Leviathan Falls

Chapter Thirty-One: Tanaka

Major Ahmadi was a trauma specialist and head of Psychiatric Services on Gewitter Base. She was a short woman, thick through the middle, with close-cropped graying hair and very dark skin. She seems nice. She makes me think of a teacher I hated. She reminds me of my favorite wife, said the chorus of distant voices in her head, that last thought accompanied by the tingle of distantly remembered sexual arousal.

“Your file, the portion I can actually access, says you were orphaned at quite a young age.”

“Yes,” Tanaka said. She shifted uncomfortably in her chair. Ahmadi’s office was all dark paneling and soft surfaces, intended to create a feeling of safety, comfort, and shared intimacy. It looked like every other head shrinker’s office Tanaka had seen, though she usually saw them as the final step in the interrogation process. After you’d fully broken the subject’s will with more intense techniques, and you were trying to build the rapport that let them feel like you were now friends as they spilled their guts.

After a few moments of waiting for her to elaborate, Ahmadi said, “Over forty years serving with front-line combat units. Though the nature of those deployments is largely classified.”

“Yes,” Tanaka said again.

“And you were recently shot in the face and had to be brought here for reconstructive surgery.”

Tanaka touched the bandage that covered half of her face. “That in my file too? Or are you just stunningly observant?”

Ahmadi didn’t take the bait. She smiled and touched something on the datapad that sat on her lap as if it were just coincidence and not her taking notes.

“You have led a life of more or less constant trauma.”

“Thank you for the flattery, but we can skip this part.”

“I’m not flattering you,” Ahmadi said. “I’m holding up a little mirror and asking you to look in it. You’ve been living in fight-or-flight mode essentially since you were a child. Everything a child is supposed to be able to rely on was ripped away from you without warning.”

“I’m not here to talk about my parents.”

“We can start anywhere you like. It’s all connected.”

“You sound like you already have me pegged.”

“I wouldn’t go that far, but…” She shrugged. “I’m good at what I do. Most of your file is classified, but what’s available to me tells a compelling story. No long-term relationships. You’ve never lived anywhere longer than a year. You refused an advanced scholarship in order to enlist. You’ve repeatedly refused promotion so that you could stay a field officer. You’ve been on the run for a long time.”

Tanaka felt her hands curl into fists. “Running from what?”

“I don’t know,” Ahmadi said. “But this seems to be the first time you’ve ever sought out counseling.”

“Yes.”

“Why are you here?” Ahmadi said, making another note on her pad. The way she wrote without ever breaking eye contact with her subject seemed like a skill she must have spent a lot of time practicing. It was a little creepy.

The need to move in her overly soft chair was finally too much, and Tanaka stood up. Her legs tingled like there was a low-level electric current running through the muscles, so she walked across the room and pretended to examine a painting on the far wall. It was a neo-impressionist rendering of Laconia’s capital city at night, done in thick oil paints. The painter had studied Imogene Batia or someone in her school. The way it was painted made it seem like the observer was looking out through a window in the pouring rain. She wondered if Ahmadi had painted it herself, or if she’d had it shipped out from Laconia when she’d taken the assignment on Gewitter Base. I used to paint, said a voice in her head.

Ahmadi cleared her throat, and Tanaka realized the doctor had asked a question that had never been answered.

“Did you paint this yourself?” Tanaka asked.

“Why are you here?” Ahmadi repeated.

Tanaka turned to face her again, throwing her full focus at the counselor and waiting for the flinch. Tristan had once told her that when she was annoyed, she radiated Don’t fuck with me. Most people took a subconscious step back.

Ahmadi smiled and rested her hand on the datapad. Tanaka had a vague and uneasy sense of having been outplayed.

“I was present at… something,” Tanaka finally said. “It is part of my mission to understand it.”

“And you don’t?”

Tanaka turned back to the painting. If Aunt Akari had let her study art history instead of enlisting in active service, where would she be right now? And who would be tracking down the high consul? What else—how many thousands of other things—would be different?

A flash of a woman very like Ahmadi blinking at her with sleepy eyes on a bed covered with white sheets. God, I used to love waking up next to her, someone thought in Tanaka’s head.

“Something happened,” Tanaka said, surprised to hear her own voice saying the words.

Ahmadi nodded. She looked… not sympathetic. Not pitying. She looked like she was weary too. Like she’d led a life of having the rug pulled out from under her, and she knew how much it hurt. She gestured toward the chair in invitation. “Tell me about it.”

Tanaka sat. Don’t tell her, she’s mean. Tell her, she always loved you, competed in her head.

“There was an incident in the ring space,” Tanaka said, softly. “I was there. You can’t know this.”

“Colonel,” Ahmadi said, “because of the nature of my work I have very high-level classified clearance. The empire has to be able to trust me with state secrets a patient might reveal during a counseling session. I take this aspect of my job very seriously.”

“If you didn’t, they’d send you to the Pen. Would have. I guess now they’d just shoot you.”

Ahmadi nodded and set her datapad aside. The canny operative in Tanaka recognized the theater in all of it, but she could feel it working anyway. Ahmadi wanted to listen. It made Tanaka want to talk.

“There was an incursion. There were cognitive effects. Like when everyone lost consciousness, only not that. The people who were there… connected. Mind to mind. Memory to memory. I was in other people’s minds.”

“It’s not an uncommon hallucination—”

“I checked it out. It was true. Everyone I could confirm played out. We were in each other’s heads. It was real.” She was trembling. She didn’t know why she was trembling. Ahmadi was very still. “Do you believe me?”

“I do.”

Tanaka nodded slowly. “I can’t have anyone inside my head.”

“Because that’s yours,” Ahmadi said. “That’s the only place that’s yours.”

“I have… outlets.”

“Outlets?”

“I have secrets. That are… mine. It’s the way I make room for myself in the world. By having secrets, I can still exist. I love Laconia because if I got caught, it would matter.”

“Do you want to tell me what those secrets are?”

Tanaka shook her head.

“Since the incident, I have been having… experiences.”

“Experiences,” Ahmadi echoed.

“Voices, but not like command hallucinations. Images from lives I haven’t lived, faces of people I’ve never met. Feelings. Deep, overwhelming feelings from situations I’ve never been in. And I am afraid that somewhere out there, someone is having that same experience… of me.”

Ahmadi took in a long, deep breath, and let it out slowly. Her expression was somber.

“I’m going to ask you if I can use your name,” Ahmadi said. Then, “May I call you by your given name?”

Tanaka nodded. For some reason it was difficult to talk. Something was wrong with her throat.

“Aliana? I am going to ask you if I can take your hand. May I take your hand?”

“Yes,” Tanaka said, but it was barely a whisper.

The thick, matronly woman leaned forward. Her fingers were strong, her skin was dry. Tanaka shuddered.

“Aliana, I feel that you are describing intimate assault.”

“No one touched me.”

“You have a very important, very private personal boundary. It was violated without your permission or consent. Is that right? Please, if I’m wrong, say. I want to understand.”

“They’re in my mind. I can’t keep them out. They’re going to know things that they can’t know.” She thought that her voice sounded very calm, all things considered. Ahmadi nodded.

“And you’re telling me that this… thing. It’s ongoing? It’s still happening right now?”

Tanaka felt herself still. Ahmadi let go of her hand and walked smoothly backward until her desk was between them. The psychiatrist’s eyes were wide and her cheeks were flushed. Prey response. Whatever training the woman had gone through, it had made her sensitive enough to recognize danger. For a moment, Tanaka considered all the ways that she could kill the woman. There were several. None of them would put her in any physical danger, and two of them would be cathartic.

For a moment, the other selves were quiet too, as if they were just as frightened as the head shrinker. That was interesting, but it was for later. Now, in this room, Tanaka spread her hands, palms out and fingers splayed. The universal gesture for I’m unarmed. Ahmadi didn’t come back around her desk. Smart woman.

“I believe you have understood the situation,” Tanaka said, as carefully as if the syllables could cut her lips.

“I can see why you’ve been struggling. That sounds… terrible.”

“It is. Can you fix it?”

“There are some things I think we can try—”

Tanaka waved the words away, and Ahmadi went quiet. “I have to stop this. I can’t feel this anymore. Do you understand?”

“I do.”

The other woman licked her lips, and Tanaka had the visceral memory of someone who looked similar but with a broader face and a higher hairline, doing the same thing. She pushed the thought away.

“There may be some interventions,” Ahmadi said. “There are medicines that we use to reduce intrusive thoughts. Assuming the mechanism is similar, they could be very effective.”

“Good.”

“If inpatient care is an option for you, there are some focused magnetic treatments that we could try. Things that can blunt your experience.”

“But not stop it.”

“I don’t know what it is,” she said. “I will help you find out, though. I promise you that, Aliana. As terrible as this is, you don’t have to go through it alone.”

She didn’t see the irony in her choice of phrase, and Tanaka wasn’t in the mood to walk her through it. Her body felt like she’d had a bad virus. Weary until her muscles were falling off her bones. The storm in her head was still there, but not overwhelming at the moment. She didn’t trust that. Being tired made her vulnerable and weak. It didn’t make her free from the others.

“Let’s try the medications first,” she said.

“I’ll have them for you right away.”

Tanaka stood up. The station swayed under her, and she wanted nothing more than to close her eyes. “I think that’s enough for today.”

“We still have time, if you want to—”

“I think that’s enough for today. Have the medications delivered to my quarters here on the station. I’ll take them.”

“I’d like to see you again.” It was a bold statement, and they both knew it. Tanaka lowered her head. Ahmadi squared her shoulders. When she spoke, her voice was lower, calmer, more reassuring, more like it had been when Tanaka had first come in the office. “You are in crisis right now. But you’re also an incredibly strong person. You’ve never met anything that could stop you before, so you believe you can grit your teeth and force your way through it. And truthfully, you probably can. But Aliana, you can’t heal from this. Not without help.”

When Tanaka spoke, it was deliberately using the other woman’s cadence and intonation. Not quite mocking her, not quite not. “You believe I am suffering an ongoing, unstoppable intimate assault.”

“I do.”

“And you think that’s something I can heal from?”

“I would like to help you.”

“I would like to be helped,” Tanaka said. “Send me the pills. We’ll go from there.”

The station was unfamiliar enough to hold her attention. The puzzle of reading the signs, finding her way to the transport tubes, picking the right lift to get her to her quarters, all kept her from thinking too much about anything else. When she got there, things were worse.

Her rooms were simple, spare, and elegant. The color scheme was mostly a dusty red designed to highlight the splashes of Laconian blue. The decoration was minimalist and tasteful: a calligraphic print of a passage of the high consul’s writings, a crystal vase with a single flower in it that was replaced each day by the staff, a floor covering designed to evoke tatami mats. There was nothing in it to distract her from her impulses and thoughts.

She ordered food to the room: curried fish and a dry white wine. Someone in her head remembered an apartment with blue-green walls of chipping paint and a couch made from foam and cloth. It was a happy memory, but Tanaka didn’t know why. Someone else had eaten a bad fish curry, and the echo of a night recovering from food poisoning wafted through her awareness and vanished again, thin as cigarette smoke.

The medication arrived at almost the same time as the food. A glassine packet with ten peach-colored pills in it and the printed directions to take one each morning and to avoid alcohol. She dry-swallowed two of them, then chased them with a long swig from the wine bottle. The curry was punishingly hot, just as she’d hoped. It gave her an excuse to polish off the wine. By the time she was finished, a deep ache was growing at the base of her skull, but she had the sense that the memories and thoughts were a little less, the voices a little quieter.

The room’s system chimed. A connection request from the Derecho. She checked her hand terminal. There were half a dozen messages from Botton queued there, but she’d forgotten to take off her privacy settings after Ahmadi. She turned them off now and accepted the connection through the room. A wall screen came to life, and Botton’s head filled it.

“Colonel,” he said. “I am very sorry to interrupt. I wouldn’t if you hadn’t specifically asked for immediate updates.”

Had she asked for immediate updates? She didn’t remember doing it, but it sounded like something she would have done. The ache at the base of her skull grew a little more intense.

“It’s fine,” she said. “What seems to be the problem?”

“We had a high-priority report from the Science Directorate on Laconia. Dr. Ochida’s office flagged it as critical.”

“What did it say?”

Botton blinked. “I don’t know, Colonel. I’m not cleared.”

She knew that. She should have known. “Of course. Send it to me. I’ll take it here.”

“Colonel,” the captain said, and then vanished. He was replaced with an encrypted datafile. As she ran the decryption, she wondered what the effect of alcohol was on her new medication. If it beat the hell out of her liver and kidneys, it might still be worth the damage. If it made the meds less effective, though…

She ordered another bottle of wine anyway.

Ochida appeared on the screen. He looked as clean and crisp as ever. She recognized the room he was in. Not the Science Directorate, but the State Building. That meant whatever he was telling her, he’d likely already told Trejo.

“Colonel,” he said. “I hope you’re well.”

“Fuck you,” Tanaka said to the recording with a polite nod.

“We were feeding the data you sent us through the virtual intelligence and pattern-matching systems here, and we came up with something interesting. Take a look at this.”

The screen jumped. Where Ochida had been, there was the ring space. Telescopic images, tactical map, scatter data. She didn’t need to look at the time stamp. She recognized the sequence like it was a well-studied painting. It was the gap between when the Derecho had entered the ring space and the transit of the Preiss. It was the last few moments that her mind had been her own.

The images ticked forward frame by frame, slowed down by the analytic software. She watched the ships inch forward in their arcs, the tactical display tracking each of them. The dissipating drive plume into Bara Gaon that had misled her. The flicker of the Preiss’s drive as it began to go dutchman. And then whiteness. The annihilating brightness of a thousand rings bursting into light.

Not just the rings, though.

Tanaka sat forward. The data images shifted, bringing the ring station at the center of the space into clearer focus. It was glowing with a sudden, violent brightness just like the rings. The visual telescopy shifted closer, diving in toward the surface of the station. There was a flaw there. A dark spot like dust on the lens. Or no, not that. Something on the surface of the station itself. The weird patterning of the structure made it hard to make sense of until the virtual intelligence stripped out the background.

It was a small, dark oval. An overlay gave a sense of scale. Not large at all. Smaller than her quarters on Gewitter. The adrenaline hit her system even before the comparison image came up. The egg-shaped ships from the grotto on Laconia. And the match certainty: 98.7 percent.

“You son of a bitch,” she whispered. “There you are.”