PERSONAL RECORD: DESIGNATION ZETA4542910-9545E
CTS THALASSA
478.2.6.04
The Elder’s door closed behind me with a click, and Nate and Cam escorted me to my computer laboratory. They waited in the hall, and for five seconds, I stood in the doorway and studied the room.
The destroyed Consortium computer had been replaced with a standard public-usage one, and patchwork antistatic tiles marked where someone had replaced the scorched and peeling flooring. The charging station that had electrocuted both me and Julian Ross had been repaired, but the same workplace safety posters stared back at me.
I crossed to my favorite computer station and commanded the drone. “Over here.”
It complied.
While my fingers summoned information, my mind wandered back to the exceedingly unclear aphorism in the Elder’s quarters. The definition of irony eluded me. Was it ironic that the Consortium’s daily saying told me to shed the past?
“Everything okay in there?” Nate called from the hallway.
“Yes.”
I drew a deep breath and attempted to obey the aphorism in the way least intended: erasing records.
But when I opened the proper programs and checked Thalassa’s footage, my concern about records was proven unfounded. The EM cannon’s damage to the ship’s records was more extensive than the damage Julian Ross had caused before he, Elliott, and Captain North had fled Thalassa. It even exceeded the damage I had done when I destroyed what he left untouched. Though I could do nothing to further obfuscate the information, I frowned all the same.
While nothing remained to betray us, hiding new identities in these shattered records was impossible. Unable to transmit the data from the network, unable to sneak information into the ship’s records, I was at a loss as to how to save the two men.
The other Consortium access point would have been the injured Recorder’s drone, but if she had been incapacitated by the EM cannon, it must have been destroyed. I rubbed my temples, but doing so did nothing to summon new ideas.
A communications link sounded nearby, and Nate’s muffled voice came from the hall. After several seconds, he appeared in the doorway.
“You about done? We’re running out of time,” he said. “Engineering needs me to check the chem system before I get that box and find Zhen.”
“It is well. Go on.”
His mouth quirked to the side. “Don’t think so.”
“It is well,” I repeated. “I must check on the ship Recorder’s drone. Cam can escort me, if he has not been assigned elsewhere.”
After a short, muted conversation with the younger man, Nate said, “I don’t like it, but that’ll have to do. Not sure if Archimedes will let me go back to Pallas until my clavicle’s healed up, but I’ll see you before you board that shuttle.”
His boots beat out a steady rhythm as he left.
I turned to the drone and used the first excuse that came to mind. “I must ascertain that the Recorder’s drone is secure. Remain here and safeguard the computers until I return.”
>>Acknowledged.
Leaving all else, I picked up the repair kit and the duffel bag containing my laundry. The computer laboratory door closed behind me with a click.
Cam accompanied me to the Recorder’s quarters, which I opened with relative ease. The drone had fallen on its own arms, crushing them beneath itself. There was no power, no way of turning it on, and black singed the sides of its access panel. I pried it open. Just as the fail-safe had destroyed the computer in my laboratory those ten-days ago, this drone was beyond recovery. No amount of forensic research would dig through its chemically disintegrated innards to discover Consortium secrets or records.
A rush of conflicting emotions hit me. Gratitude, that although the Elders had programmed a self-destruct sequence for EM cannons, they had not done so for the impossible, unforeseeable chance that giant roaches would tear drones apart. If they had, I could not have made the jammers. Relief, that I did not need to search through data and remove evidence. The twins of fear and self-doubt, for no drone, indeed no one at all, would be able to assist me as I tried to hide my friends.
I closed the panel, repacked the tools, and joined Cam at the door.
“Edwards commed me.” He hoisted my laundry bag over his shoulder. “Everyone’s waiting in the infirmary.”
“Very well.” I refrained from pointing out that everyone was a misnomer.
Neither of us spoke as we traversed the hallways. We had not reached the lift to the lower level when Cam’s communications link chimed.
Tia’s disembodied voice sounded. “Cam, you’re requested in meeting room B17.”
“I promised Timmons I would take Zeta to—”
“Edwards cleared her. She’ll be fine. Meeting room B17.” Tia paused, then whispered, “Cam, you have to go. Not only did the captain request it, but there’s talk of sending you back. I don’t know why, but you need to make sure they don’t. Who knows where you’ll end up.”
Cam paled.
“It is likely for your safety,” I said.
“Then why not me and Eric, too?” she demanded.
Cam’s mouth pulled to the side. “Eric’s useful. You are, too, even given your situation.”
She huffed. “B17.” The link stopped abruptly.
He rubbed his palm on his pant leg. “Zeta, you good with going on without me?”
“It is Thalassa.” I held out my hand for the laundry, and he looped the handle over my arm. “Additionally, Nate understands orders.”
“I don’t like it,” Cam said before he strode away.
Seven seconds ticked past as I stood in the hall, concern for Cam—for them all—tumbling through my mind. If I could somehow upload the new identities without betraying my friends, James and Daniel might be able to walk away, but I would not. The idea that I was bound for destruction in the future, however, did not alter the fact that I needed to go to the laundry room, the infirmary, and then retrieve Lorik’s drone.
The circulation fans brushed air against my skin. Pressing needs came rushing back, but I continued, bag in hand. My mind raced exponentially faster than my feet trudged.
Lorik’s last words to me had been to have faith, though he had not specified the foundation for his admonition. The concepts of hope and faith blurred in my mind, their meanings overlapping, melding into something beyond the unreasonable optimism I had always believed they implied.
Even though anticipation of my friends’ freedom carried no guarantee, it was what I worked for. Though based in my limited abilities and despite my failures and the life my mistakes had cost, was that hope? To work toward a goal despite uncertainty?
I had no reason to be optimistic about my future, and the good in my present was unmerited. My past and my present were my only certainties. I could not assert with finality that James and Daniel would be free, that I had not assigned all of us to removal and the Halls. Did any of us have a future? Not one of us could secure days yet to come, so was claiming it an act of . . . faith? Kyleigh’s confidence in her unquantifiable God seemed to have wavered, but perhaps she was incorrect. Perhaps the very immeasurable nature of such a God made its acts unfathomable to finite creations.
My footsteps slowed, for intricacies upon intricacies seemed to speak to something beyond mere reason.
The gifting of Max’s unborn twins shaped his life, enabling him to save my own. I had not died, and my specific training had led me to discover the bioweapon and alert the Consortium. I had suggested the Eldest send condemned Recorders to Pallas, and when she authorized their presence, she had saved Max’s son.
Coincidence seemed an insufficient explanation, but did that point to something beyond my understanding? I stopped in the middle of the hall, and people dodged around me, offering low, polite excuses.
Like the promise of delicate wings inside an ungainly caterpillar, a chrysalis of hope—and perhaps faith—dissolved who I was in order to shape me into something else.
Or, not perhaps after all.
I squared my shoulders and changed course, heading for the laundry before collecting the drone. While I needed to return the bedding, more importantly, I needed something to wear that was not Consortium grey.