Ghost of Mind Episode One (11 page)

Clearing his throat, John forced himself to
keep his gaze locked on her. While the Chief was happy to blithely
walk ahead with his gun set to kill, John was playing this by the
book.

Plus, he hadn’t forgotten how she’d thrown
herself over the railing on the promenade. And he would
never
forget the moment she had
forced herself up from the snow.

‘
It’ll be fine,’ he felt obligated to hell
her, ‘this will soon be over. You’ll get scanned and get back to
your cell, then the impediment field will be shut off.’

John forgot to add what would happen after
that. Then again, he didn’t know himself. It all depended on what
the scans would show.

They would take about ten minutes to
complete, especially considering the systems in Central Security
were in the process of being upgraded. If John had received the
clearance to take the woman up to the Pegasus, he could have done
the whole thing in under thirty seconds. But yanking this woman off
Orion Minor would cause all sorts of jurisdictional upsets, and
John was only here to refuel before his real mission.

Still, he was going to see this through.
Because he really, really wanted to find out who she was under
there.

‘
Any information on the hood?’ the Chief
growled from up ahead.

John opened his mouth to answer, then he
realized the Chief’s snapped question had not been directed John’s
way. The Barkanian was shouting at one of the scurrying deputies
that had just taken up position along the corridor, charged plasma
rifle in hand.

‘
There have been no reports of stolen
Ionian armor, and initial scans do not detect any known
signatures,’ the man replied in a small but still clear
voice.

The hood. Hell, John had almost forgotten
about it. He was so intent on getting the biological scan done,
that he’d nearly forgotten the real curiosity here.

He clapped his eyes on her again, his gaze
drawing over the strange blue fabric until it dropped to her
lips.

She was frowning again. She had every reason
to be.

John had been in his fair share of impediment
fields. Thankfully not since he’d joined the ranks of the Union
Forces, but when John had been ensconced in the slums, he’d been
caught up in them numerous times.

They hurt like hell. And the sensation of
having your body controlled by the burning field that surrounded
your flesh would give you nightmares for a week. A great way to
psychologically crush someone, and an even better way to scar
someone for life. For that reason John was not a fan of them. If
there had been any other way to get the woman to the scanners, John
would have done it. Plus, this was no longer his rodeo; the Chief
was in charge on this one. John may have brought her in, but unless
he pulled rank again – which he had no reason to do – he could not
become directly responsible for the woman.

Settling on taking a sharp breath and letting
his eyes half close, John tried to push the discomfort from his
mind. He also tried to push the memories to the back of his skull.
His skin felt tight and cold, a latent tingle picking along it as
he remembered exactly what it felt like to be stuck like the hooded
woman.

He felt like assuring her it would be okay
again, but she didn’t seem to be the kind to take someone’s words
on face value. She seemed to be the kind to run away from all
contact and hide in the shadows.

It was a slow and painful process, but
finally the impediment field forced the woman to walk the length of
two corridors and into the main processing room of Orion Minor
Central Security.

It was a huge room. It had to be; there was a
lot of crime to be processed on this planet.

It had been relatively cleared out, but there
was probably no way to completely empty out the officers and the
criminals they’d apprehended. They’d all been pushed off to the
sides though, the processing desks closest to the bio scanner banks
shut down.

Security bots were lined up around the
scanner, guns at the ready, their expressionless faces staring out
at the woman as she lumbered her way towards them.

To her credit, not once did she scream or beg
for mercy.

John had. Numerous times. An impediment field
had a way of eating right into your mind and upping your fear to
maximum. Plus the pain of the burning sensation the field induced
would send any grown man to his knees.

Not her though. Her hands still groped into
the slowest fists ever, and her bottom lip stuck out at a shocked,
expressive angle. But that was it. No weeping, no begging, no
pleading, nothing.

Once again John got the urge to dart forward
and yank the veil back from her eyes. It wouldn’t work of
course.

It was all part of the secret. The secret he
was about to find out.

The bio scanners flicked on. The woman took
one more lumbered step and finally entered their field.

The ground lit up as the scanners began their
work, and a bright red light darted out, penetrating her skin and
sinking straight through.

It would be barely a tingle compared to the
impediment field. The comparison of being shot in the face with a
plasma rifle to being kissed lightly on the cheek came to mind.

But as soon as the light struck her body, she
screamed.

Deep, powerful, primal. It instantly made the
hair on the back of his neck stand on end, his body jolting forward
form the surprise of it.

It felt like she’d been bottling that scream
up since she’d gotten here, and was finally letting it loose. Then
again, maybe she’d been bottling it up for years.

‘
Shut up, prisoner,’ the Chief
barked.

She finally stopped screaming. Though the
word stop could not describe the gurgle and gasp she ended it
with.

She let her head drop down between her
shoulders, as if she’d suddenly gone limp.

It got John’s attention. He stood a little
straighter, fear prickling down his arms and legs.

She did not lift her head.

Chapter 17

Alice

Good god, it was finally happening. The event
she had been dreading her whole life was now upon her. She was
being scanned on a Union planet. Unable to get free, unable to
overload the impediment field holding her in place, she had no
chance.

So the scream had been natural. Automatic.
She’d been holding it in for years. The horrible prospect of being
found out had haunted her every step her whole life, and now it was
happening.

Her mind went into freefall, her senses felt
like they were burning. Though the beam itself was relatively
non-invasive compared to the blustering sensation of the impediment
field, the knowledge of what it was doing was worse than any pain
out there.

Alice forced her head up. After she'd
finished her horrified, primal scream, she'd just let it drop, let
the impediment field take her weight.

Now a final kick of desperation was crawling
and rushing through her, prickling at her spine, making her arms
and legs twitch against the field around her.

Her head yanked to the side.

Her gaze darting around the rest of the hall
around her. She saw the security bots all lined up, she saw the
Chief standing there with one spiked hand tapping on his gun, and
she saw John. His expression was not hardened like the Chief's or
cold and dead like the robots. He could hardly look at her, his
lips twisted up into disgust as his eyes blinked tightly.

For a second that expression took her
attention. It focused her. Then Alice looked past John to what was
behind him.

It was a moment that would define the rest of
her life and maybe, just maybe, save her from her horrible
fate.

At the other end of the room was a bank of
sophisticated-looking elevators. They would service the whole of
Block Prime. Far more intricate and technical than anything on her
native Block, these would be able to travel from the base to the
top spire in under a second.

But it was not the elevators in their shiny,
metallic-white cases that riveted Alice to the spot. They didn't
send a last, spiking sensation of possibility bursting through her
dread.

It was what was beside them.

Most Old Tech had long since died. The Old
Ones had all vanished years ago, and without them, there was simply
no one around to repower it. Apart from the critical modern systems
like the ICNs and the transport network, most of it was good for
nothing more than decoration.

Collectables. It showed your power and
importance, after all, if you had a fancy Old Tech scanner sitting
on your desk as a paper weight. Sure, you couldn't turn it on. But
that did not matter; the stuff was like liquid gold.

Alice had seen it before - though certainly
not in the slums of Block Alpha - but on her travels on other
planets she'd seen Old Tech displayed around the place. Statues
mostly. Sitting up in some prominent place so the people below
could remember where the modern universe had come from. Or maybe so
they could feel powerful and protected by associating with
something far beyond their own level of development, Alice didn't
know.

Right now it didn't matter. Because before
her, just next to those elevators was Old Tech.

She knew it. She could feel it. It filled her
every sense. Her mind rang with the certainty of it.

It also called to her. She could pick it up
on the edge of her hearing. Like a keening cry, she'd heard it many
times before. The final call of some soon-to-be-dead piece of Old
Tech mourning its once-great existence.

None of the aliens around her could
appreciate that little fact. If they'd been privy to the thoughts
racing through Alice's mind, they would have baulked at the notion
that the Old Tech before her was alive.

They were wrong. Life not as a biological
would know it, but life nonetheless.

‘
Report will be finished in approximately
120 seconds,’ the scanner in front of her suddenly chimed in an
emotionless electronic voice.

‘
Two minutes? Why the hell is this taking
so long?’ the Chief of Security barked.

‘
Encountering difficulties in the scanner
matrix. Feedback from an unknown source is interfering with the
beam,’ the computer replied.

Grumbling and still tapping on his very
loaded plasma gun, the Chief cracked his neck and shoulders.

Alice ignored him.

Two minutes. She had two minutes to get out
of here.

And now she had a plan.

Alice let herself drop. She deliberately
stopped fighting the impediment field in every way, reasoning that
it would either let her fall to the floor or string her in place
like a puppet.

She didn't care if she was lying or standing
for the next bit. A part of her just need to be touching the
floor.

There was a crackle over her skin as the
field registered what John Doe would no doubt term 'unauthorized
movement'. The sensation of it trying to yank her back into place
was one that Alice would never forget.

She did not care.

Survival was never easy.

With another enormous crackle, the field
seemed to give up, and Alice finally flopped to the floor. Her head
struck the reinforced smart metal and it gave a sickening thump. If
Alice had been a soft-fleshed race, she would have no doubt just
done herself considerable damage. But she was not going to die yet
- though she'd be sporting a fantastic headache if she ever got out
of this.

‘
What the hell is happening? Computer, is
she alright?’ John Doe barked.

Though Alice had her eyes closed, she could
sense that John Doe ran right up to her and dropped to a knee just
before her face. Maybe he hovered a hand over her shoulder, maybe
he turned the flickering force field off from around his face so he
could get a better look at her.

It didn't matter.

All that mattered for Alice was that she now
had a hand clamped to the floor underneath her. She spread her
fingers wide and slow, not caring that the impediment field fought
her every step of the way. With a possible escape in sight, Alice
was finding a reserve of energy she had not known she'd
possessed.

She was going to use it in full.

Alice pushed her mind into her fingers,
forced her concentration to lay hold of the special energy within
her. Then she forced it out into the cool floor below her.

If someone had been paying real attention,
they may have seen the subtle white-blue light shift from her
touch. At first it pooled underneath her then slowly moved to the
left and right, as if it did not know where to go.

Alice's skin began to twitch, a cold sweat
drenching her.

She knew what would happen next.

‘
Computer,’ John barked again, ‘is she
okay?’

‘
Get out of the scanner beam,’ the Chief
barked back, ‘you are interfering. It's picking up your
bios.’

‘
Computer, override access, authorization
Commander John Doe. Tell me now her life signs. Is she—’

John never got a chance to finish his
sentence.

Before Alice had dropped to her stomach,
slamming herself onto the cold hard floor in her last ditch effort,
she had not bothered to ascertain exactly what kind of Old Tech was
on the other side of the room.

Alice had two rules that kept her safe in
this universe. One was never, ever to allow herself to undergo a
proper biological scan. The other was to never, ever recharge Old
Tech unless she knew exactly what it did. There was simply too much
of it, and what was more, not all of it was nice. While the Old
Ones had seeded the modern universe, they had not been beyond using
force where necessary.