and it was clear she hadn’t slept a wink last night. “Lieutenant . . . Carson,” she used his first name, “good luck. God knows we need some good luck right now.”
The Admiral looked as if she wanted to end the call, but Carson stepped forward. “What else have they found out? Have they been able to remove the implant?” His questions were probably stupid considering the Admiral had already told him Nida was being transferred to Jupiter Substation. And the Academy would hardly bother transferring her unless there was still a damn good reason to do so.
The Admiral shook her head, and it was a bitter move. “We have been unable to remove the implant. Whatever is . . . attacking it, will not let us. The Cadet is currently inside a stasis field, and as soon as we stabilise it, she will be transported. And, before you ask, no, we do not know anything more. We have no idea what that energy is, we have no idea where she picked it up from, and we have no idea what it will do to her or the implant.”
Carson didn’t know how to reply, and even if he had thought of the best and sagest wisdom to impart in that moment, he wouldn’t have been able to force himself to speak. He was rendered to the spot with surprise and deep, deep, bone-shaking shock.
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