PERSONAL RECORD: DESIGNATION ZETA4542910-9545E
CTS THALASSA
478.2.7.01
Lars left first, guiding Elliott’s tank to the infirmary. Zhen sat with me until I prodded her to go check on Alec.
“I can’t,” she protested.
“Nate will be with me. I will be fine.”
She bit her lip.
“It’s okay.” Nate appeared through the doorway to the front of the shuttle. “Go on, Zhen.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes,” Nathaniel and I said in unison.
For a moment, I thought she meant to hug me, but she grabbed her pack and departed.
Despite the fact that Nate was the pilot and had seniority, when Johansen ordered him to take me to the infirmary, he saluted her, and once again, he and I walked side by side through the hallways I knew by heart.
When we passed the ugly red painting, he asked suddenly, “Are you sure? The cameras still aren’t working. Archimedes has a couple of people from engineering monitoring their energy usage, and he’s going to put the ship on orange alert if they go back on. We can stash you somewhere. He won’t mind you stowing away, and we can sneak you into the infirmary for scans while that Recorder sleeps.”
“I have thought about this over the past few days. I do not like it, but it is the safest option for all of us.” We had not gone three paces when I stopped. “Nathaniel?”
A divot appeared between his brows.
“Would you mind holding my hand?”
A faint, dimpleless smile crept across his face. “There are many things I do mind—like taking you to that Recorder—but your hand in mine? Not one of them.”
When we reached the closed infirmary doors, he bent and pressed a short kiss on my forehead. “Love you.”
“You should leave,” I whispered.
“Nope. Done it before. Worked out badly.” He raised our interlaced fingers to brush his lips on the back of my hand. “Trying a new strategy this time.”
“At least let go of my hand?”
“It’s really too late to knock you on the head and hide you in my cabin, isn’t it?”
I decided he joked and offered him a weak smile. “Indeed. Besides, Nate, we are on Thalassa. Archimedes Genet is captain, the marines are present, and this Recorder does not have an Elder’s authority. What could go wrong?”
“Right.” He released me, leaving my hand cold and empty.
I touched the panel by the door and tried to take a confident step, but the cane undermined my assurance.
Kyleigh was not at her usual spot. No patient rested on the beds, though Elliott’s tank already hummed in the corner. A Recorder in Consortium grey but with the universal red medic badge on his shoulder glanced up from the computer where Edwards used to work.
“Ah. There you are. I have a few adjustments to make to the medical tank’s programming before I can see to you. Please take a seat by the door.” His fingers flew through the projection and letters that were no longer words, while his drone hovered in the corner like a moon. After he inserted a datacard into a slot on Elliott’s tank, it chugged once, then settled into a steady rhythm.
“Dr. Maxwell did well,” he said as he returned to wash his hands. “So you are the aberration who started this?”
“She didn’t start anything,” Nate remarked.
The Recorder studied him, and chills swept over me, even after the doctor turned away. I prayed briefly that Nate, too, would remember the drones bore witness. The Recorder-doctor tapped the foot of a bed. I left Nate’s side, grasping the cane for comfort more than assistance.
“Leave the cane by the door,” he said, eyeing me carefully. “Let me see you walk without it.”
I obeyed, despite Nate’s murmured protest.
Frowning, the Recorder-doctor studied my movements. He hummed slightly, then gathered a small medical kit and pulled on gloves. “I have interviewed Julian Ross. Young Tristram has begun to investigate his theories, and his claims bear out. I have requested he continue work under guard and with her supervision.” He added, almost as if to himself, “A shame, truly. She would have made an excellent Recorder.”
I risked a glance at Nate, whose mouth had flattened into a thin, white line.
“Remove your armor.”
My attention darted back to the Recorder.
“You are safe on Thalassa,” he added, possibly misinterpreting my lack of immediate compliance. “Or do you need assistance?”
As much as I hated to admit it, I nodded.
He held up his gloved hands. “Nathaniel Timmons, your uninvited presence proves useful. Remove her armor.”
Mouth pinched, Nate did as he was told, detaching the external communications link and putting it in my hand, allowing his fingertips to linger for a second over mine. I stood in my stockinged feet, shivering and exposed in my black pants and jacket over my illegal green shirt.
The Recorder scowled at my attire, but when he approached the bed, his nose wrinkled. “I realize the conditions on Pallas were less than pleasant, but hygiene is never optional.”
“We didn’t have any cleaning units,” Nate said. “Even if we did, between bugs and murderers, there wasn’t a lot of time for making things smell nice.”
“As you say.” The Recorder shrugged one shoulder. “Aberrant. Roll up your sleeve.”
My heart locked up. My unread note from Nate was in my inner jacket pocket. No matter what the note might say, the Recorder must not be allowed to see it.
“Why?” Nate asked.
“You are not the aberration, citizen. It is not your concern.”
Obedience was my only option, so I pivoted away from them and carefully removed the jacket, folding it in half, then in half again. Perhaps the doctor would assume I faced the wall from out-of-proportion modesty. It did not matter, so long as he did not see the paper. I handed the jacket and its cargo to Nate.
“Why are you not in your greys?” the Recorder asked in the same casual tone.
“It’s not my concern, but like I said, we didn’t do laundry on Pallas.” Nate shrugged. “With clothes in limited supply, it’s more hygienic to wear the cleanest ones we could find.” After two seconds, he added, “Sir.”
The Recorder said, “Aberrant, you will resume appropriate attire.”
“As you say.”
“Now,” the Recorder continued. “Your arm.”
I tried to roll up my left sleeve, but when I could not make it even, I commenced on the right one instead. Nate opened his mouth to speak, but the Recorder held up his hand.
“I have read the reports, Timmons, and I am well aware of your propensity for verbosity. We need neither your conversation nor your company.” He smiled, but I was not reassured by his apparently pleasant demeanor. “When you go, take the filthy suit and the jacket with you. The suit requires a heavy cleaning cycle before it is usable, and though I believe the jacket should be incinerated, do whatever citizens do with unwanted clothing.” He shook his bald head. “You are dismissed.”
Nate took three deep breaths, then smiled brightly. It was not a true smile, for his dimple did not flash at me. “Right. I’ll probably see you both sometime before New Triton.”
And he left.
The Recorder’s smile vanished. Pale hazel eyes drilled into mine. “You will cease fraternizing with citizens.”
I did not trust my voice, so I inclined my head once in answer.
“It is dangerous,” he added, then a fraction of his former manner returned. “If Julian Ross and Dr. Maxwell are correct—”
“Have you notified the Eldest?” I demanded. When he said nothing, I pushed on, “The Training Centers. We must warn her about the Training Centers.”
He grew quite still. “I have not.”
Panic rose. “But the children—the little ones—”
“I cannot.”
“It will take but moments to communicate with the High Elders,” I insisted. “Surely the network was reactivated before Attlee departed.”
His eyes narrowed. “It was, but after that ship left, the network cut off.”
“That . . . That is impossible.”
“Yet the impossible clearly has happened. I cannot even sense my drone in the corner.”
He had to be lying. It was—
The station-wide jammer.
“You know something,” he hissed.
I scrambled for a truthful response. “I would never put the little ones at risk.”
“You were the only living Recorder on Pallas. The only one with the knowledge of our network. And now, we have no way to warn the Consortium.”
My spine stiffened. “You exaggerate. A difference of an hour is not an insurmountable obstacle.”
At that moment I realized two things. Firstly, he had known that I was responsible. Secondly, so accustomed was he to the instantaneous communication over our network that he could not see around its absence. Our interconnectedness had created a vacuum, a deficit, and this lack of trust had to stop. When the Recorder on Pallas did not present her findings to Gideon Lorde, she consigned herself to death and opened the door to the present disaster. This Recorder’s absolute reliance on the Consortium could kill millions.
“What you need to do,” I said with forced calm, “is to speak with Archimedes Genet about using Thalassa’s communication—”
“And corrupt ourselves?”
My ever-present headache ratcheted up several notches to keep pace with burgeoning panic. “The captain is a good man. I trust him and Dr. Maxwell, Nathaniel Timmons, Venetia Jordan—all of them—with my life.”
“Your life. Perhaps. But would you trust them with the lives of the Consortium?”
“Yes! With anything and everyone. They saved my life on that moon well before any viral threat existed.”
Uneasy stillness corrupted the infirmary’s familiar quiet.
Finally, the Recorder-doctor said, “Very well, I shall modify my original request. You might have limitations, but you will serve a purpose. You were in training to be an Elder, so I will allow you to interact as needed while you repair the network.”
Any hint of confidence collapsed. “I cannot.”
“Cannot or will not?”
Almost against my will, my confession tore free. “I can no longer read.”
“You cannot . . .” His anger dissipated into something else, and his eyes grew round. “But that would be a nightmare. Are you certain? No, no. Why else would you say such a thing when you know I will have the medicomputer check your brain and eyes for damage? When did you notice?”
“When I woke up after escaping the roaches.”
“Eldest spare me!” he exclaimed. “Dr. Maxwell has said nothing of this in his documentation. I must remember to thank him for not revealing Consortium weakness. What did he tell you?”
I lowered my head. “He does not know.”
His browless forehead furrowed. “And you claim to trust them?”
Had I indeed undervalued them? A pang shot through me, but I held up my weak right hand. “I am broken. It is not a matter of trust. It is a matter of keeping that small dignity.”
He clicked his tongue. “Sit.”
I complied as he retrieved a medical bag labeled with the Consortium’s eye and with the red-and-white badge.
The Recorder-doctor caught my right hand and turned it wrist up. “Foolish Aberrant,” he said as if it were both my name and the sum of my being. “Fortunately, knowing you no longer had a neural chip, I brought this when they summoned me from Krios Platform Forty-One. I did not know how necessary it was at the time, but it will enable us to track your health.”
I sat, transfixed as he anchored my hand between his arm and chest and cleaned my inner wrist with an alcohol-based disinfectant. After digging through the medical bag by my hip, he lifted the largest injector I had ever seen. In truth, it was closer in size to a sidearm. I watched in detached disbelief as he angled the tip against my wrist.
“With this, I will be able to monitor your health and pinpoint your position.” He frowned. “If you had a medical tracker on Agamemnon, the citizen who tried to kill you would have been caught well beforehand. However, this has a link directly to the infirmary computers, so I will be able to send assistance or protection should I myself be incapacitated for any reason.”
Detachment vanished, but when I tugged, his grip tightened. Though not much taller, he was much stronger than I.
“Release me,” I demanded.
“You know I cannot,” he said. “I will not lie. This will hurt, but I will provide analgesics before you go in the medicomputer for a scan. Do not panic,” he added as I fought harder, and my respiration grew shallow. “This is very similar to the chips used on Ceres during storms, though those are larger.”
He pressed the trigger. Pain shot down to my fingertips and up to my neck.
Once again, a chip tied me to the Consortium.