A Plain Jane Book One (18 page)

Jane found herself growing
ever more defensive, and if she crossed her arms any tighter in
front of her chest, she would probably suffocate herself. She was
aware she was looking at him darkly, probably very
darkly.

He waved a hand at her. ‘Sorry,
you probably don't need this. Ignore me, I'm tired,’ he said as he
brushed a hand over his cheek and nose. ‘But it doesn't look as if
I'll be getting any rest any time soon,’ he mumbled to himself, ‘I
really wish I could sleep while I was awake like you.’

Jane watched him warily, and
finally let her arms uncross a little. ‘Where are we going?’ she
asked.

Lucas looked back at her, and
now the mirth was gone from his expression. ‘We’re currently
heading to the Central Shipyards. From
there . . . ’ he trailed off. ‘I have
absolutely no idea.’

Jane swallowed hard, and she
started to play with her hands. ‘Are they going to take me and put
me on a prison planet?’ she asked quietly, though her voice was
still even.

‘
Jane, of course
they . . . ’ Lucas trailed off again. He seemed
to trail off a lot. He seemed to start off knowing what he wanted
to do or say and then change his mind halfway through. It was odd,
and it was also something that had not been written about in his
fan supplements.

‘
You don't know,’ Jane replied
carefully. ‘I just broke . . . I just
shot . . . I just did . . . ’
she found herself trailing off too. She was too confused to make
sense of what she had and had not done. The only two things she
could be sure of where both equally as horrible: she had not been
in control of her body, and that white eyeless creature wanted her
dead.

Fear gripped her gut as
she thought about it, an ice-cold sensation spreading through her
chest. She shivered and rubbed at her arms and throat, trying to
coax the warmth back.

Lucas noticed the move, and
flicked something on the panel in front of him. ‘I can increase the
heat if you're cold.’

Jane was aware that her
teeth were now chattering.

‘
It might be the after-effects of
the drug,’ he noted as his eyes darted over the holographic image
that suddenly appeared over the panel in front of him. ‘You should
probably try to get some rest. You can go into one of the dormitory
rooms—’

Jane shook her head very
suddenly, and she was surprised at how quick and vehement the move
was.

‘
Or you can stay here,’ Lucas
said, blinking back his shock, but his voice was still even and
careful.

She nodded.

Silence stretched between
them. She wanted to ask him what would happen next, what would
happen to her, and what had really happened in the research lab.
Yet she wasn't sure whether he knew the answers. Plus, she didn't
want to make a fool of herself any more, and come up with any other
snippets from Mandy's fan supplements about the great Lucas Stone.
So she just sat there, rubbing at her arms, and staring out of the
view screen at the front of the cruiser.

After a while Lucas
noticed what she was doing, and out of the corner of her eye she
could see the confused but very interested look on his
face.

‘
Is that . . . is
that how you sleep?’ Lucas asked after a pause.

‘
I don't know,’ she
replied.

That same expression of
puzzlement and mirth crumpled his brow again. ‘How can you not
know?’ his voice was high with controlled exasperation. ‘I
mean—’

‘
It doesn't matter,’ Jane
interrupted defensively. ‘Different species have different sleeping
habits, and some of them don't sleep at all. I learned that in
school, and that was what the doctor told me at the Galactic
Force,’ she said very plainly. Once again, as she said it she
realized how thoroughly innocent and stupid it sounded. She was
repeating a fact she’d learnt in school to a man who had access to
the combined Galactic Database.

Lucas looked uncomfortable.
‘Yes, of course.’ He started to frown. ‘But what species are you?’
Jane wouldn’t look at him. ‘I never asked the doctor, and she never
told me,’ Lucas shrugged his shoulders, but his expression was
still pressed with interest, and a very sharp kind of interest,
‘and it wasn't on your file.’

She suddenly felt
uncomfortable, and the sensation went beyond the situation, if that
made any sense. It was the same intense reaction she’d had towards
Research Law Two. ‘I don't know,’ she snapped at him, ‘there are
many, many refugees in this Galaxy, many drifters. Not every
species has the same kind of family history as a human.’

Lucas looked shocked, and he
blinked in surprise. ‘I'm sorry,’ he managed.

She realized her reaction
had been vehement, and was completely at odds with her usual
character.

She closed her eyes for a
moment and then opened them again. That buzzing was back. The same
odd white noise that had filled her mind when the assassin robot
had attacked her.

He was still looking at
her with that same confused interest, but where it had been sharper
before, now there was a different kind of edge to it. He looked
determined, and determined in a way that Jane had no real
experience with.

‘
So you don't have any idea
whatsoever what race you're from?’ Lucas tried again.

‘
I don't want to talk about
this,’ Jane snapped.

Once again Lucas blinked in
surprise, but once again the surprise quickly shifted down into
interest. He even stuck his head forward a bit, and though there
was a good two meters between them, Jane was suddenly aware of how
close he was. ‘So you have no idea whatsoever what kind of race
you're from,’ he repeated the same question.

‘
I don't want to talk about
this,’ Jane practically shouted now.

Lucas no longer looked
surprised, and he certainly didn't look as if Jane had just shouted
at him with the kind of viciousness that was light years away from
her usual character.

‘
So you have absolutely no idea—’
Lucas started again.

She suddenly snapped up to her
feet. ‘I don't want to talk about this,’ she now
screamed.

Lucas didn't seem
concerned at her move or at her tone. He appeared to be looking at
her, or, more accurately, through her. He narrowed his gaze as if
he were trying to read something that was far-off and hard to
see.

‘
Right, you have no idea what
race you're from—’ he began again, tone very easy.

‘
Lucas—’ Jane screamed. She wound
on her foot readying to storm out of the room.

‘
You don’t know where you’re
from, but you do have an implant,’ Lucas leaned back, a startled
expression smoothing his brow.

Jane stopped.

She felt cold.

‘
I'm not surprised Miranda didn't
pick it up . . . I have never seen technology like
that. The computer only just noticed it.’

Jane turned to note that
Lucas was staring at her, his eyes darting to and fro, his
expression one of extreme interest.

‘
Maybe it only became visible
after the effects of the drug, or maybe after whatever the hell
just happened to you down on Earth,’ his voice was soft, his words
stuttering as he apparently paid far more attention to staring at
her. Then he finally blinked his eyes and sat back further in his
chair. ‘Wow, and I thought my armor was sophisticated. I have never
seen an implant like that.’

Jane still felt cold.
Though her head was screaming at her to turn around and walk the
hell out of the room and never talk to him ever again, she somehow
overrode the feeling and managed to clamp her feet to the ground
and stand there, facing him.

‘
I'm just going to try
something,’ his voice was low. ‘Jane, what species—’

‘
Stop it!’ she absolutely
bellowed at him.

‘
Wow,’ was his only response. His
face genuinely did light up with surprise and interest. ‘Prack,
that thing is linked almost perfectly with your brain. I have never
seen an implant with so—’

‘
I don't know what you're talking
about,’ Jane found herself snapping, and again she had to fight the
urge to storm off on him.

‘
It must have been the
drug . . . or maybe it overtaxed itself,’ Lucas'
eyes were narrowed, ‘that must be it. The implant,’ he pointed
right at her, ‘that would have been responsible for the speed, the
agility. Wow,’ he repeated again.

Jane felt her expression
grow sallow, her lips slowly parting as she seemed to lose all
control of her jaw.

She could not deny that she had
an overwhelming urge to get the hell out of there or to just scream
at Lucas until he shut up, but the urge . . . she
could fight it. Just.

‘
It wouldn't have had to output
like that before,’ he kept shaking his head. ‘Getting you out of
danger like that, it had to override all the messages coming from
your brain, and even control your body. It must have run itself
dry,’ Lucas crossed his arms and leaned right back in his chair.
Then he finally stopped looking at whatever picture his bio armor
was displaying to his brain, and flicked up his gaze to her face.
‘What are you?’

Jane took a step
back.

He shook his head. ‘It's okay,
I don't—’

Then Jane shook her head
too, her movement far more erratic, far shakier.

Lucas put his hands up slowly.
‘It's okay, Jane.’

The urge to run was now
getting stronger and stronger.

Lucas narrowed his eyes again,
and they shifted out of focus, as no doubt his on-board computer
started to display him telemetry and readings again. Then he
snapped his head forward and actually stood up. ‘Prack, it's
regenerating. It is fast,’ his mouth was open, his words almost
slurred as it was clear his attention was taken up by what he was
seeing.

She felt cold again, but she
still managed to stand there. It took everything she had, but a
very big part of her wanted to know what Lucas was talking about.
He seemed to be so adamant, so intrigued by
it . . . .

‘
It must be the effects of the
drug too, maybe it blocked it somehow,’ he noted, eyebrows pressed
low over his eyes.

Jane turned around and
walked out the door. Something else was in control of her limbs
again, and she was too tired to fight it, too confused, too
overcome. Her normal life, after all, had just taken a very sharp
and very surprising twist.

Lucas Stone

Lucas let her go, as he
doubted he could stop her. Not without sedating her or tying her
down somehow. That implant appeared to have measurable control over
not only her body but her moods as well.

He hadn't been lying when he’d
said he’d never seen technology like it. While he did have an
implant that functioned in somewhat the same manner, it was not
nearly as sophisticated and it did not have nearly as much control
over his body. His armor was there to assist him, to allow quick
and direct uplink to computers, to allow augmentation of his
abilities and senses. Jane's implant, on the other
hand . . . he had no idea what it did, but he could
suspect. It appeared to be programmed to get her out of trouble,
and not just that, it seemed to have the ability to stop her from
ever seeking out trouble in the first place. It had incredible
aversion capabilities. After all, he could remember the strange
conversation he'd had with Jane in the corridor that morning, where
she'd replied to his questions about why an assassin robot would be
sent after her with the adamant response that she was normal and
those kind of things do not happen to normal people.

It had to be an evasion
tactic. And the way she’d reacted when questioned on what species
she was, well, that was just the icing on the cake. That implant
was obviously programmed not just to keep her safe, but to prevent
her from finding out what species she was from.

But why?

Lucas sat there for a
moment, his head resting back against the chair behind him, his
eyes staring at the ceiling as he tried to process
everything.

What kind of a person had
an implant like that? One more sophisticated than any technology
he’d ever seen? An implant that was bizarrely programmed to stop
her from ever doing anything dangerous, from ever putting her head
out, from ever finding out what race she was from, and that
obviously had provisions to take control of her body should she
ever actually find herself in danger.

Not an admin
officer.

Perhaps the Paran Artifact was
right, and Specimen 14 really was after Jane, because Jane really
was . . . well, special. Important. Important in a
way that Lucas had absolutely no idea of yet, but which he would
now use every resource he had to figure out. In other words, he
would set this as a priority.

He used the on-board
scanner to check that Jane was okay, and that she wasn't running
off to the hangar bay door and trying to smash it open in order to
just jump out into space. She was, in fact, entrenched in one of
the dormitory rooms, huddled up in the corner quietly. Though he
wanted to go to her and check that she was okay, he fought the
urge. The implant would just kick in again, he was sure of
it.