Post 55

For a moment, you hesitate before opening Shori and stepping back into the comfort of the living ship. The girl does not, easily slipping past you into the cargo bay and looking around in appreciation. “Wow,” she says. “What a pretty ship.” She runs her hands along Shori’s walls and whistles a musical phrase that reminds you of rubber and plastic and your childhood for some reason. You shake it off.

“Listen, you--”

“Mercedes,” she says calmly as she leaps up to the upper deck without using the stairs. You blink a little in surprise and huff your way up to follow her after carefully taking Hoshi’s box with you. “Listen--” you try again, but she’s not listening. Her footsteps are so quiet, you can’t tell where she’s gone and part of you wonders why you are even trying to keep a handle on her. You intuitively trust her. Which promptly makes your rational brain scream DANGER in red letters. But you can’t help it. With a little mental effort, you kill the internal alarm bells and head back to the med bay. When you open the box over the stasis bed, Hoshi sort of oozes out. His form is definitely not cohesive now. Just a confused mass of baby lightning and turquoise smoke. 

“Oooh. He looks rough,” says Mercedes over your shoulder. 

“Yeah,” you say, rooting around in the cabinets for something that emits high energy. Anything. After a moment, you hear a whiiirr of something activating behind you. When you turn, you see that Mercedes has turned on what can only be sun lamps installed in the bio-bed. “Huh,” you say, surprised you didn’t see them before. “The bio-beds have sunlamps?”

“Yep,” says Mercedes. “It’s so organic skin can produce Vitamin D during long space missions.”

Organics are so needy, you think as you find a portable CT scanner and lug it over to the bed. It’s battery powered, so it only has a couple hours worth of juice, but your figure x-rays are energetic and it won’t hurt smoke-Hoshi. It might hurt you, Mercedes, and Shori though, so you make sure to stick it inside the lead-lined stasis box before you turn it on and angle it into the Hoshi-smoke. 

“Good idea,” says Mercedes appreciatively, giving you a kiss on the cheek and draping her arms comfortably around your shoulders as if personal space was meaningless for her. “He’ll be alright soon. I like your ship. Pre-Scream, right? It looks like it.”

“What are you talking about?” you mutter, grumpy. “Hoshi might have screamed in it a couple times, but…” you trail off. She’s dropped to her hands and is hand-stand walking behind you up the stairs as you talk. “What the fuck are you doing?”

“Practicing,” she says, letting her legs fall over in front of her head so she’s bent in half with her funny, tanned face staring up at you. You notice her skin is covered in delicate tattoos, even around her exposed skull. It’s oddly attractive while being intensely off-putting. 

“Practicing for what?”  

“Life.”

“What does that mean?”

She flows back to stand and leaps up to the railing to balance walk along it, leaving you behind. “What does life mean? Kas, you have to work on your internal connection to the universe if you have to ask me that.”

“No, I meant, why are you practicing? It can’t just be for life.” You rush to catch up to her.

“Why not? Aren’t we all practicing for life?”

You roll your eyes, definitely uninterested in continuing the conversation into philosophy. “Fine. Forget I asked.”

“Okay,” she says, flipping forward into a smooth tumble off the railing and into the control room where you are heading. “Thank you for letting me stay with you.”

“Who’s letting you do anything?” you grumble. “You just won’t leave.”

“That’s how you know it’s a good thing,” she says happily. “It’s nice that you’re here. Maybe you can talk to the Thiel agents messing up the dig site and make them leave.”

Your throat closes immediately. Thiel is here? You have a moment of blinding panic. Thiel Industries didn’t just let people leave. It was run in the ‘family’ style. You lived and died in the company. Don’t panic, you tell yourself. They think you’re dead. It’s been over a year. No one has come for you. You did a good job. No one suspects. There’s a little quiver in your gut though. Hoshi put it together, you conscious brain chimes in. If Hoshi could figure it out, maybe Mother could have too. You swallow hard and realize Mercedes has shoved her face into yours, uncomfortably close with a listening look. Get out of my head, you think at her, scowling. This is none of your business. 

“It’s not?” She blinks as if surprised. “Weird, I could have sworn it was. Are you sure?”

“Yes,” you fire back. “Go away.”

“Huh. Okay, but if I go away, how will you get Hoshi to the Shell regeneration chamber that’s just a few miles away?”

“What?” you ask cleverly.

“Yeah,” she says, idly swinging herself up to the top of the firestation cabinet to perch, looking like a giant, skinny, deranged cat. “This is a Heilong homeworld. There’s a whole mess of ruins and tech still here. That’s why Thiel is rooting around. And Aztechnologies. And Evo. There’s a lot of Corporate types around lately.”

A Heilong homeworld? You’re surprised. No, more than surprised. “I thought AmCorps destroyed all of them ages ago?”

“Destroyed? Well, yes, I guess. I mean, they blew up anything they could see, but you know their robots are kind of dumb, so there was a lot they couldn’t see. Like people do.”

“You talk weird,” you say scowling at her. “So, there’s a whole bunch of Heilong ruins here that are still active that we could use to help Hoshi?”

“Help Hoshi?” she taps her chin a little. “I mean, I suppose it depends on what you mean by ‘help’.”

You growl in irritation. “Make him solid again,” you spit out. “You know, heal him.”

“Healing...healing Hoshi will be complicated. Making him solid may actually hurt him, depending on how you…”

“Oh stop. Can we make him a body again?”

She nods happily at the simple question. “Absolutely. I can even get you two to the regeneration chamber without issue.”

“And we can reinstall him in the shell?”

“Uh huh,” she flicks her legs back and forth contentedly, reinforcing the image of a satisfied cat for you. “We can do both those things.”

“And we can heal him?”

Her legs stop. “Well. We can put his body back together, but the soul-wounds won’t go away. And they might get worse if he continues down this path.”

“What path? What’s a soul-wound?”

She leaps down to put her hand over your heart and her eyes go unfocused for a minute. The moment she touches you, you seem to see a splash of inhuman blood arc across your face and chest. For a moment, you can taste it, sweet and musty against your lips and soot making your eyes itch as you stare across the burned lab. You cough, rubbing your hands against your mouth to get rid of the non-existent blood, squeezing your eyes closed, but there’s nothing there. It was just in your head. You shove her away. Her face is sad, full of compassion. 

“That is a soul-wound, Kas.”

“Don’t touch me,” you whisper, holding up one hand while the other traces your lips to find the blood. There’s none, but the lingering sensation of it makes you want to vomit. 

“Don’t be ridiculous. We’re friends.” Between one heartbeat and the next, she’s in front of you with her arms wrapped around you in a comforting hug. You imagine this would have been what having a mother who loved you might have felt like. You feel warm and safe and loved. “Exactly,” she says to your unspoken reaction. “See? I love you. And forgive you. And absolve you of all your sins.” She pushes you away a little to scowl at you. “And, drug-use? Really Kas? I expected better of you.”

“Sor…” you are about to apologize before remembering that this girl is a total stranger. “Wait, what’s happening here?” You step back so you can get a proper look at her. “What are you?” She laughs at the expression on your face. 

“So serious, Kas! Don’t worry, you won’t have heard of my kind. I wasn’t lying when I said me and Hoshi were a kind of kin. Don’t sweat. I can’t lie. It’s impossible. Can’t kill anything either, at least, not directly. So you’re safe.”

You frown. “But I saw you beating the shit out of all those mercenaries.”

“Of course! Beating the shit out of someone is still not killing them. I’m a...modified pacifist, I guess you could say.” She laughs at her own joke. “I’m a Temperance Monk, in case you have heard of such things, but” she flips over to give you an oblique stare from being backwards and upside-down, “you don’t seem like the observant type. No offense.”

“How would you know?”

She hands you the contents of your pockets innocently. A handful of small change, part of the cesium clock-face you took apart yesterday, a couple small tools you’d jammed in there since you always had to look for them in your workshop…

You glare at her. “Was that really necessary?”

She laughs and does another flip out to the corridor. “Of course not, but it was fun. Are we going to get the rest of that ship for you? Want to go for an adventure?”

“Not really,” you murmur to yourself. “Fucking crazy woman.”

“Aren’t we all a little crazy?” came her retort. 

“No eavesdropping.”

***

It doesn’t take very long for you and Mercedes to strip the mercenary ship, even though the storm seems to have died down. You’re even able to blow up a portion of it from the chemicals conveniently staged in its gut to obscure the fact that it’s been looted, at least to the casual observer. But you can feel something not right. Mercedes is also quiet, which worries you. 

As you head back to Shori, she abruptly stops, swings a vine around both you and the carry-droid, and yanks you up a tree before leaping up to the branch, effortless as the wind. “Hey--” you start. She places a hand over your mouth and a finger to her lips. Several moments later, a rough-looking party wanders below you. They seem poorly equipped for this rainforest world. They seem to be wearing too many clothes that are all soaked and uncomfortable-looking and they are carrying an awful lot of stuff. You ease Zubaida’s rifle down into the crook of your arm and try to find a comfortable place on the branch. Mercedes gently moves the barrel down and away from the group below you with a tiny shake of her head. Wait, comes a feather-soft voice in your head. There are more of them. Many more. You start a little, but it feels oddly familiar to Hoshi’s mind-voice, so you don’t mind. It’s actually very soothing. Like running cold water on a burn. That analogy immediately makes you uncomfortable, so you shove the feeling away and focus on observing the crew below you. You can’t be sure, but you think Mercedes might be amused by your reaction. 

The leader of whatever this group was seems to find something he’s looking for. He’s an older man, gruff-looking, dirty, but has the aura of authority that paternalistic old men seem to have when they are in charge. He motions one of the younger men over to him and points to a rock. It looks ordinary enough, covered in greenery and organic bits, but sure enough, the young man takes out a complicated-looking gadget, waves it over the rock face and the whole image sputters and collapses. You breathe out, impressed. It was a good hologram. So good, you thought it was real jungle, perfectly matched to the place. You hear Mercedes curse under her breath. The men set up a perimeter with odd cone-shaped things that hum and shimmer reminding you of a generated EM field, the same one the mercenaries used on Hoshi. Another man uses two pickaxes and a tiny rolled bundle of what could only be explosives to blast open the side of the exposed gray wall that had once been a simple rock. Even as you watch, all the hallmarks of an explosion take place, but in silence. There’s a shiver in the ground, debris gets thrown up, the men cower inside their shielding, but it’s dead quiet. Which is the only reason you can hear a whisper of sound next to you as Mercedes leaps from branch to branch until she’s directly over the salvage crew. 

Your view is obscured by dust and smoke, but you can easily see her drop into the center of the group. She’s produced some sort of telescoping staff from within her rags and has planted it into the earth like an anchor. As you watch, she leaps from man to man to staff to the next opponent, her hands a blur as she strikes before moving to the next one, catching herself back on her staff before launching again. It’s over in just a heartbeat. You delicately clear your throat and she leaps back to your tree, to its base where she’s secured the vine, yanks you and the droid back up before lowering you to the forest floor. “Thanks,” you say, a little breathless from the journey, and you have to stabilize the servo whose motion sensors have gotten all confused from the unexpected vertical destabilization. “But I thought you didn’t kill people.” You look around at the half-dozen bodies in the EM shield and raise your eyebrows. “What’s all this then?”

“Pff.” She leans down to one, placing her ear over the man’s mouth. “He breathes. They are fine. Just a quick nap. And maybe, a little ‘forget-me’ help.” She touches her forefinger to the man’s forehead and whispers “Sleep.” And, like magic, his breath deepens and he curls into himself like a child. You step carefully over him as you make your way into the EM shield. After she’s done repeating the experience you lean close to her and close to the gray wall in front of you both. “What is this? What are you doing?”

She sighs a little, surveying the scene. “My job. Unfortunately.” She gives you a beautiful smile. “Just think, this would have been you if I hadn’t heard Hoshi in my head.”

“What?” You are disconcerted. So that’s what she was doing out here? This would have been me? “Great. Um, thank you? For not beating me up and making me forget my own name?” 

“You’re welcome. Here, help me stow all these EM shields and reactivate the holograms and we’ll let these boys sleep it off. You and I might as well use the door they’ve made for us. Since I’ll just have to fix it anyway. The virtuous always get the hard jobs. Hurry, Kas. Grab a leg and pull. We’re burning daylight.”

It only takes a minute. When done, Mercedes pulls out a holocron, doing something arcane and typically organic to the gray wall inset thing that the second man had fussed with and immediately, the jungle springs back into existence, along with a very subtle don’t look at me, I’m just forest. Nothing to see here feeling that makes it hard for you to focus on the spot for any length of time. Your mind seems slippery, like it keeps forgetting why you want to see that particular spot of jungle anyway. It gives you a headache. 

“Kas?” Mercedes is looking at you. “Are you alright?”

“Fine,” you say and then have to blink a couple times to make sure your brain stays where you put it. “What did you do?”

“Don’t worry about it. Huh. I wouldn’t have expected this to have such an effect on you with all your cybernetic implants. You must be more organic on the inside than you look.”

Her comment annoys you for some reason. “I’m still human,” you grouse. “Just needed a few replacement parts and upgrades.”

“Of course, of course.” She kisses you happily on the cheek and you wipe if off, like a baby. “I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings, Kas.”

“Hmph.” But you don’t really know how to reply and you don’t really want her to know that you kind of like being fussed over, so you just glare as she grabs your hand and drags you toward the blurry, slippery hole in reality she’s made. 

She drags you through a series of winding, beautiful tunnels. They’re white walled and lit with colors of light from unseen clerestory windows. Unseen air currents smelling like flowers and water swirl around you and the architecture of the place reminds you of one of the great space stations, only underground. Plants have punched through the delicate walls and vaulting ceilings, letting nature run rampant in an oddly harmonious way with the civilization under your feet. “What is this place?” you ask Mercedes as you round yet another curving tunnel into what could have been some kind of mass transit station, only part of the wall has fallen away metamorphosing into a waterfall with charming purple and red flowers flowing down its sides from some unknown plant. It burbles into a river cutting the station in half before flowing under the white stone-like material. Tree roots, instead of curving metal beams, vault overhead, and the stained glass windows seem long-gone, replaced by open-air holes shrouded in vines and long-reaching plants flowering in the light. It might be the most lovely place you’ve ever seen--an odd melancholy combination of destruction and rebirth, civilization and anarchy, nature and construct all molded into something melodious. 

Mercedes looks back at you with an expression of peaceful relaxation and calm. “Welcome to the last Amazonian Monastery. Formerly, this was the Market Station for the Heilong Family Senlin. I live here.” Her expression goes thoughtful and sad. “Well, I used to anyway. Before Corporate showed up. Anyway,” her face relaxes again. “Now that I live with you, we can just restore Hoshi, get rid of Corporate and go on galactic adventures.”

You pull your hand away from her and stare in disbelief. “Lady, I think you’ve got it all wrong, I mean--”

She waves you off, staring up at the ceiling. “Relax, I’m not interested in sex. You and Hoshi are good together. I’m celibate anyway. I just miss having a family. Hoshi and I have a lot in common. And don’t worry, I’ve Seen all this happen.”

“What?” You are confused. “Seen what happen?”

She gestures vaguely. “This. Talking. Friendship. Hoshi. I had a vision.”

“Uh huh,” you say, immediately disinterested and patronizing. “A vision. Right. From your god, I presume?” you make it sound as derisive as possible. 

She frowns at you. “No need to get all snippy. Yes. Though, Temperance monks don’t follow a god. It’s more a...a...lifestyle, I guess. Like a bunch of life coaches.” You can hear the laughter in her voice, as if she enjoys poking fun at herself and at your biased comments. As if the whole world was just absurd and funny. It makes you smile too before you remember that religion and faith were nonexistent crutches for the weak. You wrestle your smile back and scowl, which seems to make it funnier for Mercedes and she laughs harder, dragging you to still another beautiful room. “Don’t worry, Kas, wisdom isn’t catching. Even if it was, you’ve probably been vaccinated.”

You’re not quick enough to respond.

***

She finally stops. This room looks a lot like the other ones. There’s some kind of tank looking-thing in one corner, a white-washed table with inlaid metal and stones in the middle of the room, and a bunch of little waterfalls and pools making a wind-chime effect as the water flows around the outside edge of the room. Unlike most of the other Heilong rooms, this one didn’t have any natural light. It was dark except for an odd dark blue bioluminesence in the water. As Mercedes turns on the artificial lights, you can see amber-gold globes bob to life and hover two-three feet from the ceiling, a dozen or so that move with the air currents, making you feel like you are underwater as well. She pulls a pouch from her well-worn bag hidden behind folds of cloth and shakes out what you recognize as Hoshi’s skin flake, regeneration fungus pouch. “Hey,” you say, vaguely offended that she would have taken anything of Hoshi’s. “That’s not--”

“Relax, Kas, he told me I could use it.”

“He told you? How?” 

She taps the side of her head as if you are slow. “He may not have a body, but he’s perfectly capable of speaking. To those that can hear him, anyway.”

You’re not sure how you feel about that. There’s a little storm of unhappiness in your chest at the thought. She pats your shoulder with a look of pity on her face. “Relax Kas. It takes a lot of work to talk to the unGifted. It’s not that he didn’t try or that he didn’t want to.” You shrug her off. 

“It doesn’t matter.”

She smiles a little and shakes her head, focusing on the pouch and opening it to reveal small, segmented compartments. She stares at it, and two of the compartments open without her touching it. You can see blue-white flecks and chunks of something bone-like mixing in the air as Mercedes delicately places them into the tank in the corner and flips a lever. With a rush, the waterfall noise intensifies and dark blue water surges into the tank, thickening as it fills until its a gel-like consistency, filled with chunks of white. Mercedes waits until the tank is full and completely gelatinous before swirling the muck a little with her mind and shutting down the lever. Two orbs settle on either side of her shoulders, as if perverse pets, and turn brilliant, eye-blinding white. You look away to clear the sparks from your eyes and when you turn back, one globe has settled itself in the gunk and the other has stationed itself over the tank and is gradually growing larger. 

You can’t tell if it’s a trick of the light, but you seem to think Mercedes has suddenly gotten much, much thinner. Almost gaunt. And her skin seems almost yellow. She catches your notice and nods. “Yep. I have to pay with my own energies. But it’s cheaper and easier than those EVO shell production lines. Even Thiel would kill for how to build an organic shell without a couple billion credits and a whole biotech lab at their disposal.” She winks at you. “There, now you have one of my secrets. Don’t tell anyone.”

“Right,” you whisper. Impressed in spite of yourself. Damn right Thiel would kill for this kind of information. Hell, half the reason we invented Snow was to...you abruptly cut that line of thinking off and look at Mercedes to see if she’d picked up on it. She just looks tired. You let out a tiny huff of relief that turns to stress again as she grabs Zubaida’s rifle from you and flings it around her own shoulders. “Piggy-back, please,” she says.

“What?”

“I want piggy-backs. I’m too tired to walk back to Shori. Carry me.”

“Mercedes, you’re like six feet tall. How am I supposed to carry you?”

“Please. Piggy-backs.”

You roll your eyes and obediently turn your back to her so she can jump up. You settle her somewhere on your hips bones with a sigh. “Fine. There. We can just leave this?”

“Mmmph, yes. Time. Needs time to grow before we can shove Hoshi in. And Hoshi has to be strong. Really strong. Or he’ll die.” You feel her drop her head down on your back and the deep, even sounds of sleeping. Asleep? Already? You shake her a little. “Mercedes. Des. Wake up. You have to help me get back up.” No response. You look at the little droid. It’s only good for following you and carrying things. You sigh and mentally trigger the little recording implant to help you retrace your steps back to Shori. Damn useless organics always leaving us to do the clean up, huh buddy? You think at your little servo. It doesn’t respond, but Mercedes kicks you absently. Her breathing doesn’t change and it would be easy enough to think she was still asleep, but you know better. You huff and start your way back to Shori.