PERSONAL RECORD: DESIGNATION ZETA4542910-9545E
PALLAS STATION
478.2.6.02
Weapon ready, Zhen continually scanned the hall as she led the way to the control room. Kyleigh and James walked on my left and right, ready to take my arms, should I falter. Three marines in blue armor ranged around us, and the evenly spaced overhead lights made their bulky, unfamiliar weapons cast strange shapes underfoot.
Though short, the walk took longer than it should have. Halfway there, I had to rest, and while everyone waited, the marine who wore a red-and-white medic badge on her upper arm adjusted my suit’s oxygen flow. She asked a series of pointless questions before motioning to Zhen. We continued at a slower pace. Somehow my boots carried me down the hall, but when the pale-blue safety lights along the base of the walls blurred, I closed my eyes. Kyleigh wrapped an arm around my waist, and James took hold of my right forearm to steady me.
Finally, I heard the tap of fingers on a panel and the sound of the control room’s double doors sliding apart. I risked opening my eyes and winced at the subsequent brightness. Industrial floodlights illuminated the vast room’s every corner, leaving no place for a behemoth insect, or even a smaller one, to enter by stealth. Spotlights hurled lumens at the dark volcanic rock ceiling’s tooth-like structures, and their shadows huddled at their bases, not daring to creep down the walls. Flecks of mica, obsidian, and quartz caught the light and shimmered overhead like distant, bound stars.
The three marines accompanied us past a sentinel and a knot of men and women at a computer halfway through the room. We stopped less than four meters from the main console, where I had connected the drone to the computer. It hovered in the same position, like a spider awaiting prey on a web of tentacles, tendrils, and cables. A fine layer of dust had dulled its metallic body and the black of the cables anchoring it to the console, but its appendages shone.
“Recorder!”
Transfixed by a machine that had been both ally and enemy, I did not respond. James set a hand on my arm, and I glanced up at him. He inclined his head toward the man who had called me.
“There you are,” one of the marines boomed over the communications link in my helmet. It took but two seconds to summon his name from my lagging memory. Lars. “Good to see you up and about, Recorder-who-isn’t. We weren’t sure you were going to—”
A chorus of voices interrupted him with varying impolite requests for his silence.
Lars grimaced. “Well, a couple of us thought you’d have to be recycled or something. You sure you should be out here? You look like you’d fall over if someone sneezed on you.”
Someone groaned, and a woman I did not recognize suggested, “Then don’t sneeze on her.”
“Can’t.” Lars knocked one gloved hand against his helmet. “Not with this on.”
Zhen flashed a glare at the man but tapped my arm. “Go ahead and get started. I’ll be right back.”
As she left, Lars waved at the drone attached to the console. “I remembered you telling Mike, back before the bugs got him, that you needed to leave that one alone, so New-Parker helped us wrangle the other ones for you. Over that way.” He jabbed his thumb toward the corner, then walked beside me. “Good thing you’re here, though. Lytwin and Patterson are in trouble. Everyone says you and Tristram”—he angled sideways and addressed Kyleigh—“good to see you—can figure out this mess once we get that equipment. None of us know the first thing about drones. Well, maybe New-Parker does. Didn’t think of that before. Should’ve asked.”
“It is well,” I said, even though I concentrated more on my steps than his sentences. Kyleigh tightened her arm around my waist, but even with her help I was out of breath when we reached the table in the back of the room.
Lars bent over to peer through my faceplate. “Never seen anyone that color green, except once in hi-G training when that one guy washed out.”
“If that is true,” James said, edging between me and the tall marine, “you should bring her a chair.”
“Right.” Lars straightened, then walked backward toward a nearby computer station. “I really don’t think Timmons will be too pleased you’re up. Spanos wasn’t. He and Quincy argued with Jackson something fierce. Be right back.” He jogged past the vacant console’s dusty chair toward the group of people on the far side of the room.
Kyleigh and James stared after him. She shook her head, and James brought me the chair. After brushing the seat with a gloved hand, he offered it to me. I sat gratefully and allowed my eyes to close. Fatigue reached deep into my bones, nearly erasing the reason I had abandoned my bed.
Unwilling to allow myself to forget, I clung to the fact that Max needed to know if Consortium nanodevices contaminated the medgel. If the virus was inextricably linked to the technology which ran in all Consortium blood, we needed to utilize that knowledge to save the marines who had been bitten. The key to that might be to track down why I yet lived.
With my eyes closed and my thoughts circling, I startled when someone touched my shoulder. Kyleigh knelt before me, and James stood like a guardian at her side.
“Are you all right?” she asked quietly.
“I will be.” It might have been untrue. I could not tell.
Bracing myself with the chair’s padded armrests, I studied the drones arranged on and beneath the thick concrete table. Like all Elders’ primary drones, Lorik’s was three-quarters of a meter across. The Elder’s larger secondary slave drones rested on the polished floor. The two Recorders’ drones were smaller, but mine, which Zhen, Jordan, and I had retrieved from the medical bay where a roach had mangled it, was absent.
They rested on neatly folded arms, giant silver ellipsoids on tidy silver cubes. With their writhing tendrils and tentacles spooled into the interior, they were peaceful, more like giant metallic water-smoothed stones and less like the mechanical jellyfish to which I had compared them all my life. They seemed harmless.
Lars appeared again, pushing a large, overstuffed rolling chair with a small, zippered duffel bag leaning against the lumbar support cushion. He gave it a final shove, and it eased to a stop beside me.
“Ah, good thinking with the other chair. Sorry I took so long. This one is better, though.” Lars picked up the bag in one large hand, and its contents clattered. He rotated the chair toward me. “Give it a go.”
I heaved myself from the dusty chair and into the softer cushions. Even in my suit, I could feel the difference, and a sigh escaped.
Lars grinned. “It’s my favorite. Whoever’s at comms usually takes it, but I figured you needed it more. Found it in a posh office just down the hall.”
“It’s Christine Johnson’s.”
We all turned to Kyleigh, who stared at the chair. James nudged the dusty chair in her direction, and she dropped into it.
Lars’s smile evaporated, and he shifted his weight. “Oh. D’you mind?”
“No.” Her voice thinned to a thread of its usual energy. “There’s no one who will mind now.”
When they fell silent, my heartbeat echoed in my ears. I slowly scooted the chair closer to the table, all my focus narrowing to the familiar Consortium shapes before me. Regardless of the absence of people mourning whoever Christine Johnson had been, we could not allow the two bitten marines to die like the citizens on Agamemnon had. Like Freddie had. Like I could. I had to choose a drone.
Which one . . .
The bag clattered again.
“Brought you wrenches and pliers and some of that cabling, like the stuff that hooks that other one to the computer system.” Lars set the zippered duffel between Lorik’s slave drones, but I eyed it with askance. The marine meant well, but I questioned his knowledge in packing appropriate supplies. He tapped one of the drones with the toe of his boot. “Tell you what. Pick one of these big ones. Never know when more power will come in handy.”
“But have you worked with an Elder’s drone before?” Kyleigh asked.
“No,” I answered. “I have not.”
Which one . . .
Was using the Elder’s worth the risk? If a Recorder’s drone went rogue, I could shut it down, but if the codes for an Elder’s differed, would the threat to both citizens and escaping Recorders outweigh the benefits of activating it?
Images overlay the table before me. Lorik’s blood-reddened eyes and pain-etched features. The darkness in the tunnels as he repeated the codes, making me promise to use them for . . . something.
Either fatigue or the virus scrambled the numbers and letters in my memory. I closed my eyes, searching for accuracy, pleading with myself to remember. It had not been long ago. I should not have forgotten.
Which one . . .
Familiarity warred with dangers and benefits.
I had to gain access to the storage areas, true, but Lorik’s drone would also allow me to access Consortium records and create new lives for the talkative former Recorder and James. Their freedom was worth whatever I needed to do, as long as I kept the others safe as well. My eyes opened. Despite the risks, I knew what I needed.
I sat up straight and pointed to Lorik’s personal drone. “This one.”
“Not one of the really big ones?” Lars asked. “You’re sure?”
“I am certain.”
Light footsteps brought my attention around.
Zhen nodded at the tool bag. “I assembled that kit based on what you used when you set up the jammers. Will you need anything else?”
Relief trickled through me. “I have not checked, but if you assembled it, I am not concerned.”
“I’m glad someone appreciates me.” She came to a stop two and a half meters from the table. “What next?”
“I need a conference room with a lockable door.”
Zhen’s expression descended into a frown. “But if we aren’t hiding it—”
“This is not about hiding but about containment. I do not know what this drone will do, and even though it may do nothing, putting others in danger is not an option.” The room spun around me when I tried to stand, so I sank back in the chair before looking up at James. “You must stay far from the area while I attempt to activate it. I do not want it to record your presence or put you in danger.”
My first friend stiffened. “You cannot do this alone.”
“On the contrary, I do this alone, or it is not done.”
“Right.” Zhen clicked a button on her wrist. “I need those microantigravity units we used to move these beasts in here. And check with Jackson about conference rooms.”
Over the communications link, the talkative Recorder said, “You got it.”
Grabbing the comfortable chair’s armrests, I rotated toward the approaching man in the Consortium suit. The talkative former Recorder removed a microantigravity device from a box and tossed it to Zhen, who caught it one-handed.
She studied it for a moment, then frowned at me. “We aren’t going to finish before Tim and J get back, so be prepared for the scolding of your life.”
“You can’t let her go off on her own when she’s been so sick,” Kyleigh protested, and her assertion did nothing to increase my self-confidence.
James’s expression mirrored hers. “Indeed.”
“I have to say”—Lars glanced at Kyleigh and James—“they’re right.”
“Exactly,” the talkative Recorder said, all hint of his usual good humor gone.
“Oh, she’ll go alone.” An incongruous smile blossomed on Zhen’s face. “But like I said last ten-day, I’ll go with her.”