Adrift (The Sirilians Book 1) (20 page)

Images filled Karo’s mind, and he knew immediately that he was dreaming.

In front of him was the Sirilian woman, but this time something was wrong. He usually saw her jovial, smiling, or sometimes writhing in passion. Now, her vibrant blue skin was sallow. Her brows were creased with worry, her hands were shaking as she wrung them together. His heart fell.

What’s wrong?
he silently beseeched her.

It didn’t matter that she was only a figment of his imagination, a hallucination. He’d been seeing her for days now—even welcomed her illusion—especially since last night.

A tear fell from her eye, leaving a streak of moisture down her cheek. He ached to comfort her.

He tried to reach out, but couldn’t move his arms. He cried out in frustration, but she didn’t seem to hear. She began talking. He knew it was something important, something vital, and this time when he focused he began to hear her words.

He hadn’t heard her speak since they’d made love—there’s no denying that’s what they’d done—and he found the sound soothing and familiar. Karo listened carefully. Whatever she was saying, it was important.
She
was important.

She was also in trouble.

“They can’t cure me,” she lamented.

Cure her?
Why would she need to be cured? Was she sick? His mind rebelled at the thought. It wasn’t possible, couldn’t be.

“We’ll find someone to help you,” he reassured her. “There has to be an alien race close-by that can treat your disease.”

She smiled sadly at him, but the smile didn’t reach her eyes. “I just want to spend what little time I have left with you.”

She reached for him, and his arms wrapped around her. He wasn’t controlling the motions, but Karo didn’t care. He tucked her head under his chin and held her tightly.

Was she going to die?
Why would he hallucinate such wonderful things about this woman, and then take her away? What kind of sick person did that to himself?!

“It’ll be alright. You’ll see.” His voice cracked at the end. He hoped she didn’t notice. Tears wet his shirt, but he wasn’t sure if they were coming from her or him. He just held her tightly, rocking slightly back and forth while his heart broke.

*****

Karo came awake suddenly. His heart raced, and there was an intense pressure and pain in his chest. He looked around in confusion, and it took him a moment to recognize that he was once again in the Medical Center.

No! I need to know what happened to her!
He thought frantically.
Had she lived?

He tried to bring her image back, but all he got was pain at his temples. He cried out, mostly at the intense pressure, and a little in desperation.

If she dies, does that mean the hallucinations and dreams will stop? Will I be forced to watch her die?

Voices neared him. Someone spoke directly at his side, he couldn’t tell who, then something was at his neck. A moment later the pain began to recede.

“Go slowly,” Doctor Notani said. He felt her hands on his shoulders, and was comforted by the touch. “You’re alright now. Everything is fine.”

He wasn’t the person they should be worried about.
What had happened to the woman?

“The pain… what’s happening to me?” Karo asked hoarsely. His voice felt rough and it hurt to talk.

“I’m not sure. The treatment I gave you shouldn’t have caused you any kind of pain. I want to get you scanned as soon as possible.”

Karo let the doctor and Deian help him from the bed and onto the Medical Unit’s platform. He laid back and closed his eyes in the hope of stopping the room from spinning.

“Just breathe,” Deian instructed.

Karo tried to relax. He tried to not picture the woman. Tried to not hear her words. “
They can’t cure me.”
Who were
they
?

The Medical Unit ended its scan, and he knew that doctors now stood around the consoles trying to figure out what was wrong. He was more worried about the woman.

He tried to sit upright, and thankfully Deian grabbed his arm and helped him. The room didn’t lurch.

“How are you feeling?” Deian asked in a concerned tone.

“Better now.” Karo’s voice still felt rough. “Do they know what’s wrong?”

Notani came to his side. “I believe we do. We compared this scan to the one you had when you first arrived here.” She pulled up two images side-by-side on one of the consoles then enlarged the scan of his brain. The images were different. She pointed to several areas that were alight with color.

“These are the memory centers of your brain. You can see that there are several areas that weren’t active when we scanned you upon your arrival.”

“What does that mean?” Deian asked.

“When the regeneration chamber began to degrade, it damaged cells that allowed you to access certain memories, especially long-term ones. The treatment we developed is repairing that damage. I believe the onslaught of these memories is causing the pain you’re feeling.”

“What about my hallucinations?”

Notani’s eyebrows knit together with confusion. “What hallucinations?”

All eyes went to him, and he suddenly felt uneasy for not telling them sooner.

“I’ve been seeing visions of Siril and of a… woman.” Why did it feel so strange to tell anyone about her? “But if you’re right, then you’re saying that my visions are actually memories?”

“If my theory is correct, then yes.”

Karo’s heart sank. That was even worse. It meant that the woman had been real; he’d actually known her, and had lost her.

“Try to think of this as a good thing,” Notani said trying to comfort him. “We can give you medicine to help with the pain, and soon you’ll have all of your memories back.”

That was
not
comforting.

“You don’t understand. The woman I’ve been seeing, she’s sick.”

“It’s a long-term memory,” she explained. “It happened many, many years ago. You’ll probably continue to remember more and discover that she ended up just fine.”

If that happens, I’ll have to lose her all over again,
he thought. Even if she overcame her illness, it happened eight-thousand years ago… she was long gone. The thought made his chest constrict. Bile rose in his throat, and he forced it back down.

It was bad enough that he had to live with himself knowing that his people, his culture, his society were gone. His parents were gone, his friends; he was barely able to cope. But now he had to relive very clear memories of a woman—a woman he’d clearly had deep feelings for—possibly even loved. It was too much.

*****

Doctor Notani advised him to rest, but there was no way he was going to be able to stay confined to the Medical Center. They ended up compromising. He spent an hour in his former room resting—fitfully—with the doc monitoring his brain waves. He didn’t experience anymore episodes, so she agreed to let him leave… but only after he repeated
“I’m fine”
a dozen more times, promised to take the pain medication, and to come back if he had any other symptoms.

When she released him, he practically ran into the hall.

He contemplated going back to his quarters, but knew that being alone with his thoughts was the last thing he wanted. He needed to keep busy, and knew exactly where to go.

Turning right, he headed towards his ship: towards the encryption which pulled at him to continue unraveling it. He knew that he was the only person who could succeed.

Determined, he ascended the ramp into his ship and got straight to work. After all of the uncertainties he’d experienced over the past several days, it felt good to be working on something he knew he could accomplish. Coding was what he specialized in, and there was no doubt in his mind that he had written this one himself, but the question still remained:
why?

Soon, he was completely focused on solving the problem in front of him, and with each layer of encryption he uncovered, his need to compete the task grew. What had begun as a confusing quandary was now a desperate, nearly obsessive need. He
had
to unravel this code and gain access to the cargo inside the room. The doors
had
to open.

Something of great importance was at stake, he just didn’t know what.

He lost all sense of time, all awareness of his surroundings. All he saw was the code in front of him, and his fingers as they flew over the console with an urgency unlike anything he’d ever experienced. He worked tirelessly until the screen went black. He lifted his hands in surprise and watched as a recorded video message began to play.

*****

The video that began playing on the cargo room’s console was of him.

Karo scrutinized his own image: it was obvious that he hadn’t been well when he’d recorded the message. His eyes were bloodshot and ringed with bruised, dark blue circles. He’d lost at least twenty pounds, which made his face appear sunken—he looked haggard.

The recorded Karo ran his palm over his bare head, then lifted tired eyes to the camera. When he finally spoke, his voice was gravely.

“Hello, Karo. If you’re seeing this than you’ve managed to stay out of the regeneration chamber long enough to uncover my secret… our secret. I hope my plan worked: that you’re seeing this many years from now, and have no idea what I’m talking about.” He chuckled, but it was not a happy sound.

“First, you should know that I’m going to alter my memories, and if I’ve been successful, you won’t have any recollection of what I’m about to tell you. I’m not exactly sure how much of my memory will be lost, but hopefully you remember your job at the Department of Space, and that the Scout mission you’re assigned to was supposed to be solo.”

The recorded Karo took a deep breath, and continued with agony marring his features. “The memories I’m making sure to corrupt are the ones of Aevum.”

The man onscreen got a soft expression on his face, and Karo’s mind registered the name.

“This is all about her.
Everything
is for her.” Karo’s recording smirked. “She’s a fierce one. Somehow she convinced mom and dad to fight the department and be allowed to go on the mission with me; she didn’t want me to be alone all those years. The department didn’t want a battle with the High Council, so they agreed.”

His features grew soft, and Karo’s heart ached. This version of himself was obviously in love. He had a woman whom he was devoted to—that much was obvious—but Karo was frightened of what his recorded self would tell him next. The man looked too beaten for this story to have a happy ending.

“The first few years were wonderful. We explored the galaxy, cataloging everything we came across, and stopping to make contact with any forms of life we discovered.”

His features grew grim and Karo braced himself.
Here it comes;
the part he’d been loath to hear.

“We had just returned to space after spending a couple of days on a planet, when Aevum began to feel ill. It started as a headache, but quickly became something much worse. She went into her regeneration chamber to fight the illness, but it didn’t heal her.”

The Karo on screen hung his head.

“I thought the chamber was broken. I did everything I could to fix it, but the problem was with the disease. It wove itself into her DNA in such a manner that the chamber wasn’t able to differentiate its DNA from hers. It
was
able to diagnose the disease, though: she has HCA.”

Karo’s stomach fell. Hypoactive Cellular Apoptosis was a disease that changed the life cycle of cells. Instead of them dying naturally, HCA altered the cellular proteins so that the cells lived far longer than usual, giving them time to degrade and pass along inferior DNA as the cells continued to multiply.

It was a disease that was well known on Siril, and one for which there was no cure.

Anyone who contracted the disease would soon be filled with deformed cells, the healthy ones slowly being taken over. The person’s organs shut down, neural pathways degraded—it was a horrible thing to witness.

Karo’s recorded self began speaking faster, as if he had to rush to get the words out because they were too painful.

“We were going to head home to Siril, but I knew that even if we arrived before she died, they wouldn’t be able to save her. I
couldn’t
let her die, so the only other option was to find an alien race with technology advanced enough to heal her.

“I headed further into the galaxy as fast as the propulsion system would allow but… she faded too fast. I urged her to go into stasis, but she refused to leave me alone. She thought that the risk to her life was worth it. I didn’t. I tricked her into going into stasis while I continued the search.”

His expression of agony lessened, and the corner of his mouth quirked up. “She’s going to be
so
pissed.” He shook his head and looked straight into the camera, a flash of humor in his eyes. “Good luck with that.”