The Deep Link (The Ascendancy Trilogy Book 1) (5 page)

The MD discharged me from the medbay soon after Bray left,
and escorted me back to my room. I spent three hours in the sterilizer shower,
scrubbing off the sensation of other people's hands until my skin went raw.
Didn't make me feel any better. Now I sit on my bed, wearing an oversized khaki
jumpsuit, chewing on a protein bar.

There's only one way out of this mess. I have to break the
link
to Amharr.

But how? I don't know how it works; I'm not even sure what
it is: some sort of spying mechanism? Is he out there, watching me, watching
through
me, hovering around the station in his sinister ship?

Emranti inquire into the neural landscape of their targets
to find out what their true motives are. It circumvents lengthy negotiations
and eliminates deceit. But it's one-sided; the targets can't control the
exchange, and the Emranti aren't forthcoming. Our exchange was definitely not a
typical one.

Gary said no dominated species has ever disrupted an
inquiry before. But the
link
between us isn't just the side effect of an
inquiry gone wrong, either. I entered Amharr's mind just like he entered mine,
and whatever I stirred up in there carried over. Or back. I don't know.

Maybe it'll fade away if we never meet again. If we're far
enough apart. Just like he hopes.

I hope so too. But I doubt it.

I wrap myself in a blanket, and try to focus on my body to
ground myself. As the hours melt away, my intercom chimes repeatedly and
knuckles rap against my door. I ignore them all. If whoever's trying to reach
me can't override my lock, they don't need answering.

I close my eyes and sigh into my blanket. In the darkness
behind my eyelids something starts to writhe and coil and grow. My eyes fly
back open. I take a deep breath and pull the blanket tighter around me.

A pile of clothes and underwear lays sprawled on the
table. It looks like a strange creature crouching on the tabletop, a bit
smaller than a Dorylini nymph.

I haven't seen one of those since I was little. I used to
sneak out between the yurts and tents of the scientists' families, and flee
down the tunnels burrowing deep into the hive. I used to live for the thrill of
playing with those magnificent, eight-legged creatures. Sometimes I even rode
one of their simple-minded Protectors to the upper levels until my muscles gave
in and my lungs hurt from breathing their air.

The Dorylinae always took care of me whenever I was too
weak to get back to camp. After my parents realized where I was going they
tried to ground me, then put me under observation, then locked me in their
tent. But all to no avail. So they decided to put my adventurousness to good
use.

From there on out I wore recording devices on my trips.
Grown-ups, even robots, drones, and androids, were never allowed into the deeper
layers of the hive. The Protectors mercilessly tore them apart, human or
machine. But apparently a dirt-covered five-year-old playing in their tunnels
didn't alarm them.

That's how I recorded the only footage of Dorylinae nymphs
ever made.

I wouldn't have noticed them against the black of the
walls if they hadn't moved. Knee-high even to a child like me, the month-old
nymphs stirred in the moist darkness of the tunnel like tiny shadows. They
surrounded me—eight of them—curious, almost playful, investigating the novelty
of my smell and body-heat.

Those four and a half minutes of footage became legendary
back in camp. I wasted no thought on the meaning of it at the time, though. I
was touched and tasted by dozens of antennae, stared at with the hypersensitive
heat-sensors that worked as their vision, understood by hyper-electrical brains
that could process as much information simultaneously as an AI. Without any
effort on my part, I was accepted by these creatures that had never seen any
humans before.

One of them remained my friend long after its group
reached adulthood and spread throughout the hive. I called her Edrissa. She had
a tiny defect in her left mandible. It had a hole in one of the barbs, and air
hissed through it when she snapped her mandibles together. She was very curious
about me, about humans in general. She followed me every time we met, for as
long as she could. We started playing together: hide-and-seek, hunt and catch.
As I grew older and she grew stronger, we even ventured out into the Mazan
storms together.

I close my eyes and hide my face under the blanket.

I miss her. I miss my home. It's all lost to me now, part
of another universe.

Spiron's heating system breathes through the pipelines
under-deck like an exhausted giant, her gravity amplifiers buzzing softly
through the floors. The monotonous croon of the station's life support systems
is strangely soothing, and I finally allow myself to relax.

It's quiet now, and dark. I'm floating on my own
exhaustion, wrapped in the scent of soap and fresh linen. Before I know it, I
slide into the inscrutable depths of another world.

I rub my feet against each other, and a trickle of cold
water slips between my toes. My foot trails over the sheet, sending lazy
ripples across the liquid coolness.

Gravity begins to shift, and I'm no longer resting on my
back, but standing up to my ankles in a crystal-clear pond. I feel the chill of
tides lapping at my legs, and marvel at the slivers of sunlight dancing on the
water. Beyond it, rich fields of swaying copper grass expand toward the
horizon, a turquoise sky shimmering in the afternoon heat.

I never knew such a beautiful world exists beyond our
crowded, stuffy domes and frozen moons. I wish I could stand here forever, lose
myself in the scent of blooming grass...

Something rushes past me. It hooks me by the hand, and
pulls me along in a playful chase.

We run in swift, long leaps across the shimmering
grassland. My legs propel me tirelessly through the scented air, meters at a
time, as if I'm a great, weightless grasshopper. A slender creature with
iridescent skin and silky black hair runs alongside me, holding my hand. We're
both four-legged and long-limbed, elegant, fast. We are identical, and inhuman.

We stop at the end of the field, where the grassland nips
at a stretch of gray sand. I look at the creature beside me, staring back at me
with huge black eyes. I'm not me anymore. I'm an Emranti child, a
nestling
,
and the beautiful creature holding my hand is my identical twin.

I realize I'm reliving one of Amharr's memories, but I
can't stop. I inhabit his body and mind, yet am still aware of myself—I'm still
Taryn Harber, asleep in a bunkbed aboard a human station. But my heart now
beats in Amharr's youthful chest.

We stand at the edge of the grassland, my twin and I, our
toes wedged into hot sand. I know what this is, and yet, I don't entirely
understand its meaning.

We're on the traditional planetside trip that all High
Emranti nestlings must make. With neurological maturity comes the voyage to the
Emranti homeworld to pass the rite of adulthood, and return to the ships to
take our place within society.

My birth twin and I know each other better than anything
else.
Deeplinked,
we are the same—a single being split between two
bodies, thinking together, feeling together. United by the Phylra particles
that flood our nervous systems, resonating with each other through space and
time, perfectly attuned.

We step into the circle together, and something starts to
change inside us.

The grains of sand beneath our feet begin to tremble. Tiny
vibrations run up through our nerves, setting numerous, infinitesimal chain
reactions in motion. We let go of each other's hands.

I crouch and stick my hands into the sand. It trickles
between my fingers like metal filings. And the vibrations grow stronger, making
us tremble. An intense disquiet takes hold of me. It's an unbearable rush, a
primeval instinct that floods me and alters my perception, letting me recognize
what's really going on.

The grass isn't copper and lush. It's not even grass—it's
a sea of fibroid creatures, all dead and scorched by some horrible disaster.
The sand is made of billions of nanites all coming alive as they suck out our
energy. The crystalline pond is a pool of
klaar
that transported us down
into this open grave.

This isn't our homeworld. It's the site of our parents'
latest assignment—of their latest
containment
.

Something ignites inside of me. I look at my twin, and he
looks back at me. In an instant we lunge at each other with a beastly desire to
kill.

My palms crack open and thousands of tendrils shoot out of
my skin and latch onto his face. We tumble into the quaking mass of nanites and
tear ourselves open in a blood-gushing carnage.

I jerk up in my bed, in the darkness, panting and sweating
and clutching at my face.

I'm Taryn. I'm here
.

I rub my face vigorously, then punch the bulkhead
repeatedly until I hit the intercom and the lights turn on.

It was just a nightmare. It couldn't have been real...
Could it? Did Amharr really butcher his own brother?

I cringe and pull the blanket tighter around me.

What happened to him?

What's happening to me
?

-

I realize it's five in the morning when Jade answers my
call—which took me a good half hour to patch through the intercom by hand—with
a series of mumbled profanities.

"I need to ask you a favor," I say.

"Bug-Nut?" He snaps awake. "What—? How are
you?"

"Bugfuck crazy. Can you meet me?"

"Sure."

"At breakfast. In front of the mess hall, 'round
six."

"Course. But... What happened to you? Preston said
you just popped up in some cargo bay."

"I'll explain later."

"Okay. See you at the mess hall, oh six
hundred." I can hear the smile in his voice. "I'm so glad you're back
in one piece."

"The wrong piece."

He chuckles.

I close the com and climb back up into my bunkbed. I'm
intact, physically speaking. There's not a single trace of what's really going
on here. No proof. Almost makes my anxiety unjustified, like I have no right to
feel so wounded, no good reason to be scared. But I do.

Predictably, breakfast is the last thing on my mind when I
enter the mess hall. A vile mixture of smells and noises assaults me as I open
the door. The room is packed and damp, a cauldron chock-full of limbs and
salivating mouths. My attention darts from face to face, table to table and fork
to fork, and my stomach churns.

Ignorant. All of them. So content with themselves. Unaware
they owe their comfort to the TMC's ruthless profit-making. They pretend to be
better than the Ticks, dedicate their lives to do things differently, but the
very food they gorge themselves on comes from the Ticks' plunder of the
Dorylinae's food processing tech. Spoils of their genocidal conquest of Tau
Ceti.

I look at these people, at how they eat and banter,
oblivious of their hypocrisy, and I hate each and every one of them. If it
weren't for our common goal of taking out the TMC, I'd never willingly share
the same air supply with them. My hands start shaking and I press them flat
against my thighs.

I lower my eyes and make for the self-service food counter
running along the wall. I grab a casserole, pick up a vitamin juice, and some
cutlery. I make my way between the tables and see Denise and Viktor sitting
with two kids I don't know. So I head toward them.

"Pull your head out of your ass next time," Vik
tells the blond boy next to him. "It's just a simulation, but it's fucking
serious to
me
."

The boy doesn't look older than fifteen. But he's
apparently training to become a combat pilot. He looks frail, sitting next to
mountain-sized Vik with his square shoulders, clean-shaved head, and
perpetually motor-oil stained fingers.

Did Vik always look like this? Did anything here look as
it does now? It's like I've landed in a parallel dimension, where things appear
the same but they're fundamentally different. Or maybe I'm the one who's
changed. I don't much like either prospect.

Denise gives me a hug. She's the only one who tried to
befriend me since I joined Preston's crew, apart from good old Jade. Didn't
work though. I don't feel close to anyone here. That's not likely to change
either, not with this
link
fucking with my mind.

I sit down.

"I hope Preston's not giving you a hard time,"
Vik says with a smile.

"Not yet."

I inspect the casserole in front of me. Protein extracts
and bio-engineered vegetable stew, with dry crackers and algae concentrate. I
don't think I'm hungry after all.

Denise is slurping a cream soup that looks like
gobbet-filled tar, and Vik is sipping something thick and yellow through a
straw. It reminds me of Dorylini blood. And there goes my attempt at breakfast.

"So how was it?" The blond boy leans over the
table to gawk at me. "The rumor mill here's already grinding stone. Let's
get the story from the source."

"I heard they experimented on you." The other
boy spreads a buck-toothed grin at me. "Is it true? They probe you?"

Denise scowls at them. "Don't, guys." But her
voice is meek. She's curious too.

Vik minds his own business, pretending not to pay
attention. But I know he's dying to hear it. They
all
are. Let the
freak
talk about her alien abduction.

"I heard they tortured you," Blondy says.
"Rigged your synet with some alien subroutine. But you hacked your way out
and ran."

Vik grunts at him. "Yeah, she
ran
all the way
here through space."

"The Ticks will definitely think you're a spy,"
Hamster-Face says from across the table. "They'll hunt you down and pick
you apart, cell by cell."