Requiem (54 page)

The time you
sang for me.

She lay still,
her legs straight, her arms at her side, mummified beneath the
tightly clad sheet. Above the pain was a strange feeling across the
surface of most of her body. Some kind of cast, she thought. How
bad is the damage?

The time you
sang for me.

She looked
around the darkness, her eyes starting to adjust. The red digits of
a clock hovered on the wall to her right. 5:13.

She was still
swimming through the dream, clinging on to it for as long as she
could. She wanted to touch her forehead, partly to calm the aching
feeling and partly to see if her mother's kiss was more than a
memory.

The tingling
sensation in her fingers had faded. She realised that she had a
right arm again. How did that get there? She couldn't clench her
left hand into a fist but she could still move it. She winced at
the pain but still managed to peel the bed sheet from her body,
like a band-aid being torn from skin. She pulled the sheet down to
her waist, hesitated, then uncovered her legs.

A missing leg?
No. A missing foot? No. Not even a missing toe, she quietly thanked
whatever god that was willing to take the credit. She could now see
the cast on her right leg and a thin black gauze, clinging to the
other parts of her body like a new layer of skin. She remained
there, looking at her toes and feeling the distant tingle of pins
and needles running the length of her body. She wiggled her big
toe.

The time you
sang for me.

She looked to
her left. There was a small bedside table and a glass of water
sitting on top. She pushed her hands into the mattress and
carefully shuffled back against her pillows until she was sitting
up. A wave of euphoria swept across her. Her vision blurred. She
squeezed the bridge of her nose. She couldn't see the redness of
her fingertips but could feel them, where the nails used to be. She
swallowed.

The time you
sang for me.

Her hands were
shaking. She ran her fingers through her damp hair. She looked down
at the second shelf of her bedside table. There was a small shadow
on the shelf. She squinted her eyes. The neural link and blackbox
were sitting right there. She thought of Sear. She shifted over to
the left side of the bed. She reached for them, managed to ignore
the pain shooting up her side, fumbled with and almost dropped the
blackbox but eventually managed to recline back on the bed and
attach the node of the neural link to her right temple and plug the
link into the blackbox.

She had to
search to find the port in her arm. She found it, plugged the
blackbox in and let the opening message play again while she
focused her mind on her mother's face, on the sound of the guitar,
on the sunlight, and on her own words and voice. Now that she had
found it, the memory needed little prompting. It played out just
like the dream.

The opening
hologram faded into complete darkness. A moment of silence before a
series of large panels appeared in her view-screen. Seline's optics
gave her the effect of standing in the centre of a series of flat
holographic panels which had formed a ring around her. The panels
were all the colour of vanilla with small tabs at their top left
corners. Each represented a folder within the blackbox with their
names hovering just above.

Seline read the
name of the folder sitting directly in front of her: 'NeoCorp'. The
folder to its left read 'MSI'. She raised her hand in front of her
and swiped it to the right. The large vanilla panels followed her
movements and cycled clockwise around her. 'Atlas Bridge,' read the
title of another folder as it scrolled past. The next pane came
into view. Her name was spelled out in the green glowing blocks of
text above it. She tapped her fingers in the air to open the
folder. The ring of folders floated upward into the void, staying
just at the top of her vision where they would wait to be recalled
if needed.

The folder she
opened changed into a series of smaller panels, into a neatly
arranged grid in front of her. Each panel was displaying its own
silent video. They were small, looped sections indicating the
content of the individual video files. She tapped at the first file
in the top, left corner. It expanded, filled her field of vision
and began to play.

Her eyes felt
like the camera through which the video had been recorded as it
silently moved down a dimly lit hallway. Seline could make out the
hard edges of some of the picture frames hanging on the wall. Mum
always framed photos in that same thickness of black; permanently
trapping histories into boxed and compartmentalised memories. They
lined the hall in place of wallpaper. She was home. Seline couldn't
make out any of the photos but she could remember not being able to
afford the digital image display walls that she saw in the online
catalogues.

The camera kept
moving silently towards a crack of light that was peaking into the
hall. Seline could hear music and a small child's voice getting
only slightly louder as the camera approached the light. The
cautious tones of the child could only just be heard singing along
to a slurring, heavy and distorted guitar and a strange, melodic
voice. The camera approached the crack in the door. Fingertips came
into view at the bottom of the picture. They gently slid the door
open. Seline saw herself seated with her legs crossed at the end of
a small bed only slightly raised from the floor. She must have been
about six years old but it was hard to tell, she was always too
small for her age. Her hair was long like her mother's, it hid the
side of her face from view. She continued to sing, unaware of her
audience.

'If IIII were
brave, could you be saved?'

Her voice was
surprisingly well balanced. Her mother recorded the whole
performance. As the song, the same one she sang in her dream, came
to an end, young Seline stared at the wall for a moment before
turning to face the camera. Her mother was giggling from behind the
camera.

'I caught you!'
her mother said.

'Mum!' Seline's
little self yelled back indignantly. She ran towards the camera and
held her face up to the partially opened door. 'No paparazzi
allowed!' she growled and slammed the door shut. Her mother was
still laughing while the camera fidgeted in the darkness of the
hall. The video stopped suddenly and Seline was returned to the
folder with the video files displayed before her again.

Seline realised
that she was smiling. The traces of warm reluctant tears collected
in the corners of her eyes. She closed her eyes and squeezed her
forefinger and thumb on the sides of the bridge of her nose to try
to stop the tingling sensation beneath her skin. She couldn't
remember the last time she had cried. Yes she could. It was when
she finally understood that mother wasn't coming home.

The feeling of
abandonment was fed by each and every recollection of her former
life. It had been a mistake to forget but with only eleven years of
life behind her it was the only choice she could have made at the
time. With no one to turn to or confide in and with the world
crumbling around her and within her she crept into the cargo-hold
of one of the freight ships heading to Ira Station.

She imagined
her unwanted memories being dragged out, severed, and cast into the
vacuum like the scattering of ashes from a nameless urn left to
burn away in the vapour of her vessel's flight. Banished to her own
private Alcatraz.

She selected
the next video, determined to demonstrate to herself that she was
in control. The video was short. Just a shaky camera pointed at her
mother, seated at an old wooden desk before a holographic display.
She couldn't understand what was on the screen. The video ended.
She selected the next video, was about to press play when she heard
footsteps approaching from the other side of the door. She
disconnected the blackbox and placed it back on the shelf. She slid
back onto her back, grimacing from the pain. There was a quiet
knock at the door. She scrambled for the sheet, pulled it back over
her body, lay her head on the pillow and closed her eyes.

Someone
entered.

Why did they
knock?

Light
footfalls.

Therin? The
Doctor?

The stranger
approached the bedside. There was a shuffling noise. The footsteps
moved around the bed and stopped, she guessed, at the far wall. She
dared not open her eyes in case they were staring directly at her.
Soon after, the stranger walked towards the door, opened it and
left.

There was a
strong urge to grab the blackbox again, to exhaust its contents, to
see and hear her mother again but another wave swept across her,
like a delayed headrush. It pulled her into the mattress. She
turned her head, opened her eyes, caught her reflection in the
glass of water. It could have been her mother. She knew it wasn't.
She closed her eyes once more, and felt her mind drift away.

Indeterminable
periods of sleep were punctuated by brief waking moments. Every
time she woke she would reach for the blackbox and try her best to
find something new, not knowing how long she would have before
exhaustion would take hold and drag her back into sleep. Some of
the captured moments she realised that she remembered. Some she was
too young to remember and others, for no observable reason, she had
truly forgotten. She saw herself smile. She saw her first tooth
pulled with a piece of string and a slammed door. She heard her
mother talk and laugh, saw her brushing her hair, tuning a guitar,
trying to teach mathematics.

Too much too
fast. Your heart will break all over again if you keep gorging
yourself like this.

But she found
that she couldn't stop. In the brief moments of lucidity all she
could bring herself to do was run through the recorded memories on
the blackbox. The memories of Abigail, of the cockroach, of the
Warlord were never far away but she wasn't ready for them. Not yet.
How much time had passed since she'd woke in this hospital bed? She
didn't know. The clock on the wall only showed random digits
without context and before she knew it she was falling back, the
warmth of the bed folding around her, her head too heavy to
hold.

Seline woke to
the sound of voices. But she kept her eyes shut. She could hear
Therin's voice only metres away.

'Well what are
we supposed to do? We simply don't have the time. Everything
indicates that Icarus is heading straight here. That information
becomes more important by the day. At what point does late become
too late? For all we know, we've already passed that point.'

'We have the
virus,' said Sear.

'Sure but it's
purely theoretical. It's just assumptions that have been piled on
top of one another and been labelled a solution because we have
nothing else.'

'Maybe the
answers are on the blackbox, maybe they aren't. We can only use
what we have available to us.'

'Maybe NeoCorp
were onto something...' Therin muttered.

Sear said
nothing.

'Icarus is
almost at the Tryil Gate,' said Therin. 'The only thing that's
going to buy us time is if it decides to harvest the systems on its
way to us. But if it doesn't stop...' there was a moment of
silence. 'The Ordonians won't stand a chance and after them, it's
us.'

'There's still
time.'

'Two weeks
doesn't seem like much time to me.'

'What would you
have me do, Therin? Just put my hand inside her head and yank the
memory out?'

There was no
reply.

'I know how
frustrated you are but this is something we can't force.'

'How do we even
know they didn't break her? How do we know they don't already have
the information?'

'Because they
wouldn't still be trying to get her back.'

Therin sighed.
Her voice was strained in a way Seline had never heard before. 'We
need solutions. It's been too long since we had any good news.'

Sear said
nothing.

There were
light steps heading towards the door. It opened.

'Where are you
going?' Sear asked.

'Back to the
lab.'

'You just came
from there. You should take a rest.'

'There's no
time.'

The door
closed. At length, Seline heard Sear walk to the door and
leave.

She lay
perfectly still. She realised that she was holding her breath and
had to consciously start her lungs again. She thought of the first
time she'd seen Icarus. Just a distant shadow engulfing a distant
light. She wondered how far her own light was from that same
shadow. How late was too late? Was that conversation purely for her
benefit? Staged? If it was then they had a point. If it wasn't
staged then it should've been.

She swallowed.
Her throat was dry. She sat up in her bed and stared at the clock
on the wall. She took a sip from the glass of water that Sear had
placed next to her bed. She put it down then picked it up again and
drank what was left.

The Warlord
sat, leaning against the landing foot of the shuttle. Failure had
followed him, stalked him from one end of the galaxy to the other.
NeoCorp reinforcements would be there any minute. His breath was
labouring, heavy but thin. His shoulder was strapped and treated
from the med-kit he'd found in the armoury but the second shot in
his ribs, despite the pressure he applied with his hand, would not
stop bleeding.

He clasped his
right hand even harder over the wound in his stomach. He couldn't
see how much blood he'd lost as there was no light to see by but he
could feel it leaving his body. His fingers were barely slowing it
down. He slumped down. Threw out a hand to prop himself up. He
clenched bloodied fingers around something hard, something metal.
Its edges were jagged and it tapered to a sharp point. He held it
up to his face and could just make out its rough shape. A piece of
shrapnel.