“Can’t,” said Tschetter.
Kira’s defenses shot back up. “Can’t or won’t?”
“Can’t. The xeno destroyed your implants. I’m sorry. There’s nothing left to turn back on.”
Kira groaned, feeling as if another someone had died. All her memories … She’d had her system set to automatically back up to the server at HQ at the end of each day. If the server had survived, then so had her personal archives, although everything that had happened to her since would be lost, existing only in the fragile and fallible tissues of her brain. If she had to choose, she would have rather lost an arm than her implants. With her overlays, she had a world within a world—a whole universe of content to explore, both real and invented. Without, all she was left with were her thoughts, thin and insubstantial, and the echoing darkness beyond. What’s more, her senses had been blunted; she couldn’t see UV or infrared, couldn’t feel the magnetic fields around her, couldn’t interface with machines, and worst of all, couldn’t look up whatever she didn’t know.
She was diminished. The thing had reduced her to the level of an animal, to nothing more than meat. Primitive, unenhanced meat. And in order to do that, it must have worked its way into her brain, severed the nanowire leads that joined the implants to her neurons.
What else had it severed?
For a minute Kira stood still and silent, breathing heavy. The suit felt as hard as steel plate around her torso. Tschetter had the sense not to interrupt. At last Kira said, “Then let me have a tablet. Or some holo-glasses. Something.”
Tschetter shook her head. “We can’t allow the xeno to access our computer system. Not at the moment. It’s too dangerous.”
A huff of air escaped Kira, but she knew better than to argue. The major was right. “Dammit,” she said. “Okay. Let’s get started.”
Tschetter picked up her tablet and stood. “One last question, Navárez: Do you still feel like yourself?”
The question struck an unpleasant chord. Kira knew what the major was asking. Was she, Kira, still in control of her mind? Regardless of the truth, there was only one answer she could give if she were to ever walk free.
“Yes.”
“That’s good. That’s what we want to hear.” But Tschetter didn’t look happy. “Alright. Doctor Carr will be with you shortly.”
As Tschetter started to walk away, Kira asked a question of her own: “Have you found any other artifacts like this?” The words fell out of her in a breathless jumble. “Like the xeno?”
The major glanced back at her. “No, Ms. Navárez. We haven’t.”
The holo winked out of existence.
4.
Kira sat by the pressure door, still mulling over the major’s final question. How could she be sure her thoughts, actions, or emotions were still her own? Plenty of parasites modified the behavior of their hosts. Maybe the xeno was doing the same to her.
If so, she might not even notice.
Some things Kira felt sure an alien wouldn’t be able to successfully manipulate, no matter how smart the creature was. Thoughts, memories, language, culture—all of those were too complex and context-dependent for an alien to fully understand. Hell, even humans had difficulty going from one human culture to another. However, big emotions, urges, actions, those would be vulnerable to tampering. For all she knew, her anger might be coming from the organism. It didn’t feel like it, but then it wouldn’t.
Have to try and stay calm, Kira thought. Whatever the xeno was doing to her was out of her control, but she could still watch herself for unusual behavior.
A spotlight snapped on overhead, pinning her beneath its harsh glare. In the darkness beyond, there was a stir of movement as the robotic arms descended toward her.
Halfway up the cylindrical wall, the two-way mirror blurred transparent. Through it, she saw a short, hunched man in a UMC uniform standing at a console. He had a brown mustache and deep-set eyes that stared at her with feverish intensity.
A speaker clicked on overhead, and she heard the man’s gravelly voice: “Ms. Navárez, this is Doctor Carr. We met before, although you wouldn’t remember.”
“So you’re the one who got most of my team killed.”
The doctor tilted his head to the side. “No, that would be you, Ms. Navárez.”
In that instant, Kira’s anger curdled into hate. “Oh fuck you. Fuck you! How could you have missed the xeno? Look at the size of it.”
Carr shrugged, tapping buttons on a display she couldn’t see. “That’s what we’re here to find out.” He peered down at her, his face round and owlish. “Now stop wasting time. Drink.” One of the robotic arms presented her with a pouch of orange liquid. “It’ll keep you on your feet until there’s time for a solid meal. I don’t want you passing out on me.”
Biting back an obscenity, Kira took the pouch and downed it in a single, sustained gulp.
Then the hatch set within the airlock popped open, and at the doctor’s order, she dropped the pouch inside. The hatch closed, and a loud thud sounded as the airlock vented into space.
From that point on, Carr subjected her to an unrelenting series of examinations. Ultrasounds. Spectrographs. X-rays. PET scans (prior to those she had to drink a cup of milky-white liquid). Cultures. Reactant tests … Carr tried them all and more.
The robots—he called them S-PACs—acted as his assistants. Blood, saliva, skin, tissue: if she could part with it, they took it. Urine samples weren’t possible, given how the suit covered her, and no matter how much Kira drank, she never felt the need to relieve herself, for which she was grateful. Peeing in a bucket while Carr watched wasn’t something she wanted to do.
Despite her anger—and her fear—Kira also felt a strong, almost irresistible curiosity. The chance to study a xeno like this was what she’d hoped for her whole career.
If only the chance hadn’t come at such a terrible price.
She paid close attention to which experiments the doctor was running and in which order, hoping to glean some hint of what he was learning about the organism. To her immense frustration, he refused to tell her the results of his tests. Every time she asked, Carr was evasive or outright refused to answer, which did nothing to improve Kira’s mood.
Despite his lack of communication, Kira could tell from the doctor’s scowls and muttered expletives that the thing was proving remarkably resistant to scrutiny.
Kira had theories of her own. Microbiology was more her specialty than macro, but she knew enough about both to deduce a couple of things. First, given its properties, there was no way the xeno could have evolved naturally. It was either a highly advanced nanomachine or some form of gene-hacked life-form. Second, the xeno possessed at least a rudimentary awareness. She could feel it reacting to the tests: a slight stiffening along her arm; a soap-bubble shimmer across her chest, so faint as to be nearly invisible; a subtle flexing of the fibers. Whether it was sentient or not, though, she didn’t think even Carr knew.
“Hold still,” said the doctor. “We’re going to try something different.”
Kira stiffened as one of the S-PACs produced a blunt-tipped scalpel from within its casing and lowered the knife toward her left arm. She held her breath as the blade touched. She could feel the edge pressing against her, sharp as glass.
The suit dimpled beneath the blade as the S-PAC scraped it sideways across her forearm, but the fibers refused to part. The robot repeated the motion with increasing force, until at last it gave up scraping and attempted a short draw cut.
As Kira watched, she saw the fibers underneath the blade fuse and harden. It looked as if the scalpel were skating across a surface of molded obsidian. The blade produced a tiny shriek.