Wincing at Light

<– Chapter 27 / Chapter 29 –>

“Brett.”

He snapped forward, lost his balance. At some point, his legs had fallen asleep. His sudden movement jerked them to the side. They thumped against the floor like wooden blocks, and only their numb weight kept him from toppling over backward.

He sucked in a breath, blinked at his surroundings. Oriented.

He’d fallen asleep. He’d been dreaming, dreaming about Emily. That was what he told himself.

“Brett.”

The voice was more insistent this time. Ilam’s voice, from the intercom in the wall behind him. The tinny speaker made him sound harsh, or maybe it was just impatience. He didn’t know how long Ilam had been calling, though if it was very long, he could imagine what he was thinking. He was probably making certain the gun was still loaded. Brett tried to hurry, but the pins and needles had started, and all he could manage was a crab-like hobble.

Brett stabbed the button.

“I’m here.”

“About bloody time.”

“Sorry. I was away from the comm.” Brett looked at his watch and cursed. He’d slept for almost three hours. “What’s your news?”

“I’ve got two awake and the rest are stirring. We should be on our way in the next half hour, I think, whether the others are fully up and moving or not. I performed some preliminary scans on the first two, and they look clean, so the procedure worked. I’d like Cassandra to confirm the results, but I can’t seem to get her to answer.”

Brett grimaced. It was something he should have considered. “I took Cassandra off line.”

If Ilam wondered why, he didn’t ask. Brett assumed he was smart enough to put the pieces together.

“I think my examination has been thorough enough. That, and these idiots keep asking me to repeat the bloody date.” Ilam laughed. “We’ve only got five. Two of them didn’t make it. Same reaction as Micah.”

Djen. His heart made a thudding noise in his ears. “Who?”

“Garaby and Reece.” Ilam knew what he was thinking. He lowered his voice. “She’s fine, Markus. First one out of it, just like Liston promised. Very bright eyed and curious as well, wondering what the hell exactly it was she agreed to and why she would do such a thing.”

“Have you told her?”

“I piped the entire file to the Escape Module. She and the others will have ample time to review it for the next three months while we’re waiting for pickup. I hope, by the way, that in your system tests on the module you thought to include a healthy number of in-flight movies for our entertainment.”

“You’re entirely too fixated with television, you realize that.”

“A man has to have his vices.” Ilam paused, not bothering to chuckle at his own joke. “And what about you, Commander? How are you?”

Brett thought about the dream he’d just had, the way his attention and his thoughts wandered whenever he stopped concentrating. The way, in fact, he couldn’t even convince himself anymore that what he was about to do was sane, only that it was what must be done.

“The natives are restless,” he said.

“What do you want us to do?”

“Exactly what we planned. Gather the other survivors when you’re ready.” All five of them. Five! “Get to the Love bug and take off. Everything else has been done for you.”

Ilam agreed. “I’ll contact you from the comm in the launch area just before we leave.”

“There’s no need for that.”

“I’ll do it anyway, so you might as well make it an official order.”

“That’s fine.”

There was a commotion in the background. Brett heard someone shouting.

Ilam said, “Well, that’s Ashburn waking himself up. I’m going to have to run, I’m afraid. Apparently someone wasn’t in the best of moods during their last imaging. Ilam out.”

Brett didn’t acknowledge him. He closed the channel and turned to face Cassandra. It took him several seconds to remember what he needed to do next. Time was against him, he knew that, but he didn’t recall exactly why that was anymore. This forgetting bothered him, but not in any concrete way. He knew it should have bothered him more, but couldn’t quite seem to care. He tried to reconstruct his activities to make himself remember. He’d stopped after shutting Cassandra down, sat down to eat and take a nap. No, the nap had been unintentional, but he’d obviously been waiting. He had to wait until the last possible minute. That was as far as he could get.

He shrugged and began to retrieve his tools. It would come to him. Of that much, he was certain.

#

Brett worked at the capsule’s plastisheen shielding with the laser scalpel set to its most intense beam. He had expected it to slice the material cleanly, quickly. It did neither. It warmed the surface to a dull orange glow, rounded the edges made by his cutting like melted wax. In twenty minutes of work, he managed only the top to bottom cut down the center of the capsule’s front plate. The nutrient fluid did not wash over his feet as he expected, and he had to probe with his fingertips to determine the reason. Beyond the hard outer shell was another layer of plastisheen, thinner, warm to the touch and pliable against his probing.

The scalpel gave him only the first vertical slash, then it sputtered, overheated. It grew hot in his hands, and he had to drop it. It rolled to a stop against the wall, smoking from the tip where the beam should exit.

What he’d needed, he realized, hadn’t been the scalpel at all, but a goddamned laser torch. He didn’t have one, of course, and by his watch, he couldn’t burn the time to track one down. Brett cursed loudly and struck the face of the capsule with his hand.

He mulled for several seconds, mentally examining the station inventory for something useful, something close.

At last, he used what he had handy to finish the job. He stripped the canvas from the camp chair, broke the bolts that held it together by smashing it against the floor. The legs were made of thin steel, but it was strong enough, he hoped, to substitute as a pry bar.

He worked quickly after that, wedging the bar into the gap between the pieces of plastisheen. The walls of the capsule buckled where he threw his weight against them. The gash widened perhaps a dozen centimeters, enough that he couldn’t get any more leverage on it, so he attacked the top and bottom where the plastisheen walls bolted into the capsule’s metal caps.

He began to sweat. His breathing became ragged, and with each strain and jerk of his arms, he grunted. It was a fierce and constant stream of cries, howls, mumbled profanities. Each bolt was an obstacle, and he leapt at them with leopard ferocity.

When the bolts had been sheared or broken along both the top and bottom, he abandoned the tool and used only his hands. He gripped both sides of the split capsule and tired to pull them apart. They squealed, but didn’t break. He switched to one side, hooking his fingers into the gap, clutching the edges still warm from the laser’s heat and bracing his feet against Cassandra’s solid carapace. He pulled as hard as he could, pulled until he could hear his blood thudding in his temples. The entire side cracked and tore free. Brett spilled to the ground, panting and triumphant, still gripping the piece he had broken.

Yes!

He tossed the fragment away and climbed to his feet. The inner lining held firm. He was surprised that it did not sag from the weight of the fluid given its flexibility. He approached the capsule and put his hands against the barrier. The fluid inside was warm, as warm as comfortable bath water. Bubbles of oxygen trickled upward from the point where he touched it.

Brett looked at Emily. So close. He hadn’t been so close to her, so near to having her in his arms in years. He suppressed a tremble. He could almost smell her, imagine or remember the touch of her skin against his. But Emily didn’t return his stare. Her eyes aimed above him, beyond him. Her chin did not turn in his direction.

But it would. Before long, it would. He had the irrational urge to crow.

Brett pulled a short folding knife from his trouser pocket. He opened the blade and tested it against the plastisheen fabric lining. The blade was sharp. He hoped sharp enough. He didn’t know what else he would do if it wasn’t. He certainly couldn’t launch himself into a frenzy of brute force like he had against the capsule’s outer shell. He might hurt her.

Holding his breath, he tested the blade against the lining. He withdrew, forced his hand to be steady, then tried again.

The liquid was clear, thick, more like a gelatin than water as he had expected. It bubbled from the rent made by the blade, ran slowly down the outside of the lining and pooled on the floor at his feet. Brett made his cut, six centimeters, then withdrew. He put his fingers inside the hole and felt the gelatin warmth. It was oily and smooth. He held his fingers to his nose, found it was odorless.

Brett smiled and applied the knife again.

A sound reached him. A series of clicks that reminded him of electrical breakers flipping themselves open. Or flipping themselves closed, completing a circuit.

He suddenly remembered the thing he had forgotten. The reason he had told himself to hurry. And it was happening too soon. He hadn’t been quick enough.

Behind him, cooling fans kicked themselves on. Status and indicator lights flashed. From her wide speaker system, Cassandra began to emit a shrieking, growling wail.

#

Brett stared at the monitor embedded in the front panel of the Cassandra system. Messages scrolled across the screen in large amber letters.

Initializing emergency startup sequence.

Initializing link with main power grid.

Initializing parallel processor ports.

Initializing external sensor activation protocols.

Initializing memory cell dump.

The messages continued, and Brett understood what she was doing. Cassandra was taking back all of the systems he had delegated elsewhere. She was spontaneously resuming control of Persia Station. The bleat of the alarms rose to a painful level, and he knew what else she was doing. She was responding to the breach of the capsule, to what she perceived as an imminent threat to the biological component. To herself, in fact.

This was also why he had told himself to work so quickly. Cassandra never completely shutdown, not as long as she had access to a power source. She was designed to protect herself against deactivation and against activity that would compromise her hardwired mission directives. Enough of her had remained awake and alert to respond to this crisis, and now she had leapt to the task of rousing her latent members.

The cursor on the screen blinked, and Brett read the last line of print.

Initializing System Defense Mechanism.

Brett didn’t wait for her to complete the task. He attacked the plastisheen fabric which separated him from Emily. He stabbed high at the lining, at the level of his forehead, and pulled against the knife with all his strength. The blade tried to turn in his hands, but he hung on. The fabric split with the sound of ripping sheets. The clear fluid gushed from the hole, drained over his chest and ran down his legs.

The smooth floor became slick with gel, and his feet slid out from under him. He tried to catch himself, but his hands were oily. They banged off the flat metal surfaces. The hard edge of the capsule’s bottom seal came up to meet him. A flare of white pain blinded him, then a wave of darkness.

Brett opened his eyes. His vision was blurred, uncertain. His head ached. Not a dull headache aching, but a sharp and fiery spike. He shook to clear his vision and almost screamed. Blood ran down the side of his nose, and he remembered falling. He blinked his vision clear, saw that he lay on his stomach in a pool of liquid. His eyes looked out at the point where Cassandra’s merciless weight met the floor.

Still the growl of the alarm. Ehht! Ehht!

He forced himself to his knees. Pain struck at him and he had to wait there on his hands and knees, his head down, until the gray urge to faint passed. He grunted. The effort of climbing to his feet didn’t get any easier.

Over the klaxons, Cassandra spoke. “Warning: Cassandra System Biological Capsule breach. System Defense Mechanism activated. Station data coded as ‘Sensitive’ placed under security lock. Proximity Diagnostic scan initiated.”

She repeated the message three times.

Brett faced her, wobbling on legs that seemed only tenuously connected to his torso. “Stop it. Cancel System Defense.”

If Cassandra heard him, she didn’t take note of his command. “Unauthorized personnel detected in Cassandra System location. Unauthorized personnel are advised to withdraw and report to Persia Station Security. This is your last warning.”

Brett shouted back. “Logon: Brett, Markus Jasper. Passcode: Emily Rosette. Terminate System Defense Mechanism.”

“Activating Emergency Broadcast Channel. All Personnel Message as follows: Unauthorized personnel have entered Persia Station secure Cassandra System zone. Unauthorized personnel have entered Persia Station secure Cassandra System zone. All station personnel are to proceed to Cassandra System zone and provide emergency assistance.”

Brett cursed. The Emergency Broadcast Channel activated the comm system all over the station, transmitting a general warning message for everyone to hear. For Ilam and the others to hear. Brett listened to the reverberation of screeching alarms and Cassandra’s echoed message outside the door, all the way down the hall.

He shouted his logon credentials at her again. It didn’t help, and she didn’t acknowledge him.

She wouldn’t, he realized. He had become unauthorized personnel.

A new hum joined the cacophony, this one low, threatening. Brett could feel it vibrating in his chest. Cassandra had decided help either was not coming, or wouldn’t arrive quickly enough to save her. Brett felt the hairs on his neck rise, then the hairs on his arms. She was activating her final system defense.

Bees, Brett thought. The room seemed to fill with discorporated bees, the ghosts of a hundred hives. They fluttered across his skin, made his teeth chatter.

It wasn’t bees. It was Cassandra charging her internal burst transformer. In a moment, she would begin to lash surges of raw and crackling electricity across her carapace. Her components were shielded for it. She’d just said as much, and she would send wave after wave of high voltage—fatal voltage—electricity rumbling along fiber-optic microchannels that crisscrossed her outer shell until he withdrew. Or until she inevitably overheated, short-circuited, committed a necessary suicide.

And Emily, vulnerable without the plastisheen capsule to protect her, would absorb the brunt of the charge.

He almost reached in and grabbed her then, but dismissed the thought at once. He hadn’t disconnected the feeding tube from her back. He hadn’t discerned how to dismantle the cables that pierced her skull. And he didn’t know what it would do to her if he simply snapped them off.

Instead, Brett did the unthinkable.

He retrieved the heavy metal leg from the broken camp chair and wiped the gel from it the best he could. With the first blow, he cobwebbed the display monitor facing him. It snapped a greenish white, then went blank. He struck at the rows of lights, making them pop and spark and shatter.

Cassandra continued to charge her transformer, shouting warnings.

Roaring, Brett demolished the shining sensor array. He battered at cables where they disappeared into the wall. He dashed ugly, sharp-edged dents into her carapace. He had to stop her. Finally, he struck the narrow bolts from the front panel. He used the chair leg to pry it aside, leaned his shoulder into the peeled edge and made room in which to work. He hacked away bundles of wiring that blocked him, and when there was space, he plunged his head and arms and as much of his upper body as would fit into the gap.

Inside her, it was hot. She smelled of scorched insulation and ozone. It was also dark, as black and dense as the vent home of the organism that had invaded his station. But Brett didn’t need to see, only to raise his arms and lash the heavy cudgel and smash at everything that snapped and clanked and broke. He battered everything within reach of his arms, and knowing it was not enough, bulled himself further in. His feet left the floor and he wriggled further, clearing a jagged path along the boards and chips and sharp-toothed components he had destroyed.

He could still hear her, Cassandra, chanting her senseless warning. Her voice cracked. Its rhythm stumbled. She forgot her lines and had to begin again. She began to sound frenzied to him, and he grinned at her desperation and drove himself farther in.

At some point, he lost his weapon, but he didn’t stop. He touched her secret places with his fingers, felt the rounded bulbs of her chip clusters. He tore them free. He grasped at stacked fiber-towers of neural cognate networks, clawed at them until his fingernails ripped and peeled back. He locked his teeth on a bank of silicon wafers, chewed them to shards and spit them, bloodied, away from him.

Cassandra shuddered around him. Her words slid into a constant, ululating moan. A voice caught in a single, unspeakable thought.

Brett smelled the poisonous odor of electrical component smoke. He coughed on it. It stung his eyes. He forced himself back, out of her again. The razor edges of the panel caught his elbows and cut long, gouging strips up his arms. He fell to the floor, landed hard, caught himself before he bowled completely over. Then he sat there, leaning back on his braced arms, panting.

Cassandra made no noise at all.

He waited for evidence of a fire, but Cassandra had been built not to burn. What insulation and combustible wiring there was fried itself away. He heard it hiss until it was gone, and then there was silence again. A black and noxious smoke poured from her various seams, from the holes he had punched in her panels, but it was already lessening. On the other hand, it wasn’t dissipating. The atmospheric purge controls had been taken back from their distant components when Cassandra revived herself, and command of them had died with her.

Brett peered through the haze, breathing through his mouth, and considered what that might mean. Not just atmospherics, but air mixtures, communications, autonomic life support. Cassandra had reclaimed them all.

If there had been thirty people still in the station, programming the remote devices that actually performed these functions would have been a priority. Thirty would have burned up the healthy atmosphere in something less than three hours. As it was, only he and Ilam’s patients remained, and they were on their way out, if they weren’t already in the Escape Module. The remaining heat and air would last for several hours, he imagined. Probably longer than he would. If it didn’t, there were always e-suits on the upper levels.

He didn’t expect that he would need them.

Brett pushed himself up. He checked the cuts on his arms, probed the gash on his forehead. Each one of them hurt, but the blood was already starting to thicken. He wiped his face against the sleeve of his shipsuit. It would have to do.

He picked up the knife where it had skittered off into a corner when he slipped. A few more cuts and he removed a wide sheet of the inner lining roughly the same size as the piece of plastisheen shell he had broken out earlier. He stopped then, and leaned his head into the hole. Dollops of gel strung down from the ceiling, gathered in piles on the capsule’s floor. Inside, it was all moisture and dank odor and shimmers of light from his work lamps.

He touched her with his hand, tentatively at first, a trembling roll with his fingers down the side of her body. He felt the protrusions of her shoulder joints through the slick plastic material of her jumper, the place where her arms had once been. On down her side, he could pick out the ridges of her individual ribs. Down to the curve of her hip and the outside of her thigh. She felt cool to the touch, but that was because she had been immersed in the fluid, he was certain.

He examined her breathing, because he hadn’t thought to do it immediately, when he should have. He experienced a moment of panic and wondered how he could have neglected such an elementary thing, but her chest rose and fell, her nostrils flared, her eyes blinked. She’d made the transition from oxygenated fluid to atmosphere without difficulty, just as she was engineered to do, by quietly retching the fluid from her lungs. It had run down her chest and pooled on the floor. He leaned into the capsule and held his hand flat, a few centimeters from her nose. Her breath was warm against his palm, and he shuddered at the feel of it.

Emily’s breath on his skin. It made him want to weep to feel it again.

But he didn’t have time for weeping. There was too much yet to be done. Brett pulled himself up as straight and tall as he could. He examined the feeding tube where it pierced her back. He stood on the tips of his toes and studied the optical cables in her skull. He got onto his knees and peered at the metal clamps that bound the sheared stumps of her legs to the capsule’s floor, then the series of padded supports bolted to the capsule’s back wall which held her more or less in a natural pose.

Eventually, he understood it all. He removed the optical cables one at a time, sliding them from their microdiameter sheaths. They came readily enough and with no apparent resistance, but this wasn’t one of his concerns. He wasn’t worried about the integrity of her neural networks.

The feeding apparatus was a similar problem. A plastic receptor port had been implanted just above her left kidney. It was small, circular, about the width of his pinky finger. The feeding tube was a pliable hose which vacuum sealed into that port. When he pressed the release clasp at the juncture between hose and port, the tube came free with a hiss. At its end was a tapered spout a few centimeters long, like a particularly large gauged needle. Brett probed the hole where it had entered her. In the absence of the spout, a solid plastic panel had snapped closed, blocking the hole.

He understood her this way, in small pieces. An examination of her back, a studied progress from fiber to fiber across the curve of her skull, the nubs of her shoulder joints. He didn’t allow himself to step back, to consider her as a full person. Without the capsule wall between them, she was totally divorced from Cassandra. She was totally human, completely Emily. Despite what had been done to her, the missing limbs, the skull sheared of her wheaten glory, he would have recognized her if he allowed himself. And the recognition would have shattered him.

He didn’t remove her from the clamps or what he discovered to be the complex harness fused with her jumper that bound her to the pads at her back. He had nowhere to put her if her removed her from the capsule. He wanted to embrace her, to hold her in his arms as he took these last steps, but it was better this way, he knew.

Brett went back to the table and retrieved all of his implements, then returned to her.

He didn’t know if she could hear him, or if her mind recorded any information now that the optical fibers had been removed and Cassandra’s fist of control broken. He spoke to her anyway, finding that casual, explanatory tone Liston had used with Djen.

He held up one of the test tubes laden with organisms for her to see. “This is the cause of all our problems. Can you believe it? You can’t see them, I know, but each of these containers has probably something on the order of several billion of the little bastards inside. They get into your brain, they make you a little crazy, then more than a little dead. We’ve established that as fact. We’ve spent the last few days trying to find a solution to the problem. I don’t know if Cassandra told you that.

“We did, by the way. Find a solution. Only a few of us made it that far, but that was better than nothing, better than none of us. Given all of that, you might think that I’ve gone a little too long without getting the procedure myself, given what I’m about to propose to you. But I don’t think you’d disagree too much. I mean, even if it goes wrong, it’s better than what you had before, right?

“You see, Liston explained it to me, though I don’t think he had quite this application in mind.” Brett smiled, wide and reassuring. He shook the test tube so that the fluid inside caught the light. “He said the method the organism used to obtain control over us was a massive infection and realignment of the pre-frontal cortex, the part of our brain that makes us. . .us. I don’t know what they did to you, Emily. I don’t know how to reverse the self-definitional suppression that keeps you away from me, but the organism does. Maybe not the exact same way, maybe not the best way, but maybe the right way. I’m guessing. I’m taking a chance that they can save you from what’s been done to you.”

He moved closer to her and pried the stopper from the end of the test tube.

“I want you to take this, Em. I want you to trust me. See, Djen said I had to choose. I chose. I chose you. And this is how I make good.”

Brett placed his fingers against her lips. He stroked her jaw and squeezed gently until her mouth parted. She didn’t resist him. He didn’t know if she could, but he smiled because she didn’t fight him, at least.

“Over the lips, past the gums, watch out stomach, here it comes.”

He poured the liquid into her mouth, then massaged her throat until she swallowed. He suspected that it tasted bad, probably even worse than it smelled, but she didn’t react to it at all. She took it as though she trusted him. Brett duplicated the process three times, until she had taken all four vials. He pressed his hand beneath her chin and closed her mouth.

“That probably isn’t the fastest way to get them to your brain, but it was the only way I could think of that didn’t involve loading them into auto-injector vials, and then I was sure to spill some. I also don’t know how long this might take, but I’ll wait with you as long as I can. I promise.”

When he was finished, he stepped back and settled his shoulder against Cassandra’s carapace. It was warm, and the heat felt wonderful to him, relaxing. He found a spot beyond the congealing pool of gel and sat down. He could still see her.

And he was certain she could still hear him.

“I have to tell you the rest, so you’ll know. You’ll ask me why I didn’t do this sooner. Five years! That’s what you’ll say to me. How could I wait for five years to do something? I wanted to help you, Em. I wanted to so badly, but I couldn’t. The station depended on Cassandra. Cassandra runs everything, and she wasn’t going to let you go unless I killed her. And I couldn’t kill her without killing everyone else, and even if I did, where would that have left you? I didn’t have the mechanism to save your mind. Cassandra wasn’t going to tell me how to undo it, and I wouldn’t have been able to figure it out without her until the organism presented itself. Except, of course, for the fact that even then I couldn’t proceed. I couldn’t afford to kill Cassandra until everyone who could be saved was safely away.

“So that’s how we arrived at this point. Just you and me, the station is abandoned; Earth is a billion kilometers away, and no one is coming back here any time soon. Since Cassandra is no longer managing all the autonomic systems, we can expect that atmospheric deprivation will kill us shortly if the cold doesn’t get us first. Even if I had the time and knowledge to fire up all the interlacing life support devices, it would only prolong the inevitable. We can’t leave. Ilam and the others are taking the Escape Module, and they can’t wait for us.

“And beyond all of that, I have the little problem that I’m infected with the same organism as everyone else, the same as you, and I can’t take the therapy until I’m certain–absolutely certain–that you’re back and healthy and sane, because I’d forget what I was doing, what had to be done to save you. That you were capable of being saved in the first place. I’m hoping I won’t be a raving madman by that time, because I’d like to see you again. I’d really like to talk to you once more.

“That’s my dilemma. I don’t have time to save both you and myself, and by choosing to save you, I’ve killed us both.

“And my one hope is that soon you’ll open your eyes and smile at me and say that you understand it all. You’ll tell me that you forgive me, that I made the right choice, that you’re willing to have a few last hours together in exchange for everything else that might have been. That’s all. Just tell me it was good enough.”

Tell me I kept my promises.

#

Across the room, the intercom buzzed. Brett rose, went over and stood beside it.

“Brett here.”

Static crackled over the line, but he recognized Ilam’s voice through it. “Are you all right?”

“I’m still here.”

“We heard Cassandra. She didn’t sound very happy.”

“She wasn’t. She doesn’t have to worry about it anymore. Neither do you. Are you in the module?”

“The others are inside. I’m at the airlock. I thought I should check in one last time, so you would know we were getting ready to leave.”

Ilam sounded bleak. Leaving a man behind was not a decision he accepted willingly. Brett understood this, and would have felt the same.

“I’m staying,” he said. “You have a good flight.”

“Brett, wait a moment.”

“What? Do you need piloting instructions? Sit in the chair, hit the button that says ‘Launch’. The ship will do the rest.”

“Please, just a moment.”

“You don’t have a moment. Every second you stay compromises the safety of the crew and the integrity of the procedure. It doesn’t do anybody a damned bit of good if you dally around attracting organisms to carry back to Earth.”

“We won’t take any back. I’ll see to that, and I’ll make sure the pickup vessel follows complete decon protocols.”

Brett shook his head. “We thought we had sufficient decon protocols.”

Ilam hesitated. When he spoke, his voice was quiet. “Is she out of the capsule yet? Have you gotten that far?”

Brett didn’t answer. He wasn’t tempted to ask how Ilam knew.

“You didn’t have to tell me,” Ilam said. “Even before Cassandra started blathering about murder, it was obvious what you would be doing. I’ve been following your progress around the station, until you discontinued my link through Cassandra, that is.”

“She’s infected with the organism, Ilam. Just like I am.”

“Christ. What were you thinking?”

“It isn’t your problem. Get the ship out of here.”

“Wait, please.” Ilam paused to gather himself. He was thinking quickly, Brett thought, trying to stumble across any leverage that would move him. “We can manage that.”

“Not without excessive risk, and not without burning time you don’t have.”

Ilam cursed again, then he said, “We’ll find a way to treat her here, in process. The ship has a rudimentary mech lab. We’ll insist on stringent decon procedures both at pickup and before you enter Earth’s atmosphere, maybe keep both of you quarantined. We can tell them what to look for, Markus. We can show them how to treat it.”

Unless you don’t get the opportunity, Brett thought. You don’t have the equipment to quarantine us on board the module, and you don’t understand what I’ve done. You don’t know how infected she is, maybe more than anyone else. Maybe the therapy won’t work well enough and the organism would live in her, breeding, until the mechs inside the others dissolved and they were ripe for re-infestation. It wasn’t a chance he was willing to take.

Were there other ways he could have done it? He suspected there were. He could have taken Cassandra apart earlier and strapped the crew into e-suits or enlisted Ilam to keep the life support systems running. He could have incubated Emily and hauled her along without the organism, waited for better facilities and nimbler minds to solve the problem of her self-definitional suppression. With enough time, Ilam probably could have designed a mech just for that task.

But he had seen doctors pore over her once before. He’d heard them pronounce her condition immedicable. And he had seen Ilam’s doubt. No one else would recognize her as anything but a biological component of an Cassandra system. They wouldn’t take the steps necessary to save her. Like Ilam, they would say he was crazy to have ever thought anything of her remained and that would be the end of it. After he had received his own vial of mech therapy, he would agree with them.

Or perhaps they couldn’t help her. Maybe only the bastards at Palimpset Industries fully understood the procedure that had made her what she was. Cassandra suggested as much. Most of the subjects went mad when the suppressions were removed.

Definitely, no one would countenance the therapy he had developed, prescribed and administered. Even if they considered her beyond help, they would have condemned him.

But at the last, each of these options involved the potential exposure of more people to the organism, more potential deaths, even with the mech protocol Liston and Ilam had developed.

He had chosen the only course of action that was reasonable. Brett would sacrifice his life for her, and one life was enough.

“No,” was all he said.

Ilam might have offered a further argument, but Brett didn’t let him. He toggled the intercom off and smashed the speaker and transmit console. The discussion was finished.

Brett turned away and went back to sit near Emily and wait.

<– Chapter 27 / Chapter 29 –>