Mindlink (12 page)

They did not have the luxury of discussing the link, no matter
how much they both may wish to better understand their newly altered
reality.

“What is your name?” he asked the boy and got no response. The
Telhada had incarcerated him for a reason, perhaps because of mental
deficiencies. Every moment they risked being discovered, yet
One
hesitated to haul the boy to his feet. “We must
go.”

His tone seemed to snap the boy into motion. He rose on shaky
legs. The Redhead jumped up as well and held out a hand to the boy, which he
refused to acknowledge, let alone take.

The boy followed
One
and she
brought up the rear. Fortunately, the workers had allowed the boy to retain his
clothing.

They reached the storage area housing the other Mora Tuwa
without incident. The three who had been incapacitated by the workers remained
unconscious and the fourth remained asleep.
One
roused the useless human and together they wrestled the large human onto the
stretcher.

At the signal, The Redhead hefted the other female to her limp
feet and he lifted the young human.
One
took the
lead, dragging the comatose human along, and motioned the child in behind him.
The useless human pushed the stretcher at the rear.

They moved into the corridor. Heavy footsteps echoed from the
left.

They had no time to take cover.
One
swung around and let the young human sink to the floor. Four guards burst into
the hall and spread out.

They were surrounded.

One
exhaled. He’d prepared for this
possibility, but he hadn’t taken into account The Redhead’s deluge of black,
fragmented terror via the link. Nor had he accounted for the boy. Both weighed
on him, pressuring him to succeed. He couldn’t fail them.

A guard spoke into his handheld, alerting everyone system-wide
they’d located the escaped prisoners. He holstered the device and moved toward
One
.

One
slid a finger across the
handheld and the hall plunged into darkness, courtesy of the sequence of
commands he’d created before setting off to rescue the boy.

The Redhead’s emotions washed over him, digging into his
consciousness with frenzied spikes. He pushed a soothing stream, guiding her
mentally to follow him as he dragged the unconscious human male through an open
panel, which had flipped when the lights extinguished.

This was taking too long.

With one hand, he guided the stretcher into the auxiliary
hallway and grabbed the boy with the other. The Redhead scurried through, then
the useless human.
One
sealed the panel, silencing
the worker’s chatter as they diagnosed the issue with the lights.

The new hall illuminated. Safety.

“Come.”
One
turned and hauled up
the young human, calling out over his shoulder. “The workers will seal the
entire building once they gain their bearings. The exit is this way.”

He rounded a corner, leading the others. A sliding door of
frosted polycarbonate lay ahead.
One’s
fingers flew
across the handheld screen, triggering commands, but the doors remained closed.
The weight across his shoulders amplified.

There were no options. The mechanism activated by linking with
an implant, allowing the Telhada to monitor citizen’s movements. The handheld’s
programming could not override it.

He glanced over the bedraggled group whose safety he’d sworn to
ensure. The humans were various sizes and shapes and the young citizen a
hindrance under the best of circumstances. If they successfully exited the
building into Kir Barsha, only invisibility would prevent recapture. They might
as well broadcast their location to all citizens via an alert.

Neither could they stay here.

“Who is the girl in the image?” The Redhead whispered.

Startled, he paused, reorienting. He hadn’t consciously thought
of her, nor had he pushed the image, but he knew precisely what she meant. “My
sister,
YLL
.”

“Oh, are you worried you’ll never see her again? Sad?”

“I have not spoken to or seen
YLL
since I reached the age of majority. We are not employed in the same quadrant
and do not maintain contact.”

Though he’d thought of her often, secretly. She’d not yet been
grown when he left their assigned parent’s residence and she’d been struggling
to fully embrace the qualities of a citizen. Her studies suffered and he’d
harbored an urge to help her, comfort her and ease her way into adulthood. Such
things were impossible and he’d wondered more than once what had become of her.
“I recalled something she said once about wishing to be invisible. Childish
nonsense.”

“We need to be invisible. I got that too,” she affirmed.

He’d somehow communicated the need to disappear as well?
Nothing he’d been taught or presumed about the link had proven to be true.
Citizens understood it to be horrific, used only for interrogation and
intimidation. The link was quite the opposite, evoking a rush of unexamined
anticipation. Perhaps the difference lay in linking with a human instead of
another citizen, though he suspected if so, it was due to the specific human
he’d linked with.

“Invisible, yes,” he said. “It would be helpful.”

“Can’t we like put aluminum foil over our heads or something?
That’s what they do in the movies when characters don’t want their brains to be
scrambled by the death ray.”

“Are you suggesting a type of covering which would prevent the
reader from seeing us?” He considered the possibilities and the heaviness across
his shoulders lifted all at once. “Your movie inspires another idea.”

He keyed sequences in rapid succession and motioned to the tall
useless human. “Approach the doors. If they open, seek cover to the left and
remain hidden.

With mincing steps, the human complied. The polycarbonate
panels slid open.

Success.

His throat squeezed as he switched the IDs of all the prisoners
to those of Penal System workers, using the processing protocol he knew backward
and inside out.

Now they were invisible.

“Follow him,” he said to the boy and repeated the instructions
in English to the humans. He remained at the rear, evaluating the readouts on
his handheld. The boy complied and then The Redhead. She stopped, just shy of
crossing the threshold.

“Now I know I’m not in Kansas anymore,” The Redhead
muttered.

Chapter Seven

Ashley dragged Natalie through the doors and into the
most bizarre world imaginable. The dreary landscape stretched to the horizon in
all directions with nothing to break up the shades of gray. The pyramid-shaped
buildings were gray. The cement roads were gray. The cloudy sky, gray. The city
spread out, depressingly vast and devoid of any bit of personality.

It was Oz in reverse. Way in reverse. Apparently, Sam wasn’t
the sole color-blind alien. Instead of landing over the rainbow into a
full-blown Technicolor world with munchkins and a wizard, she’d been plunged
into a colorless nightmare with aliens who’d shoved a mind reader into her brain
and wanted to use her as mulch.

Once, her manager had suckered her into appearing in Lil’
Jackhammer’s music video and afterward, she learned the rapper’s creative team
shot every last frame in black-and-white. They’d featured the most famous
redhead in the world in their little art show and eliminated any possibility of
a career boost by rendering her unrecognizable. Her hair was her meal ticket.
Hollywood had pounded that truth into her head time and time again.

She scuttled after Sam as he herded Sid and the boy toward
cover. Her hair swung in a wide arc as she ducked under a canopy. She winced,
convinced the splash of red against the stark colors would cause a rush of
guards.

Duh. Aliens didn’t see color. In this world, she didn’t stand
out any more than the next person.

There was nothing special about her here.

Natalie woke up then, followed by Dr. Glasses and Freddy. Thank
God. She’d have traded her Ferrari to not have to haul Natalie around
anymore.

Sam prodded them over to a corner and up against the wall.
Gratefully, she squatted between Natalie and the boy, who had yet to say a word.
Every bone in her body ached, along with some places she hadn’t known existed.
At least it was warmer out here than in jail.

Sam cleared his throat. Heads swiveled in his direction with
the exception of the boy. He kept his eyes on the ground and shoulders hunched.
Stringy hair shielded a face lined with an impossible mix of innocence and
experience. Could such a young boy really have done something so bad the aliens
were willing to kill him? What had happened to his parents?

“We must exit the city,” Sam said in his robot voice. Did
nothing ever get under his skin? “Once the entire quadrant is alerted to our
escape, we will be recaptured quickly.”

Freddy coughed, racking his entire body. “What happened to the
other scientists? Did we leave them behind?”

Ashley shook her head. “We checked and couldn’t find anyone
else in the cells. We think they were already recycled.”

Natalie started crying, and Sid flinched like he’d been
hit.

Sam’s agitation and anxiety swirled into her thoughts. They had
no choice but to follow his lead, and she hadn’t broken out of alien-jail only
to be recaptured. “We can all be sad about the others later. It sucks that
they’re gone, but we’re not. We have to get going if we’re going to live.”

“Who are you, anyway?” Freddy asked Sam. “Why should we trust
you just because you were in jail too?”

“Because he helped us escape,” Ashley broke in. “We’d all be
dead now without Sam. He knows this world and is willing to share his expertise.
Why wouldn’t you trust him?”

Sid crossed his arms and leaned forward. “He’s an alien. They
lied to us and lured us here under false pretenses. The others are dead. My
ability to trust anyone is severely limited.”

Dr. Glasses nodded his agreement.

Something else sprang into her mind. Not images this time, but
a feeling. Remorse. Sam was sorry about them being here and regretted the
Telhada’s trick.

Natalie frowned. “I don’t trust the aliens but I do trust
Ashley. I’m with her. No matter what.”

Ashley warmed inside. What had she done to earn that?

With a snort, Dr. Glasses said, “That one lies for a living. A
perfect match for these aliens.”

Of all the nerve, after she saved his fat butt from being
turned into a Coke can.

“I don’t lie, I entertain, and I’m good at it. Even you were
fooled into thinking I was a PhD,” she countered, pleased with the quick
deflection and the delivery. She should be used to dismissal of her acting
skills but it still hurt. No one appreciated how hard it was to be someone else,
especially when the cameras weren’t filming.

“Cease,” Sam commanded and everyone stopped talking to stare up
at him. “Speak quietly. We must move. Security will begin searching outside the
pyramid at any moment.”

Freddy, in a surprise show of compassion, moved over and slung
an arm over her shoulders. Maybe she’d misjudged him. No one else noticed Dr.
Glasses had hurt her feelings.

Something undefined flitted at the edges of her consciousness.
Helplessness and frustration twined together and grew.

Sam. She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye and saw
nothing out of the ordinary in the rigid line of his posture and tight jaw, but
she could still tell. He’d experienced her hurt and wanted to help, but hadn’t
known what to do.

It tugged at her heart in a way Freddy’s practiced move
hadn’t.

Sam lifted a palm, his expression blank. “The perimeter is this
way.”

How did this link thing work anyway? She hadn’t made any sort
of a conscious decision to communicate hurt feelings to him. Probably like he
hadn’t meant to communicate his remorse earlier.

She wanted to scream or bash her head against a wall or
something until this alien bond broke forever. Before it drove her insane and
before her nerves completely unraveled. She didn’t want a connection with him.
This constant state of exposure, of sharing stuff that should be private with
someone she barely knew, wore on her. She spent a lot of effort pushing away
random thoughts and actively thinking about butterflies and bananas to keep the
orange couch at bay.

“Can’t we find a place to hide until we can get back on the
spaceship?” Sid asked. “Why try to leave the city at all?”

“Everything in Kir Barsha is operated by citizen’s implants,
including access to food and shelter. The spacebarge as well. We cannot enter
the Acquisitions pyramid or operate the controls.” Sam’s gaze bored into each of
them, one by one, and none of them looked away. Except Ashley. “Before we exited
the Penal pyramid, I interchanged our IDs with citizens who have permissions for
this quadrant. As soon as those citizens attempt to eat or sleep, the deception
will be discovered. The Telhada will not fail to recapture us. Exiting the city
is our only hope.”

Images of dark obelisks in pairs every so often along the
border of the city flew into her head. The daunting needlelike structures were
as tall as the pyramids and formed a barrier. Not a physical barrier, but an
invisible one, like a fence made of undetectable gamma rays or something.

Interlaced with the images was the distinct impression of pain
and death.

* * *

Because he and The Redhead were still linked,
One
met the other humans’ eyes, but the deliberate
transgression against something so heavily ingrained crawled across his neck.
His body’s response to looking another full in the face paled in comparison to
that of being linked with a human.

He must stop thinking about The Redhead, about the colors and
fantastic range of emotion tunneling open before him, and focus on the immediate
issues. The overweight one’s jacket gaped open and the tall one’s pants were at
least ten centimeters too short. Conversely, the younger human wore the uniform
as if he’d been a citizen of the Telhada his entire life.

“We must go. Now.” The canopy they huddled under provided scant
protection from the eyes of the Telhada. Any Security worker could easily find
the old IDs in the system, if he knew to look for them. The vigilant security in
Kir Barsha lacked its usual comfort and became yet another obstacle in an
increasingly insurmountable series of obstacles.

His head felt too heavy for his shoulders to support. The
familiar weight of duty. These prisoners required his leadership and he owed it
to them. They would die without his assistance.

“Follow me.” He rose and led the way.

One
monitored the streets ahead,
selecting those with no citizens present, often veering from course to avoid
workers. They might escape notice due to the custom of not looking others in the
face, but a citizen might notice something amiss via peripheral vision and feel
duty-bound to raise the alarm.

The humans shadowed his steps for two kilometers without
incident and
One
began to feel confident the Penal
Division workers had not discovered their direction yet.

Just then, a group of Service Division workers entered the
street, eyes on their assignment, not the ground.
One’s
pulse began throbbing. With a flick of his wrist, he motioned
to the others to move out of sight.

Crouching, he watched around the corner as the workers
performed routine maintenance on the common grounds outside the residence
complex across from where they hid. They were trapped until the crew finished
their task.

“We must stay hidden,” he whispered to the others.

“For how long?” The Redhead matched his volume and placed a
hand on his forearm.

No one had ever touched him as she did. Randomly, absently, as
if a natural part of communication. Before being thrown into reluctant
partnership with The Redhead, the concept of touch held a strictly utilitarian
purpose—to toss him into a cell, for example.

Her touch jolted him, sending shocks through his skin. It
should be something he avoided. Yet he didn’t. The Telhada no longer dictated
his actions. If he chose to allow another to touch him, he would.

“Until it is safe,” he responded and her hand slid off. The
spot on his arm she’d covered grew cold.

“Can’t we find something to eat?” the tall one asked.

“No. We eat in the dispensary at prescribed times. We cannot
risk this, as food is issued by scanning implants. Our new IDs must not be
introduced to the system any further.”

One
glanced at the handheld.
Second-meal would be in two hours. If they waited until then to traverse the
city, few workers would be outside and security markedly less present.

“I’m hungry and we’re stuck here for who knows how long.” The
overweight one glanced around as if food pellets might fall from the sky to
appease his appetite. “Isn’t there another way to get
something
to eat?”

“No. Your survival is more critical than food.” The humans
grumbled at his declaration and ruffled his patience until The Redhead’s
thoughts drifted through the link.
Safety
.

She felt safe with him.

Warmth stole through his midsection, though he had difficulty
sorting whether it came from her or if his body had produced the response. The
Telhada—to whom he’d pledged loyalty his whole life—had betrayed him.
Improbably, this human aligning with him salved some of that ache.

“I, uh, don’t want to be rude but I don’t know what to call
you,” the other female ventured with a quivery lilt. “I’m Natalie. Your name is
Sam?”

He bit back a sigh and longed for his quiet office in the
Acquisitions building where no one dared speak to him unless spoken to. But
where he also had no concept of the palette of colors beyond black-and-white. He
had no wish to return to his achromatic world. “No. However, you may use it to
address me.”

The younger male broke in. “The name’s McAlister, mate, but you
can call me Freddy.”

“Please.” The overweight obnoxious one scoffed. “You aren’t
seriously trying to play diplomats after all we’ve been through, are you? Who
cares what your names are? Not him, not any of these aliens.”

“Dr. Glasson,” the male designated as Freddy said. “This alien
is helping us. The least we can do is be cooperative and thankful.”

The child, who had taken a seat near him, glanced up. In a low
voice,
One
took advantage of his unusual interest
and said, “What is your name?”

The boy shook his head and pointed at
One’s
pocket. He fished out the handheld and passed it to the boy.
With quick fingers, the boy called up a text interface and keyed the word
“Neeko.”

“Your name is Neeko?”

The boy nodded. He clearly possessed intelligence and
functional abilities. He just didn’t talk.

“You do not have a designation?”

Again, he tapped the screen and the letters
NKO
appeared. Ah. Neeko was a derivative of his
assigned ID.
One’s
sister,
YLL
, had been similarly called Yellie. Once a citizen reached
adulthood, most dispensed with such frivolity. Yellie hadn’t, though.

Why was he recalling her with such frequency? Frowning, he
swept away memories of the sister he hadn’t seen in years.

“Once we leave the city, where can we go?” the overweight one
asked.

“We will find a place to hide in the Badramun,”
One
responded.

The forest called the Badramun swallowed the light—a sinister
warning to any foolish enough to consider entering. The leading edge followed
the perimeter of the city but a dense screen of underbrush hid its heart.

The Redhead collapsed back against the ground, fingers on her
temples. Processing the image he’d sent. “You’re taking us there, into a place
that means ‘without God’?”

“How do you know?” Natalie asked, brow furrowed in
curiosity.

One
was curious too since he hadn’t
consciously sent the translation along with the image. The Redhead glanced at
him and the link was unnecessary to surmise she preferred not to explain.

“I, uh, guessed,” she said.