Betrothed Episode One (20 page)

Stripping the room of all DNA and other biological
identification factors wasn’t the only thing they cleaned,
either.

Every
record of why the elusive Miranda had booked into this room, how
long she’d stayed, where she’d come from and why had also been
deleted. There were holes in the hotel’s registration system, holes
that had been put there by an extremely sophisticated
hacker.

It would
be easy to assume it was Miranda herself, but that would be denying
one fact.

I
cleared my throat. “Are you still picking up traces of stalker
energy?”

The
technician, a human, went white in the face and nodded.

Stalkers were the most sophisticated assassins in all the
universe. Some theories had it that they were a leftover from the
Gap; a force left behind to continue the Gap’s never-ending
war.

I wasn’t sure if I could believe that. One thing I did know,
though, was that they were categorically the most dangerous enemy
anyone could face.

They weren’t a physical being; they were comprised of energy.
Possessing sentience, uncanny intelligence, and an unquenchable
drive to complete their mission, if a stalker was after you, you
had no hope.

They
were meant to be rare, and they were; I’d never faced one in my
entire career, and there had only been a few sightings in the past
century or so. That didn’t mean we’d forgotten how to look for
them. Considering how dangerous they could be, every technician and
security officer who worked for the Foundation Forces knew how to
identify a stalker.

They
also knew how to protect against them. Which raised one question:
how in the hell had a Stalker managed to get into the most
protected system in all the universe?

And what
did this have to do with Miranda?

“
Do we have any idea where the stalker went?” I asked as I
shoved my hands further and further into my pockets until the
fabric threatened to rip apart.

She
shook her head. “We were lucky enough to pick up stalker energy in
here, frankly.” She pointed a finger towards the window and the
city beyond. “Out there, there will be too many competing
signatures.”

“
Well at least we know one fact,” I sighed.

“
What’s that?”

“
The last entity in this room was a stalker.”

“
What does that tell us?”

I had no
idea.

I turned
sharply on my boot and headed for the door.

…

Anna
Carter

Something wasn't right.

Something wasn't right.

The
visions were no longer assaulting my mind, but that did not leave
me devoid of intuition. And right now intuition was screaming at
me.

My hands
shook as I walked, not from the cold, but from fear.

This was different to the gut wrenching panic that had over
taken me when I'd been on Cluster. When the inability to control my
actions as I followed the vision had terrified me to the
core.

This
felt rawer. Realer.

“
There's nothing to worry about,” I tried to tell
myself.

“
There are many things to worry about,” the computer corrected
me. “But with correct planning we should be able to overcome them.
As long as there are no surprises.”

Surprises?

I'd been
enduring nothing but surprises since I'd arrived on
Cluster.

I kept
wanting to close my eyes, squeeze them shut, and wake up back in
the past. With my family and friends and a normal world I could
understand.

This was
an ongoing horrific nightmare. One I would never be able to
escape.

That
sent a full cold shiver tracing down my back, shaking my shoulders,
and even trembling my knees.

“
If we continue along this path, soon we will reach the outer
perimeter of the facility.”

“
Are you absolutely sure there's nobody inside?”

“
I cannot detect any life signs for a distance of over 100
km.”

“
100 km is kind of close. Especially if somebody has a
hovercraft or a vessel nearby.”

“
I am not detecting any vessels nearby.”

I
pressed my lips shut, realizing I didn't have the wherewithal to
argue with a computer. I was just the idiot from the
past.

Still,
this idiot could not deny the fear growing in her gut.

My head
kept jerking to the left and staring at the sky.

I had no
idea what kind of planet I'd landed on, but there were three
perfectly circular moons hanging low on the horizon. Silvery and
pitted, they were large enough that I could see them in
detail.

Though they were beautiful, and startling for a girl from old
Earth, I shouldn't keep staring at them like this.

But
could I stop myself?

No.

It
wasn't the vision doing this to me either. It was that strange
premonition-like sense that extended far beyond the vision’s
scope.

I
pressed a hand flat into my stomach, my fingers bunching against
the fabric of my tunic.

“
There will likely be a food synthesizer in the
facility.”

“
I'm not hungry.”

To be honest, I felt sick. A sickness I knew wouldn't be
shifting anytime soon and certainly not from hunger.

The computer was right about one thing: the trek to the outer
perimeter of the facility was short.

As I
came up a rise on a hill, I saw it. A cluster of grey-white
buildings surrounding a large set of modern satellite dishes. They
were nothing like the satellite dishes I was used to; they were
much, much larger for one, and the array of modern technology
dotted around them, let alone the strong pillars of light they sent
shooting into the atmosphere, left you with no questions that you
were in the future.

“
Is it safe to be this close to the facility? I mean, is it
spewing out radiation or something?” I asked. It shouldn't have
been the first of my questions. Honestly, I should be questioning
everyone and everything I came across to try to figure out what was
happening to me.

Still, perhaps there was a reason this facility was unmanned,
and that reason was that it dealt with some pretty serious
radiation that would fry a biological organism to a
crisp.

“
All critical systems are shielded,” the computer answered
smoothly. “Once we reach the perimeter fence, you must find a
service panel. There should be one at equal intervals of 22
meters.”

I
nodded, then realized the computer couldn't see me.
“Alright.”

Alright.
I just agreed to help the computer hack into a secure
communications facility. Was this the kind of thing I'd done on old
Earth?

Heck
no.

I'd done
nothing. Well, pretty much nothing. My dad had been a wealthy
entrepreneur, and I just floated around, coming up with plan after
plan but never sticking with any.

My past
would not prepare me for what I was about to do now.

Somehow I held myself together, despite the fact I could
still feel the fatigue drawing through my body. It felt like I'd
sliced every muscle in two and poured acid into them. I burnt all
over, and with every step, my legs wobbled.

God
knows how much sleep I'd managed to secure on the trip to this
planet, but I fancied I'd need a week or two of rest before I was
fighting fit again.

A week or two I would not get. At that exact moment, I felt
my head twitching to the left and up towards the moons dotted along
the horizon.

Why did
I keep staring at them?

My teeth
clenched together, the tension twisting through my jaw.

“
We are approaching a service panel. When we arrive, you must
decouple my subspace transponder and connected it to the
panel.”

I nodded
mutely.

I had no
idea what I was doing.

I had no
idea what I was doing.

That
thought ground harder and harder into me as I reached the
panel.

With
shaking hands, I followed every step the computer relayed, making
plenty of mistakes as usual. Fortunately none of them fried me, and
after a few minutes of fumbling I stood back.

The
perimeter fence wasn't made out of wire and concrete. It was made
out of interconnecting fields of blue and green light.

The
force fields looked strong. Strong enough that if I were to
foolishly push a hand towards them, I wouldn't see the hand come
back to me; it would be fried to a cinder or lopped right off at
the wrist.

With a
flickering hum, a section of the wall in front of me died. It was
sudden and I wasn’t expecting it. The computer, however, was. In a
seamless smooth tone, she told me to walk forward and head towards
the nearest building.

I was
shaking, I was honestly shaking all over. If I kept this up, I
swore I would snap my back. Somehow I made it over the sparse rocky
terrain and I reached the first building.

As I
approached, I realized it was seamless. No windows, no doors. Just
smooth walls leading up to a rounded ceiling. It looked like
nothing more than a lump of metal, yet the nearer I got, the more I
realized it was covered in a strange filmy substance. It was like
slime growing over a wet rock.

My
breath was uneasy, my heart beating hard in my chest. But with the
computer’s help, I reached that building, then it directed me
towards the door.

Though the walls were seamless, if I peered close at one
specific section, I saw a tiny symbol.

“
Jam your thumb into the symbol,” the computer told
me.

I did as it stated.

There was an almost silent hiss and air escaped in a rush,
striking my face and sending my fringe playing hard across my
forehead and temples.

I
pressed a hand to my eyes, and by the time I dropped it, the door
had appeared. It didn't slide back into a wall, and it didn't shift
up into the ceiling. Instead, the vision of the wall simply dropped
away as if it were nothing more than a hologram.

“
Proceed into the building,” the computer told me.

I stood
at the threshold of the doorway for several seconds,
shaking.

Did this computer really know what it was doing? Sure,
apparently I had programmed it to help me during my frenzied
vision. And considering my vision had
helped
me escape Cluster, I should
trust it. But, honestly, one look at this building told me it was
one of the most sophisticated places I'd seen. I was just a girl
from old Earth! I wanted to shout at myself.

“
Proceed into the building,” the computer prompted once more.
“You should hurry; we don't have much time. We must access critical
controls so that we can obscure our presence from security
patrols.”

“
Security patrols,” I suddenly wheezed.

“
There are none in our vicinity at the moment. However, they
may patrol this region in several hours.”

Several
hours sounded like a lot, but good God, it wasn't. I was honestly
one of the most useless people in the universe. Every time the
computer gave me a detailed instruction, it would take me at least
five minutes to figure out what I was doing.

I sucked in a calming breath, shoved my lips together,
gritted my teeth, and entered the building.

As soon
as I was inside the door appeared behind me. Or rather, the wall
did – the vision of it returning as if it had always been
there.

I stood
and stared at it for a single second before the computer prompted
me once more.

“
We must continue along this maintenance tunnel until we reach
the central computing area.”

“
Alright.” I forced my stiff neck to turn, and then I
walked.

If the
outside of this building looked sophisticated, then the inside was
insane. It wasn't like I was in some kind of sci-fi anymore; it was
like I'd transcended every imagined future entirely.

The
building was hard to describe, but it was filled – absolutely
filled – with sophisticated devices and machinery. All of which I
couldn't even guess the use of.

The corridor I was walking along had minimal lighting, and
without the vision here to stop me from tumbling over, I kept
running into things and tripping on cables that were crossing the
floor.

“
We must hurry,” the computer told me once more.

I complied.

…

Lieutenant Mark Havelock

Jesus
Christ this couldn’t be happening. I wasn’t alone. I knew that
because the damn sensors of my ship had picked up a certain energy
that should be nowhere near this system: a bloody
stalker.

I sat ramrod straight in my seat, staring at the view panel
before me. I let a loud curse tear from my lips and I balled up a
fist and struck it into the base of the panel, actually cracking
the metal.