KATH TOOM

I remember.

She was a child at her father’s knee, listening to his holo-conference with the Kal-Bryant board, the smell of Tyrador cigars heavy in the room. Even as she played she could sense his thoughts, his dislike of the politics of the business, and his desire to be in his secretary’s bed again instead of at home. It wasn’t good for her to know these things, her daddy told her, not normal. She would have to see a doctor.

Years later, her father pacing in that same office, accused of betraying the Dominion through something called Sector 9 …

This wasn’t right, these memories that flew at her like ghosts and haunted her dreams.

My daddy died far from Pridewater.

Kath Toom jerked awake, gasping, to darkness and gloom and a vivid image of her father’s now terribly scarred face, her cheeks wet with tears. The last glimpse of him had lit up like a flash of lightning splitting the sky, his agony twisting in her guts. What had happened to him? Some kind of accident? And what was Sector 9? She sensed it was terribly important. But as hard as she tried, she could not remember the rest.

Panic nearly overwhelmed her when she found that she could not move her limbs. She was held down on some sort of flat, cold surface and covered in nothing but a sheet, her nakedness amplifying how vulnerable she felt.

Shapes loomed in the dark: machines beeped and whirred. She felt the pinch of an IV in her right forearm, and her temples throbbed with pain.

Altara. The attack in the caverns came rushing back, and she instinctively tried to sit up, pulling against the restraints. Her movement triggered motion lights, and the room blinked into life. A wave of dizziness washed over her as she turned her head to see.

She was strapped to some kind of surgical table in a medical unit no more than a four-meter square. A scalpel and bloody gauze sat on a neosteel tray nearby, and a robot arm speckled with red hung lifelessly over it. One wall was dominated by rows of meter-high metal doors like lockers for cadavers, except each of them had a small window in the center.

… morgue full of marines torn limb from limb as Kath Toom wandered through an empty ship …

The scene flashed through her mind like another lightning strike, and she had to bite her lip to keep from screaming. She didn’t know if it was a real memory or a dream, and for a moment she wondered if she might be going insane. She shook her head, driving the image away. She had to focus, remember her training, and find a way out.

But her ghost suit was gone, and with it all her weapons.

Think, Agent X52735N. She had been investigating a terrorist cell on a forgotten planet, sent there by the emperor himself. Or so she had thought. But now it felt more like a setup. She remembered the coppery smell of the gas leaking from the crack in the rock. Who had brought her here? That black-clad monster that had attacked her back on Altara? If so, why? And what had been done to her?

She slid her wrists back and forth in her restraints, studied their play. They were made of rough canvas with a fused edge, and there was a sharp seam on the left one that rubbed against her skin. This one was too easy. She yanked and twisted violently, letting the seam cut into her until it drew blood, then slid her arm back and forth until the canvas was slick enough for her to tuck her thumb into her palm and pull her wrist free.

Quickly she undid the other strap, then the larger one across her chest, then her ankles. She yanked the needle from her arm, the tube leaking clear fluid. Her limbs tingled as she swung her legs to the floor, tucking the sheet around her naked body. She felt a vibration, faint but steady, flowing through her. She was on a ship.

As she gained her feet and looked up, a hydralisk hissed and lunged at her, fangs exposed and dripping, and she screamed and stumbled backward against the table, the surgical tray clattering to the floor, but she blinked and it was gone. There was nothing there: she was seeing things, and now she didn’t even know if what surrounded her was real or a fragment of memory dislodged as if a tongue were worrying at a rotten tooth.

She ran to the wall of little doors and looked through the thick glass windows, saw bare terran feet. Some kind of chambers that housed the living or the dead; she couldn’t tell. She pounded on them, shouting, the blood from her wrist smearing the glass, but nothing changed and the feet didn’t move. She tried to turn the handles, but the chambers were all locked, and she couldn’t sense any thoughts, not even the pulse of a living mind within.

Sobbing, she slid to the floor, clutching her legs to her chest and rocking back and forth. She was a small child again, Kath Toom playing with the other executives’ children from the Kal-Bryant conglomerate, only they wouldn’t play with her anymore because she always knew where they were hiding or could guess the numbers on the holocards before anyone told her. The girl is spooky, her best friend’s mother whispered to another, out of earshot but not far enough. Like a … ghost.

A noise made her look up. A hulking figure was at the door, his massive shoulders filling the frame, dreadlocks dangling down around his shoulders. His face was familiar to her. She scrambled to her feet, fists clenched, as he took a step into the room.

Don’t come any closer!

But he did, his eyes a strange shade of white that contrasted with his dark skin, a handsome face that had aged since she had last seen it. She did not remember this man, could not place him in any sort of personal history, and yet she knew that face like her own, and it stirred something deep within her. A confusing rush of emotions washed over her, making her tremble more deeply.

Her back was up against the meat lockers as he reached out to touch her, and she stepped forward in one fluid motion, grabbing his arm in order to use his weight to topple him before she drove an elbow into his solar plexus and then chopped the side of her hand to his throat to send him to the floor.

Except when she grabbed for him he had already moved, anticipating her, wrapping her arms up and pinning them to her body. She tried to claw at him, but his strength was enormous, overwhelming, his muscles like wood. She thrust her head forward to crack his nose, but he seemed to know what she would do before she did it, dodging the blow neatly before he spun her in his arms and pressed her up against the wall, shackling her wrists together.

She stood sobbing as he remained close to her, his body warmth spreading through her limbs, breath stirring her hair. His thoughts echoed inside her head, and what he said both thrilled and terrified her.

Do not fight me, Kath. My name is Gabriel Tosh, and you know me. Before long, you will understand why you’re here on Gehenna. You will remember everything. Team Blue will be together again, and you’ll be free.

She struggled again, but the shackles that bound her only cut more deeply. A hiss of escaping gas came from somewhere behind her, and she smelled the familiar scent of copper. Flashes passed before her eyes.

A moment later she felt the bite of a needle in her arm, and before she could let out a single scream, she sank back into darkness.