Kamikaze by Jayel

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Kamikaze, Part 10
by Jayel

I awoke before dawn the next morning to Magus shaking me like a rat. "Come on, Doc," she ordered. "I can't handle this one alone."

"What are you talking about?" I asked, still too groggy to really comprehend what was going on. "It's still dark . . . where's Alonzo?"

"Funny you should ask," she said, dragging me upright and throwing me my boots. "He, Danziger, and Wolman have gone insane. They're in there opening Devon's cold sleep capsule."

"What?!" I jumped to my feet and ran out onto the dewy grass, grabbing up my kit but leaving the boots behind. "They can't be--they don't even have the code to unlock--"

"I know," Magus interrupted. "That's why it's taking all three of them to do it. Come on."

Inside the EVE ship, we found Alonzo and Wolman steadying the capsule while Danziger attacked the lock with an axe. "John, no!" I yelled. "What are you doing?"

"It's okay," Alonzo said, stopping me from stopping John. "Uly's right--we have to get her out of there."

"Are you insane?" I demanded. "If you take her out of there, she'll die--you guys heard me explain that to Ulysses."

"She's dying anyway," John said, giving the lock another solid whack. "Let her at least know what's going on."

"She's too far gone to know," Magus insisted. "Right, Doc?"

"Exactly." I started toward John again, fumbling in my kit for a sedaderm, but Alonzo caught hold of me and wouldn't let go. "Alonzo, he is killing her--"

"No, he isn't," Wolman insisted stubbornly, bracing harder against the capsule. "I've got her, John. Hit it again."

"No!" I screamed, struggling to get free. "Magus, for pity's sake, stop him!"

Magus looked as if she meant to obey, but then she looked at Wolman's determined face and stopped. "I . . . maybe they're right," she said hesitantly.

"It's okay, Doc, I promise," Alonzo soothed, sounding so sane and certain I was sure he was crazy. "I dreamed it . . . the Terrians think that Devon being a part of this ship is giving EVE more power over them, strengthening her--its--connection to the dream plane. Devon is dreaming, and the cold sleep monitors are hooking into her dreams."

"They're also keeping her alive," I pointed out hotly. "And we're supposed to be figuring out how to shut EVE down, remember?"

"Either way, Devon's gotta come out," Danziger said. Turning the axe around, he dealt the lock a final heavy blow with the blunt side, shattering it. The cold sleep vapors began seeping, then flooding around the broken seal.

"Don't breathe that!" I ordered as Wolman opened the door and Devon's limp body fell forward into John's arms. "You guys are way out of line here--"

"Punish us later," John snapped, carrying Devon toward the door. "Right now we need you to hook her up to life support." Alonzo let me go and followed them, as did Magus and Wolman.

"Sure," I said bitterly to no one but the dimly glowing lights of the empty ship. "No problem."

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I managed to stabilize Devon's condition at "critical in the extreme." Her bodily systems continued to fail at an ever-increasing rate, but her brain functions continued to register high levels of creative energy--she was still dreaming up a storm. I put everything I possibly could under the supervision and control of a machine and prayed we could release her from whatever was causing her illness before she shut down completely.

Needless to say I had plenty of witnesses as I worked. Everyone in the Eden Project came by at least once while I stabilized her and most of them stayed. Yale and Danziger stood on either side of the doorway like sentinels, each looking as if he would have gladly taken Devon's place given the option. Ulysses sat at Danziger's feet, just watching. And Alonzo had taken up a vigil right beside Devon's cot. He hadn't spoken to me or anyone else since we'd left the wreck. Now he looked . . . well, like a Terrian, actually. He was squatting, not sitting, by the cot with his brown eyes closed and both hands clasped around one of Devon's cold, slender arms. Just looking at him made me want to cry with fear and frustration and the jealousy I pretended I couldn't feel.

"So that's the famous Devon," Tara said softly, coming in. I thought the sound of her voice might make Alonzo at least look up, but he didn't move a muscle. "She's quite a looker."

"You should see her when she's not half-dead," I said, trying not to sound as perturbed as I felt.

Tara shot me an amused glance but wisely made no comment. "Come on," she said. "You and I have work to do."

Suddenly the idea of staying in the medtent didn't seem so bad. I had known, of course, that we would eventually have to turn EVE back on, that I would eventually have to confront Reilly again. But I had managed to push the idea to the back of my mind, keeping the screaming horror of it manageable by simply pretending it wasn't there. But now it was time to face it, and horror was all I could feel. "Yes," I said, my mouth turning dry as cotton. "I guess we do." I started picking up objects--a clipboard, a medkit, VR gear, anything I could think of that might help or at least postpone the moment when we actually walked out the door. "I don't know what to bring," I confessed, looking up at Tara helplessly.

"Nothing," she said, trying to flash her signature grin but only managing a scared-looking grimace. "None of this stuff is gonna be any help anyway."

The strange thing was that seeing her feel fear made my own a bit more bearable.

Suddenly, I could think again. "I'll bring the gear and the kit," I decided.

Val was waiting for us at the door of the EVE ship. "What are you doing here?" Tara asked lightly.

"I want to watch," he answered, opening the door. "And you're not going to stop me."

"Val, please," she began, obviously resuming a longstanding argument.

"Tara, enough," he said firmly, putting his hands on her shoulders. "If you're going in there, I'm going in there." He tilted her chin up, making her look him in the eye. "Share and share alike, for better or worse, remember?"

Her bittersweet smile would have made the most hardened anti-romantic's heart melt. It just made me remember that my love was watching vigil over somebody else. "I remember," she said, kissing him quickly on the lips. "So come on already."

"Where's Alonzo?" Val asked me, following us in.

"Watching Devon," I replied. "Apparently he wants to be the first to know when what he and John did kills her."

I saw them exchange a significant look--Val raised his eyebrows, and Tara shook her head ever so slightly. For a moment, I was so jealous of their intimacy I hated them both. Then I turned the corner and saw the central console Elizabeth had used to bring EVE to life and even my jealousy was forgotten.

"Good lord," Tara breathed. "I've seen this . . . this is home."

"Are you okay?" Val asked.

"Fine," she replied, shaking her head as if to clear it. "It's just so familiar--this was my parent's computer on the stations . . ."

"Good," I said brusquely, sitting down at Bennett's keyboard. "So let's fire her up." Now that we were committed to doing this insanity, I wanted to get it over as quickly as possible.

"Wait," she said. "Not there." She went over to the wall and ran her fingers along what appeared to be a purely decorative groove running parallel to the floor. Suddenly a semi-circle of flat black tabletop slid out of the wall. The center of the curve opened up to reveal a glossy black screen. "Let's use this instead," she said, pulling up a chair.

"What is it?" Val asked.

"A direct-line console, my sweetest love," she said with an impish grin. "No keyboard required. Bennett made it for me. He thought it would contain my . . . light."

"Did it work?" I asked.

She glanced up at me, her eyes too bright, and I could see she was terrified. "Not really," she admitted with a shaky smile. "But it's probably the best chance we have." She turned her attention back to the screen, concentrating for a moment. "Hang on to whatever you hold dearest," she said at last.

She laid her hands lightly, palms down, on the plain black table-top, and suddenly the screen burst into brightlycolored light which threatened to spill over the edges. "Don't look directly at it," Val instructed, shouting to me over a roar I hadn't realized I heard. I tried to concentrate on the sound, to analyze its component parts, and I realized it was actually a babble, like thousands of voices all speaking at once.

"Have you ever seen her do this before?" I shouted back.

"Oh, once or twice," he said. "Be ready to run . . . it may get away from her."

Tara was staring at the pulsating lights which were now more concentrated around the screen than confined to it-- it was like she had conjured up a holo of a nuclear reaction about six inches in front of her eyes. "You guys get out!" she called--or at least her voice rang out over the babbling roar--her lips didn't move at all.

"Turn it off!" Val yelled back. "You hear me, Tara? Let it go, right now--"

Suddenly the center console let out its own war-whoop of expanding energy, seeming to suck power from Tara's screen in a whirlwind. The holographic image of Reilly we had seen before sprang to life on its circling screen.

"Why look who's here," Reilly said sarcastically. "My two favorite little girls in all the universe. And one of them's brought her pet pilot."

The image was much more vivid than the one Elizabeth had brought up--it was as if we could simply step through the screen and touch him. Or punch him. Or rip his smirking face to pieces . . .

"I'm glad you're so happy to see us," Tara said in a voice I barely recognized. I had never noticed it before, but her usual accent was as "Dixie-fied" as Val's, to use Morgan's word--moonlight and magnolias. But now the drawl was simply gone, replaced with the crisp diction I had heretofore subconsciously associated with my superiors-- my teachers, the Council. Mostly, she sounded like Reilly. "We had no idea we were your favorites," she continued.

"Don't be absurd, my darling daughter," he said with infuriating good humor. " I'm sure you're perfectly aware of just how much I've missed you. I told your husband just a few months ago how eager I was to see you again." He turned his attention from her to me for a moment. "And surely Citizen Heller realizes how important she has made herself to our success. I'm so pleased the two of you have met." He was fairly beaming with satisfaction. "Why, in a sense, you could even be called sisters."

"We are rather close," Tara said coolly. "You should have quit while you were ahead, Papa. You couldn't even control me. How did you ever imagine you could control Julia? She's much smarter and much stronger than I am, and you never even pretended to care about her."

"Don't sell yourself short, Tara Reilly," he shot back, looking almost rattled. It was as if he really did care about Tara. But then the moment passed, and he was his old unfeeling self again. "Or me, for that matter," he continued. "You haven't beaten me yet."

"Haven't I?" she replied easily, getting up from her chair, but keeping one hand resting lightly on the console. "As I see it, you're trapped in my father's creation--my real father, Bennett. You remember him, don't you, the one who actually did love me? He explained to me exactly how this friend of yours, EVE, worked. He even gave me my own little access. Now that I've found you, it should be a fairly simple matter to shut you down."

Reilly's eyes widened perceptibly, but his smile never slipped. "Ah yes, but you'll be shutting your friends down in the process," he said. "Or hasn't Heller explained all that to you yet?"

"That will be unfortunate," she replied, returning her attention to her screen, which now seemed two-dimensional again, though still pulsing with light. "They're all quite sweet, really." Her eyes were frighteningly blue, absorbing rather than reflecting the light from the screen, and I realized I was clutching Val's arm so hard my nails were white.

"But as I see it, they're doomed anyway," Tara went on. "By destroying you, I'll simply be putting them out of their collective misery, leaving the planet free and clear for me and my husband. As for the rest of the colonists, I assume, meglomaniac that you are, that you loaded connections into their neural nets as well, so when you die, they simply won't wake up." She glanced up from the screen and smiled at Reilly, ignoring us entirely. "As for the Terrians, I think that once I rid them of this terrible scourge on their highly evolved metaphysical environment, they'll be sufficiently grateful to allow us to live out the rest of our days in perfect peace."

"And you think this sentimental fool will go along with that?" Reilly asked, gesturing dismissively toward Val. "He is real, isn't he? He isn't just one of your clever little projections?"

"Oh, he's real, all right," Tara replied with a laugh. "Aren't you, baby? And he'll go along with anything I say."

My vision was clouding, and for a moment I thought quite lucidly that I was about to faint, that I was so frightened and angry that I was losing consciousness. Then suddenly I was looking at something else, a series of doors, like one of the long corridors at the medical research institute on the stations, only the walls and floor and ceiling were all vibrating with glowing light. Only the doors were dark and solid. I could still hear Tara and Reilly exchanging barbed pleasantries as if from somewhere far, far behind me and I could still feel the tense muscle of Val's arm under my clutching fingers, but my eyes thought I was walking down this corridor alone, looking at one door after another. All of them were blank, but suddenly I knew what was behind each one--each one was a file! A file within EVE--this was where Elizabeth had sent Yale before to eliminate the virus. The doors came rushing by faster and faster as I ran, turning corner after corner. Suddenly I knew the one just ahead was the download switch, the way to transfer everything if I could only reach the knob and turn it--

Then the corridor exploded in a holocaust of light and I was falling--it felt like I fell forever, but it couldn't have been more than a few inches, just back into Val's arms. I blinked hard and saw his face, then the room behind him. The central screen was dark again, and Tara was slumped over her console, apparently unconscious. Her palms were glowing with the eerie light we had seen before, as were her eyelids and lips, and her skin was burned a painful, purplish red.

"Oh no," Val said, letting me go and running to her. "Help her, Doc, please."

"Don't touch me," she croaked, waving him away but keeping her eyes tightly shut. The light falling from her open mouth looked ridiculous. "Wait just a minute . . . I'm all right, but I can't be touched just yet." The glow from her hands, eyelids, and lips slowly faded, and she opened her eyes. "That was nearly it," she said, grinning up at us, her drawl back in full force. "We almost did it."

"Almost did what?" I demanded, reaching for my medkit. "What did we almost do? Kill us all? Destroy Eden Advance so you and Val could live with the Terrians?"

"Doc, I was bluffing," she said, apparently shocked and hurt. "Didn't you realize? I had to keep him distracted while you looked for the switch." She got up rather unsteadily and grabbed my shoulder. "And you found it."

"Why her?" Val asked, rather incongruously, I thought. "Why not me?"

"You're not part of the network, baby," Tara explained patiently. "You couldn't have found it." She ran her hands back through her hair as if putting herself together again. "Now all we have to do is figure out how to transfer everyone and make the transfer stick."

"Wait a minute," I demanded. "I found something, yes, but how do we know it was--"

"You know," she said. "You knew as soon as you saw it, didn't you?"

I had to admit she was right--I've never been so certain of anything as I had been that the door I found was the one I wanted. "Okay, but it didn't work, right? That explosion--"

"Yeah, that smarts a bit," Tara admitted. "We weren't quite fast enough; Reilly caught on too quickly and shut me down--"

"So now he'll know what you're up to," Val said.

"Not necessarily," she said. "You forget, he's a computer. When he shut me down, he pulled his own plug, and he probably lost a lot of new data--he may not even 'remember' we had that conversation. But Julia is a person, and she will remember exactly where that door is next time. She can go through and show the rest of the Eden Project the way as well."

I couldn't get over the difference in her. This was the Tara we had met in the speakeasy--friendly, warm, devoutly to be trusted, hanging on her husband's every glance and eager to save the Eden Project and any other good cause that came along. But just as vivid was the memory of the other Tara, the cool, calculating computer genius who had called our annihilation "unfortunate" but inevitable, the one who seemed perfectly at home with Citizen Reilly. Which one was real?

Obviously Val believed in this one and believed he could control her. "Angel, what if he doesn't 'forget'?" he asked. "It's too risky; I mean, look at you. Reilly almost fried you alive--what will he do if you try again? I think it's time to cut our losses--"

"We can't," she said sharply, a hint of the other Tara creeping into her tone. "It's the only option we have."

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