Chapter 4
The night is quiet.
We are spared any attacks from animals, and nothing spectacular happens, either. I spend the night snuggled up to Johar, and do some thinking. I have so much to ponder that I get little sleep. I know I will regret this the next day, but my eyes just won’t shut. At least, I now know who the mysterious “we” is that Johar talked about, and I also know the extent to which my creator fooled me. A thousand times over, I imagine confronting him, and every time, when I envision his reaction– from his mocking laugh to his surprise that I even care, anger courses through my body and I am wide awake again. My cyborg cannot understand that I am not exactly thrilled that he was only pretending to cooperate with my father. He tried to explain it to me. If he had refused to watch over me, then, obviously, Ruthiel would have just assigned someone else to the job. And since it is in the best interest of all mistreated creatures that Cassie and her damned children do not fall into my father’s hands, Johar had no choice.
However, it’s not that simple. With only a few rational words he has assigned me to second place in the list of important things. I know, of course, that I am not a thing, and can also comprehend, to some degree, how important this duplicitous game is. But it still hurts. A lot. I feel childish and spoiled for putting my own feelings before the rescue of many, and think about all of the good things Johar has done. My image of him has gone through so many radical changes, over the last few weeks. I ask myself who he really is; the cyborg who is a double agent, the cyborg who happily completes my father’s assignments, or the man who awakens such passionate and extreme feelings in me that I can hardly deal with them. With him, nothing is in moderation; nothing is lukewarm. Everything is black or white, hot or cold. All or nothing. And if I listen to my heart, this half-mechanical, knocking thing in my chest, then I decide on all. It helps that I am lying in Johar’s arms, looking at the starry sky. The vastness of the universe makes me realize how small we, and our problems, really are. Anyway, I smile to myself, this is the most romantic night, out in the open that I have ever experienced, even with the loudly snoring scorpion-man nearby. Nobody other than me needs to know that it is also the first and only night I have ever spent out in the open to begin with. My surprise couldn’t be bigger when I realize how peaceful I feel.
I examine my feelings, carefully searching for any conflicting emotions. Maybe looking at the sky has made it clear to me that the world consists of more than black and white. I can be both, I realize; neither a human or a machine, but a mixed being. A cyborg. The thought sends a kick of adrenaline through me that is so powerful, I sit up without losing physical contact with Johar. I understand now; it is not horrible to be a cyborg. My existence brings wonderful possibilities with it. I can be stronger, live longer and learn more. This last thought, in particular, brings me joy. My brain is more powerful, and my body more robust than a human’s. What is so bad about that? Exactly, I think, nothing. I am at the beginning of a path. I will not walk it alone. I will walk it with the man I love.
I come to this conclusion as we are preparing to move on, right before sunrise. The orange-red fireball awakens hope in me for a second, just as the stars in the night sky did. There have been more sunrises on Earth than anyone can count, but today, the four of us experience one of the most beautiful ones. I can feel the rays from the fireball on my skin, even though they originate a gazillion miles away. It will still be here when we are long dead. I try, once again, to imagine a future at Johar’s side, in which we both watch another sunrise together, but this time, I can’t see it. The only thing I can feel is an overwhelming fear. Ruthiel appears in my head, leaning over me, smiling. It is this triumphant and always confident grimace that suddenly makes me doubt that we will all live happily ever after. With effort, I turn away from the sun. In a matter of minutes, the pleasant warmth has turned to a blazing burning sensation. It feels like a bad omen, far too much, and I cannot enjoy the sight of the rising sun any longer.
I shoulder my back pack. At least it’s not as heavy as it was (canned goods weigh a lot and we ate well yesterday.) I decide to refrain from asking Johar any more questions, today. Instead, I walk next to the Sethari who still owes me something. I am going to claim that debt today, while we are on our way to the cave system at Point Blank. Before I replaced his sucking snout, he told me that I needed to “practice.” By that, he meant the moment when I was in his head, of that I am sure. I also think that this was not the first time that someone visited there, to put it mildly. The fact that the Sethari could open himself up to me and could sort his thoughts, so I could understand them, tells me that he has experience of this sort of thing. I am going to put that experience to good use today.
The two of us drop back a little, and put our heads together. Shazuul understands immediately what I want, and is willing to help me, just not right now. He explains to me that my body will not move if I send my spirit into someone else, so we will need to postpone our experiments for another time. I sigh, frustrated, but there is nothing I can do about it. Shazuul sees my disappointment, stops for a second and touches my fingers. Immediately, I can feel that he is opening his head to me and I look at him, inquiringly. He shakes his head and runs after the men who are already looking for us. In the blazing sun, which rises quickly over the desert, I can just barely make them out. I notice how similar their statures are. When you see Johar for the first time, the one thing you notice is the metal plate on his face. When I look at him now, his eyes are most important to me, because they reflect his mood so strongly.
I look at my blue-veined hands. Now, my whole body is covered in the lines. It would be silly to use the skin-colored paste when I don’t need to disguise myself, so it is still tucked unobtrusively into the pocket of my pants. I wonder if someone who meets me for the first time will only notice the blue lines. What does Johar see when he looks at me? Over and over, I have moments when it is hard for me to grasp that I am a creature who is half-machine. The old prejudices are embedded in my head, and I can’t get rid of them, even towards myself.
Shazuul draws my attention to himself by pulling on my sleeve. “Yes?” I ask, without slowing down. By now, I can understand him pretty well, and he has also expanded the repertoire of words he knows. Right now, however, he does not need any words to make himself understood. He brings his hand close to my fingers, but this time, he does not touch them. He stops about an inch before our fingertips touch. Again, I feel this inviting pull coming from his head. Over the next half hour, he repeats this over and over, increasing the distance every time.
I am so grateful that I could kiss him. He is teaching me how to feel the pull, how to manage it, and even how to resist it! This is amazing! When I tell him this, he chatters excitedly and wags his sucking snout back and forth, like he is embarrassed. “You’re not so bad for a Sethari,” I tell him and he surprises me with a quick-witted come-back.
“You’re not so bad yourself, for a machine-human,” he says with that squeaky voice, and I look at him in astonishment, because he spoke a whole, grammatically correct, sentence. He frowns and I assume that if he had eyebrows, they would be raised right now. To hide my embarrassment, and my lack of self-confidence, I ask Shazuul about Cassie. It is a sign of the newly formed trust between us that he tells me about her.”
“Cassie Burnett,” he says and looks into the distance, as if he were thinking about something wonderful. “She … first human, give energy voluntarily. She is a good human.”
The knowledge that someone could give themselves to a Sethari, of their own free will, is a real shock. But it is highly fascinating for two reasons. One, the woman offered him her energy. Two, he didn’t suck her dry. Whenever I witnessed, by chance, how his race fed on humans, they were always self-indulgent and sucked their victims dry, until all that remained of them was a dried-out hull. “Can you control how much energy you tap?”
He shrugs casually. It’s the only way to describe it. I throw a glance at Johar and Hazathel, who have their heads together while they are stomping through the sand, talking about important man things. I look at the Sethari. Trust. I keep returning to this word. I trust Johar – as far as he will let me. He trusts me, as well, in moderation. Hazathel trusts me reluctantly, because Johar forced him to. But he, this Sethari, trusts me so far that he let me into his head, and was comfortable letting me anesthetize him and operate on his snout.
The men ahead of us are deep in a heated discussion and have forgotten all about us. Now or never. “Are you hungry?” I ask Shazuul and raise the hair off the back of my neck, revealing the right spot. My heart is racing like crazy. I must be completely crazy – this shoots through my head. Instead of throwing himself on my bare neck, as I half-expected, he tilts his head and looks at me searchingly. “Sure?” he wants to know, and even though I am scared, I nod.
Slowly, almost hesitatingly, he moves his sucking snout over me. I am still watching how well the muscles are working, filled with overflowing pride about my work, when I feel the soft touch of the opening on my skin. A quick prick of pain, and then I don’t feel anything else. I have no idea how long he feeds on my energy. It can’t have been long, because when he pulls back from me, Johar and Hazathel are not much further ahead of us than before. Shazuul burps discreetly and I can’t help myself – I laugh. He really didn’t take much of my energy. Just enough to satiate him, but not so much that it weakens me. It feels good to give someone something without wanting anything in return. Learning this lesson from a Sethari, of all people, counts as one of the most surprising experiences of the last few days. Despite the loss of energy, I feel buoyant and stride ahead vigorously to catch up to the men. Shazuul smiles to himself and does the same thing.
When we finally catch up to the others, we can hear their discussion which is still quite heated. “…definitely too dangerous. I say we lure them up.” Hazathel buzzes and looks at my cyborg darkly. He throws his arms up in fake desperation and counters with a dramatic sigh.
“Fine. Then why don’t you tell me how you are going to get them out the caves,” he says and stops walking. He crosses his arms and looks at his companion furiously. “Of course, we could just yell into the caves that it’s just us and that we don’t mean them any harm.” Sarcasm doesn’t suit him, but I bite my tongue. “If you have a plan, then let’s hear it. I’m listening.” Hazathel grumbles something we can barely hear to himself, but it is obvious that he doesn’t have a plan. Johar gives him a conciliatory pat on the shoulder. “It won’t be that bad down there,” he reassures the gigantic guy, whose scorpion has hidden behind his ear. When I look at the trembling animal, I realize that Hazathel is afraid. He doesn’t want to go down into the dark and narrow caves. It would be a snap to get lost down there.
“We won’t get lost,” I add, somehow touched by his fear.
“Oh yeah? How would you know?”
Because the Sethari have a compass in their bodies that always tells them which way is north,” I improvise. Johar can barely hold back a snort, but he recovers quickly and confirms my story with a nod. “All we need to do is remember the coordinates of our entrance. Then nothing will go wrong. And of course, we have to be careful to not lose Shazuul.” In the distance, I can already recognize Point Blank, standing out gloomily against the blue sky. The huge cliff looks like a memorial. Hazathel’s unease jumps over to me now, and I picture massive rocks from the mountain blocking our entrance forever. I can see us wandering around aimlessly in the dark, looking for the exit we will never find. At some point, we will get so hungry that we will kill one of us and eat him. Just like back then, when I was still in a small cage in the lab, and the scientists made a game of driving us crazy with hunger and torture.
I stare at the scorpion man. I must have been in his head for a split second. Otherwise, how would I know things I couldn’t possibly know? His memories were heart-breaking and also cruel. The snide smile from the man who was my father comes to mind, turning his cold, gray look to me – no, I cannot mistake this, to Hazathel – and pointing to him with his finger. “That one looks robust,” Ruthiel says and they put a noose around his neck and pull him from his cage.
“Mara, is everything okay?” I didn’t even notice that Johar has put his arm around my shoulders. Relieved, I lean into him with wobbly knees. I need to learn to control this damned jumping into strangers’ heads! I am sure that Hazathel would not appreciate it, if I share his memories with the others, so I tell Johar that everything is okay.
We keep on hiking.
After an hour, we are at the foot of the mountain. Every one of us looks up in awe, and tries to see through the layer of clouds. Nobody knows how high the mountain is, and nobody who has ever climbed it has lived to tell about it. The air down here is easier to breathe than the air in the desert; not because it is cooler, but because it feels clearer and cleaner. In the distance, I can see the woods that Johar mentioned. This is a place where I could linger for hours. It gives me a feeling of peace, the last thing I would have expected here. A quick glance at the others tells me that they are experiencing similar emotions. Hazathel is looking up at the peak, as if he wished for nothing more than to hike up to it. The Sethari has very round, surprised eyes, and Johar has a dreamy facial expression, something I have never seen on him before.
We land back in reality with a jolt, when, for the first time in days, clouds block the sun. The top of the mountain lights up blood red for a second, and all of us have to suppress a shiver. If I were superstitious, I would consider that a bad omen. But one half of me is machine – and for once, I am happy about that. As a machine-human, I couldn’t care less about such things, I decide, and give first Shazuul and then Johar a little push – I don’t dare to push the scorpion man. “What’s up?” I ask, and tap my foot impatiently. “Can we please get going?” Johar grins in response, and starts looking around.
“I guess you can’t wait to go below the surface,” he says and pokes me in the side, before he pulls me to him. In the few days, since we have been on Earth, he has obviously developed the need to touch me more often than before. He is not only more emotional, and showing it, but also more loving. He kisses me, and I forget the world around me until a smacking sound interrupts my bliss. It is Shazuul, who has shaped the tip of his snout into kissing lips, and is running after Hazathel, who is doing his best to evade the love-stricken Sethari. This opens the floodgates completely, and we all laugh until our sides hurt.
Suddenly, Johar turns serious. “The entrance should be about 500 feet to the northwest,” he says and points with his arms in the appropriate direction. “Are you ready?” We nod, more or less resigned. “In every backpack, you will find ropes, flashlights and fresh batteries. We will not, under any circumstances, be separated from each other down there. Is that clear?” He has taken the lead, but none of us have any objections. The role fits him like a glove. Johar is the most level-headed among us, and he is also the one who has the most experience in tracing people. “I will go first. Then comes Mara, and after her, Hazathel. Shazuul will bring up the rear of our chain.” Hazathel is not happy with being put in the safe middle, like a baby or a woman, but he has to accept it. It is obvious that, out of all of us, he is the one who is most afraid of going down into the dark tunnel system. I am also a little uneasy at the thought of possibly having to crawl on my belly through narrow passageways, but I know I can handle it.
“How exactly will we find the woman?” Hazathel asks, and voices the same concern that I have; that we will be wandering around aimlessly down there.
“We will proceed systematically, and keep moving further inwards in circles,” Johar explains. I must have given him a skeptical look, because he further explains that the tunnels are situated, more or less, around a subterranean lake.
“It shouldn’t take more than half a day to find Cassie,” he thinks.
I am satisfied with his explanation, but remain skeptical. How does he know which way the tunnels go? Has someone made a map of them? I keep my mouth shut, but only because Hazathel still seems very uneasy, and I don’t want to awaken any more horrific visions in him. I have to shake my head at myself and my new tendency to question everything. When I was still firmly convinced that I was a human, I acted more like a cyborg, or at least like many humans want a cyborg to act: as a mix of machine and human that has few feelings and never second-guesses anything. Now that I know what I am, I act more like a human, meaning I am more emotional, curious and unpredictable.
While I have been pondering all of this, we have reached a tree, whose black, bare branches stretch up to the sky. Next to the tree, I see a round hole. Johar frowns, kneels down next to the entrance, and runs his hand through the brush next to it. “Someone has already been here before us,” he mumbles and looks over the ground. He is looking for tracks; that much is clear, but the ground is too smooth in the area around the entrance, the ground is too smooth, because there are no animal tracks, nor are there any naturally occurring drifts from the wind.
Hazathel kneels down and sends out the scorpion. Johar gets up and dusts off his formerly black pants, absentmindedly. “This is strange,” he says. Someone has gone to the trouble of obliterating all of the tracks around the entrance, but has neglected to cover it with branches.
“Could it be that one of Cassie’s companions came out to go hunting, but then forgot to put the brush back in place?” I ask him. He shakes his head vehemently – no.
“I don’t think the Qua’Hathri would be that negligent,” he answers slowly, keeping Hazathel’s animal in sight. “Either, …” His thoughts are interrupted by the scorpion, which is making a loud rattling with his tail. He is about 50 feet away from us, but we can still hear him very clearly. We hurry over to the spot the dangerous little guy has marked. There we can see tracks. They are from a space glider. We look at each other, because we all know what this means: Someone has landed here and is also on the hunt for the sought-after children.
“It was Ruthiel,” I say with absolute certainty. My cyborg nods in agreement.
“I think it went like this,” he reconstructs the scene. “One or more of the warriors were outside, here, replenishing their supplies. Ruthiel and his people must have surprised them, so it made no sense to cover the entrance. They were in a hurry, in order to make sure Cassie was safe, and were discovered.”
I can think of a different scenario that could also be possible: we are too late. Ruthiel already has Cassie in his possession, and therefore, it made no sense to hide the entrance. But in that case, why is the ground so smooth?
Hazathel collects his scorpion, and Shazuul goes back to the entrance. He stretches his snout into the hole, sniffing the air. It is almost comical seeing that half of the Sethari disappear further and further into the hole. When he comes back out, he shakes his head. “Cassie not there,” he reports.
“How would you know that?” Johar and I ask at the same time. Shazuul looks a little embarrassed as he tries to explain his “special connection” to Cassie. He claims that he can feel her presence. How can that be? What else has the Sethari kept from us? Sometimes, I have the bad feeling that each and every one of us has his or her own agenda, and that we will all be in each other’s way in the end.
“You could have told us that before,” Johar snaps at him. He looks around, and I can tell how desperately he wants to bring Cassie to safety. How much really depends on this woman and her children? But Shazuul isn’t finished. He keeps pointing down into the hole, excited and insistent. “Husband,” he says. “Her husband is there. Get. Get.” In his excitement, he wants to climb down there himself, but my cyborg grabs him by the scruff of the neck and furiously puts him down on the sandy ground.
“Alright, my rubber-skinned friend,” he says and stares down at Shazuul mercilessly. One could almost feel sorry for the Sethari, if he hadn’t kept something so important from us. All of us seem to have our own reasons for this mission, and are keeping them do ourselves, and that is not good at all. “Let us be crystal clear. Can you still feel Cassie? How far away is she?” he presses him, further, after Shazuul nods eagerly.
“Up,” he answers and points to the sky. He conveniently falls into this monosyllabic language when it suits him – at least, that’s how it seems.
Our small group falls silent, as we realize that Cassie isn’t here anymore. “Then why did you let us come here, at all?” Johar asks through clenched teeth. “How long have you known?” He approaches Shazuul threateningly, who seeks cover behind me.
“Find husband,” he says, clipped. “Important. Cassie not without husband.”
I am trying to understand what he is saying, and wish I could look into his head to help me get it more quickly. But I don’t dare in Hazathel’s presence, so I try other solutions. Can Cassie not live without her husband? Does she need him for some inexplicable reason to bring her children into this world, safely? This thought is not as absurd as it sounds. I once saw a spider-like species where the female ate the male, alive, during the two-week long birthing process. The female had to stay in one spot during the birth, so it was dependent on an alternative source of food. Suddenly, I am happy that Cassie is a human – and that Ruthiel was not with me on that expedition. I don’t even want to think about everything he could have done with a specimen of that species.
Johar sits down on the ground, Indian-style. Even though he is agitated, his movements are still elegant and flowing, and I envy him for it. His eyes cloud over while he is thinking. At this moment, he really looks like a machine-human. I almost think I can hear the little wheels turning in his brain, which is, of course, complete nonsense. I realize that we are all looking at him in anticipation, as if he was going to magically pull a complete solution to our problem, out of a non-existent hat in the next few minutes. When he finally speaks, I exhale quietly in relief. Everything is not lost yet. “We have the following choices,” he begins, raising his index finger. “One, we give up.” He smiles crookedly when he hears our mumbled protest. Even Hazathel is against this option, and I don’t know if he is going to come with us on our hunt for Cassie. “Two, we pursue Ruthiel’s ship, sneak on board and free Cassie.”
This sounds like a great way to get ourselves killed. I know that Johar doesn’t really take this “plan” seriously, but am still relieved when he immediately starts listing the counterarguments. “Things against this plan are that we have no way of sneaking on board without being seen. And even if we could somehow manage it, we could hardly get into the lab, let alone back out. At least not without serious losses.”
The three of us are hanging on Johar’s every word. I have always been aware that he has a strong personality. Often, it isn’t obvious until afterwards – how often has he simply done the right thing, even though I have complained and desperately wanted my way? He is a man of action – no. He is a cyborg of action, and my cyborg, to boot. I look at him, with the metal on his face, shimmering in the sun, and his dark hair and clever eyes, and feel endlessly happy. He did not reject me when I needed him, and he has made it clear that he – likes me? No. That doesn’t describe it. I am afraid of losing myself in him, but liking is much too weak a word to describe what the two of us share.
He interrupts my romantic train of thought with the third and final option for getting Cassie, after all. “We will need to split up,” he begins. His eyes tell me that he doesn’t like this. I get a sense of the pain that I will feel without him by my side, and start to tell him no, but he cuts me off, before the first impulsive protest even makes it out of my mouth. “The only way we can still win is with a ruse.” He looks at Hazathel and Shazuul, both of whom are listening intently. “Hazathel, you and I will go into the caves, as planned, and bring Cassie’s companions out.” Shazuul likes this idea, and grunts happily. Hazathel visibly pulls himself together and manages a hesitant nod. The poor guy. I really feel sorry for him. It looks like he will have to face his worst fears. “Shazuul and Mara, you two will make contact with Ruthiel.” He sighs. “Can you do that, Mara?” He says my name like a caress, and for that alone, I want to kiss him. So, I do, without caring about the unsuitable situation. My lips and his touch for a very short, but sweet kiss, before I pull back from him, reluctantly. This time, there are no kiss-imitations from Shazuul. He can feel that it is starting to get dangerous now, and I mean, really dangerous.
“Of course, I can do it,” I respond and after a short hesitation, I add, “I do think I can stand face-to-face with him, without strangling his skinny neck.”
“This isn’t just about you holding back,” my cyborg says factually. A small wrinkle appears between his eyebrows. “You will have to play the role of the penitent daughter, and you will have to play it so well that he does not get suspicious.” The dismay that is making its way through my body must be showing on my face, because he adds: “You have to be 100% believable and make it clear to him that you want your place at his side back at any price. Without any ifs and buts.” He sighs heavily, and turns to Shazuul. “It won’t be a cakewalk for you, either, my friend. Mara will take you along as bait, and you will be a prisoner in Ruthiel’s lab.”
I think I see Shazuul’s rubber skin turn a shade paler than usual. His snout hangs down, dangling sadly on his torso. He exchanges a wordless look with me, and I can feel the pull in my head as he is looking at me. I deny him inconspicuously. I don’t know why, but I don’t want Hazathel to know anything about the special connection between me and the Sethari. Quid pro quo – the scorpion man is keeping his own secrets from me, after all, and anyway, he still doesn’t think I am trustworthy. “Do we really have to separate?” I ask softly. “Why can’t we do everything together?”
“Because we are running out of time, and because our chances will be better if Hazathel and I can join you secretly,” Johar says exactly what I already know in my heart. I wonder if the danger we are going to be in is really worth it. Are Cassie and her unborn children really the key to power, as Johar and his unique organization claim she is? I don’t like this one little bit that I don’t know anything about the people who are pulling the strings in the background. In this respect, maybe it really isn’t such a bad idea for me to try to find Cassie on my own. I can always decide if I really want to hand her over to the faceless people, whose plans I have no knowledge of. I trust Johar, but even the best man can be fooled and used; especially if he is as idealistic as Johar.
Over the next half hour, we discuss all of the details. While Johar and Hazathel search for Cassie’s husband in the tunnels, Shazuul and I will establish contact with my father. I will use Shazuul as bait and get my father to pick me up and take me back to his inner circle. The only fly in the ointment, and it’s a huge fly, is that the Sethari and I might not actually be interesting enough for a man like Ruthiel anymore. He has already experimented on the Sethari, right when they were beginning to conquer our planet, and he already knows me inside and out. Shazuul is quiet and leaves the decision to tell Johar about my new abilities and his role in all of it, to me. At some point, when we have exhausted all other ideas, because they don’t offer my father anything new or exciting. I pull Johar to the side and confess. He has experienced for himself, after all, that, thanks to the infection from the virus, I can suddenly look into others’ heads, so at first, he isn’t particularly surprised. But when I get to the point, where I tell him that Shazuul is teaching me to be more precise, he starts paying attention. He doesn’t say a word and I start to worry that he wants to see proof. Finally he speaks. I am relieved, because I wouldn’t want to jump into the thoughts of the man I love. Not for anything in the world. “Just promise me one thing,” he says, in that deep, soft voice, that really belongs in the intimate setting of the bedroom. “Take good care of yourself. I don’t want to risk you ending up on your father’s dissecting table.”
It breaks my heart to see the real and unaffected concern in his eyes, but there is no way I can add to his burden, so I act confident. “We will see each other in seven days, at the latest,” I reassure him with a levity that is totally fake. Now comes the hardest part of our plan. It is not the separation, but the fact that Johar is going to implant a mini transmitter in me, so he can make contact with me. As soon as he sends me the signal, I am going to open one of the side ports on the ship for him, so he can dock with the small space glider. It’s convenient that his friend O’Hare taught him how to mask the signature of a small space glider, so nobody will discover that a foreign ship is approaching. At least, that’s the theory. We will find out in a few days, at the very latest, if it works in reality. By then, I should know where Cassie is, and what my father is planning to do with her. I will bring Johar, Hazathel and maybe even her husband – if his health allows – to her. We will free her and Shazuul and race back to Earth, where we will hide. That’s the plan.
There are two things that I purposefully didn’t ask Johar. One, what is he planning to do with Cassie, and what will happen to Ruthiel. I cannot imagine that my cyborg is so ruthless that he would blow up an entire space ship with all of its crew, to say nothing of the creatures who are still imprisoned in my father’s lab. This is what I am thinking about when I fall on my knees in front of him and push my hair to the side. I can see his hands. His slender fingers pull a syringe from his belt. The syringe has a chip with a small transmitter in it. I feel nothing other than a small prick, as he injects the contents of the syringe into the muscles in my neck.
I am filled with a mix of defiance and pain in my soul when I stand up. This transmitter, which doesn’t work in humans, is making its way through the artificial parts of my body, until it finds its spot. It will hide in the electronic steerage in my body, and will automatically find a frequency that is so similar to my electronic signature that you can only trace it if you know it’s there. Johar tests the reception and nods, satisfied, before pulling me to him. “I hate long good-byes,” he whispers and kisses me one last time, before going back to the others.
Shazuul and I watch as he and Hazathel disappear down the opening, and I feel lonelier than ever before. Then I think about the difficult task ahead for Shazuul and me, and square my shoulders. I get out my minicomputer, enter the password and dial Ruthiel.
In a matter of seconds, his face appears on the screen. I smile at him broadly. “Hello, Father,” I say. “Any chance you could come and pick me up?”