Page 34 of Elanie & the Empath
“Rax and Morgath? Could they be…following us?”
“Highly unlikely,” I said. “We’ve jumped too many times. Whoever is controlling this pod doesn’t want us tracked.”
His fingers encircled my arms, holding on. It was a comfort, knowing he was still alive. Still warm. Still here.
“Why did you follow me?” I needed to know before he passed out again. “It was madness, Sem. Suicide.”
“Nah.” A wet cough shook him. “We’re both still alive so far, aren’t we?”
As the FTL drive spooled up again, I tightened my grip on him. Just before we jumped, he said, “I didn’t want you to be alone.” Then he passed out in my arms.
My ears poppedas the G-forces normalized. The jump was complete, but it still took three hundred and forty-one billion nanoseconds for Sem to stir. Not that I was counting. Not that I ran a full analysis on my internal timing system when it seemed to take too long.
I loosened my grip on him, and he slumped forward, nearly falling off my lap until I wrapped my arms around him again.
Grasping his head in his hands, he groaned. “I don’t feel good.”
“You have jump sickness,” I explained unnecessarily. Because he was a physician and would know this sort of thing. Why was I babbling internally? Must have been shock.
His groan dropped into a moan as his head fell back to rest on my shoulder, his silver hair brushing softly against my cheek, smelling sweet and spicy and, objectively,good. “Is the pod spinning?”
The FTL drive powered down and the onboard AI said,This concludes your faster-than-light travel. Your autopilot has turned off the fasten seatbelt sign. Feel free to move around the pod until landing.
Relief washed over me, through me, leaving me lightheaded and heavy boned. Sem wouldn’t die. At least not immediately. “Not spinning. We’re finally finished jumping.”
“Thank the Saints,” he wheezed.
Slowly, I let him go. But I watched him closely while he stood from my lap, ready to lunge for him if he decided to do something non-bionically senseless like pass out again.
He made it the few steps to the pod wall, then turned so he could lean against it. Closing his eyes and rubbing his temples, he asked, “Can you access your VC?”
“No.” I worked my knees straight, rolled my wrists, both stiff and sore from acting as his personal safety harness. “Not for hours now. Wherever we are, there’s no Vnet.”
“Did you say ‘hours’?” He blanched, the cobalt blue of his cheeks drained to a muted gray. “How long have I been out?”
“We have been in this pod for nine hours, thirty-four minutes, and sixteen seconds. You’ve been unconscious for close to 70 percent of the trip.”
“Shit.” He ran his fingers through his hair, leaving it tousled. Walking to the pod’s control panel, looking slightly less likely to trip over his feet, he pushed a few buttons. When nothing happened, he pushed a few more. “Welp, that doesn’t work.”
While he fiddled with the radiation shield monitor, I took stock of my systems. Vitals: normal. Power core: intact. Operating System: nominal. Network connections… “That’s weird.”
“What’s weird?” he asked while opening and closing the pod’s overhead compartments.
“I still have access to the SBN.”
He wheeled around, his bangs swinging into his eyes. “How in the stars do you have access to the Shared Bionic Network when there’s no Vnet?”
That was a very good question. “Maybe a local beacon? Not all the gen-3s were found when they were due to be decommissioned. Some are still stuck out here on their deep-space exploration missions. If one was close enough, I could pick up a stray signal. Theoretically.”
“Isone close enough?” he asked. “Could we trace the signal back to its ship and try to get help?”
This was a dangerous proposition. Even though a bionic’s CPU was designed to be resilient, we weren’t immune to mental breakdown. Case in point: me waking up in an escape pod with no memory of how I’d gotten there. Something I decided would be inefficient to worry about now, considering we probably wouldn’t survive long enough for my questionable sanity to matter. But a gen-3 who’d been isolated in deep space for stars knew how long, centuries, probably? By now they were likely stuck in an infinite altered-reality loop populated by the imaginary friends they’d made from their toenail clippings.
Normally I’d say no, that it wouldn’t be worth the risk. But these were far from normal circumstances.
After analyzing my network connections, I was almost relieved to say, “Aside from our pod, there are no LunaCorp or Mirror of Sacred Truth signals out here. No local hotspots. Nothing to explain my connection to the SBN. It’s strange. It’s almost like someone hacked the network and is sharing it directly with me through an encrypted link. I can’tsee where it’s coming from, only that it’s there. Weak and limited, but there.”
“That is strange.” He rubbed thoughtfully at his cheek stubble, a pleasant rasp echoing through the pod. “Can you do anything with it? With the SBN?”
