Leviathan Falls

Chapter Thirty-Eight: Elvi

The laboratory was still in an organized kind of chaos. The old setup had been taken down before they left Adro with no reason to think it would be reconstructed anytime soon. Now all the pieces were coming back out, laid down in familiar lines for an unfamiliar purpose. It reminded her of an autopsy. Everything in place, but not functioning.

Or at least not functioning yet.

Rebuilding it was easier and faster than creating it the first time had been. The medical couch already knew the baseline for Cara and Amos. The long months they had spent calibrating the system made recalibrating it simpler. The sensors were already in place, and the territory they were sampling—the station—many orders of magnitude smaller than the Adro diamond.

It should have felt better, but with every cable that came out from storage, every monitor that was paired with some part of the sensors or the medical couch, Elvi felt a little more anxious, the knot in her stomach a little tighter. She couldn’t say exactly what she was frightened of, only that she was frightened.

The crew worked with the efficiency of a well-drilled military. Someone who didn’t know what they were looking at would have heard a cacophony of voices, everyone talking over everyone else. She could see the structure in it. She knew that Oran Alberts and Susan Yi were ringing the power lines to make sure there was a minimum of noise in the system. Weyrick and Cole were preparing the sync between the medical couch’s NIR scanners and the signal processing deck. Jenna and Harshaan were feeding the system backups into the secondary array. They were three distinct conversations like three melodies played simultaneously that sounded discordant until you understood how they all fit together.

With twelve hours still to go before the dive began, Fayez came to the lab. There was a tightness he got around the corners of his eyes sometimes when he was tense. She put the potentiometer back in its case to calibrate later and launched herself over to him, lifting an eyebrow when he met her gaze.

“New briefing came in from Ochida,” he said.

“Want to go see if he’s figured it all out for us?”

“Hope springs eternal.” Fayez turned and led the way back to her office.

Since Naomi had accepted Trejo’s offer of cooperation, Elvi hadn’t heard from the admiral. She wasn’t sure what her status was with him or with Laconia, but she was very aware of having humiliated the de facto military dictator of the empire. It wasn’t the sort of thing that ended well for people, historically speaking. It still wasn’t in her top five biggest worries.

Ochida, on the other hand, seemed to have embraced a strategy of almost transcendental denial. His reports and the information flowing through him from the rest of the Science Directorate were absolutely unchanged. On the screen in her office, his smile was bright and genuine, and the data he shared with her showed every sign of being complete, accurate, and unabridged.

The survey team had found what they believed to be the bullet at San Esteban, which was interesting. The bullets—scars in the fabric of space-time according to the most popular theory—seemed to accompany each of the intrusions into reality by the dark gods inside the gates. They were relatively small, cosmologically speaking, though the implications of their existence were a fundamental alteration in humanity’s understanding of the cosmos. Back in what were quickly becoming the good old days, they’d been easier to locate because they appeared in proximity to whatever had triggered them. The hundreds or thousands or hundreds of thousands of experiments by the enemy since then should in theory have produced just as many small, persistent anomalies, but without being tied to a human object, action, or frame of reference, finding them made needles and haystacks look trivial.

On San Esteban, the break in reality was several meters wide, almost undetectable by instrumentation but very apparent to human conscious experience, and floating half a klick above the moon of one of the minor rocky inner planets. The team was turning all its attention to gathering data from it in hopes that variations between the bullets might yield something critical about the mechanisms behind them.

“What?” Fayez asked.

Elvi looked at him, confused.

“You made a noise. You grunted.”

“Oh. I was just thinking. This would have been massive news. Maybe more important than what we were getting out of Adro. But now?”

“Nothing takes your mind off the guy pointing a gun at you like already being on fire,” Fayez said. “San Esteban was the biggest threat we could imagine, until Duarte showed back up.”

“Duarte’s not trying to kill us.”

“You sure it wouldn’t be better if he were?”

Elvi moved on. Ochida’s report on what he was calling “spontaneous alocal cognitive cross-connections” only left her stomach tighter, her jaw aching. The effect was being reported in all systems now. There was a distinctly larger response in places where the ships present during the initial event had gone afterward—Bara Gaon, Nieuwestad, Clarke, Sao Paulo—that suggested an infection-like contact transmission, but there were also suggestions of activity clusters between systems with low physical contact and high communicative load. The greatest predictor of suffering the hive mind effect was having someone who was already affected be aware of you. The epidemiologists were building a model of transmission-by-awareness, and hoped to have a fuller report soon. An intrusive image appeared in Elvi’s mind—a vast, bright, interconnected network like the cells in a brain or the relationships in a city, with one node turning deep bloodred, then the ones around it, and the ones connected to those, and on and on.

The longest chain of connection between any two human beings wasn’t more than seven or eight connections. Even as vast as humanity had become, as far as they’d flung themselves into the universe, they were still too damn close.

“That doesn’t look good for us,” Elvi said.

“We could make an argument that Colonel Tanaka and her whole crew need to be in sensory deprivation tanks as a sanitary precaution. That might be fun.”

Ochida was moving on to a follow-up report on the death reports from San Esteban when a soft knock interrupted them. When Elvi opened the door, Cara was there. Her face was tight and she held her hands in front of her like she was singing in a choir. Elvi knew what had brought her there before the girl spoke.

“I heard,” Cara said. “There’s a dive?”

“We’re going to try using the catalyst to open a path into the ring station, yes,” Elvi said. “But it’s not like going into the diamond. Same equipment, different job.”

“I should go in. You should send me.”

“Amos Burton is going to—”

“I have more experience,” Cara said. “I understand how it works in there better than he does.”

Elvi raised her hands, seeing as she did it how condescending the gesture was. “It’s not like that. This is a different artifact. It’s unlikely to behave in the same way. There’s no reason to think your experience in Adro will translate to this. And the dependency issue—”

The rage in Cara’s expression was as sudden as flipping a page. When she spoke, her voice had a hornet’s-nest buzz. Fayez shifted closer to Elvi.

“Dependency is bullshit. It’s bullshit, and we both know it.”

“It’s real,” Elvi said. “I can show you the data. The serotonin and dopamine levels—”

Cara shook her head once, a movement of controlled violence. A voice in Elvi’s mind said You did this. This is your fault. It sounded like Burton, filled with a flat, matter-of-fact rage.

“I understand the risks,” Cara said. “I’ve always understood the risks. You’re going to save me from addiction by blowing our best chance to survive? Does that make any sense to you?”

Fayez shifted, trying to bring the girl’s wrath away from Elvi. “I don’t think that’s exactly—”

“Look in a fucking mirror, Doc,” Cara said. “You don’t get to tell me how important my health is while you’re spending your own like that. If you don’t matter, why are you pretending that I do? Is it because I look like a teenager? Keep your fucking maternal instinct to yourself.”

“There’s a difference,” Elvi said, “between missing a few exercise sessions and intentionally exposing a research subject to risk. What I do with my own body—”

“I get to pick what I do with my body too!” Cara’s voice was a roar now. The need and hunger in her eyes was feral. “You treat me like a child because I look like a child, but I’m not.”

She could have just as easily said You treat me like a human because I look like a human. It would have been as true. Elvi felt something deep in her chest settle. An ancient instinct, deep in her, told her that showing weakness now was a step toward death. She summoned the coldness of decades in academia.

“I don’t think you’re a child, but I am the lead researcher here, and in my judgment you aren’t the right subject for this test. If you want to try assaulting me into changing my mind, this is your opportunity.”

Cara went still for a moment, and then deflated. “You’re just doing this because you’re scared of him,” she said, but there was no heat behind it. Cara turned and pulled herself away down the corridor. The guilt was a knot in Elvi’s throat, but she didn’t let herself soften. There would be time later to make amends.

She hoped there would.

“This is Tanaka. The girl and I are in position.”

Elvi made one last look around the lab. Amos was in place, strapped into the medical couch. They’d taken his shirt off to place the sensors, and the black, chitinous mass of scar where he’d been shot on New Egypt shimmered in the light like oil on water. A white ceramic feed line had been inserted into a vein in his arm and taped down to hold it in place. His body’s rapid healing kept trying to push the needle back out again.

He seemed at ease and mildly amused by it all.

The technicians and science team were at their stations. Where the readouts of the BFE had been, images of the ring station flickered and jumped. Elvi felt vaguely nauseated. She didn’t remember the last time she’d eaten.

“Understood,” she said. “We are starting the dive now. Stand by.” She dropped the external connection. “Last chance to back out.”

Amos smiled at her. It was the same expression he’d have used if she’d told a joke or offered him a beer. The medical readouts showed his heartbeat low and steady, his cortisol levels low. Either his resurrection had been more transformative than Cara’s or he was just really hard to scare. He gave her a thumbs-up and stretched. Jim, tucked in a corner, seemed like a ghost trying to keep out of the paths where someone might walk through him. She half regretted letting him come observe.

She shifted her connection to the catalyst’s chamber.

“Are you good to go?”

“We are,” Fayez said. “The chamber is going to be a little tight for Cara and Xan both, but I think we’ll be all right. As long as no one starts getting claustrophobic.”

“All right then. Take out the catalyst.”

She could have pulled up a video feed, watched Fayez and his techs open the chamber, wheel out the catalyst, and usher the two not-quite-children into the place it had been. She kept her attention on Amos and the station instead. She heard when the chamber closed.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Harshaan Lee said, “by the numbers and by the book.” And then, more quietly, “If any book applies.”

Gently, a technician fed the pale cocktail of sedatives into Amos’ thick, ropy arm. The black eyes closed.

“Catalyst is out,” Fayez said, but she could already tell. The activity on the ring station shifted like an eye turning toward them. Magnetic fields reached out where none had been before, and the rhythm of seismic and energetic activity changed. The activity in Amos’ brain shifted as well.

“Look for a matching pattern, please,” Lee said. “If this is similar to our green friend in Adro, we should find an echo of the subject.”

But the technicians weren’t listening. Every head was bent to a screen, every hand on the controls. The Falcon seemed to hum with raw human attention. Elvi’s heart tapped impatiently at her breastbone.

“I’m seeing…” one of the geology group said, then stopped.

Time became very slow. On the screens, pattern-matching systems fed the intimate signals of Amos Burton’s brain and body into one input and the data from the ring station into another, fitting one to the other a million times a second and looking for a match. Cascades of green and yellow flickered as the man and the artifact fell in and out of synchrony. Amos sighed once, like a commentary on something just a little disappointing.

“I have something that resembles the handshake,” the woman at the informatics station said. Her tone was artificially flat, trying very hard to hide her excitement. “It began twenty seconds ago from… mark.”

“Confirmed. They’re talking.”

Elvi pulled herself to the medical couch. Amos’ face was empty as a mask, his muscles slack, his eyes closed, his lips the powder gray that his altered blood created. She wanted to touch him, to make sure he was still warm. That he was still alive. His eyes shifted under their lids, left and then right and then left again. He took another breath.

One of the medical technicians made a soft noise. “I’ve got some activity in the dorsal posterior insula that I can’t—”

Amos’ eyes shot open and he screamed. The rage and pain in the sound were a punch in Elvi’s face. She reared back, spinning as she missed her handhold. He took another breath and shrieked.

“We have a cardiac problem,” one of the medical technicians said, his voice high and tight. “I’ve got an arrhythmia here… I don’t know what I’m looking at.”

“Elvi?” Jim said.

“Not now,” she snapped back.

Amos raised his arms, the muscles standing out under his skin. His left bicep—as thick around as Elvi’s thigh—began crawling with spasm. He made a deep hiccuping sound, struggling to breathe.

“Pull him out,” Elvi said. “We’re done here. Pull him out.”

“You heard the lead!” Harshaan shouted. “By the numbers and by the book!”

Lee moved in, fixing a syringe to the feed in Amos’ arm. The cocktail of revival medicines seemed to resist going into the vein. Elvi waited for the spasming to stop. Jim, out from his corner, floated at her side, his face ashen.

“He’s not coming up,” he said. “Why isn’t he coming up?”

Amos’ head bent back, baring his neck. The veins in his throat stood out in a way that made Elvi think massive debilitating stroke. His eyes were open, black pits without any clear focus.

“I can give him another dose,” Lee said.

“Do it,” Elvi shouted.

Another cocktail went into the big man’s arm. Alerts were sounding all through the lab; machines and monitors panicking at what they saw.

The medical technician’s voice was an island of professional calm in the chaos. “He is not coming up. We are moving into GTCS with ventricular fibrillation. We’re going to lose him.”

Jim was murmuring a string of quiet obscenities like it was a prayer.

“Sedate him. Whatever you need to do,” Elvi said. And then, “I’ll be right back.”

“Where are you going?” Jim asked, but she didn’t answer.

She didn’t know she was leaving until she was already gone. She pulled herself hand over hand through the hallways like a nightmare of being trapped in a sunken cave. She was going faster than she could handle, bruising herself as she crashed around corners. Her mind was divided between a deep animal panic and something smaller, calmer, and more watchful.

The catalyst chamber was as full as it ever got. Fayez and two techs floated beside the catalyst. The catalyst’s empty eyes were vague and unsurprised, her hair floating around her like a drowned woman. Xan and Cara were visible on a screen in the isolation chamber, their small bodies filling the space within it.

“Elvi?” Fayez said. “What’s the matter?”

She didn’t answer him. Jim slid in through the door behind her. She ignored him too.

The isolation chamber was one of the most advanced devices Laconia had ever fashioned, but it was as easy to use as a meat freezer. Elvi grabbed the handle, braced, and pulled the thick door open. Cara and Xan turned to her, their eyes wide with confusion and alarm.

“Get out,” Elvi said. “Out of the container. Do it now.”

Fayez was at her side. She was afraid he was going to grab her, stop her, slow her down and make her explain herself. He didn’t.

“The dive went bad,” Elvi said. “Amos is stuck there, and we can’t get him back.”

Xan shook his head. “I don’t understand. You can’t get him back? Stuck how? What stuck him there?”

Cara’s smile was triumphant. She took her brother’s hand. “It’s all right. We can do this. Follow me.”

Her eyes closed, and then a heartbeat later, Xan’s closed too. The catalyst cooed softly and mindlessly. Elvi’s breath shuddered and her hands trembled. It occurred to her exactly how bad this moment would be for a medical emergency of her own. Fayez put a hand on her shoulder, and she let herself be turned. He was frowning with worry. Maybe fear.

“Hey, Elvi,” he said.

“Fayez.”

“So. I guess we’ll call this field-testing a new protocol?”

To her surprise, Elvi laughed, even if it came out like a sob. Cara shifted like someone twitching in her sleep. A connection request came through on the ship’s system: Harshaan Lee looking for her. She answered, but didn’t give him time to speak.

“What are we seeing?”

“The subject appears to be stabilizing,” Lee said. “However, I am seeing—”

Before the next word came, Elvi’s awareness widened like its jaw had unhinged, and she exploded into white.