Crossover (7 page)

Then, "...
go
..." And the light about her began to fade, retreating down broken, fragmented pathways, a distant pulsing left in its wake. In haste, Vanessa recovered her selection panel, and activated the correct icons ... another gathering, humming sensation, her programs unfolding, a gleaming, latticework link unfurled, shooting up the deadened pathway down which she'd come, establishing hooks and feelers into the walls as it went. Past and over her, reaching for the pulsing node ... ripples spread, as if on the surface of a still pond. Interface accepted, established, and did not reject. The node glowed, and the glow spread, gathering to accumulate in many branches around, pausing at severed links, rebuilding as it went. The interface grew, assisted now by the GI's own systems, which merged smoothly with the growing flood, directing, mapping, showing the way ... with greater direction, the flow continued, and the surrounding universe began to gleam with pulsing, spreading energy. It was only a small portion of what needed to be rebuilt. But it was beginning.

Vanessa retreated, wanting to be clear of the constructs depths before it restored to anything like full power, feeling that she might not normally be so welcome here.

But, "...
thank you
..." a soft voice whispered, weak with emotion and fading among the gleaming, broken strands.

... And she surfaced, eyes flashing open to reveal a glaringly bright operating theatre, and a cluster of worried armoured SWAT personnel gathered around, and someone shining a penlight into her eyes... she batted him aside, unplugged herself and leapt to her feet, mind spinning, breath coming hard as she strode across the room and stared sightlessly into space for a moment.

"LT?" came a cautious voice from behind her. Armoured footsteps approached, doubtless concerned that she might not be entirely together. Or sane for that matter. "Are you okay?"

"Jesus Christ," she said breathlessly, slowing her racing heartbeat with an effort. Spun about, to find a half dozen anxious faces staring at her, and Singh the one venturing close, the one with medical training. He held up four armoured fingers.

"LT, how many?"

She ignored him, and strode about the table, staring at the half-torso that lay there, stripped of skin and bristling with monitoring implements ... most recognisably not human, at this range — incredulously similar, but she had seen autopsies first-hand and they were nothing this neat and precise ... She still held the headset in her hand, a trailing cord along the floor to the GI's head, connected to her suit's exposed collar. Continuing to feed the code, and make corrections and adjustments as it went.

"LT?"

"She's alive," she said breathlessly, staring at the GI. "She's taking code. I think she'll be okay but not if she doesn't get fixed up ... Christ, we've got to get the paras here. Those look like clean cuts — they should be able to reattach easily enough. They do it to humans all the time if the cut's clean enough ..."

"She?" asked Sharma, frowning. Vanessa stared at her, wide-eyed and slightly dazed.

"Yes, she. Her name's Sandy." How the hell did she know that? The GI hadn't told her. "She's scared. And confused. She doesn't know what she did to deserve this."

Stares from her guys. They thought she'd gone crazy. It happened sometimes to people who dived too deep, or stayed too long, or poked their reckless noses where they weren't welcome. Something bleeped on her inner-ear frequency. That was backup arriving, landing on the roofpads. She made a connection.

"
Naidu
," a voice acknowledged in her inner ear, "
go Vanessa
."

"We have to get the best biotech surgeons and specialists available. There's a GI here and she's in bad shape."

"
A GI
?" Pause. "
Shit, that explains a few things. I'll get everyone. I don't think they'll have to be asked twice
."

Vanessa strode back around the table, ignoring her gathered team and careful not to entangle the cord. Knelt down by the GI's immobilised, blond-haired head, an uncomfortable move in the bulky armour, and gazed at her face. The eyes stared unsighted at the floor, loose hair framing features that might have been beautiful under other circumstances.

You'll be okay, Vanessa thought, remembering the sensation of hurt and fear, and despair. Remembering the voice, distinctly female now that she remembered it, whispering in her ear. We'll fix you. Whatever you are, and whatever you've done, no one deserves this. Not even a GI.

CHAPTER 3

Several times she woke. It was exhausting, being awake. Sleeping was just as bad. Her interface rebuilt itself, no longer needing the external feeds, and her sleep was delirious. She dreamed dreams that made no sense, of dark, shifting shapes and flooding, incoherent emotion. It washed her like a tide and left her scoured and bare. She lost all track of time, and struggled for sanity.

Awoke once more, and discovered after several searching minutes that she was face down on a bed. She had no access to her links, completely shut out, and something was hooked into her access. Reading responses, private things, like pain, and basic sensation. It registered that she was awake.

"Ms Cassidy?" came a voice, distantly, from across a vast, unbridgeable distance. But that was not her name and she ignored it.

"April?" the voice tried again, many times. Something was pressing at her feet, she was vaguely aware ... and found time to wonder at why feet should be significant enough to trigger a surge of unthought relief.

"Cassandra?" the voice tried again. Finally, the right name. She applied some effort, and tried to open her eyes. Her vision was dark and she shifted spectrums, trying for regular light ... shapes remained indistinct. Further adjustment, and light drowned everything. She could find no in-between and moved instead to infrared, merged with motion-sense ... it hurt her eyes to hold it there, but she could at least make basic sense of her immediate surroundings, as regular light alone could not. Sounds echoed badly. Of smell or taste she had no hope, her tongue swollen and dry, her sinuses blocked. "Cassandra Kresnov?"

She tried to speak, but nothing came out. Forced air from her lungs with an effort, and managed ... "that's me." A small, dry whisper.

"Can you feel your feet, Cassandra?"

"...a little..." Pause.

"Does that hurt?" Stupid question.

"... never does ... short of bullets ..." She felt terrible, all over. She wanted to go back to sleep.

"Cassandra, you're going to be fine. We've fixed everything, the incisions were very precise and everything fit back together very easily. It was much easier than a normal human. So don't you worry. You're going to be perfectly okay."

She didn't feel perfectly okay. She felt like shit. Being patronised made her feel worse.

"We're going to put you back to sleep now. I'll see you again when you wake up." She had just enough time to decide she didn't like being turned on and off like a light switch, before the darkness hit her once again.

The next time she woke she was alone in a room. A big room with big, sunlit windows. She realised she felt much more clear-headed, and could see better. She could certainly see the sunlight. It was beautiful. The windows went all the way around the room, and everywhere were the spires of tall buildings in a gleaming blue sky. Aircars passing. Light reflecting from glass. Light splashed over the lounge suite and pot plants, and she realised that it was not a regular hospital ward. More like a live-in apartment, her bed settled over in a corner behind the chairs, a dresser at her side. And an IV drip, with computer monitor.

After an indeterminate time watching the sunlight, some people came in. She heard a double-lock clack before the door opened and deduced with light-headed surprise that it was a secure room. Like a prison, really. But a nice prison.

"Cassandra?" said a man. She shifted her head minutely to look, and discovered that there was a plug in the back of her skull, connected to a cord that ran to the computer bank. She stared at it stupidly for a moment, feeling no real surprise. "Cassandra, these men are from the CSA. That's the Callayan Security Agency. They would like to have a word with you. Do you mind talking to them?"

A question. Questions required answers. She remembered thinking so. How to answer ... she strained her memory. Do you mind? It wasn't much of a question, really. Since when did it matter if she minded or not?

"Cassandra," said a different man with an interesting accent. The sensor plug cord on the pillow beside her head finally lost her interest, and she looked at him. A heavy, brown-skinned man. Indian, she recalled. Long, unruly hair. That was unusual. "We are directing a very important investigation, Cassandra. We are trying to catch the people who did this to you. They were FIA, Cassandra, Federal Intelligence Agency. Would you like to help us catch them?"

Another question. It was asking too much of her, in this state, to answer questions. And they were blocking her view of that lovely sunlight through the windows. She wished they'd move a little, all three of them.

"Cassandra," the man said after a moment, more forcefully this time, "what are you doing in Tanusha? Why did you come here? Why did you leave the League?" Pause. "Do you understand me?" Then aside to the doctor, "Can she even hear what I'm saying?"

"... are you a Hindu ...?" she asked the man, in the soft whisper that was as much of a voice as she could muster. A moment's consternation.

"Yes. Yes, I am a Hindu. Cassandra, this is very important..."

"... I like Krishna ..." she whispered. "... he's a good god ... and Ganesh. Do you have a favourite ...?" Another pause. She wondered if he could hear.

"I've always been very partial to Lakshmi, myself," came the reply after a moment.

"... if I ever had a religion, I think I might like to be a Hindu ..." It seemed an important thought. She had often wondered what it felt like, having a religion. Believing in something. Belonging to it. Now, of all times, it felt important.

"If you could answer my questions," the man replied, "maybe I could help you to become a Hindu. Would you like to answer my questions?"

The doctor, she saw, was checking some readings on the bedside screens. Said something to the men. Something about drugs, post-operative procedures and it really being too early...

"Cassandra," the man persisted, coming very close then, "I have an extremely important situation on my hands here, I am trying to catch the people who did this to you. These are very dangerous people, Cassandra, and they're loose in my city. Please help us catch them."

"... it's not my war any longer ..." she whispered. Her vision was all a blur, and she closed her eyes. "... it's not my war. It was never my war ..."

"Cassandra." A hand descended hard upon her arm, her reflexes jerked in fast override of the drugs and someone yelled, a rush of jostling commotion, people surrounding the bed, grabbing the Indian man. Attempted vainly to peel her fingers away from his arm, a steel-hard grip through a handful of bedcovers. She realised dimly that she was still holding on, and let go. The Indian man staggered backward, assisted by alarmed colleagues. The room was filled with much alarm.

"... I'm sorry ..." she murmured, "... don't surprise me... too many drugs ... bad reflexes ..."

"I'm okay," the Indian man said, shaking them away, "I'm fine. She didn't hurt me."

"I think we'd better put her back to sleep," someone said warily, and there was movement to comply.

"... no ..." It was as much of a protest as she could muster, dazed and half blind on her back. "... no ... please..."

When she awoke again it was dark. Night light shone through the windows. City light. Tower tops gleaming in the surrounding dark, and the blinking passage of aircars. Time had passed. She wondered how much, before remembering that she hadn't known the time the last time she was awake either.

She felt stiff from lying too long on her back and made to roll over. And found she could not. Her wrists were bound to the bed. Her ankles too, she discovered when she tried to move her legs. Her pulse rate rose and immediately sedative was flowing into her, she could feel it, a cold, creeping numbness from the tube in her arm, up the shoulder and into her chest. Her muscles were going limp. She breathed deep, calming breaths and tried to remain awake.

Succeeded, though barely. Through her bandage-wrapped body, the cold feeling remained, eating at her nerves. It scared her, both the cold and the bandages. Her bedside machine read the fear and pumped more sedative. It left her dazed, numb and only barely conscious, struggling vainly for awareness, for some sense of where she was, and what had happened to her. She remembered, vaguely. Remembered horrible things. But she did not want to remember more now lest the machine put her entirely to sleep.

The discomfort was acute, all through her body. Not pain. Tightness. Wrongness. Damage, slowly repairing itself and being repaired. She needed to move, to get blood flowing, to loosen the stiffness. But she could not. Not struggling was an effort. Staying awake was. She did not want to sleep — she had slept far too long already. But waking was agony. And life itself promised little better. She was scared, and trying to repress it because of the machine, not wanting to sleep, not even free to feel her fear lest it drag her back to an oblivion of delirious dreams and turbulent darkness. Tears rolled from her eyes, wetting her temples. She lay in the light-strewn darkness for a full five minutes, in soundless tears, before the effort grew too great and she surrendered to the machine, and the darkness it granted.

"Lieutenant," said Naidu, rising to his feet as Vanessa passed the security door, restowing her badge in her jacket pocket. Behind her, one of the armed security guards saw the door securely shut and locked. Another man was present, she noted. He also stood. It looked like a waiting room, with comfortable chairs, a pot plant and paintings on the wall. An adjoining doorway was open, revealing a complex battery of monitors, multiple screens and displays, watched by several seated operators. "I hope we did not spoil your evening. Did you have something planned?"

"Why me?" Vanessa asked him, fixing him with a very hard stare. Yes, she had had something planned, something intended to help fix her marriage, no less. Now her work had intervened yet again, and she was not impressed. Naidu perhaps read as much in her expression and got quickly to the point.

"She has been unresponsive," he said. He looked troubled, his longish, grey-streaked hair in a greater state of disarray than usual, his open-collared shirt rumpled beneath the jacket. "Obviously she is suffering from shock ... the doctors recommend to leave her alone, but right now I don't have that luxury. The evidence suggests the FIA presence in Tanusha may be far larger than we had first anticipated."

"How much larger?" Arms tightly folded, and not at all surprised at the confirmation of this particular rumour ... it had been making the rounds through CSA circles ever since the GI had been recovered three days ago. Intel, of course, had difficulty admitting to a large, undetected infiltration. And she watched, with merciless satisfaction, as Naidu shifted uncomfortably, ran a weathered brown hand through his hair.

"A lot larger," he admitted. "There are some very weird things going on in this city, Vanessa ... some of them we are already on top of, and a lot more we're not. Obviously it's connected to the GI somehow, but she won't talk. And we no longer have the luxury of allowing her time to get over her trauma. We need answers."

"Which goes back to my question," Vanessa said impatiently. "Why me? I'm a SWAT lieutenant..." She held up a hand, forestalling Naidu's predictable response. "Yes, I know, I made contact with her, you think she might trust me, et cetera, et cetera ... I'm not an analyst, Rajeev, I don't know what questions to ask. I'm not trained with interviews, I'm not a biotechnician and I'm sure as hell not a psychoanalyst..."

"So much the better. She appears to react very negatively to anyone smelling of 'establishment'. You are the closest thing this city has to an indigenous combat soldier, Vanessa, and I feel you might be our best chance of getting her to talk right now."

"It's just another piece of manoeuvring," Vanessa retorted. "She'd be stupid not to see it. You think she's stupid?"

"That remains to be seen, but her false identity documentation would suggest otherwise — it was quite flawless, probably the best I've seen ..."

Another man entered from the monitoring room, a small man of Indonesian appearance in a dark brown suit.

"Ah, Lieutenant Rice, I am Dr Djohan, the biotech surgeon. Mr Naidu has briefed you on the situation, ah?" He came to a brisk stop before her. Small as he was, he was taller than Vanessa. "Yes," Vanessa drawled.

"Good." He clapped his hands together. "Now firstly, when you are in the room with her, do not get too close. Mr Naidu did that and she grabbed him, not hard ..." as Vanessa shot Naidu an alarmed look, "... but harder than we'd thought possible with the repressant drugs. Evidently she has some sort of short-term reflexive resistance, so we've felt it safer to keep her restrained and heavily sedated. It also lessens the chance of self-inflicted injury and allows her more time to heal free of unnecessary movement.

"Now, you do know what she is, don't you?"

Vanessa frowned. "You mean she's not a regular GI?"

"Hmm ..." The little doctor spared himself a small, amused smile. "From what little she has told us, her designation is GI-5074J-HK. Now, that is a most unusual designation. The first two digits typically designate the design type. Most GIs range from the twenties to thirties. Anything higher than a thirty is very advanced, and from the literature I'd read I hadn't been aware there
was
anything higher than a forty. But even a cursory examination of her interface capability suggests that her story is probably true — her neural interface patterns are simply extraordinary. We suspect she is an experimental model, which would perhaps explain her erratic behaviour in being here in the first place. Dark Star, as you know, is the most specialised and lethal of all League Special Operations units — their GIs aren't in the habit of wandering off, usually.

"Oh ... and the HK at the end is standard League abbreviation for Hunter Killer." Vanessa blinked. "Just so that you know what you're dealing with here. Always bear it in mind, Lieutenant — this is a killing machine, designed to replicate human biological function in so close a mimicry that it is most difficult, without close examination, to tell the difference. But however apparently close to humanity she may appear, make no mistake, she is artificial, and she is most indisputably designed to kill.