Chapter 5
The Sethari and I wait less than half an hour for the little ship to land next to us.
Of course, my “father” doesn’t trouble himself to pick us up from the surface of the Earth himself. On one hand, this is good, because it gives me and Shazuul another little breather until we have to face the doctor. On the other hand, I am getting more uneasy, the further I am from Johar. I think I can almost feel the pain of separation physically, which is just in my imagination, of course, but it still hurts.
The men and women who pick us up do not talk to us. It is clear that the news of Mara Ruthiel, falling out of favor with her dad, is spreading quickly. They put Shazuul in chains, as if he were a wild animal. I do not protest, even though I want to criticize his rough treatment. That is part of my role as the ruthless Mara Ruthiel, who will do anything to have her place back among renowned scientists – even if it means buying that place with the life of another. Since my father doesn’t know exactly why Shazuul is so important and unique, he obviously told the guards to not injure him. It is good to see that at least one small part of our plan is going as we hoped. I am unnerved the most by the looks they are giving me. These are anywhere from contemptuous and suspicious to downright hostile. I did not go to the trouble of hiding the signs of my infection, so the pale, blue-veined skin is clearly visible on my arms, face and neck. Nobody dares to touch me, and they keep their distance from me. For fun, and to see if my perceptions are correct, I stumble over something on purpose, and reach “instinctively” for one of the men’s arms, so I don’t fall. He literally jumps 3 feet in the air to avoid me and I land inelegantly on the ground. Inside, I am rejoicing, because my assignment will be much easier if the people are afraid of me. I wonder if they really don’t know that they can’t catch the virus through the air. I can’t blame them, because I would have reacted the same way earlier.
I settle into the upholstered chair and close my eyes. Shazuul is ready, waiting for me. Everything okay? I ask him in his head, and he answers me, just as silently. Big fear, he says. I will not desert you, I assure him. He sighs in my thoughts and we separate from each other. Every time I hear his thoughts, I also receive a wave of his feelings, and his fear of the physical torture that might await him makes me tremble. He is so brave, in spite of his fear that I would love to hug him. I can’t, of course, because the crew members keep stealing glances at me.
The more I practice, the better I am able to travel around in thoughts. It is exhausting, because I can feel what the other one is thinking at that moment. It is incredibly strange to feel someone else’s feelings. I know that they aren’t my own, but they still feel just as intense. For a minute, I think about what it must look like in my father’s head, and shiver.
The research ship is orbiting about three hours from Earth, around the blue planet. I spend the time, until we dock, sending my thoughts on trips. Shazuul and I have selected two people as targets. I am careful not to stay too long in their heads, so they won’t notice me, and so it isn’t too exhausting. Neither of them has noticed my presence in their heads, and this gives my confidence exactly the kind of boost it needs for my meeting with Ruthiel.
It feels a little like coming home when I board the ship. I spent many years on the Solaria, and I know it inside and out. That is another advantage for me, I think, as I am escorted by two huge men to my father. The two heavily muscled guys have weapons, but even they fear my virus and are carefully keeping their distance from me. Shazuul is walking next to me, in handcuffs. When we reach the lab, one of the guys tries to knock on the door, but I push by him and open the door, without warning my father. As if his lackeys didn’t inform him long ago that we are on board, I think, and go straight over to him.
“Hello, father,” I say and put all of my hate into my words. It is not easy, because his appearance is as familiar to me as that of my own hand. He is still much too skinny, because eating is not very far up on his list of priorities, and the circles underneath his eyes are still dark, emphasizing his gray eyes.
“Mara,” he says in a tone that would have felt like affection earlier. Now I know better. “Or maybe I should say SY002?” He gives the two men a signal to wait outside. He does not acknowledge Shazuul, but I didn’t expect him this, anyway. I flinch when he calls me by my rank number, and curse myself when I see him nod in satisfaction. Now he knows exactly what will hurt me the most. “What can I do for you?” Ruthiel carelessly puts the slide away. He was just getting ready to put it under the microscope, but now he sits down at his desk, instead. He crosses his arms behind his head and turns casually from side to side, just like a bored boss, who is being forced into a conversation by an annoying subordinate. “You said you have something interesting for me? Did you, by any chance, mean this Sethari?”
I nod. “Exactly. I have discovered a few abilities in him that will help you get one step closer to your goal of developing the perfect weapon.”
“What might these abilities be?” He grimaces in contempt. But now, it is paying off that he kept me as his own, small test subject at his side for so long. In his eyes, I recognize the spark he always gets when he is on the tail of something new.
I sit on the edge of the desk and swing my legs. I know he hates for his papers to get messed up, so I lean my left hand on the stack of papers that still need to be signed. The corners shift and his hands start to jerk involuntarily, wanting to bring order back to its former and flawless original state. Now I know I have him. “This Sethari has telepathic abilities. He can read minds.”
Ruthiel stares at me for a few seconds. Then he laughs, until tears run down his face. “The virus must have really attacked your brain,” he says, finally, and wipes the tears from his cheeks dramatically. The virus has done just that, of course, but differently than he thinks it has. This thought helps me to keep the anger out of my voice when I answer him.
“Why don’t we just test it?” I suggest, and lean forward until I am almost face to face with him. “Think of a number. Any number. Concentrate on the number, and he will tell you what it is.” I give Shazuul a kick that makes him fall to his knees. Hopefully, Ruthiel didn’t notice that I stopped myself at the very last second from hurting the Sethari.
“Fine,” the doctor says. He leans back, relaxed, and closes his eyes. Now I have to act quickly. I sneak over into Ruthiel’s head, see the number, and am out again in the blink of an eye. Shazuul has opened himself up, receives the number from me, and I am back to being myself again. “789,” Shazuul snarls, and my father sits up with a start. He looks at me suspiciously, then at the Sethari and then looks around the room thoroughly. I know that he is looking for clues that could have revealed the number to a clever observer, for instance, a file with the number 789 that he could have perceived unknowingly. He finds nothing.
“Again,” he orders, and concentrates on a longer number. Shazuul and I repeat the game. It is almost as if I am passing a ball to him, which he takes and shoots into the goal. We are a good team, the Sethari and I, I think happily. We repeat the whole thing two more times, and then I raise my hand.
“That’s enough for now,” I instruct my father, because I am starting to get a little dizzy from jumping back and forth. Anyway, it is disturbing to be in his thoughts, even if I am only there for a split second at a time. Feelings do not wash over me in his head. There is a complete absence of any emotion. That scares me much more than an overabundance of feelings. I can feel hysterical giggling bubbling up inside me when I realize that he is much more like a typical emotionless cyborg than I am. I push it back down and concentrate on the present. “Before I turn him over to you, you need to meet a few of my demands.”
“I do not need your permission to experiment on him,” my father remarks, correctly. He licks his lips.
“That is true,” I admit and allow myself a small smile. “But without my help, he will be of no use to you. I have injected him with a poison, and its effect will spread over the next 45 minutes. I implanted,” I look at him, and see his fingers move towards the red alarm button which would summon the guards from outside the room, “the antidote. So you can forget about ordering your men to search me. Only I know which spot on his body I need to push, to release the antidote into his bloodstream.” Ruthiel weighs his options. Of course, he could make his men work Shazuul over, until they had pushed every spot on his body. But the risk is too high. The antidote might not be released in time, or something might happen to the telepathic alien. 45 minutes are not long when you want to get your hands on a test subject, as urgently as the doctor wants to. He could torture me, or read the contents of my brain – I am sure of it. But this wouldn’t be fast enough, either, given the circumstances.
“What do you want?” he asks, cutting to the chase.
“I want an official contract as your assistant,” I respond promptly. “I have already drawn it up.” With a flourish, I pull out the paper and hold it under his nose. “All you need to do is sign it and send it to the notary. Immediately.” I have to give him credit. Once he has made a decision, he doesn’t hesitate long. He signs the bottom of the document, scans it in and, under my watchful eye, sends it to the officials. Now, it is valid in every earthly court. Of course, he thinks that he is just playing along for now, and that he will get rid of me later, so he can have Shazuul all to himself, but he doesn’t know that I will only be on board the Solarian for a few days. After that, will disappear again.
“I hope you put in a good wage for yourself into the contract.” He manages to make me look like an idiot by emphasizing his generosity. Ruthiel does not worry himself with details as long as he gets what he wants. At the moment, he wants nothing more than to get his hands on Shazuul. I have to take advantage of it.
“It has never been about money for me,” I deflect. It’s true. My best memories are of the times we worked on new projects together. I push these thoughts emphatically to the side. They will just make me go soft towards Ruthiel. I don’t even know if those are real memories or memories he implanted in me, so I would act the way he wants me to. “You know that it was always about knowledge for me. About research for the sake of research.”
“You are hardly recognizable, my child,” he ridicules and stands up. “I assume you want to be part of the testing on the Sethari?” I nod silently. “First, he will need to be in quarantine for three days,” my father determines. As much as he would like to start right away, he is careful when it comes to his other creatures. He will separate Shazuul from the other creatures until he is sure that he does not have any infectious diseases. This gives him a reprieve until the experiments start, and gives me the time I need to find out where Cassie Burnett is. I hope Johar and his companions can find her husband quickly.
“Ah, one more thing,” Ruthiel says, after the two guards have grabbed Shazuul between them and have taken him to the quarantine ward. I pause, and turn around to again look at the man whom I thought of as my father my entire life. “Make sure you stay away from the crew. They are not as tolerant as I am, when it comes to infectious diseases. It is entirely possible that one of them might think that you present an unacceptable risk.” He looks pointedly at the blue lines that make me an outsider. I realize that he is letting me know that my life is worth nothing without his protection. But I just turn the tables back on him.
“Are you telling me that you do not have your own people under control? Surely they wouldn’t take a valued employee out of commission without your blessing?”
He smirks. “Not, they wouldn’t. But an employee who forgets to follow through with her bluff, all the way to the end, is not especially intelligent.”
I can hear him laughing through the closed door, and it echoes even in my tears.