Traitor Page 3

  Kieran said it wasn’t her fault. It was self-defence. They would have killed her, she had to do it to stay alive. But self-defence would have meant escape, self-defence would have entailed incapacitating the doctor and guards and running away. But she had killed them all and razed the building to the ground.

  The silver skeleton flexed, and she choked back the bile that rose in her throat. She never wanted to become a killer — it was against the Gods, against all she believed was good. But the hands told her all she needed to know: they had made her. They had ripped out the bones and replaced them with titanium, stripped the nerves so she couldn’t feel. She was a monster. More machine than human. A weapon. Her life belonged to them.

  She stuffed her hands into her armpits, sealing them there with her body weight, so they couldn’t do something unbidden.

  Her eyes searched out the cube, heart thumping erratically. If she could just solve it — the same way Kieran had, spinning it around, hands a blur, until all the sides matched, then twisted it up again and tossed it to her with a carefree grin — maybe she had a chance against the rest, a chance to do something normal, to be human.

  She had to solve it — there was no other way. The right side required a clockwise rotation — her humanity, whatever tatters were left, depended on it.

  The cube turned, her hands still buried firmly.

  A gasp left her lips, but the cube remained hovering between the sheets, inches from her face. The top layer now turned anticlockwise, lining blue up with blue. Then the bottom, green to green. Moving objects with her mind was as unnatural as her titanium-skeleton hands, as unnatural as being able to watch Kieran through solid walls two decks above.

  She wanted to shove it away like the horrible mutated thing it was, but as the cube spun, as the simple toy followed her simple thoughts, everything else melted away. The cube took all of her focus, the need to solve it overwhelming.

  Her metal hands she tucked under a pillow and wrapped tightly in sheets. The memories too she stuffed far from reach, and set all of her concentration on the toy.

  Slowly, as she worked, her body stretched, opening and relaxing so that she laid comfortably on the bed beneath the unfamiliar stars. The side spun, now lining up yellow with yellow. Two lines came together, perhaps it wouldn’t be so difficult. Perhaps none of this would be so difficult.

  The door slid open unannounced, and the cube fell, bouncing across the bed.

  Hoepe strode in, long legs taking him around the side of the bed in three steps.

  Sarrin held her breath. Had he seen? What would he say? Or think? Who would he tell?

  “How are you feeling?” he asked. He set his data-tablet on the nightstand, raising a single eyebrow at the colourful picture frame, then kneeled on the bed. He said nothing about the cube.

  She shifted to the far side. He was unnecessarily close for an idle conversation. Not that Hoepe or Sarrin ever indulged in idle conversation.

  He reached across and palpated her trigger points and lymph nodes. She fought her instinct to shove him backwards and run, gritting her teeth against his touch. Hoepe was a friend she had known for years, but he was still a doctor, and she never wanted to be in another medical suite or operating theatre ever again.

  Dr. Guitteriez had always worn protective black gloves when he touched her overly sensitive skin, but Hoepe had no idea of the danger he was in. Where his hands brushed her skin, energy crackled, snapping through her like lightening, and she could sense all of him, every cold, calculating, medical vibration. She could almost hear his thoughts.

  She bundled her own energy and forced it to be still, locked deep in the core of her being. In the past, the monster had done things, terrible things of its own accord. Another thing that made her less than human.

  He pulled apart the twisted sheets that wrapped around her hands, and she jerked them back. Thankfully the skin was back in place. They were whole again, pink and clean, blood nowhere to be seen. The only sign something was amiss were the almost imperceptible micro-suture lines that criss-crossed the flesh.

  “It’s time for you to get out of this room,” he said. Hoepe turned his attention to his tablet, typing something quickly on the screen. He stood to leave, but paused at the foot of the bed, pointing at the door. “Come on, Sarrin. Doctor’s orders.”

  She gulped. He thought… he wanted her to go through there. She couldn’t. It wasn’t safe.

  The door stared at her every day. Three-inches of hollow plastique held together with a magnet lock. Three-inches that separated this safe room from the rest of the ship and the hustle and bustle of curious bodies. Three-inches that when open, even for a second, threatened to swallow her whole and chew her into nothing.

  Three-inches kept the monster locked in its cage. Kept the others safe.

  She shook her head.

  “Sarrin,” Hoepe said again, waves of impatience rolling off of him.

  A silent protest, she laid down, pulling the blankets to her chest. The hole in her soul tugged, stealing all her breath.

  “Sarrin.” He sighed and leaned against the wall. “You have made a full recovery. You presence is needed in Engineering. The warship could return any day.”

  The warship that had taken her brother away — it left a sick feeling in her empty hole.

  “Gods.” He squeezed a hand into his hair, messing up the tufts that had grown in the last month. A wall of desperate emotion hit her as it rolled off of him.

  She tugged the sheets all the way over her head, as though it might protect her. Protect him.

  Hoepe sighed. “Come on, you have to go out. You can’t stay in this room forever.” His feet treaded softly closer, she could nearly feel him leaning over her, and held her breath still. “You’re the only one that’s keeping you in this room. You’re not a prisoner anymore, so stop acting like one,” he said, and then his hand was on her arm, lifting her up with strength she forgot the doctor had. She bolted dup, scrambling to the far side of the room. The door opened as she passed its sensor, threatening to swallow her whole.

  Hoepe watched from where he kneeled on the bed.

  Wary, she crawled back until the door closed.

  “You might want to clean up a little first,” he said.

  She retreated to the latrine, the only place where she could avoid Hoepe’s penetration gaze. Pulling herself up to the sink, she blinked several times before she realized the haggard creature staring back in the mirror was in fact her. She no longer even looked human, more like a corpse: thin and grey, shaded hollows around her eyes and cheeks.

  She scrubbed her hand over her face, although it made little difference. Her hair hung in matted sheets, and she tied it back haphazardly. An old memory caught her, slamming the air from her lungs:

  Sarrin sat on a hard bunk in Evangecore, age six-standard. It was night, the room dark and quiet, punctuation only by the muffled sleeping sounds of a dozen other girls. Her friend, older, maybe ten, sat behind Sarrin, combing through her long hair with her fingers. Silently, the friend smoothed her hair over and over, knowing Sarrin would never brush it herself.

  Sarrin reached her tiny hand for the girl’s outstretched leg, and the girl wrapped her arms around Sarrin quickly, before they parted. Sarrin leapt to the upper bunk, laying in her own bed just as the door creaked open and the night nurse came to check on their unit.

  Warmth tingled where the girl’s arms had been, reaching in and filling Sarrin’s chest, until she creaked open her eyes and found herself standing once again in the grey latrine. She slammed her eyes closed, begging for the memory to come back, but it was gone.

  This was her life now. Her brother was gone, her friend long dead. And so was sweet, innocent Sarrin. In her place was a killer, a confirmed monster, and there was no comfort for her to find.

  Stumbling back into the main room, looking no less corpse-like than before, she found Hoepe waiting by the open door. He stepped around her, long arms outstretched, herding her forward. And just lik
e that, she found herself in the corridor.

  TWO

  HOEPE PRESSED HER FORWARD, THROUGH the quiet corridor of the crew quarters and into the main hall. Two women passed, and Sarrin jolted back, pressing into the wall, somehow thinking she could hide there. Beside her, Hoepe chuckled. In Evangecore, she would have been shot for stupidity.

  The Augments spared them only a glance, nodding quickly at Hoepe as they passed. Their hands danced back and forth in lively conversation. One laughed.

  Sarrin found herself fixated, her jaw dropping open at the sight of their backs and the loose, torn fabric that exposed the lines of procedural tattoos. “What are they doing?” she gasped.

  Hoepe shrugged. “It doesn’t matter if their marks are exposed here, everyone knows they’re Augments. Now, it seems to have become a bit of a status symbol.”

  In Evangecore, they wore mandated jumpsuits which covered all but the barcodes printed on their necks and arms. In the war, they found clothes that ensured even the IDs were covered, because to be recognized as an Augment meant death or at least a lot of trouble. But here, these girls wore their marks with pride. They wore their marks without fear.

  Her foot stepped forward.

  A man rushed past, nearly brushing against Sarrin, the barcodes on the backs of his arms clearly visible. “Hurry up, we’re already late.”

  She turned to Hoepe. “Late for what?”

  “Grant and Rami called a meeting in the canteen. I don’t know what about, but I thought you should be there.” He encouraged her forwards again.

  “Me?”

  “Yes. People listen to you.”

  She stopped in front of the doors to the canteen, just far enough away not to trigger the sensors. There were nearly three dozen Augments in the room, she could feel them through the walls — all their nervous fidgeting excitement. “Why?”

  “Because of who you are, your reputation, and”—he glanced at her back—“your marks.”

  Cold ice settled in the pit of her stomach. “I don’t want them to know.” No one should listen to a monster.

  “Fine. I still want you there.” Hoepe lifted his arm, waving it, and the doors slid open on their pneumatic mechanism.

  The normal arrangement of tables and chairs had been pushed aside. A sea of marks and barcodes faced back at her. Muscles flexed, rippling under the pale skin and dark lines, but the bodies were relaxed. As they turned and shifted, talking to one another, Sarrin searched for familiar faces. Many she recognized from Evangecore, but, with the exception of Grant and Thomas and handful of others she had known in the war, she didn’t know their names — she’d known most of them only as opponents in the training exercises the researchers called the war games, where teams of children hunted each other, and the memory caught in her chest.

  The edges of her vision crowded in, and her hands found the seams of the nearest wall panel, prying it loose to make her escape. It had been eight years since she had been put into the arena, but her heart still raced. The others chatted casually, nodding and smiling amicably. A peal of laughter came from the front of the room. She paused, uncertain, leaving the panel in place, watching with fascination.

  Hoepe leaned against the wall beside her. His expression remained customarily grim, but his eyes darted over the others with as much fascination as she felt. It sparked a new kind of thought in her: they might actually have a chance for freedom.

  A cheer went up, the attention in the room turning to a table at the far end and the man who climbed on top of it. He was short and stocky, heavily muscled. Sarrin didn’t recognize him, but he was young. Maybe he’d never been put in the arena. The others around her certainly seemed to know him though, and listened raptly as he spoke. “We did it!” he shouted, and the Augments around her clapped and whistled.

  Another, louder cheer built from the first, and Grant, stumbling at first as though he had been pushed, climbed onto the table beside the other Augment. His back turned to them briefly, as he scrambled up, and Sarrin caught a spot of blood blooming through his shirt. It sobered her and quieted the rest, a reminder they were not together for a party, but to survive. While captive on Junk, Grant had been experimented on, much like Sarrin, a gruesome second-skin implanted between his shoulder blades, and the blood oozed from the cracking scab where it had torn through the skin too many times before.

  Grant faced the crowd grimly. He said, “It’s good to see you all again, especially without bars in front of your faces.” A pleased murmur passed through the crowd, some bringing their five fingers to their chest in reverence. “We know there are other Augments, other facilities. Rami” — he gestured at the other man — “and I think it’s time we tried little offence of our own, and tried to help them.”

  Rami stepped forward. The Augments watched him with rapt attention. “When we were prisoners on Junk, I told you that I would get you out of there, that we would walk freely. I don’t want for us just to be free from captivity, I want us to be free to live our lives however we see fit. I want for us to be able to walk through the streets with our heads high.”

  Sarrin gasped, a spark of hope dancing in her brain. What would it be like to not be hunted? She met Hoepe’s eyes, but the gaze that met hers was strained and wary. He knew it as well as she did: freedom like that was impossible.

  “Let me tell you, it is possible!” shouted Rami. “The same as us escaping from their torture facilities not once but twice. We will walk free.” The crowd cheered as he pounded his chest. Hoepe stiffened. Sarrin’s chest pounded too, entirely different from the heady emotions that swirled around her.

  Beside Rami, Grant nodded, lips pulled back in a tight grin as he surveyed the excited Augments. “When I was being held in solitary, I heard rumours about facilities on Jade and Porter, and I think it’s reasonable to assume there are more. And there’s one place I know of that will have the full database.”

  “We’re going to attack the warship when it returns,” said Rami.

  Sarrin’s limbs went numb, and she thumped against the wall, nearly sagging to the floor before she caught herself. Attacking the warship meant certain death. The energy in the room stood shock still as well, Augments looking between each other.

  Hoepe pushed off the wall, sliding through the crowd to the front. “I thought we had decided it was a fool’s plan. I don’t want to have this argument again.”

  “Why not?” Grant stared down at the doctor. “Everyone should be involved in making the decision. We don’t know when the warship is coming back, but it could be any day. It could be tomorrow. Kieran tells me the ship is at least a week away from being able to make an FTL jump, which means we’re stuck here.”

  Rami grumbled, his knuckles cracking as he worked his hands back and forth.

  “The freightship is in no condition to fight,” Hoepe said, and pointedly looked at the myriad faces around him. “And neither are any of you.”

  “We’re Augments,” said Grant. “We’ve been through worse. We’re strong.”

  Hoepe shook his head. “Sorry, but as your doctor, you’re not. Everyone is suffering multiple mineral deficiencies and recovering from exhaustion. Not to mention psychosocial disorientation. And you want to have us board a warship with a-hundred-and-fifty elite soldiers and try to conquer it.”

  “We’re stronger than they are.”

  “Not right now. For all we know, there are Augments aboard on their side — we know they can control minds.”

  Grant turned a sickly grey colour, and Sarrin couldn’t help but feel badly for him — what went through his mind, knowing they had the ability to take control of him at the flip of a switch? Knowing what he had done under their mind control, and what he had chosen to do to similarly affected Augments in the past?

  Hoepe said, “I still say our best option is to first let ourselves recuperate. That gives us the best possible advantage over whatever we may face. We’ll run sensor sweeps of Junk’s moons and the surrounding area — we may find somewhere to go w
here the warship won’t be able to find us, at least not easily.”

  “The warship,” argued Grant, “will have information about all the UEC bases and their research facilities. If we can get that data, it gives us a map. Otherwise, we’ll end up flying planet to planet, hoping to get lucky and find them. We’re already stuck here, we may as well make the best of it and plan for the warship’s arrival instead of hoping like fools that it won’t come back.”

  A murmur of assent rippled through the canteen, chased by nervous whispers. Back and forth.

  “You’re infiltrated the warship before,” said Rami.

  Hoepe frowned. “That was a trap. They wanted us to board.”

  Sarrin shuddered. When they had snuck aboard The Comrade, it had been the beginning of a long and convoluted experiment designed by Guitteriez to learn more about her and try to bring out deep unlocked abilities. Sarrin had barely held onto herself. By the end, she’d lost control, attacking the crew and Kieran. She wouldn’t do it again.

  But the monster whispered to her: it could be different this time. The others wanted to destroy the warship. If she let it, the monster could destroy every last soldier, every computer, every system. No one would be able to stop her.

  Another thought occurred: Halud had been on the warship. If, by some miracle, they could attack it and learn the information stored on its computers, there would be a record of what happened to Halud — at least if he’d made it to the warship or not, and if he had, had he been killed or brought back to Etar.

  Her heart raced in her chest, the black tendrils blanking out the canteen in front of her. Could she? Could she attack the warship to find her brother? That was what siblings did, what normal people did — like Hoepe finding Leove — they went to extraordinary lengths to find those they loved. Perhaps, once she found him, she would be human again.