ATLAS 2 (ATLAS Series Book 2) (40 page)

She bent down in front of me and whispered in my ear. “But pain, well now, that’s an entirely different matter. Direct pain, we all know how wonderful that is. Are you ready to experience the blissful release of direct pain, Floor?”

She slid the pronged tip of the Snake down my chest, somewhat erotically. I was just waiting for her to activate it. Dreading it.

“Of course,” she whispered seductively. “If you tell me the password to your embedded ID, this can all end.”

“I am Rade Galaal,” I said, staring at the floor. “Petty Officer Second Class. Navy MOTH. Embedded ID number 527892540.”

“Look at me,” she said. “Look at me!”

I didn’t. “I am Rade Galaal. Petty Officer Second Class. Navy MOTH. Embedded ID number 527892540.”

“As you wish, Floor.”

“I am Rade Galaal. Petty Officer Second Class. Navy—”

She set the prong of the Snake directly beneath my chin.

And gave me pain.

I won’t describe what happened in the next few hours. No one likes to read about torture. All I’ll say is that by the time she was done, my heart had to be restarted three times, courtesy of the portable defibrillator she’d brought along specifically for that purpose, and I nearly choked on my own vomit twice.

I never looked at her directly, not once. Never gave her that honor. Though I caught enough glances to know she was dressed in tight-fitting, blue-and-gray digital camos.

When it was finally over, she used the pulley to raise me up off the floor once more, then secured the rope to the metallic loop in the wall. My body stank from my voided cavities, but I was too far gone to really notice.

“I have heard MOTH training prepares a man for anything,” she said. “And yet, do you know, I interrogated two MOTHs before you, using all the techniques of the Sino-Korean Keepers we have absorbed. Eventually, both MOTHs cracked. You knew them, I believe. Angus and Mortar of Bravo platoon.”

“Impossible,” I said. It had to be a lie. Those two had died on Geronimo, with most of Bravo platoon.

“The great MOTHs,” she continued. “Who thought they were more than men, proved to be little more than weeping children in the end. Sniveling, groveling children, begging to obey. Begging to answer my every question.”

“I don’t believe you.”

A hint of humor tinged her voice. “You have proven to be most resilient, Floor. But in the end, I will break you, as I broke them. As I broke Hijak.”

She left. The door slab sealed, and the bright lights and blaring music returned.

I knew she had lied. Hijak would never talk. Nor would any other MOTH. It just wasn’t possible.

Even so, another realization slowly dawned on me:

My platoon wasn’t coming.

Either my brothers couldn’t get to me, or they couldn’t find me. Otherwise, they would have arrived already.

They are not coming.

I told myself these sessions were no different than what I had endured in training. That it was simply Trial Week all over again. I just had to buckle down and see it through.

But it
was
different. Because in training there was an end in sight, a glimmer of hope. But for this torture, the only release was submission. I had wanted to die as a MOTH, but not even death was an option, because the Keeper kept me alive no matter how many times my heart stopped.

If there was a hell, this was what it was like. I pitied the damned in that moment.

I pitied myself.

I held out for a week. Longer than could reasonably be expected. My broken molar became infected. My hands swelled in the harness. But that pain was minor compared to the agony of the Snake.

I repeated Shaw’s mantra when I came close to cracking, alternating it with the Code of Conduct answers for Missing-Captured personnel. “Remember me in the deepest, darkest hours, when you think you can’t go on . . . I am Rade Galaal. Petty Officer Second Class . . .”

I had told myself MOTHs never gave up. That it just wasn’t possible.

But in the end, no mantra, no mere words, could save me.

I had said I would die before I surrendered.

Well, I did die. I did.

My spirit, anyway.

The Keeper returned each day, and on the seventh, she seemed to have sensed something was different about my demeanor, because she lowered my body entirely to the floor and freed me from the harness.

When the bright afterimage faded from my vision, I stared at my swollen hands. My purple fingers were so distended I couldn’t move them.

The Keeper cradled my head in her lap, and she fed me the gruel she had brought.

Thus far, I had never once looked at her face, even when the light levels were low like this.

I glanced up to meet her eyes for the first time.

She had an exquisite, chiseled face, reminding me of an ancient Greek sculpture of Athena I had once seen, though with Asian features. There was gentleness and concern written into her eyes.

“You’re so beautiful,” I said.

She smiled compassionately as she combed the matted strands of hair from my face. She truly cared about me.

“What is your password?” she said softly.

“Alejandro has his own star 5248241,” I said simply.

There was pride in her eyes, the same pride a parent feels when she witnesses her child walking for the first time, I thought. The Keeper pressed her lips together and blinked away tears.

“Thank you.” She released me and stood up. “Thank you.” She went to the entrance. “You are a hero to your race. Your courage and loyalty will be remembered for generations to come.”

She turned around, and before she left, I saw for the first time the long bar of metal grafted into her back. It ran along her neck from the base of the skull (the hair around it was shaved) and passed beneath her outfit, where I could see the bulge of the bar reach to the small of her back.

In the neck region, red droplets were scattered across the exposed surface of the metal: the glowing condensation of a Phant.

I blacked out.

I awoke, lying on a bed of some kind. The telescoping, spider-like limbs of a Weaver hovered above my pillow. The sensor light of the medical robot flashed blue.

I tried to sit up.

Tight straps bound me in place.

I resided in a crude, box-like metal compartment. Empty steel beds covered in foam mats faced me. There was no EKG. No IV tube jammed into the dorsal venous network of my hand.

This was a poor man’s Convalescence Ward.

The rotten molar in my mouth had been replaced. I glanced at the thick straps that bound my torso and arms. My hands were no longer swollen from the wrists down. There were stretch marks along the skin of my hand, and crisscross scars where the harness had dug into my wrists, but otherwise I was healed up.

Physically, at least.

I heard the distant ambiance of a ventilation fan. That could indicate any number of things, though I had a tendency to believe it meant I was on a ship. Whether that was good or bad, I didn’t know.

I glanced to my left. More empty beds.

I turned my head to the right.

Hijak lay there.

He was strapped down like me, two beds away. His face was very, very white, and his hands, like my own, had marks from previous swelling, and dark scars crisscrossing the wrists.

He was unconscious.

Hijak.

My heart went out to him. Forget our differences. Hijak was my platoon brother. My comrade-in-arms.

“Hijak,” I said. “Hijak!”

His eyelids fluttered opened, and a long moment passed before his gaze focused on me with any recognition.

“Rage,” Hijak said finally. His voice sounded raspy, like he hadn’t sipped water in days. “I thought . . . you were dead.”

“I thought I was dead, too.”

“She said . . . she said she’d killed you. And she promised my parents were next.” Hijak started weeping. “She said all the money they had wouldn’t save them. She said she’d hang them up like pigs and skin them. I had to tell her, Rage. I had to.”

The bastards. Torturing me was one thing, but torturing my platoon brother? That positively enraged me.

And yet I couldn’t shake the terrible guilt I felt.

They broke me, too.

“It’s okay now, Hijak. It’s okay.” I wanted to tell him I’d betrayed the platoon as well. And our country. But I couldn’t. I was too ashamed.

His features twisted by shame, Hijak turned away from me. I saw he had a metallic knob attached to the back of his head, just like me.

Hijak. My brother.

The door to the ward opened.

Jiāndāo stepped inside in all her dark splendor. She was wearing full makeup today, eyes outlined in dark purple, lips a pale red, forehead perfectly bronzed, cheeks rouged. The camos had been replaced with a sleeveless black dress with a low neckline that accentuated her breasts.

She had two military robots with her. They were the same as the MA (master-at-arms) robots the UC had, and looked similar to Centurions, but minus any uniforms. Their polycarbonate skins were a black tint, and around the rectangular boxes on the chests, where the brain cases resided, I saw the telltale blue droplets of Phant possession. Rifle stocks protruded from the holsters behind their heads.

“How sweet,” Jiāndāo said. “The two of you broke on the same day.”

She leaned against the wall, a panther stretching her well-used claws. Jiāndāo eyed us casually for a moment, resting the Snake comfortably in the crook of one arm.

My heart rate doubled just looking at the Snake, and I broke into a cold sweat. When I heard Hijak’s breathing quicken beside me, anger and indignation abruptly overrode any fear I felt.

No one tortures my platoon brothers.

I was ready to spring at the tormenting bitch.

Unbind me. I dare you.

Jiāndāo smiled slyly. “Don’t worry, there is no pain today. If you behave.” She glanced at the MA robots. “Prepare them.”

The robots unstrapped me and Hijak from the beds.

I tried to lunge at Jiāndāo, but the robot was quicker. It slammed me down with inhuman strength and promptly electrocuffed me.

The same thing was done to Hijak beside me. No plasticuffs for us. Only the good stuff.

I scowled at Jiāndāo the whole time, but she affected not to notice.

We were escorted into the corridor outside. This was definitely a ship of some kind. SK make, judging from the Korean-Chinese characters outside the door.

Jiāndāo confidently took the lead in her low-cut dress.

My eyes were drawn to the metal bar drilled into her spine. I had thought I’d imagined the thing back in the brig, but it was very real. As were the drops of glowing red condensation scattered up and down the metal.

“You’re one of them,” I said.

She glanced askance, the hint of a smile on her lips, but she didn’t say anything.

The metal bar reminded me of the knob attached to my own brain. How far was I from a fate similar to hers?

“Where are you taking us?” I said.

“The Guide wants to see you, Floor,” she answered.

“The Guide?”

“Yes. The envoy to humanity.”

Out here the main lights were dimmed, and the emergency system provided most of the illumination. The long twin tubes of blue LEDS built into the seams between the deck, bulkhead, and overhead gave everything a skeletal, wire-frame feel. It felt a bit like I was touring the insides of a liquid-cooled computer with all those gaudy tubules.

Otherwise the corridor wasn’t so different from those found on UC starships, albeit a bit tight. The cramped metal bulkheads allowed Hijak and me just enough space to walk abreast. It was very claustrophobic. Shaw would have hated it.

There weren’t any human crew about—theoretically, they would all be at duty stations. We did squeeze past a few unfriendly looking masters-at-arms robots on patrol.

We turned past a T intersection and ascended to an upper deck. Since my Implant was active, and logged in, I brought up my HUD map. On it, the ship’s blueprint was represented by a black mass, with previously visited corridors filled out cookie-cutter style by the mapping software. Ahead of my position, the blueprint updated with each step I took. The software based the bulkhead delineations on my stereoscopic vision. When I glanced down side corridors, the software completed partial areas.

A few moments later I found myself on the bridge.

A man dressed in a captain’s blue-and-white uniform stood before the main view screen. He faced away from us, his hands folded behind his back.

Wait a moment. This was no man, but an Artificial. SK variant.

The High-Value Target.

I noted its feet were fully repaired and intact. On the back of its neck, above the collar, I saw the telltale condensation of alien possession. Glowing, fat, purple drops.

Purple.

A purple Phant had killed my best friend, Alejandro.

The remaining members of the bridge crew included robot guards and a handful of humans, all SK. Nearly all the humans had long metal bars embedded in the back of their skulls and spines, and just like Jiāndāo, droplets of red condensation glowed from the grotesque grafts. Only two humans seemed unmodified, one an astrogator and the other a tactical officer, judging from their duty stations. These latter two very carefully refused to meet my eyes.