PERSONAL RECORD: DESIGNATION ZETA4542910-9545E
CTS THALASSA
478.2.6.04
Images, letters, and numbers swept across the linked datapad’s screen, and though I closed my eyes against the onslaught, they burned in my mind.
Freddie as a child in a hospital bed. Freddie learning to write and draw after receiving his new eyes. A small Freddie playing catch with a younger and happier version of his father. Freddie, his father at his side, as his mother’s remains moved down the conveyor belt in a Center for Reclamation and Recycling.
How could I erase the importance of this one bright life? And how had the weight of doing so never mattered to me?
My sole focus had been on saving my first friend, but now the pressure in my throat made it difficult to draw air. I made myself remember the young man who had given me the datastick. His insistence that saving Max’s son was what mattered. His belief that he was not dying but going home. His face, streaked by bloody tears—
That brought the virus to mind again. My concentration splintered.
But perhaps the two tasks were not mutually exclusive. All I needed was for the researchers to examine the datastick, and that could be done here on Thalassa while I saved James and the talkative Recorder. It would take but moments to turn over the information. I had that much time, did I not?
I tapped my communications link, demanding to speak to virology.
“Dr. Clarkson,” I began when she answered, “I have—”
“Recorder? What can you possibly want? Bother Edwards instead. I’ve got work to do.”
“Which is why—”
A snort interrupted me. “Stay where you are, plague take you.”
“Enough!” I snapped, and she fell quiet. My fingers curled around Elliott’s datastick. “I have information about the bioweapon.”
She clicked her tongue. “So I’ve heard, but you’re not a virologist, Recorder. What makes you think you could come up with—”
“From the people who released the virus.” Interruption had been frowned upon in the Consortium, but she showed no signs of stopping.
“What?” After a brief pause, her words unleashed in a torrent. “Void it, why didn’t you say so yesterday? Were you withholding it on purpose? What information?”
I ground my teeth. “If you could display but a modicum of manners, I could better complete my sentences. As you noted, I am no virologist. The information was given to me by the young man who helped us escape. Elliott Ross—”
“The one who assaulted you? I find it hard to believe someone like him would give us reliable data.”
Never before had I felt such a rush of violence toward someone who was not a criminal. “Elliott Ross downloaded information to a datastick. Without a computer in the Elder’s quarters, I cannot transmit the information through the ship’s network.”
“No computer? Oh, right. There’d be no need for one with drones and all,” she said. “Fine. Call Edwards. Tell him to get the stick with your supposed information. And your blood, while he’s at it.”
Eyes on the frozen images of Freddie’s past, I disconnected her link. Call Edwards, indeed. I should have contacted him first, save that I wanted to get the information to virology as soon as possible.
When Edwards did not answer, I left a message, then attempted to contact Archimedes Genet. He was also unavailable, and chasing people to get them the information was stealing valuable time. If they received their messages right away, Edwards or whomever the captain sent could arrive in as little as fifteen minutes. That had to be enough time. If they did not receive the messages, however, I needed someone who would listen.
Nate. I needed Nate.
I chided myself for not contacting him first, for though he was not a virologist, either, I knew he would answer. He did.
“Nathaniel, my heart—”
He inhaled sharply. “Careful now.”
I gestured at the drone, belatedly realizing he would not receive visual cues over the communications link. “I must get a datastick to Dr. Clarkson.”
His voice pitched low. “That doesn’t mean you need to be reckless.”
“I am not.” I did not waste time clarifying. “But I need you.”
He immediately responded, “On my way,” and the link ended.
Even if Nate took the datastick to the virologists, I could—should—transmit the information over the Consortium network. I inserted Elliott’s datastick into my blue datapad and copied the information, pacing the room while it loaded. When it finished, I ran a check to verify that it had transferred properly. It had.
While swallowing the remainder of the weak ginger tea, I pulled up James’s biomedical information from the Elder’s files and switched it with Freddie’s, then duplicated it onto my blue datapad. I could not recreate their ancestry, but their Earth ethnicities were a close enough match that perhaps no one would notice. Their ages, however, were a different matter. No one would mistake James for a young man of twenty-one who had wasted away to skeletal levels after two years in a medical pod. His shoulders were too broad, his muscles too well defined. For a moment, I stared blankly at the data, then I shrugged. There was nothing I could do. If Julian Ross had not become gaunt, perhaps my friend had not, either.
As I altered Freddie’s educational records to match James’s experience at university, a pang rippled through me at the diminishment of Freddie’s art. His handiwork should not be lost. That had to be his memorial. I falsified a surge in the medical pods from his time in stasis, emphasizing system glitches to explain any discrepancy in artistic abilities.
I dove deeper, replacing pictures and images, merging documentation for both Freddie and James, inserting the merged images into data I would somehow transmit over the Consortium network once the drone reconnected.
The words swam before me, and my headache spiked. I poured the last of the warm water into my cup and swallowed it before checking the chronometer.
Nineteen minutes had passed. Nate had not arrived.
One last adjustment: I altered Frederick Standon Westruther to Frederick James. At least in this small way, my first friend had the option to go with the name he had accepted as his own.
I tugged on my nightshirt’s hem, tempted momentarily to gather a blanket from the bed to wear as a cape against a chill that might have been imagined. What else? The talkative Recorder, the AAVA drone?
The door sprang into its pocket, startling me, and Nate entered. His green eyes, bright against the biosuit’s orange, darted from me to the drone, and his shoulders lost some of their rigidity.
He let out a breath. “The drone’s off? Don’t go scaring me like that, sweetheart.” His gaze drifted from my eyes to my bare legs, then shot back up. His lips quirked into a smile that showed his dimple. “You look nice.”
Attempting—and failing—to raise a single brow, I said, “It is but a nightshirt, Nathaniel.”
His smile broadened. “Sorry I’m late. The marine at the door made me change. Told him orange wasn’t my color, but he insisted.”
“He was correct.” After a moment’s consideration, lest Nate believe I referred to his obscure remark about owning the color orange, I clarified, “You cannot be in my quarantine room without protection.”
His expression softened. “I’m pretty sure Shiro is right. I’ll be fine. Haven’t caught anything yet, and neither has Kye. She’d be down for the count if you were contagious, especially after Freddie . . .” He cleared his throat. “Besides, I’ll be going back through that cleaning thing on my way out. The ship and I will be safe enough.”
I bit my lip.
Nate crossed the room in three long strides. Instead of immediately telling him why I required his assistance, I buried my face against his chest. His arms encircled me, and his cheek rested against my head, the face shield’s rigid sides uncomfortable on my scalp. Though dimmed through the suit’s stiff material, the music of his heartbeat felt like home. I closed my eyes and rested against a rhythm that surpassed the resonant beat of the subsonic canons.
This. This is the music for which I had longed.
He eased back and lifted my chin. “You said you needed me.”
“I do.”
“Don’t get me wrong,” he said, his voice thicker than usual, “because I’d stay here in an Elder’s room with a disemboweled drone, if that’s what you wanted, but I know you wouldn’t have commed me if you didn’t think it was important. You mentioned a datastick.”
I jerked backward, drumming my thigh. He caught my hand.
“Ease up, sweetheart,” he murmured.
Pulling free, I skirted the chair to place it between us so I would not allow myself to listen to his heart again. Lifting the datastick from the seat, I said, “This.”
He accepted it, but his eyes remained steady on mine. “That’s the datastick you had on Pallas, isn’t it? Freddie’s?”
“Yes, and no. Elliott gave it to me.”
All gentleness disappeared from Nate’s face. “When?”
“He loaded it with information from Ross’s computer.”
Nate’s eyebrows disappeared behind his orange hood, and his fingers fisted around the black datastick.
“I contacted Dr. Clarkson, but she would not come to get it,” I admitted. The confession did not ease the sudden pang that he still thought I had called for him on Pallas when, in fact, Kyleigh had contacted Jordan. “I should have known to reach out to you first.”
He merely nodded.
“The researchers and authorities must have the information. It might save Patterson or the medic. Or others.” I tipped my head to study his face. “If I am not to leave the Elder’s quarters without permission, I need help.”
His eyes held steady on mine, but his perfect brows met over his nose. “You only just remembered you had it?”
I ducked my head.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll get the information where it needs to go, and you’re going in that medicomputer first chance we get.”
All at once, I saw around me the walls of the medicomputer, heard the door lock, heard men arguing. I shrank into myself.
“Hey. Look at me.”
I shoved my panic aside and raised my head. “I am looking, my heart.”
“You’ll go in the medicomputer, right? For me?”
“For you,” I whispered, “yes.”
He backed to the door, his eyes on mine, then it closed Nathaniel into the vestibule. For uncounted seconds, I watched its unmoving surface before turning back to the drone. Allowing emotions to cloud my reasoning was unsound.
The talkative Recorder—Daniel Parker. I had to save him, as well.
My nose tickled. I dashed to the water closet in search of a tissue, but the nosebleed was of short duration. I disposed of the reddened wad and forced my mind back to crafting an alternate life—and death—for the talkative Recorder.
Falsifying the deaths of both Recorders was simple enough, though I would need to alter the marines’ logs as soon as the opportunity presented itself. I disliked saying that either man had been killed and devoured by insects. It felt as though I were making an evil prediction, that I would murder them by accident, even as I had killed the man Skip had called Cord.
My hands shook when I finished and again saved the information to my datapad, and I closed myself in the water closet and doused my head in the sink, then leaned against the wall. Water ran in rivulets down my neck. But the scent of soap did nothing to clean the splotches on my conscience. My lower lip quivered.
Prime numbers: two, three, five, seven, eleven, thirteen . . .
As I listed them, the water ceased to drip like tears from my short curls, and slowly, I pushed myself away from the wall. After eliminating Recorder Mau4531809-3423R and Recorder Gamma4524708-3801-1R, I could save Daniel, too.
Adjusting James’s identity had been easy enough, but Daniel’s? Uncertainty nagged at me. I had little experience with fiction, but if I remembered correctly, fiction was most believable when it bore a kernel of truth. But which truth? I tapped my thigh. At the very least, I could retain Daniel’s birthday, for like all Recorders, his CDN was based on the date of his retrieval from the tanks and the center where he had been donated.
But what had been his education? He had worked in a governmental center. Perhaps a dual degree in liberal arts and political science would serve? Had he told me his middle name? I could not remember. After scrounging through my memory, I settled on the middle name of a marine who had vowed to give up his identity to keep a former Recorder safe. It seemed a fitting honor.
All I had was a name, a birthday, a college degree, and the falsified marine service record. As insufficient as it was, I copied everything onto Freddie’s datastick as well as my blue datapad. At least, it was a beginning. I would need to access the ship’s records, as well, to be certain that the information I transmitted matched any surviving documentation in Thalassa’s computers. My old computer laboratory would have to be my next destination.
I reinserted the datastick with secondary arm control and slid the green datapad into place. Then, I hesitated.
My heart thundered, and the burden of risking two more lives—lives far more precious to me than Cord’s had been—made my hands tremble. There was no one to double-check my workmanship, and the consequences of any mistake could destroy those two men and all who endeavored to free them.
Yet, this was what they wanted.
The realization selfishly brought my mind back to my own predicament, and cold seeped through me.
For another three minutes, I stared at the door through which Nathaniel had left, torn between hope and resignation. Whether or not the cure existed or would be found in cats or on a datastick, the Eldest had announced that I must return. My escape would endanger Daniel and James. After all, a mission wherein all aberrations mysteriously disappeared would be highly suspect and call for closer scrutiny. Conversely, a trip in which an Elder and only some of the expendable Recorders and their drones were destroyed by mammoth insects, but one aberrant survived would be believable.
“It is well,” I said quietly, though no one was there to hear, and no record was made.
The drone’s screen pulsed twice, and I turned away. Once it powered on, there would be nothing else I could do.
Consortium grey filled my hands when I removed a clean tunic and leggings from the closet. The deep rhythm of music beyond human hearing was beautiful, as were the bold yet delicate colors of infrared and ultraviolet. However, the color that mattered most was the green of Nathaniel’s eyes. The music that mattered most was his heart beating beneath my cheek.
Sickness, reclamation, death . . . Too many endings. Past and present twisted around each other like DNA into an unfathomable future, one in which freedom seemed unlikely.
I dressed slowly, clasped my hands together to keep from drumming my thigh, and waited.
Perhaps . . . perhaps it was not wrong to look for freedom, for despite the endings all around me, there might be beginnings, as well.
Once the Consortium’s network registered the new information, it would take a fraction of a second for Recorders Mau4531809-3423R and Gamma4524708-3801-1R to cease to exist. Whether or not they liked their new names, Daniel Geoffrey Parker and Frederick James Westruther would take their places.
As they should.