5

HEAT—INSIDE HER BODY, INSIDE HER SKIN, AS THOUGH her skeleton had become a kind of gentle fire.

Light—not visible with her eyes shut, yet somehow sensed, fully known.

Stillness—within her chest, where always before a heart had beat.

Now, at the core of her, is… something else.

Noemi Vidal opens her eyes. The brilliance of the light shining down on her blinds her to anything else, but she knows she is not alone.

“Don’t move,” says a female voice. It’s one Noemi’s heard before, though she can’t place it.

Nor can she disobey the voice, because she’s realizing she couldn’t move much if she wanted to. Her limbs and reflexes don’t seem to be paralyzed; it’s more as if they were—waiting. And somehow that feels right. It’s as though this motionlessness is as much a part of her as her skin.

Though some of her skin feels odd, too, sort of prickly… her chest and belly, her breasts, her sides… a painless throbbing in her head…

Darius Akide. Abel laid flat, unconscious, endangered. The blaster in Akide’s hand. The terrible scorching pain—

—I’m going to find Esther’s star. Come to me there someday—

Noemi closes her eyes tightly, trying to ward off the nightmare. That has to be a nightmare, not memory, because if it were a memory, Noemi couldn’t be here. Couldn’t be anywhere. In her bad dream, Akide betrayed both her and Abel.

Akide killed her.

Whatever strange situation she’s in at the moment, Noemi’s absolutely sure this isn’t heaven.

I thought I read once that if you died in your dream, you would wake up. But I’m not awake—not completely—why can’t I wake all the way up?

Mist shivers through her. Sort of. Mist is the only word Noemi has for the ethereal coldness that’s unfurling beneath her skin, tendrils spreading out thinner and finer within her as the sensation reaches her extremities. It’s contained within her skin, and yet somehow it feels as though it contains her. Nausea clenches her belly, and Noemi moans.

“She’s hurting,” says a male voice. Noemi knows that one, too—knows it, loves it, understands he’s trying to protect her—

“It’s within acceptable parameters.” It’s the same woman from before, even colder.

“Acceptable to you, perhaps. Not to me. We must—”

“Must what? Leave her as she is? That’s impossible.”

The voices bounce back and forth, back and forth, always falling silent one word before Noemi can recognize them.

The male voice says, “How much worse will this get?”

“How would I know? We’re in uncharted territory, and there’s no way out but through. Her vitals are strong; there’s no reason not to finish bringing her online.”

A new fire sparks into flame within Noemi. This one burns inside her head. It doesn’t hurt. If anything, it feels good, like she’s being warmed up where she hadn’t even realized how cold she truly was. Her mind seems to sway toward that flame—

Strange thoughts, feelings, data pour into her brain, shattering all rational thought. There’s no way to think, not when she has to process.

Elbow joint currently resting at one hundred twenty degrees, flesh 89 percent healed, blood flow optimized.

Liver functions successfully rerouted, healing around excised organ at 71 percent, kidneys shifting abdominal location as body adjusts to new parameters.

Artificial rib splice into living skeleton continuing.

“Processor functions normally,” says the female voice. “I wish I had better readings, for next time. A pity we had to rush this.”

A memory takes shape in Noemi’s buzzing brain: A ship’s hold filled with broken mech tanks and injured, sobbing people. A woman with damp red hair, crawling toward a child who is not a child. “I’m sorry we had to rush—it’s going to be all right—”

Gillian Shearer. The person speaking is Gillian Shearer, daughter of Burton Mansfield, as zealously loyal to him as any cult follower could be. How can Gillian be here, in the Genesis system?

Am I still in the Genesis system? What happened? Where am I? Noemi tries to remember, but her brain will show her nothing but that bad dream, over and over and over—Darius Akide firing his blaster—

The weird voice in Noemi’s head reports, Memory accuracy verified.

No. No, it can’t be—I’m dreaming the voice, too—

Gillian says, “Initial activations complete.”

All the bright light around Noemi instantly switches to total darkness. Suddenly she can move—she knows this, on a level she can’t define, even before she tries to act on it. The darkness splits along its seams, and Noemi figures out that she’s in a pod, one that’s opening around her like the petals of a flower in the sun. Instead of sunshine, though, what’s revealed is a blindingly light room. A row of expressionless mechs stands at guard, near what must be a door. Machines beep and whirr, like scientific instruments.

Is this Shearer’s lab? Noemi’s terror deepens; the cold misty tendrils within her continue to spread. That lab ought to be half a galaxy away. Am I on Haven? How is that possible?

She doesn’t know and doesn’t care. The one thing she’s sure of is that being under Gillian Shearer’s control is very, very bad, and she has to get out of here, this second. Noemi sits up—

—or tries to. Her torso rises, but her balance is shot, or isn’t even in existence, because she leans so far to the right that she nearly falls off the strange bed she’s lying on. Jerking to the left makes it even worse, and this time she does fall. The floor is only about half a meter down, but pain flares through her rib cage and along the seams in her skin.

Seams?

As she lies there on the floor, useless and limp, she hears two sets of footsteps approach her, and Shearer speaks, her voice sharper and less muffled. “We just got done fixing her, and she’s determined to break herself again already.”

“She can’t walk. She can’t move. What have you done to her?”

It’s the male voice again, and this time it, too, awakens a memory: An upside-down theater on a crashed spacecraft. Red velvet and broken mosaics. Blue eyes looking at her as though she were a miracle. “Maybe I’m programming a new Directive One for myself.”

Past and present finally connect. Hope bursts through the confusion and nausea like sunshine through clouds. Noemi manages to speak. “Abel?”

More gently he says, “I’m here.”

He kneels next to her. Bright light shines behind him, obscuring his features, but she knows Abel’s face by heart. He’s conscious, free, totally functional—he’s alive. In the dream, Akide had overpowered him and would surely have destroyed Abel. Thank God it was only a nightmare after all. The voice in her head was only part of the bad dream. Wasn’t it? Noemi feels the impulse to sigh in relief, but her chest doesn’t do it. Physically it feels… unnecessary.

What feels necessary is being with Abel. Remaining close to him. Making sure that anywhere she goes, he comes with her—

“All her nervous system functions are normal,” Shearer continues. She steps close enough for Noemi to see her, that signal-flare-red hair pulled back in a tight bun. “If our projections prove accurate, motor control should adjust within the next day or so.”

The hardness in Abel’s expression when he looks up at Shearer is startling. Noemi’s never seen him look like that. Never seen him angry. “You told me the cerebellum implant would coordinate motor reflexes with the new nervous system.”

“It’s calibrating as we speak. Give it time. This is unprecedented, on every level.”

“What is she talking about? Is—is that Shearer?” Noemi manages to roll onto her back. Now that she looks directly up at Abel, she can see a faint shimmer along his skin. Is she hallucinating?

“You’re disoriented,” Abel says quietly. “We shouldn’t get into all the details now.”

She wants to protest that she’s fine—that he should explain the confusing jumble of bad dreams and memories inside her head—but everything tilts sideways again, and she has to fight not to vomit.

“Do you remember being shot by Darius Akide?” Abel asks.

Noemi winces with both present and remembered pain. “Oh my God.”

“I will take that as a yes,” Abel says, with his usual precision. “Your injuries were too great to be healed by any medical means. My only chance to save you was through cybernetics.”

“What?” Noemi tries again to sit up, and fails. “You’re not making sense—I’m not awake yet—”

“The damage to your body went beyond what artificial organs alone could fix,” he continues. His voice sounds so gentle, so kind, so wrong for the strange things he’s saying. “Without central processing through a cybernetic nervous system, you couldn’t have survived. So we gave you one.”

Cybernetics inside her? “That’s not possible.”

“It is now,” Abel replies.

“But—I’m human—”

“Not so much, anymore,” says Shearer. Noemi’s helpless bewilderment must be amusing for her, to judge by the cruel smile on her face. “You now contain a high percentage of mech components. To be exact, I’ve replaced your entire cardiopulmonary system and your liver, along with a few bones of your skeleton, and I’ve significantly enhanced your nervous system. You wouldn’t have been able to coordinate all of that with only a human mind, so I added a processor to your brain. Don’t worry about the hair, by the way. It should grow back even faster now, actually, between the regenerative fluid and more efficient processing of nutrients overall.”

Why is she talking about nutrients? Who cares about my hair? Noemi wants to scream. All she can understand in her present confusion is that she’s been altered—blood and bones and brain—and that the person responsible is Gillian Shearer, who would gladly see Noemi and Abel dead. Shearer would only have changed her into—

A monster, her brain supplies.

But as she looks at Abel’s gentle, worried face, she finds a tiny shred of hope. He wouldn’t let Shearer do anything terrible to me. He wouldn’t let her transform me from human into… into something else.

She has to stay with Abel. That’s the only thing she knows.

“You’re a hybrid now, Noemi,” Shearer continues. “Half human, half mech. Well. Maybe three-quarters human, one-quarter mech?”

“Exact percentages are beside the point,” Abel says.

He said percentages didn’t matter? That can’t be right. Maybe this is just the most vivid, awful nightmare of her life.

“Are you certain her functions will normalize?” he asks.

Shearer nods. “As certain as it’s possible to be. She is, after all, the first of her kind. My innovation. My creation.”

The thought of belonging to Shearer in any way is too grotesque to bear. Noemi looks up at Abel and says the only thing she knows for sure: “We have to get out of here.” She tries to reach toward him and to her relief finds that she can—but he pulls back. That’s when she recognizes the gold-tinged shimmer around Abel’s body—a portable force field.

But that’s meant to shield you from the cold vacuum of deep space. In-atmosphere, a field like that would deflect blasters and physical force, though it would also disorient anyone wearing it. Anyone human, anyway. Not Abel. But why would he be wearing it in a laboratory?

For protection.

Noemi looks over at Shearer again. They must be on Haven. Abel came here—risked his life—to save her. Whatever the hell has been done to her, he was trying to save her.

Abel says, “I want to see Noemi fully functional before we complete the deal.”

Shearer folds her arms, and her voice is like ice. “That’s going to take days. This has gone on long enough.”

“That wasn’t our agreement,” he says flatly. “Noemi must be safe and well.”

Why would Gillian Shearer be willing to save me? It’s not like she’s our friend. She’d only help me if Abel had something she wanted, and there’s nothing she wants more than…

Abel himself.

At last Noemi understands why they’re on Haven. She knows the bargain Abel has made.

“No,” she whispers. She shakes her head, or tries to, but it lolls to one side. Why does she have to be so weak and helpless? Why doesn’t she have her own body? Why is any of this happening? “You can’t do this, Abel. Come on—we’ll get out of this, together—”

Neither he nor Shearer listens to her. Shearer says, “She is well. The rest is just healing and adjustment. As for safe—how do you suggest we arrange that?”

Abel never looks away from Shearer’s face. “Permit me to load Noemi onto my ship and program a course for the Haven Gate. Then you allow me to monitor sensors until I can tell she’s safely out of range.”

Shearer purses her lips thoughtfully, then nods. “That’s fair.”

Noemi finds her full voice. “Abel, stop! Don’t do this.”

“It’s already done.” He looks back at her at last, his expression so tender, so sad, that tears prickle in her eyes. “I tried to die for you once before. You declined. This time, I must insist.”

They’re about to have the argument of all arguments. If he thought she was mad when she nearly jettisoned him out an air lock—

The cold silvery mist snakes through her body again, wreathing around her skull. It doesn’t hurt, but it muddies her mind again, until she’s only able to hold on to a few basic thoughts.

She can’t stop them. This is going to happen. Has already happened.

Noemi is nothing God ever made, and Abel is dying.