Because of the unanswered questions surrounding Devlin, Bedivere didn’t feel any guilt over the daily conversations he and Cat were still having. They didn’t meet in person…that would be stepping over a line in his own mind he wasn’t sure he was ready to take just yet. Catherine didn’t seem to mind talking to him whenever he connected with her. In a small way, he suspected he was helping her stay centered so she could cope with the frantic life aboard the
Hana
. Devlin was back in the captains’ chair and politicking his way around the galaxy on a non-stop schedule that often left her looking drained.
Bedivere couldn’t do anything about that just now.
The evacuation of Sunita went on. It was the last remaining emergency generated by the Periglus, yet they were nearing the end of that operation and Bedivere was already looking ahead, anticipating the next demands that the Varkan would have to meet. Now that the old gate system had gone, humans would have to rely on Varkans for transport between star systems. That would generate new enterprises, new ship designs, new revenues and new headaches.
Until Sunita was cleared, though, it was all theory.
* * * * *
Connell liked returning to Charlton. It was an ugly city looked at from the outside, hanging there in space and turning slowly. It looked like a bunch of really big space junk pieces had got together and were now drifting in space, forever locked by the mild gravity even small chunks of matter generated. The hundreds of docking collars and bays dotting the exteriors didn’t help the aesthetics. Every time a new village asked to be added to the city, they were added on where space and a smooth connection could be found. The village itself got its shape and design from whatever structures they were using to build it. Celestial was the only village that had been built for beauty, and that was a tiny village and buried among the others.
Despite the chunky appearance, Charlton was home to Connell in a way that his birth planet had never been. He had a life here. Friends. A growing business and more than enough revenue to meet his needs. He understood now in a way that he had never been able to grasp before he had been gifted his human body why Bedivere clung to his human nature. It gave a richness to life that the digital landscape in all its complexity could never hope to imitate.
He had worked harder in the last few months than at any other time in his life, and for no pay, either. For the enormous privilege of helping humans and making such a huge difference in their lives, he would do it all over again. From the hints that Bedivere and the others had dropped, he thought they were feeling the same way, too.
He shut down the bus after running the final checks, which only took a few seconds, because he was still inside the ship systems. He withdrew and put the ship to sleep and reconnected with the city.
He looked up from watching his feet as he walked down the ramp, startled.
The citymind sounded…unfamiliar.
“Yennifer?” he asked, vocalizing his digital reach out to her through habit. There was no one there to hear him.
“Yennifer, say hello,” he added.
Nothing. The citymind was a whisper in his mind. The whisper was the sound of systems running smoothly…and that was all.
“Zoey, locate Yennifer for me,” Connell demanded.
The AI turned its attention to him, processed the command and hesitated. “I believe she is in her office in Central City,” it said in Zoey’s voice.
“You
believe
? Why don’t you know?” He picked up his pace.
“I…don’t know.” It didn’t sound upset. It couldn’t. It was an intelligent sub-routine—a big one, but still just a sub-routine—sitting inside the city systems.
“Hell and damnation,” he muttered and picked up his pace even more. He had been planning on heading back to the suite, dropping into bed and sleeping for seven luxurious hours.
As he hurried through the city to the central core where her office was, Connell weighed and discarded possibilities and lines of action. He hadn’t had a chance to discuss with anyone what to do with Nichol August. The man had disappeared after leaving Yennifer a bleeding heap on the floor. Zoey had instituted a city-wide search for traces of Nichol’s biomarkers and no fresh ones had been found, which let him conclude that the bastard had escaped Charlton. With so many strangers squeezed into the city at the moment and so many ships docking and leaving with a bare handful of minutes between the two, it would have been easy to walk onboard one and disappear into the galaxy.
Had he snuck back onto Charlton once more?
“Zoey, do a city-wide bio-scan for Nichol August. Superficial and fast, please.”
“There is no trace of Nichol August in the city.”
He let out a gusty breath. That removed one horrible possibility. Now, the only way to find out what was happening would be to find Yennifer herself. The city systems were not his. He couldn’t hijack them and use them as conduits the way he could his own ship systems. For a moment he wished he could. It took time for his flesh and blood body to do what a digital investigation could complete in seconds.
The corridors and streets were crowded, making it necessary to dodge and weave between slower walkers. He barely noticed. He reached the big open central markets, with the elegant sweeping stairs and the tiers rising up to the dometop and climbed up the stairs, taking them two at a time all while wishing there were drop shafts here. Although, even drop shafts would be slower with more people using them.
The top level had fewer people merely because most of the city’s administration resources were located here, along with a few select businesses like the
Vivaldi
restaurant, that paid a premium to be sited right under the dome.
The city had rotated enough to bring the dome into sunlight and it was dazzling against the white and pale colored floors and walls. Connell winced and hurried along the balcony to the glass doors of Yennifer’s office.
There were people inside, sitting at terminals and going about their business as usual. The inner doors to Yennifer’s private office were closed and the glass polarized so that they were dark and unrevealing.
He pushed his way past the humans, who looked up with a scowl, then relaxed when they saw it was him. He pushed on the inner doors. They didn’t budge.
“Zoey, open the doors, will you?” he said.
The lock clicked and they eased open. He thrust the door aside and hurried in. The chair behind the desk was empty and at first glance, the room looked to be that way, also. Then he heard it.
He rounded the desk and found her.
Yennifer was sitting on the floor in the corner of the room, her back against the two walls. Her knees were pulled up against her chest, revealing a lot of shapely thigh that Connell barely noticed (
except you did
, his human mind insisted). He crouched down next to her. Her eyes were glazed and unfocused and she clutched her legs as if she were cold. She was shivering so badly her teeth were chattering. That was what he had heard.
“Yennifer,” he said. He went to shake her shoulder then hesitated. He didn’t know what to do with her.
He tried again. “Yennifer.”
She didn’t look at him. She didn’t respond. He didn’t know what was wrong, but he knew with every instinct he’d developed as a human that this was something to do with August. He just didn’t understand the connection.
Yet.
He connected with the therapy center’s AI and spoke to it directly, no human vocalization. It was faster and now he wanted fast. Zoey opened the feeds in the room to the AI for analysis when requested. When directed, Connell felt for Yennifer’s pulse. She didn’t react at the touch of his fingers to her neck.
The AI cleared her of critical traumas and Connell picked her up. She weighed nothing in his arms and she didn’t respond to being lifted. Her whole body was trembling.
He turned back to the doors and saw the screen on her desk. There was an open message there.
You forced me from my own city. You owe me. N.
Fury swamped him, making his vision fade and thought to halt.
It was Yennifer’s shivering that brought him back to himself and to reason. The AI was chattering at him. Directions. Treatment.
“Have the injection delivered to the suite,” he told it. “I’m taking her there.”
More protests.
He cut the AI off. “Zoey, open the door for me. I’m taking her home.”
* * * * *
“What happened?” Lilly cried when he strode into the suite with her.
“I don’t know. Something the clinic is telling me is post-trauma related. It should have printed a dose of something by now. I’m putting her in my room.”
“I’ll get the dose,” Brant said quietly.
“Lilly, there was stuff all over my bed when I left. Could you…?” He headed for the bedroom door, which Zoey opened for him without asking. She had unlocked and had open and waiting for him every old bulkhead door and airlock between the Central City and the suite, moving ahead of him to clear obstacles.
When he got inside the room, Lilly was already heaping clothes on the armchair by the fireplace. The bed was unmade, but it was cleared off.
He put Yennifer down and took the syringe that Brant held out to him.
“Know what you’re doing with that?” Brant asked him.
“I reviewed the video the AI pushed at me on the way here.” He held the muscle of her upper arm between his fingers and injected the medication, then tossed the empty syringe at the recycle maw.
“Now what?” Lilly whispered.
“She’ll sleep.”
“I imagine it’s what comes after sleep that will be the critical phase,” Brant said. “Is this to do with Nichol August?”
“I’m going to kill him,” Connell said as the fury rose up again and tried to swamp his thoughts.
“That won’t solve anything,” Lilly said, her voice soft.
“It’ll stop him coming at her again,” Connell replied. “And I’ll feel a whole lot better about it, too.”
“Just finding him and putting him in a long-term clinic will do that,” Brant pointed out.
“That just helps
him
.” He made his hand uncurl from the tight fist he was holding it in. “How can someone do that to another person? I don’t understand. And I thought I understood humans after all this time.”
“No one really understands,” Lilly said. “It happens, sometimes. Very rarely, now.”
“Doesn’t matter how rare it is. If it isn’t extinct, it’s still a deadly disease.”
Yennifer’s shivering had lessened and her eyes slowly shut. Then, with a soft sigh, she turned over on her side. She was sleeping.
Lilly squeezed Connell’s shoulder. “You should sleep, too. It could be a long while before she wakes once more and Zoey can warn you when she does. I’m going to start a search for August.”
“I’ll do that,” Connell said sharply.
“You can take over from me when you’re awake. You’re better at that sort of search, anyway.”
* * * * *
Yennifer stretched under the warm coverings. Her eyes were heavy with sleep and she was reluctant to open them. Except that the bed smelled wrong. It wasn’t her bed.
That brought her all the way out of sleep. She opened her eyes, the first stirrings of alarm circling, making her heart beat harder.
In the space of a heartbeat, she assessed the city systems. Everything was fine. Zoey greeted her with what felt a lot like relief.
Then Yennifer absorbed her physical surroundings. The room was dark, the sky beyond the windows all black star field. The only light source was a faux fire burning silently in an ancient-styled fireplace on the other side of the room from her. There was a chair pulled up next to it, turned to face the bed. Connell was sitting in the chair, his legs stretched out and relaxed in front of him. He was asleep.
As her glance settled on him, his eyes opened and he blinked. He looked at her. “You’re safe,” he said softly.
“I know.” As soon as she had seen Connell she had known that with complete surety. Which was odd, for Connell had been one of her least favorite people for so long, constantly challenging her, arguing with her and general ruffling her feelings one way or another.
Then she put it together. Connell had always been sarcastic. Angry, even. Often he had been frustrated that she didn’t understand something he had experienced in his many more years as a sentient. Yet never once in all that time had she felt threatened by him.
“Sleep if you want to. Zoey is watching out.”
She had a hundred questions, including questions she didn’t want to ask and didn’t want answers to. They hung in her mind anyway. Questions about Nichol. Questions about what she should do now. How could she carry on if he could reach out like this and with a simple message scare her so badly? She would never be rid of him….
For right now, though, she was safe and that let her close her eyes again and sleep.
Charlton Space City, New Cathay (Ji Xiu Prime), Ji Xiu System, Perseus Arm. FY 10.187
Digging deep into the digital landscape had never been painful…until now. It was a mental pain, bringing with it flashes of mostly-forgotten things, images and memories that Bedivere would much rather forget permanently, because they provoked the physical response. Adrenaline, a hot, thick soup of it churning in his belly and his chest, making him short on breath. Nausea threatened.
Just ahead, he could see the target. The answer was there…if he could reach that far. He stretched, groping desperately, knowing he was at the limits of his tolerance. He drew closer. It was there. He could see it. Dizziness swamped him, blurring the perfect representation of facts. Information. Knowledge.
He grasped, tearing the data away from its source and clutching it to himself, before streaking upward to the surface.
He broke surface, gasping. He staggered to his feet and over to the wall and propped himself up, panting. Cold sweat was clinging to his temples and his back, making the flesh under his arms prickle. The nausea stirred again.
Connell thrust a glass of liquid at him. “Here,” he said.
“I’ll throw up if I drink that.”
“It’s electrolytes. It will help.”