Grayson Bane
There were times when it was hard to keep up with Mason’s brains. Grayson usually liked to ride shotgun, following along with the various little Masons’ escapades and ensuring that everything was working well, but right now he felt his lack of energy like a lead brick had been grafted to his spine, pressing him down even as he fought to rise back up.
It was especially hard to keep up when all three of the remaining visual processors were functioning in different ranges: one in ultraviolet, one getting the best resolution in its heat-sensing mode, and the other’s camera operating normally, which didn’t help very much when there was little light to work with other than what it was generating itself. Not to mention the challenges of making it through ancient waste tunnels that were really too small for the arm’s extensors to get through without serious modification, which made them so… damn… slow.
[Take a break.]
“Nope, I’ve got it,” Grayson muttered, lifting his head up from where he and Mason were sitting in the mess hall. It had the biggest entrances into the tunnels, which so far seemed uninhabited by both revenants and mold. “M’fine.”
[You’re not. Go eat something. Drink something. Take a nap. Clear your mind. You’re slowing us down more than anything else right now.]
“Who do you think you are, you pushy son of a bitch?”
[Don’t talk about Mom that way. Go on.]
“Yeah, yeah.” Grayson stretched and felt his neck crack in three places. “Fine, you brat. But let me know if you need another set of eyes.”
[I do need another set of eyes, make me one.]
“When we’re out of here.” When he and his brother were on their way and everyone else was… doing whatever they were going to be doing at that point. Hopefully if they were revenants, they were back to being dead. And in the case of Dr Drexler and Six, they’d probably also be dead soon enough. If they were lucky.
Grayson was good at compartmentalizing. He had to be. He stood up and walked around, took note of how much food they had brought with them from Six’s ship – he and Mason would be able to last about a month on it if they were careful – and finally went in to talk to Six about how to rev up the wormhole generator on the pod, because a month wasn’t good enough and he didn’t want to be surprised with any rusted but functioning Caridian booby traps or unexpected surprises once they were in space.
Six, per usual, was very free with handing over information. “It seems like it will be quite easy to operate,” he assured Grayson. “Much like the wormhole generator on my own ship, all you need is to input the proper password and the sequence will initiate on its own.”
“Yeah, but we don’t have that password, do we? Or will the password that worked on your ship work for this one?” Grayson asked, vaguely aware of the first of his brother’s limbs dropping down into the hangar. It did so slowly, every extensor used to soften its landing. None of the revenants milling about in front of the entrance to the hallway seemed to notice it, and Right-leg Mason headed for its target destination to steal a set of stabilizers for their getaway pod.
“Hmm.” Six’s antennae waved more vigorously. “That is an excellent question. The operational passwords for our ships are well known to all Caridians, as we are inherently loyal to the Glorious Hegemony. The passwords are to shield our technology from aliens, not from ourselves. However, they generally only stay relevant for a hundred years or so – once per the use cycle of each generation. After that we generate new ones for Seethe use. I will have to do some research to look this generation’s password up.”
“How’s about you go do that now?”
Six left the lab for the library, leaving Grayson alone with Dr Drexler – and the creepy thing that used to be Dr Lifhe, who was looking less Centauran and more like a revenant by the hour. Almost all of his original skin had vanished now, replaced by carapace and shifting plates of moldy bone. His new eyes glittered, even in the low light, and his mouth moved almost constantly. Grayson wondered what he was saying.
“How can you stand to keep him goin’ in here?” he asked Dizzie despite himself. He tried not to focus on how another one of Mason’s limbs was coming out into the hangar. It had fewer extensors to give it swiftness, but Mason had let it down farther away from the crowd of revenants, where it was less likely to attract notice. “Doesn’t he creep you the hell out?”
Dr Drexler sighed. “What am I supposed to do, just kill him?”
“Yeah, that’s exactly what you’re supposed to do.” Grayson gestured at the testing chamber. “Pretty soon he’s going to be too big to be held in there, and he’ll start buttin’ up against the force field. At that point you’ll start electrocuting him bit by bit just by dint of doin’ nothin’. Plus, don’t think I haven’t seen the shit you’re spraying in there to keep his brain quiet. Better to finish him off before you run out, don’t you think?”
“Maybe,” Dr Drexler said. They sounded almost as tired as Grayson felt. “But I’m still learning a lot about the mold from him. Its rate of growth is impressive – I’ve been working on correlating it to visual data gathered from Dr Rigby’s expedition, which makes me think that the mold that spread across PK-L7 has the same origin as this mold.”
“Which is interesting why?”
Dr Drexler perked up a bit. “Oh, there are whole fields of astromycology devoted to the spread of spores through space! Think about how far Sik-Tar is from the PK-L system. If their mold has the same genetic signature, then that could feed into all sorts of theories out there about everything from gene seeding to the existence of a founder race, or even space mushrooms that can generate their own wormholes…”
“Bullshit,” Grayson said, startled into a chuckle even as he was drawn back to watching Mason’s progress. Left-leg Mason was trying to move a container of liquid Xenium into the pod now. It was slow going, but he was still good so far.
“Most of the people who push that theory are usually high on their own dissertation subjects, but it’s out there,” Dr Drexler assured him. “If it’s true, then it tells us a lot about the original Xenos, too. They presented so differently than the revenants here – a lot more soft tissue, extensive growth of tentacles, that kind of thing, whereas here it’s almost all clear variations on Caridian physiology.”
“Except for that one.”
“Yeah, except for that weird one. I have no idea what the basis for its anatomy is or why it’s so different from the others. I don’t want to theorize more without data, but I am very willing to call it creepy as hell.” They shared a shudder. “Anyway, I’m taking constant readings on Corinus’s mutations and–”
[Shit!]
Grayson leapt back into his brother’s mind at the sudden swear word, blocking Dr Drexler out as he focused.
[One of these bastards found Left-leg Mason. He managed to get the fuel to the pod and hooked up to the tank, but it’s punctured. There’s some spillage, we can’t say how much.]
“Where’s Left-leg Mason now?” Grayson asked.
[In the process of being ripped to shreds,] Mason said grimly. [Don’t try to access him, you don’t want to experience that.]
Grayson swallowed. “Got it. What about the others?”
[They got their supplies to the pod and into position. As soon as we turn the power on in there, the stabilizers ought to take effect.]
“Good. Get them back here, then.”
[Will do.] He sighed. [It’s going to be weird trying to get around on one arm and one leg.]
“We’ll make it work,” Grayson promised him. Mason sighed and pushed him out of the group mind, and Grayson became aware of Dr Drexler looking at him curiously.
“News from your brother?”
“Yeah. He got everything fixed up on the pod, but the Xenium was compromised. Gonna be a rough takeoff if the takeoff generates enough heat to ignite the leftover liquid.”
“I’ll do some basic calculations on its rate of evaporation,” they said, pulling out their tablet. “It might be less flammable once it becomes less volatile.”
“Whatever makes you happy,” Grayson muttered. He could vaguely sense the other limbs making their way back through the tunnels. Right-arm Mason in particular seemed very keen to get back, although his movements were a little jerky. His light was almost dead, making it impossible to gauge whether or not he’d taken extra damage out there. “You wanted to spray the limbs down with disinfectant when they got back, yeah?”
“Yes, absolutely.” Dr Drexler reached for the palm-sized mister they’d prepared earlier in the day. “Let’s make sure we keep any more mold from joining us back here. This ought to kill the spores on contact, but I’d still wait a few minutes to make sure the limbs’ nervous systems are clear before having them hook back up to Mason’s main body. They make an actual neural connection, right?”
“Right.”
“Then yeah, definitely wait a bit.” The two of them headed for the mess hall and over to Mason, and a second later Right-leg Mason dropped down from the tunnel entrance in the ceiling. Dr Drexler immediately sprayed him down with the disinfectant. Right-arm Mason followed about thirty seconds later and was similarly sprayed.
“That’s all that’s left,” Grayson said. “The left leg was caught by the revenants. It ain’t gonna be joining us any time soon.”
[Grayson…]
“Aw, that’s too bad,” Dr Drexler replied. “Sorry about that, Mason.”
Grayson shrugged, trying to put the loss behind them. No time for mourning the dead right now, after all. “Eh, I’ll make him a better one.”
[Grayson… I feel like…]
“And another left arm, I guess.” Dr Drexler frowned in sympathy.
Grayson refused to feel bad about Lefty’s disappearance. “He saved our asses. That’s the most we can ask from any independently mobile, AI-controlled cybernetic limb.”
Dr Drexler laughed. “Well said. Maybe…”
All of a sudden, a lump of metal dropped out of the ceiling. Grayson and Dr Drexler both startled. It was unrecognizable, hardly more than a single boxy piece of melted machinery and two awkward, pincerlike grabbers. It was unexpectedly fast, though, hauling itself over to Mason and attaching itself to the gaping hole on the upper-left side of his body before Grayson could stop it.
“No!” he screamed, but it was already too late.
[Lefty!] Mason rejoiced. [I missed you so much! Where have you beeeeeee…]
All of a sudden his voice began to fade out. His program’s failsafes were kicking in, disconnecting his primary mind from all outer connections. That meant it had detected either a computer virus, or… or some other pathogen.
“Shit!” Grayson darted forward and grabbed the lump that was Lefty with his gloved hands, trying to pry it off his brother’s body. It clung tenaciously, though, all of its former failsafes and releases burned away in the blast that Grayson had assumed had taken its life. “Disengage!” he shouted at his brother. “Disengage, you worthless son of a–”
“Back up!” Dr Drexler swapped their multitool over to its “zapper” function and hit the former arm with a carefully directed bolt. Lefty sizzled in place, but still didn’t let go. “Shit, we’ll have to–”
Grayson was already moving, adrenaline making him fast but jerky as he ripped off the rigid cover built over his brother’s spinal nerves and pulled a special series of switches on his back. A second later, all of the limbs fell away, even Lefty, dropping Mason’s head and torso to the floor. The limbs were all docile, except for that damn left arm, which was whirring and kicking even now as it tried to get up and reattach itself to Mason’s body.
Looking down at the piece of his brother that was trying to destroy him, Grayson lost his mind a little bit.
“Goddamn piece of–” He grabbed the closest thing to hand, another of Mason’s limbs, and began beating his left arm. “Coming back at the wrong time, always at the wrong time, couldn’t have just died out there like you should have! You–” He lost his ability to speak but not his ability to beat the arm until it finally stopped moving.
“OK.” Dr Drexler’s hand on his shoulder pulled Grayson out of his violent fugue state. “OK, you got it. It’s done. Take a few deep breaths, and don’t worry, we’ll figure this out.”
“What’s there to figure out?” Grayson panted furiously. Figuring it out was for people who had the luxury of time and not being threatened with their very existence getting ripped to shreds. People who didn’t have to worry about their little brother – had Dr Drexler ever really worried about anyone other than themself? “Lefty found his way back, that little – and he’s infected with the mold.”
“Are you sure?”
“Positive. Mason’s programming wouldn’t have shut all his neuro functions down if it wasn’t being threatened with something nasty. S’gotta be the mold.”
“OK.” Dr Drexler nodded. “Lefty is infected. That doesn’t mean it got to Mason, right? We just need to run some tests and see whether or not–”
“He is infected.”
Grayson and Dr Drexler both turned to stare at Six, who’d spoken with calm assurance. The doctor replied first. “You can’t know that.”
“It is nevertheless the only conclusion we can reliably make at this time without more data on the spread of the mold,” he said. “We must assume he is, in fact, infected until we can prove that he is not. That might take more time than we have.”
“So what if Lefty is infected?” Grayson growled. “Mason’s a bloody cyborg! Just chuck the limb and he’ll be right. Unless of course you want us to leave him here. The three of us fly off into space using the pod he prepped for us and abandon him?” The thought of it filled him with fury. Never mind that he’d been planning for them to do that very thing to Six and Dr Drexler if they had to – it was the principle of the thing. Mason had done the work! He ought to be one of the ones to survive!
“I’m suggesting that we take sensible precautions,” Six replied. “We must leave Mason isolated while Dr Drexler determines whether or not he truly is infected with the mold. We have no safe chamber for testing it right now, given the location of the former Dr Lifhe, so we should lock him in here in his current state while Dr Drexler endeavors to do these tests.”
Dr Drexler turned to Grayson. “I can do it,” they confirmed. “I’ve got some models to work off now, thanks to how closely I’ve been able to monitor Corinus. I think we should know within an hour whether or not your brother is infected with the mold. We can sterilize what’s left of, well, Lefty with one of your welding torches and make sure it doesn’t contaminate him any further, too, but… Six is right. We need him in isolation right now.”
“Are you mad? There’s no way I’m leavin’ my brother while you–”
“Remember what happened the last time people started not listening to my plans?” Dr Drexler snapped. Literally snapped, like their voice was a rubber band that had been stretched to its limit. “It got us trapped in this undead hellscape, is what it got us! If you don’t give a shit whether you get infected or not, then you can stay in here with him while I run the tests, but I will lock you in, and I will take measures against you if you try to get out before I verify that you’re not infected. Do you get me? I’m sick of other people risking my life just because they’re too busy or too angry or too dismissive to wait for some goddamn scientific results!”
Grayson blinked. He blinked again, and the rage inside retracted enough for him to realize that if he pushed right now, he’d only be making thing worse for himself. For both of them. He couldn’t take on both Dr Drexler and Six, not without Mason, and he wasn’t going anywhere without Mason either, so he might as well let them do their tests and confirm that his brother was all right.
Then they’d be leaving Sik-Tar as fast as they could come up with the right distraction, and screw these two if they tried to get in his way. “Fine.”
“Good. Now. I’m going to go back to my experiments, you two are going to burn that arm to a crisp, and then Six is going to lock this place down.” Dr Drexler turned and walked out of the mess hall, leaving Grayson alone with the Caridian.
“What’re you staring at?” he asked, disconcerted to be the sole focus of the alien’s large, all-seeing eyes.
“Everything,” Six replied with a quiet clack of his mandibles. “More than you know. Now. Shall we get the fire?”
Creepy jackass. Grayson would be glad when he and his brother could leave this piece of work behind.
When. When. It had to be when.
Otherwise, he didn’t know what he would do.