PERSONAL RECORD: DESIGNATION ZETA4542910-9545E
PALLAS STATION
478.2.6.07
Frustration built to surpass weariness when, the next morning after breakfast, the translucent images in the small VVR had not proven anything other than Ross’s innocence, although at least I remembered what I had meant about drones. Any and all documentation needed to be purged from the Recorders’ individual drones, which took several hours. Zhen insisted on saving their personal records on spare datapads, which seemed exceptionally unwise to me.
I returned to my fruitless perusal of records on the antiquated VVR, and Zhen watched the monitors and kept me company, her needles trading yarn like whispers of gossip. Jordan, who had been unusually restless, traversed the other room. Zhen would occasionally call out an update, but when she laughed out loud, Jordan left her pacing to lean over the monitor.
Jordan snorted. “Does Hodges have what I think he has?”
“He does.”
“They’ll kill him for this.” Jordan’s low chuckle seemed to contradict the severity of her assessment. “Can you angle the cameras?”
“Hold on,” Zhen said.
I frowned. While not displeased she had discovered a solution, I had received training solely for this purpose. Adjusting the cameras should have been simple.
“There.” Jordan pointed. “To the right.”
Zhen grinned. “Oh good, he left the door—”
They both collapsed in laughter. Curiosity pulled me over, but all I saw was the young man with the struggling moustache running full speed down the hall from the rooms where the marines slept, clutching a—
“Is he holding a cockroach antenna?”
Caught in the throes of amusement, Zhen nodded and gestured at another monitor where a knot of laughing marines blocked a man in his stocking feet from chasing the runner.
There were moments I did not understand citizens. This was one of them.
A flurry of activity on the control room’s monitor snared my attention. Marines were jumping to their feet, and at the communications console, the woman’s hands flew between knobs, buttons, and switches. Surely a man who was unwise enough to snap off a cockroach antenna had not provoked a response clear in the control room?
“Jordan? Zhen? The control room—is the activity connected with Hodges?”
Their amusement vanished as they watched the other monitor.
While one man dropped to his knees to rifle through a pack on the floor, a pair of marines sprinted from the control room. People throughout the station went still, their heads cocked as if they listened. The hangar began to pulse with activity.
I scanned the images until I found two Consortium-grey, armored suits amid the marines’ blue. James and Daniel and three others pushed a hover gurney laden with boxes and bags. They paused for a moment, then sped up, taking the second turning, but away from the hangar. James and Daniel proceeded another fifteen meters, then the shortest marine patted their shoulders. Daniel hefted his weapon, and they both turned right and disappeared from our view. The other three marines continued with the material-laden gurney and turned onto more frequently used passages.
“Jordan?” I asked. “I do not understand.”
Her forehead knotted. “Still no sound?”
Zhen shook her head. “Not unless you want to start recording everything.”
I added, “Which is not worth the risk.”
“Quincy!” Zhen pointed at the monitor showing the control room. “Good man! He remembered we can’t hear. Hold on, I’ll zoom in.”
I might not have recognized him without Zhen’s identification, but indeed, a tiny, clean-shaven Quincy raised his face so the camera had a clear view of his features. He stood by the communication console holding a large datapad over his head with one hand and waving with the other.
The letters on the datapad blurred and danced, though whether due to poor resolution or a vision issue, I could not tell. He lowered it, typed, and gave the datapad to another marine before jogging over to Jackson. Not realizing where the camera was, the woman slowly rotated, only facing the camera at random.
I squinted at the screen. “What does it say?”
Jordan huffed and rubbed her eyes. “I can’t tell. Zhen?”
After a moment, Zhen, too, jumped to her feet, embraced Jordan, then enfolded me in a hug. “They have it! They have a treatment!”
Surprise at Zhen’s quick hug delayed my comprehension. “The virus?”
She beamed at me. “Yes!”
Hope hit me like a shock wave. I dropped into the chair, and tears welled up. This would prevent deaths like Freddie’s or the ones on Agamemnon. The promise felt too overwhelming and grand.
“How?” I asked, my voice shaky. “Do they have an antivirus or simply understand the mechanism?”
“Can’t know unless they write it down. Move,” Zhen said, but not roughly.
Jordan helped me to my feet, and we watched the screen as the woman typed something else and again showed Quincy’s datapad to the entire control room.
“Datapad says—” She growled an unkind description of the woman. “Just a moment. She took it down to write something else. There’s no way to pause what we’re seeing,” Zhen protested. “Wait . . .” Her voice brightened. “The datapad says, ‘Attlee leaving supplies, departing for NT. Stay put.’”
“That makes sense,” Jordan said. “Even with Thalassa fully operational, Attlee is faster, and the information has to get to New Triton as soon as possible. We’ll fix up Thalassa and follow. Any idea when we can get out of here?”
Zhen spun the chair around and lofted her eyebrows at the taller woman. “Moons and stars, J, how am I supposed to know?”
Jordan grinned. “Well, the marine put the datapad down. I say we break out the instant coffee to celebrate, since that’s as fancy as we’ll get.”
My thoughts crystalized, and I blurted, “Will they keep Edwards?”
Both of my friends’ smiles evaporated.
“They ought not keep him,” I pressed when neither replied. Panic punched tiny fists into my lungs. “He has done much to assist us, much to, to . . .”
Zhen stood abruptly, caught my arm, and lowered me into the chair.
“They probably will. We’ll find out soon enough.” Jordan settled in a crouch in front of me. “We haven’t forgotten him, and we won’t. And we haven’t forgotten you, either. Daniel and James have new identities now. You still need one yourself.”
I resisted the urge to tap my thigh. “I cannot.”
“Dross,” Zhen said rudely. “You can so.”
Jordan, however, asked why, and I gave them the muddled explanation that my disappearance would call attention to the men’s.
“Wait right here.” Zhen retrieved her pack from the other room, then placed the black-and-silver identification bracelet that had once belonged to Alec’s mother in my hand. “I’ve carried this since you left. I knew you’d be back. That you’d need it.”
“Did you ever pick a name?” Jordan asked.
My gaze shot to the drones, and my respiration sped up.
“I know,” she said, as if she read my thoughts. “It feels all wrong to talk in front of those things, but you turned them all off, remember?”
“I had forgotten,” I confessed. “As to a name, I have one in mind.” I caught myself before I said more, before I told them something that could draw them into danger. “As Edwards told me long ago, it is not a decision to make lightly. He never told me what he chose.” I sighed. “I will keep it as my own secret and hold fast to the truth.”
Jordan cocked her head to the side, and her braids clicked. “Which is?”
“Love.” I would not say family. “Sacrifice means nothing without love. And that every human in this system is unique and valuable.”
“Including you,” Jordan said softly.
I closed my eyes and claimed her assertion: “Even me.”
Silence crept around us, filling gaps with larger gaps, until Zhen said abruptly, “We’re still going to celebrate finding whatever they found so they can save the system and Attlee taking off. You don’t like coffee, do you?”
I blinked. “Pardon?”
“I’ll look for tea.”
“We won’t forget you,” Jordan said quietly.
“I know.” I stood. “I will shut down the VVR. Eric Thompson was correct about its inadequacies.”
“I’ll do it.” Jordan’s expression softened. “You haven’t recovered from your headache yesterday. Have some tea and then a lie-down. Work on it tomorrow.” When I sputtered another protest, she added, “Please.”
I acquiesced, and Jordan settled in the chair, her focus flitting from screen to screen. I turned off visual records and settled on the sofa with a cup of lavender tea.
Even if I never claimed a name legally, I would hold one as my own. After all, Lorik had done so. I reviewed the names people had called me, from Izzy to Zeta. Choosing a name that was an abbreviated form of either Recorder-who-isn’t or my Consortium designation number did not feel like who I was, who I was meant to be. No, I lingered over my favorites, from ones offered before I left on Agamemnon to the one offered here on Pallas. Then, deep in my heart, I repeated the one that felt like home.
I drifted to sleep, content that Attlee would carry whatever knowledge the researchers had uncovered to New Triton. The scent of lavender lingered in the air, both a memory and a promise.