Terminal Point (9 page)

“How did you know to store this here? And the fuel?” Jason said as he wiped dust and grime off the biotank's top seal with his uniform sleeve.

“How do you think?”

No one mentioned Aisling, the child whose orders Lucas was following, but her name hung heavy between them anyway. They should have hit Antarctica already, but they'd taken the long route south across the Pacific Ocean, flying over an expanse of gray, acidic water and arriving here. They were stopping in New Zealand only because they couldn't risk Threnody's life any longer. Her health since unlocking the seed bank had only gotten worse over the hours. Staying the course meant losing her, and Lucas wasn't going to risk that. They needed a refuel anyway, and Matron was handling that out on the street.

These three had a life to save.

Lucas dealt with the biotank while Jason and Quinton worked to strip Threnody of the blanket she was wrapped in and her clothes. Quinton carefully removed the IV lines sticking out from the back of her hands. He pulled a long hypo out of the bag Jason was carrying and ripped the plastic seal off it with his teeth. Jason carefully turned Threnody onto her stomach with his telekinesis, letting her hover a few centimeters off the ground.

“Hold her steady,” Quinton said as he spanned one hand over the jut of Threnody's hip, lining up the hypo against the bone. They didn't have time to administer a sedative, and no one was sure how she would react to the drug in the state she was in.

Jason held her still as gently as he could. Quinton jammed his thumb down on the release button, feeling resistance as the longer, thicker needle of the hypospray pierced Threnody's bone to extract a stem-cell-packed marrow sample.

Quinton passed the hypo to Lucas once it was full. Lucas slid it into the receiver tube attached to the storage tank that held nanites and the regen-therapy fluid integral to biotanks. Mixed together, the concoction would accelerate the healing capabilities of cells in the human body. With a hard stab of his thumb, Lucas depressed Threnody's marrow into the tube, letting the nanites get a preread on her DNA. Clear, viscous fluid was already pumping into the holding tank for oxygenation.

“I hope this works,” Jason said as he struggled to find a viable vein in first one of her arms, then the other. The empty tubing floated in the air by way of telekinesis. They didn't have a sterility field here, so Jason was improvising, trying to keep the tube off the ground and free of contamination. “I hope—
shit!
”

He flipped her from her side onto her back so suddenly that Quinton didn't have time to let go of her wrist. His fingers snagged on the needle in her vein, dislodging it with bloody results. Her skin tore, so did the vein, and blood leaked from the wound.

“Jason,” Quinton snarled, head snapping up.

“She's not breathing,” Jason said, holding one hand down over Threnody's chest. “She's not
breathing.
”

Which meant her heart wasn't beating.

Quinton felt the burn in the back of his mind through their bond as Jason accessed his microtelekinesis. Bright spots filled Quinton's vision, obscuring Threnody. He fumbled for the gauze in Jason's bag, working to clean up the mess her hand and wrist had become and reset the needle.

Jason sank his power into her chest, wrapped it around her heart, and started up a cardiac rhythm. He used his own as a baseline, nearly breaking her ribs from the inside out as he struggled to keep her from dying.

“Lucas, you need to move faster,” Quinton yelled over his shoulder. “She's crashing!”

“This can't be rushed” was Lucas's only answer.

“God fucking damn it.” Jason's pupils were dilated as he stared blankly down at Threnody. “Okay, I've got her. I've got her.”

Quinton pressed two fingers to Threnody's throat, searching out a pulse that was too erratic for his liking. “Slow it down, Jays.”

Jason sucked in a deep breath. “I'm trying.”

“Try harder.”

“The biotank is ready,” Lucas said seconds later, voice taut. “Bring her.”

The machine's side panels slid far enough apart for Jason to telekinetically lower Threnody inside. He held her down as the thick fluid flowed over her, sliding up her nose, into her mouth, down her throat, drowning her. Even unconscious, Jason could feel her struggling as he telekinetically attached the tubing to the sides of the tank. Lucas tapped in another command, and seconds later a heavy, gray stream of nanites mixed with the regen-therapy fluid began to flow through the tubing into Threnody's body. Dozens of sealed wires extended from the sides of the tank, pressing against her skin to monitor her vitals.

Lucas came around to Jason's side, carrying a handful of wires. He peeled the tape off the tiny electrodes, sticking them to Jason's temples and his chest. A second set of vitals showed up on another screen; Jason's baseline. It eerily matched Threnody's.

Quinton stared at the jagged moving lines representing two heartbeats. “Jason?”

“I've got her,” Jason said, sounding distant.

“He's in deep,” Lucas said, eyeing Jason critically. “He caught her in time, so maybe this will work.”

“Maybe?” Quinton said.

“We're going to be stuck here for a few days, and Jason is going to need to be awake for the entire process.” Lucas glanced over his shoulder. “Find me a shot of Adrenalin.”

Quinton went for their bags. “You think he can handle it? He dosed himself pretty heavily with that stuff back in Buffalo.”

“If he passes out, she dies.”

Quinton came back with not one dose of Adrenalin, but a dozen.

Lucas pressed the hypospray against Jason's throat and administered the dose. Jason shuddered, leaning heavily against the biotank. Lucas helped him sit down, back to the machine. He was pale-faced and breathing quickly, sweat beading along his brow.

“Jason?” Quinton said, closing his eyes against the sudden pull at the back of his mind.

“I've got her,” Jason repeated like a mantra. “I've got her.”

A biotank could force cellular regeneration to happen faster than the human body could do so alone, building off a patient's own stem cells through the persistence of nanites. With enough time and training, Jason might one day accomplish the same on his own in minutes, not hours or days, but he still didn't know what he was capable of. As things stood, he was barely holding Threnody together, his power slip-sliding through cellular levels, chasing after nanites. He tried to recall through remembered agony what he had done on the flight out of Buffalo. Jason forced himself to concentrate on the shape of Threnody's cells to get a feel for her DNA and build off the genetic blueprint of her body.

Quinton looked at Jason, feeling the other man's power pulling at the back of his mind through the permanent bond they shared. He winced at what felt like an itch on the inside of his skull and tried to ignore it. Quinton pressed his hand against the dusty, dirty plasglass and didn't take his eyes off Threnody.

 

NINE

SEPTEMBER 2379
INVERCARGILL, NEW ZEALAND

She took a breath.

Then another. Deeper.

It was cold; wet.

Fluid was in her lungs. In her mouth.

Threnody cracked open her eyes to a world made of light. Fractured light, seen through the heavy, curved plasglass of a biotank and the thick, undulating fluid that breathed for her. She closed her eyes. Opened them again. The world didn't change.

Shadows moved around her outside the biotank. She could hear the soft, constant beeping of a monitor, the sound deep and distant through the fluid. She tried to move her hand, felt her fingers get tangled in tiny wires, so many attached to the length of her body. They didn't hurt.

She did.

Who am I?

Go to sleep,
someone answered. The voice was clear, accented, sounding like those who hailed from London. Stretched in a way she felt in her bones. In her nerves.

Who am I?

Threnody Corwin. Now go to sleep. We aren't finished.

She was dragged under by waves of water and light, a riptide of power that took her to the depths of the ocean. Which was impossible, for this wasn't any ocean found in the world.

She slept.

When she regained consciousness, it was to cold air blowing across bare skin and pressure in her chest. She struggled to cough up the thick fluid in her lungs and replace it with oxygen. Strong arms held her steady, a deep, familiar voice filling her ears and not her mind.

“That's it, Thren,” Quinton said. “Like that. Keep coughing. It's almost all out.”

His skin was dark against her own, his grip solid as she heaved and jerked in his support, coughing out every last minuscule bit of the perfluorocarbons that she didn't remember swallowing.

“Hate this part,” Threnody rasped as her body shuddered through the motions.

“I know. You're almost there.”

When she was breathing air and not fluid, he picked her up from the cold metal floor and carried her to a portable sterilization tent. The plastic walls smelled too sharp in her nose. She thought she could taste it. Wires were stuck to her skin, in her veins, dangling like long-dead vines made of plastic and metal.

“Ready?” a voice asked.

She opened her eyes, watched as Jason came into blurry focus at the entrance to the small tent.

“Ready,” Quinton answered for the both of them.

Jason sealed the inner layer shut, then the outer. The soft hiss of the sterilization process starting up echoed in her ears, vaporizing the viscous fluid sticking to her body. Threnody held one hand close to her face, struggling to focus. Her hand shook, but with no spastic jerk to the movement of her muscles. Just exhaustion, nothing more complicated than that.

“Should be dead,” Threnody murmured, letting her head drop onto Quinton's shoulder. Gravity pulled her hand down, arm swinging in the air.

“Go to sleep, Thren,” Quinton said, voice rough.

“Did we make it inside the seed bank?”

“Yeah.” He swallowed. “Yeah, we made it.”

She took a breath, felt air flow into her lungs; sterile and cold. Unconsciousness took her once more. When Threnody woke again, she was lying on a flight deck, wrapped in thermal blankets and clean clothes. It was silent, and the person watching over her this time wasn't Quinton.

“Where are we?” she asked, her voice dry, tongue sticking to the roof of her mouth.

Lucas looked up from the datapad in his hands and whatever report he was familiarizing himself with. The bruise from when Quinton had punched him in the mouth was gone. “New Zealand.”

Threnody's eyebrows drew together in confusion, thin creases lining her forehead. “I thought—the Arctic?”

“Mm.” Lucas set aside the datapad. “You've been unconscious since frying the seed-bank doors.”

“How long?”

“We spent two days in the Arctic. It took half another day to get down here with everything we stole, and we've been here for almost two days since we landed so Jason could work on you. You weren't going to make it to Antarctica, so we took a detour.”

“Antarctica,” she echoed, fingers curling against her palms. Her skin felt new and it itched, but the burning pain she remembered from the power plant and the seed bank was gone. Threnody sucked in a deep breath, her mind unfolding those memories easily enough. “I feel like I should be dead.”

“You don't die here.”

“Here is relative.”

Lucas smiled at her, the look full of some twisted understanding, as if he knew what secrets she kept. He probably did.

Threnody pushed at the blankets until she was free of them and could sit up, putting her back against the bulkhead. A faint twinge from her right hand made her look down. A small bruise surrounded the entrance point of the IV there. She eyed the tubing that connected her to the mostly empty bag hanging off the pilot's seat.

“So we succeeded in the Arctic. Did everyone make it off Spitsbergen?”

“I love that you distrust me so thoroughly. It's refreshing, to say the least.”

Threnody gave Lucas a cool look, blue eyes slightly narrowed. Her black hair was a tangled mess, she needed a shower, and she had no idea what had transpired between the Arctic and now. She wanted answers. “If you're not going to tell me what's going on, I'll find someone who will.”

Lucas got to his feet, looking down at her. “Who else would have the answers you need?”

Threnody curled her hands around her knees and glared. “Just give me what I want, Lucas. You already have my support. You don't need me to beg.”

“It's so interesting when you do.” Lucas shrugged his ambivalence and ran a hand through his pale blond hair. “We didn't leave anyone behind, if that's what you're worried about. None of our people, at least.”

“Have our actions been discovered yet?”

“The government isn't going to announce what happened on a news stream. If they haven't discovered the discrepancy by now, then they will within the next twenty-four hours. We can't confirm where they stand right now without risking our position and that's not something I'll do.”

Threnody had more questions, but Lucas was already leaving. Before the hatch closed, Quinton stepped inside, scowling faintly at Lucas's back.

Threnody glanced at Quinton, taking stock of how he moved, needing to assure herself that he was all right. Then his attention was on her, some of the worry leaving his brown eyes. She swallowed a sudden surge of relief as Quinton knelt beside her. She dimly recalled moments from her time in the biotank that made no sense to her. Dreams, maybe. Or possibly nightmares. But always, always, he was there.

“Brought you another insulated skinsuit,” Quinton said as he set the pile near her knees. “You'll need it where we're going.”