Betrothed Episode One

  Chapter 13

  Anna Carter

  I awoke, stiff from head to foot as if I’d just run 10 marathons. In many ways, I had.

  With a shaking, trembling, practically convulsing hand I pushed the scrappy fringe from my face. My hair was oily and here and there clumped with a few droplets of blood.

  Bringing the same hand down, I wiped it over my top lip and realized my bleeding nose had dried long ago, but it had left a trail of sticky and dried blood all the way down my chin and neck.

  I blinked hard, swaying back and forth in my chair as I pressed my still shaking hand over my eyes.

  “We have reached the planet’s orbit. Landing protocol initiated. We will touch down in approximately two minutes,” the computer said, its electronic voice echoing around the room.

  Though I was dizzy and my ears were ringing, I somehow managed to gather together the energy to open both eyes and stare at the viewscreen. Sure enough, a large green-blue planet had come into view.

  “As per your original instructions, we will utilize the long-range intergalactic communication satellite on the primary continent of this planet to send your message.”

  “My message?” I stuttered.

  “We will be unable to land near the tower. Security is too sophisticated. You will need to remove the communication manifold from this ship and manually enter the facility yourself.”

  “What, why?” I managed.

  “To send your message,” the computer repeated tonelessly.

  “What message? I didn’t ask you to send a message.”

  “You programmed this computer with very specific orders. You programmed this computer to remind you of those orders. You programmed this computer to remind you that after you woke up you would be weak and you would require reminding.”

  I could understand every separate word the computer was saying, but I just couldn’t comprehend them.

  My mind rang like 1000 bells were lodged between my ears.

  “This computer will assist you.”

  “… Thank you,” I managed, for some reason remembering my manners even though I’d forgotten everything else.

  Oh no… I hadn’t forgotten everything else. In a flash, it returned to me.

  Good God, I’d escaped from Cluster. I’d hacked into a maintenance tower and stolen a ship!

  What was I doing?

  My heartbeat tripled, and my hands began to shake like they were tectonic plates crumbling under an earthquake.

  “You should calm yourself,” the computer suggested.

  Should I?

  What I should do was contact the Foundation Forces, try to explain what was happening to me, and fall on their mercy.

  Even though that was unquestionably the most sensible thing to do, I didn’t do it.

  This time there was no vision playing in my mind to stop me, either. I stopped me.

  Call it gut instinct or second sight, but I could tell it was too late to contact the Foundation Forces.

  Something else was going on here.

  I watched the view from the main screen as we came in to land. The planet went from a dot of green-blue to vast oceans and continents below me. We shot through the atmosphere with such speed it was seconds until a continent turned into a vast plain and then a mountain and then a rocky outcrop.

  We landed, the ship plateauing smoothly and dropping without so much as a shake as it settled on the ground.

  For several seconds I sat in my chair, and I stared, and I stared, and I stared at the viewscreen. When I stopped, I brought my hands up and stared at them instead.

  I was looking for a solution, but there wasn’t one to be found.

  “You must access the communications facility. You must remove the communications manifold from this vessel.”

  “How do I do that?” I stuttered. Even as I asked that question, I started to see how it would be possible.

  However fleetingly, a vision returned. But it was distant, extremely distant, and thankfully easy to ignore.

  The pain, however, I could not ignore.

  It seared behind my left eye as if a sun was going nova behind the lens.

  Clutching a hand to my face, I screamed.

  “It is unwise for you to use the ability at this time. Your body has been weakened.”

  “Ability?” I questioned in a hesitant tone.

  “You programmed this computer to remind you of the ability. You programmed this computer to tell you it is unwise to use the ability until you have had a chance to rest.”

  “What’s the ability?” I asked with a dry mouth.

  “This computer does not know.”

  “How do I stop myself from using it?” My voice shook badly.

  Fortunately, the computer could make out what I was saying. “By keeping yourself safe. If you enter a dangerous scenario, the ability will return.”

  I couldn’t process what the computer was saying. I didn’t want to.

  Yet I knew it was right. Instinctively I knew it was right.

  I couldn’t deny the existence of the ability, nor could I deny the fact it would return.

  So reluctantly I pulled myself off the seat and stood before what I assumed was the communications panel. “How do I remove the manifold?”

  “I will talk you through the process.”

  I followed the computer’s instructions, but it was far less smooth and easy than when I was following the vision. My hands didn’t instinctively know what to do, and they kept fumbling and making mistakes.

  The computer was thankfully patient and was incapable of irony or insult. Eventually, I managed to remove the manifold.

  Occasionally a few flecks of dried blood would flake off my lips and chin. I was in a right state. My oily hair clung to the sides of my neck, and my tunic was torn in places.

  Thankfully the burn I’d received on my hand was now gone. Clearly, the vision had dealt with it at the same time it had programmed the computer.

  There was no time to clean myself up. I imagined if I paused for some personal grooming, the visions would return.

  It was safer to do what I was told.

  I couldn’t put up with the pain of seeing things again. It was like being torn in two over and over again. Maybe this is what Prometheus felt every time his liver was eaten out only for it to regrow and to be eaten out once more, endlessly.

  Before I made my way out of the ship, the computer made me download something into a chunky portable gauntlet. I soon realized that it was the computer’s AI.

  As weird as it sounded, considering it was only electronic and artificial, I was thankful to have company.

  As soon as I reached the outside world, I shivered.

  It wasn’t cold, it wasn’t my fatigue either; it was something else.

  Something beyond intuition. Beyond my standard visions, too.

  Something that reached further.

  Something that warned me danger was coming.

  “It will be difficult but not impossible to circumvent the security of the facility. Currently, it is unmanned.”

  “Well, that’s good,” I muttered.

  I didn’t want to bring anybody else into this. God knows how much destruction I’d wrought on Cluster. God knows what I’d done to that tower. I could have hurt people, even killed people, and I wouldn’t know.

  That terrible thought settled on me like a dark cloud.

  “You are shivering. You are cold. We can return to the ship and manufacture a jacket.”

  “… No, I’m fine. We just need to get this done,” I added. Or did I? Was that a vestige of the vision controlling my lips for a few short seconds?

  I didn’t want to get this done. I wanted to stop and crumple into a ball and forget any of this was happening.

  So why was I still walking forward? Why was I trusting the computer or whatever I’d told the computer to tell me during my frenzied vision?

  I couldn’t answer that question.

  I just… had to keep going. H
ad to believe that somewhere at some point I would find out what was happening to me.

  …

  Captain Fargo

  “So we aren’t the first people to go through this room then?” I pushed my hands into my pockets, my shoulders rigid with tension as I stared around the room.

  I wasn’t any closer to solving this mystery; with every passing second, I was getting further and further away.

  The mysteries kept mounting with no sign they would stop.

  Right now I was standing in Miranda’s hotel room. There was no luggage, and the room was clean.

  Too clean.

  Every trace of DNA had been removed from it.

  Somebody had been through it before we had arrived.

  “Whoever cleaned this room, they did a thorough job,” one of my technicians commented.

  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 toward 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 overtaken 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. Silver 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 gray-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 toward 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 toward 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 toward 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 toward 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.

  The ordinary Mark Havelock wouldn’t have been able to do that; the ordinary Mark Havelock hadn’t been able to do much. He’d been a junkie, a waste of space, and a no-hoper. Then he’d woken up in the goddamn future, and someone had decided they could do something more creative with him.

  I was a graft.

  I was still coming to terms with what that meant, but the strength, stamina, and willpower I’d already mastered.

  With a creaking back, I stood, pressing my hands into the control panel as I steadied myself and stared at the information running across the viewscreen.

  Stalker energy was very specific. It could be detected easily, but it wasn’t always present; stalkers could clean up after themselves, eradicating every single particle of radiation that would reveal where they’d been.

  But if it was present, it meant one thing: they wanted you to know they’d been there. Why? It was a kind of calling card. They would use it to warn pirates and bounty hunters, letting them know there was absolutely no reason to bother going after the same target.

  If on the other hand, a stalker wanted to assassinate someone without leaving a trace, they could do that too. So if I was picking up stalker energy, it meant one thing: a stalker was going after Anna Carter.

  I swore again. This time the word echoing around the room like a gunshot.

  I brought one hand up and pressed it hard into my brow, taking a massive breath before I let the hand drop to my knee.

  Technically, as a graft, I was one of the most fearsome enemies in the universe. That didn’t mean I was a match for a stalker. I’d heard the theories – stalkers were meant to be some kind of leftover from the Gap. One the Illuminates hadn’t been able to remove from the universe.

  I wondered if this was worth a call to them. Whether I should tell them a stalker had locked onto our target and there was no longer any reason for me to go after Annie.

  I instinctively knew what their response would be: they would tell me to continue with the mission. Because for some goddamn reason they needed Annie. Maybe it was her connection to Illuminate Hart, or maybe it was that strange ability they talked of.

  Instinctively I found myself turning and staring at the vials of concentrated red liquid still sitting in the synthesizer. My eyes locked on them and my hands tightened into fists. I hated not knowing what I was doing. It had taken a heck of a lot of willpower to come to terms with this universe. Once I’d been woken five years ago, it had been a strange kind of hell to live in a place so different to my past. You had to question everything you experienced, everything you saw, and it made you extremely easy to manipulate.

  I tried not to think about that as I turned from the synthesizer and started to type something over the console in front of me. If there was a stalker
going after Annie – and I could only assume it was going after her rather than some other insignificant dolt in this system – then I had to plan meticulously. I also had to hope, pray, and believe that she would be alive by the time I got there.

  Annie Carter had a sense of humor, I’d grant you that. I hadn’t begrudged her company all that much. But the only reason I’d stuck close to her all these years was because I’d been told to. I hadn’t figured out the reason why until she’d handed me her betrothal certificate.

  As soon as I’d handed that to my superiors, they’d confirmed who she was: goddamn Illuminate Hart’s betrothed.

  Now I had a new mission: deliver her to them.

  And who were they?

  Who knew? Some shady, dodgy group my superiors and friends had formed a brief alliance with, one necessary for securing the ultimate goal.

  I pressed a sweaty hand into my face and let it close my eyes. Then I took in a steadying breath.

  A strange twist of emotion wrapped its way around my gut. But just as I recognize what it was – guilt – I pushed it away. I pushed it away with the proficiency only a graft could manage. I could literally wash emotions from my body as if they were nothing but unsavory stains.

  After several seconds of reasserting control over my mind, I sat straighter, my expression stiff and cold.

  I knew what was at stake here. I knew why I was doing this and would never ever question my orders. If I needed Annie to get this done, I would get Annie. If that meant going up against a stalker, so be it.