Kira refused to break form. But she kept screaming until her throat was raw and slick with blood. She couldn’t help it. The pain was too great.
As the laser burned another track, her pride fled. She no longer cared about appearing weak; escaping the pain had become the sole focus of her existence. She begged Carr to stop, begged and begged and begged, to no effect. He didn’t even respond.
Between the lashings of agony, fragments of memories passed through Kira’s mind … Alan; her father tending his Midnight Constellations; her sister, Isthah, chasing her through the racks in the storage room; Alan laughing; the weight of the ring sliding onto her finger; the loneliness of her first posting; a comet streaking across the face of a nebula. And more she failed to recognize.
How long it went on, Kira didn’t know. She retreated deep into the core of herself and clung to one thought above all else: this too shall pass.
…
The machines stopped.
Kira remained frozen where she was, sobbing and barely conscious. At any moment, she expected the laser to hit her again.
“Stay where you are, Citizen,” said one of the loader bots. “Any attempt to escape will be met with lethal force.” There was a whine of motors as the S-PACs retreated into the ceiling, and a heavy series of steps as the two loader bots moved away from the exam table. But they didn’t return the way they’d come.
Instead, Kira heard them trundle over to the airlock. It clanked open. Her gut went ice-cold as fear flooded her. What were they doing? Surely they weren’t going to vent the cell? They wouldn’t. They couldn’t …
The loader bots entered the airlock, and to Kira’s relief, the door closed after them, although it did nothing to lessen her confusion.
And then … silence. The airlock didn’t cycle. The intercom didn’t turn on. The only sounds were of her breathing and the fans circulating the atmosphere and the distant rumble of the ship’s engines.
4.
Kira’s sobs slowly ran out. The pain was fading to a dull ache as the suit bandaged and healed her wounds. She stayed curled into a ball, though, half-convinced that Carr was pulling a trick on her.
For a long, empty while she waited, listening to the ambient sounds of the Extenuating Circumstances for any hint she might be attacked again.
In time, she began to relax. The xeno relaxed with her, allowing the different parts of her body to unstick from one another.
Lifting her head, Kira looked around.
Aside from the exam table and a few new scorch marks, the cell appeared the same as before … as if Carr hadn’t just spent the last few hours (or however long it had been) torturing her. Through the airlock window, she could see the loader bots standing one next to the other, locked into hard points along the curving wall. Standing. Waiting. Watching.
She understood now. The UMC didn’t want to allow the bots back into the main area of the ship. Not when they were worried about contamination. But they also didn’t want to leave the bots where she could access them.
Kira shivered. She swung her legs over the side of the table and slid to the floor. Her knees were stiff, and she felt sick and shaky, as if she’d just finished a set of sprints.
No evidence of her injuries remained; the surface of the xeno looked the same as before. Kira pressed her hand against her side, where the laser had cut deepest. A sudden throb of pain caused her to suck in her breath. So she wasn’t entirely healed.
She sent a hate-filled glance toward the mirror.
How far would Captain Henriksen allow Carr to go? What were their limits? If they were truly scared of the xeno, was any measure too far? Kira knew how the politicians would spin it: “In order to protect the League of Worlds, extraordinary measures had to be taken.”
… had to be taken. They always used the passive voice when acknowledging a mistake.
She didn’t know exactly what time it was, but she knew they were getting close to their final deadline. Was that why Carr had left off tormenting her? Because more xenos were emerging among the crew of the Extenuating Circumstances?
Kira eyed the closed pressure door. If so, it would be chaos throughout the ship. She couldn’t hear anything, though: no screams, no alarms, no pressure breaches.
She rubbed her arms, feeling cold as she remembered the breach on Serris, during her third mission out of Weyland’s system. A pressure dome on the mining outpost had failed, nearly killing her and everyone else.… The whistle of escaping air still gave her nightmares.
The cold was spreading throughout her body. It felt as if her blood pressure was dropping, a horrible, doom-laden sensation. In a detached way, Kira realized the ordeal had left her in shock. Her teeth chattered, and she hugged herself.
Maybe something on the exam table could help.
Kira went to examine it.
Scanner, oxygen mask, tissue regenerator, chip-lab, and more besides. Nothing overtly dangerous, and nothing to help her with the shock. Mounted at one end of the bed was a bank of vials containing various drugs. The vials were sealed with molecular locks; she wouldn’t be opening them any time soon. Underneath the mattress hung a canister of liquid nitrogen, beaded with condensation.
Feeling suddenly weak and light-headed, Kira sank to the floor, keeping a hand on the wall for balance. How long had it been since she’d had any sort of food? Too long. Surely the UMC wouldn’t let her starve. At some point Carr would feed her.
He’d just have to, right?
5.
Kira kept expecting Carr to reappear, but he didn’t. Nor did anyone else come to talk with her. That was just fine, as far as she was concerned. Right then, she just wanted to be left alone.
Still, without her overlays, being alone was its own special form of torture. All she had were her thoughts and memories, and neither of those were particularly pleasant at the moment.
She tried closing her eyes. It didn’t work. She kept seeing the loader bots. Or if not them, the last, horrifying moments on Adra, and each time, her heart rate spiked and she broke into a hot sweat.
“Dammit,” she muttered. Then, “Bishop, you there?”
The ship mind didn’t answer. She wasn’t even sure he heard, or if he did, if he was allowed to answer.
Desperate for a distraction, and with nothing else to do, Kira decided to run an experiment of her own. The suit could harden in response to threat/pressure/stimuli. Okay. How did it decide what constituted a threat? And was that something she could influence?
Ducking her head between her arms, where no one else could see, Kira concentrated on the inner part of her elbow. Then she imagined the tip of a knife pressing into her arm, breaking the skin … pushing into the muscles and tendons beneath.
No change.
She tried twice more, struggling to make her imagining as real as possible. She used the memory of past pains to help, and on the third attempt, she felt the crease of her elbow harden, a scar-like pucker drawing together her skin.
After that, it got easier. With each attempt, the suit became more responsive, as if it were learning. Interpreting. Understanding. A frightening prospect.
At the thought, the thing constricted across the whole of her body.
Kira sucked in her breath, caught by surprise.
A deep sense of unease formed in her as she sat staring at the weave of fused fibers on her palms. She’d been concerned, and the suit had reacted to that concern. It had read her emotions without her making any attempt to impose them on the organism.