Spark and Tether, page 25
“Kirsha. Hey.”
Kirsha’s smile widened. “Good to see you, Sacheri. You on a run?”
“In between,” he said. It wasn’t a lie. But he wasn’t going to explain, either. “You?”
“On the way back to OS.”
Sacheri gestured at the new safety tech armbands on Kirsha’s COR Ops jacket. “Congratulations.”
Kirsha raised an arm to show off the band. “Thanks. Umair looked out for me.”
“He’s good at that,” Sacheri said. “I owe him, myself.”
“I heard you were injured a few runs back.” Kirsha dropped his arm back to his side. “I’m sorry, man.”
“Thanks,” Sacheri said. Kirsha sought something, and he cursed his missing synplants, which might have told him what. Had Kirsha installed guards upon reaching ranked levels? He wondered. “I’m recovering here, for a bit.”
“You remember Zain? They came here to recover, too.”
His general sense of the vague awkwardness between them grew a tinge of panic, but he could not stop himself from asking. “Were they injured on the run we did?”
“Not injured,” Kirsha said. “Never took to it, I guess.” He shrugged, and Sacheri guessed at the heartbreak under the gesture. “They ended up leaving COR. Last I heard they’d decided to settle dirtside.”
“I’m sorry,” he said.
Kirsha’s glance was hesitant. “I always wondered if that team lead had something to do with it.”
“Oh?” Sacheri kept most of the surprise out of his voice. The sounds of the halls around them faded out and then back louder than before.
“Yeah. Zain was really shaken up by the way she treated us on that run. They changed.” He was eyeing Sacheri with something almost hopeful. “Umair says she can be hard to work with.”
“Umair would know,” he said. “You take any runs with her since then?”
Kirsha shook his head. “No, I steer clear of Reclamations. Keep hoping I’ll run into Jin at some point.”
There was that little stab in his chest again. “You might yet.” He had some small hope of being able to see Jin himself, someday.
“Umair said you two were—”
“Not anymore.” He turned toward the hall that would take him back to his room.
“I’m sorry,” Kirsha said, and Sacheri heard understanding in the hushed tone.
Sacheri froze, unable to choose an answer. Violet light was creeping across the walls at the edges of his vision.
“Sacheri?”
“I’m just here to heal,” he said. “I’m sorry about Zain.” If only he could find Adda. Perhaps she could be convinced to combine forces, and they could wring something better out of COR, in the end. He found no hint of what he should say next in Kirsha’s expression.
“Yeah,” Kirsha said. “I am too. Is there anything I can do for you while I’m here?”
He hadn’t had access to COR’s systems since being put on leave. She’d be hiding in there. “Actually…I’d like to get a message to someone in COR,” he said.
“But they’ve locked you out while you’re on sick leave,” Kirsha said. “I always thought that was a ridiculous rule. I can help.”
“It’s Adda,” he said.
Kirsha took a long time to answer.
Sacheri watched sympathy and doubt and curiosity cross his eyes, and lost hope.
“I’ll see what I can do,” Kirsha said.
The next sets of results came up quickly. He opened the report and danced in his seat: it was, on its surface, a request for records and verification, but the description detailed several previous missions and investigations including several partially terraformed worlds across the Outer Ring.
One section even justified the data request by mentioning both fai and synchronist COR staff who were missing and presumed deceased. It cited a distress call which had carried both fai and synchronist signatures and referenced an earlier investigation in which COR had suspected infiltrators of contaminating both fai code bases and synplants. With dimmer mods.
Sacheri read that section over and over.
COR’s transparency regulations being what they were, he should be able to find updates on this inquiry. Some of the time stamps dated a few standard years before his first runs with Adda; someone else had been tracking missing and injured fai. He skimmed to the end, looking for the I&R identifying seals. Whose medallions might have more information for him?
It hit him like a blow to the chest.
Sacheri stared at the display, trying to breathe through the lightheadedness and the growing ache in his belly. He had expected to find some new part of Adda’s trail, but it was much, much worse.
The ID filing the reports—the COR I&R rep tracking damaged fai, who followed Adda’s trail, who knew about the dimmer mods—was Jin.
Chapter 32
Sacheri reread the reports until words no longer made sense, and then he stared at a blank display until the buzzing in his ears subsided.
He pinged Paradis’s direct private channel. He did not know what he would say to her, only that he needed a voice who would tell him the truth no matter how bad it was.
She answered at once, and as she recognized him a cascade of emotions flashed across her face as she burst into tears: fright-relief-anguish-rage, all gone so quickly he barely registered them as they passed.
“Hey,” he whispered, hoarse from days on end of whispering to himself.
“Sacheri. What in the starforsaken hells?” She waved her hand at someone off to her left, and he caught sight of an edge of a cloth landing in her lap. “Do you have any idea how scared—” she stopped, and looked over the top of the display again; he heard a door close. Her tears washed the bright blue-green powder from her eyeliner down her cheeks in shimmery streaks. It made her look magical.
“Are we private?”
“Of course.” She wiped at her eyes, which had turned bright red along with the tip of her nose. He stared, fascinated: he had not seen Paradis cry in many years, and never over him. He didn’t know where to start. He felt like he should cry with her, but he was out of tears, somehow. He didn’t know how he would explain that, either.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
Now she was glaring at him, which felt much more familiar. “Fuck you, you absolute selfish monster.”
He gave her what he hoped was a reassuring smile. “Yeah. I know.” She took a deep, steadying breath; he considered what next to say. “I’m safe. I’m finding what I need. I’ll tell you everything when I can.”
“Sacheri,” she interrupted. “Jin—”
He closed his eyes at the name. “No. I can’t talk about them, Paradis. It’s done. Please don’t.”
She didn’t answer until he looked at her again. “Did you know,” she said, her voice low and furious, “they thought you might have been taken? That you were hurt, or in danger? They called in every favor they had trying to find you, and then—” she was staring right into him now— “and then I had to tell them you’d sent me a message that you were fine and would be in touch soon.”
There was no way around it. His behavior had been terrible. He would not try to justify it. But so, it turned out, was theirs. He had carried a pinpoint flicker of hope for their eventual forgiveness in his chest, but now there was only a hurt that swelled at their name; he did not know how to tell her that neither he nor Jin had deserved her trust, after all.
Paradis raised her brows as she twitched her head toward him. “No explanation?”
“Maybe I’ll get to explain it someday,” he said, not believing it. “I’m sorry. I didn’t plan any of it.” Too risky. He had decided that before sending the ping; she would want to rescue him, and he might let her. He remembered how Jin had not trusted him, that last evening, and the thought of Paradis reacting the same way was too much to stomach.
“Obviously,” she said, her stare withering. “Where are you?”
“On my way to my next stop,” he said. “I think it will be done soon.”
“That’s it?”
He nodded. “I just—I just needed to hear your voice.”
Her expression softened. “I don’t know how to help you this time. They’re all looking for you, you know. You’ll be recovering in a COR quarantine next.”
“I figured.” That was why he was on Bolis Station; even if they found him, Bolis had no agreements regarding the removal of citizens by other entities. COR could track him all they wanted, but as long as he was on Bolis Station or a non-COR transport, they couldn’t touch him.
“Please talk to Jin,” she whispered.
The hollow feeling in his chest, which he’d grown so adept at ignoring that he’d begun to believe it was gone, flared with a rush. “I can’t.”
“Why?”
“They knew, Par,” he whispered. “I found reports about anti-synchronist infiltration groups and corrupted fai and dead worlds. There’s too much to say here, but they knew so much more than they shared. They knew from the beginning.”
Her eyes hardened as her expression flashed between confusion and fury and careful neutrality, and he wondered if she ever saw things through a color haze, too. He missed reaching her through their synplants. It was so much easier than talking. So much less lonely.
“Jin made some of those reports,” he said.
All feeling fell away from her. “Sacheri—” she started, but he cut her off. The rasp in her voice hurt him.
“I didn’t know when I left,” he said. He wanted to be honest, to claim his own shortcomings. “I knew they might know something, but this—”
Paradis put her head in her hands, hiding her face as she wiped at her eyes. He hadn’t heard the door open again, but it must have; she pointed toward the door and stuttered, “O-out.”
“I’m not ready to talk to them,” he said. “I know I’m a coward, but…not yet.”
Paradis’s breath hitched. “Can you please keep talking to me?”
He wiped at his eyes. “I miss you,” he said. “So much. I’m so sorry. I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to do it if anyone knew.”
She patted at her cheeks with the cloth. “I would have stopped you,” she said.
“Where were you?” he asked, remembering how many times he’d tried to contact her and gone unanswered.
The tiniest hint of a smile appeared on her lips. “I was with Dorun,” she said simply. “Having a fantastic time, in fact, until your partner tracked me down.”
“Ex,” Sacheri said. “Ex-partner.”
Paradis stared at him in confusion for a second, and then dropped her eyes to her lap. “Sacheri—”
He shook his head. He’d left in the night, knowing what he was doing, how it would hurt them; he couldn’t ask for forgiveness or understanding on either side. Not now.
Paradis swallowed and looked away from him.
He desperately wanted to ask where Jin was now, if they were over the shock, if they had regrets like he did, but none of those were fair questions to ask her, and he stayed silent.
Paradis took a deep breath, settling something in her thoughts. “I understand you’re not going to tell me what your plans are, but you must have made some progress. So how can I help?”
“I have some inquiries I need to run through a few archives,” he said. “But I don’t want to draw attention.”
“Send it,” she said. “I’ll take care of it.” She gestured to her display. Her movements lagged, the worry and grief he’d caused her revealed in the heaviness of her limbs. He hated himself for it.
“Thank you.” He sent the packets through her private channels. “I’ll be in touch again soon.”
Paradis was crying again.
“Par—” he started to say, but she waved him off.
“I’m fine,” she said. “I just need to recover from the shock. All this time and they never said—”
“Yeah,” he said. It had helped him, in a way; he had something to resent Jin for now, which made it easier to miss them less, but that was now, after he’d had some time to process his initial reflexive denial. “Time helps.”
She glowered at him through the display. “It does not mean I forgive you for any of this.”
He blew her a kiss and signed off.
Talking to Paradis shifted something in him, and he canceled the next set of meal drops to wander the station instead. The chatter of passerby did not overwhelm him, this time; it was easy to slip between crowds, coasting from corridor to corridor, and take in the glittering bustle of a crossroads station once again.
He used to love this. Even before he met Jin. He tried to remember how.
Sacheri bought a foamy, steaming drinking chocolate from one window and a half-stale hand pie from another and sampled both as he wandered. A wavering violet light distracted him from the far edges of his vision, only to vanish as he turned toward it. He talked to it in his thoughts, but it never answered him directly. The voice had not returned.
Knowing it was code—and that it had happened before—meant it could be removed, but neither COR nor Oversight were likely to allow the other to do so, and even he knew having his ‘plants modified by anyone outside of those organizations was too risky. But there was hope, now, where he had had so little before.
A few days later, he pinged Paradis again. “Tell me what you’ve found,” he said.
“Nothing of any use. I’m sorry. I’ve lost access.”
Sacheri looked down at his hands, which were twisting around themselves out of her view. “I thought that might happen,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
“Too late now,” she said. “Until your investigation is done. Oversight is keeping an eye on me, too. They’re worried you’re contagious.”
She must have reviewed the packets he’d sent, about the infection code buried in syns and fai alike. “We don’t know that I’m not.” He balled his hands into fists on his lap, out of her sight. It was true: he might be contagious, and didn’t that mean that they could not quite trust each other? And then the use of such a threat seemed clearer to him: a synchronist, isolated from all of the structures and supports that regulated and replenished him, might be driven to anything. What power that could give, until it wholly consumed him. He dared not say this to her.
She lowered her gaze. “What next?”
“If you were stranded alone on a dying world…what would you do?”
A momentary flash of confusion settle into a more reserved expression as she considered the question. “Call for help, run scenarios for resource preservation and rationing with the fai…what are you asking?”
She was trying to think ahead of him, he thought, but she had not seen what he had seen. He was no longer able to think it into her senses. “Lose touch with reality,” he said. “Get the booms?”
She nodded along thoughtfully as he spoke; synchronists were more susceptible to it, or so they’d been told. You lost yourself in the vastness of the energies of the universe and could not reorient. The echo kept you searching and stranded. “Go on.”
“And if it’s just you, and a fai, and no one comes for help? What do you do?”
Paradis was biting her lip. He had given her too much to think about at once. “What collaboration would even be possible? Either you die before the fai runs out of reserves, or it runs out before you die...” Her eyes grew large and round as she leaned back from the display.
“Backup,” Sacheri said. “They used each other as backups, and left us a message.” He closed his eyes. “It’s not debris, Par. It’s code. They figured out some way to use pieces of fai code combined with synplants as a backup of themselves.” When he opened his eyes, Paradis looked as ill as he felt.
“They must know,” she whispered. He didn’t know if she meant COR or Oversight, but it didn’t matter. Someone must have known.
Sacheri gave her a tight smile.
“Every ethical law—”
“You’re not that naive.”
“It’s hard to imagine a fai agreeing to it.”
“Not that hard,” he said.
“Not inside COR. Or Oversight.”
“Plenty fai on other worlds. And with the merchants.”
She frowned.
He shrugged. “You could ask him, next time you see him. Maybe he already knows.”
“Don’t.”
“Which brings me to the other thing I need.”
Paradis’s frown grew wary.
“I won’t use it unless I am out of other options, I swear. But I might need safe transport. Will my line to Dorun work?” Her brow creased and relaxed as she considered it.
“No,” she said. “But I can send you a key. Any of the ships will board you with it.”
“Thank you,” he said.
“Don’t abuse it,” she warned. “I’m not fixing it if you screw it up.”
He bowed his head in thanks. “I promise.”
He came back to the room from one of his wanders through the station to a ping from Kirsha with a copy of a job rec from COR’s internal networks. Someone on a small station in the Macinus system had begun preparations for a reclamation run and was recruiting fai with certain expertise.
It was almost certainly Adda.
The I&R review was likely to conclude on either Macinus or Orinus, and she would need to be near enough to meet the time limit on her recall, whatever it had been set to. The language profiles of the recruiting call matched her previous requests for applications. The restrictions and requirements for applications made sense given the casualties of her last teams.
