23. The Discovery #2
"No," Kess assured her quickly. "No, you're healthy but, it is significant.
" Kess paused, and Charlie watched the CMO's brain work in what felt like slow-motion to choose her next words very, very carefully.
"The embedded PERS radiation has, in fact, stabilized your cellular clock.
" Charlie watched Kess look up at Reyna before looking back at Charlie.
"Your cells are not aging at a normal human rate, Charlie. They have decelerated."
Suddenly, the quiet of that room became deafening.
"Decelerated," Charlie repeated.
"Your biological aging, Charlie. It's slowed.
It's come down to approximately one-third of the standard human rate, in fact.
And it could possibly be slower. I don't have enough longitudinal data yet to be definitive, but three months of identical cellular turnover readings are consistent enough with the handful of documented cases in Coalition medical literature. "
Charlie stared at the flat line on the display.
Three months of data points, each one the same as the last, her body stubbornly insisting it was still January 1st, 1990.
According to the PERS radiation in her system, she was still twenty-nine years old, still standing in a lab at JPL, and still reaching for that damn piece of metal that would change everything.
"So I'll just... stay like this?"
"You will not remain static, no. Biological processes will continue. It will just be at a fraction of the standard human rate. You will age, Charlie. Just very, very slowly."
"How long?"
"How... long?" Kess questioned.
"How long will I live now?"
"Charlie, with so little data, I cannot determine your total projected lifespan with certainty." Charlie just stared at her. Kess looked at Charlie before looking up at Reyna.
"Just tell her, Kess. She deserves to know," Reyna said, her voice soft.
Kess turned back to Charlie. "As a conservative estimate, I can predict that you will experience one year of biological aging for every three to five calendar years."
Charlie's brain did what it always did. It started to calculate.
The numbers came fast and merciless, even though half of her didn't want them to.
Katie was twenty-three, and she still would be when Charlie returned in three months.
If Charlie was aging at a third of the rate, because right now she couldn't think about the possibility of it being a fifth, it meant that when Katie was fifty, Charlie would look approximately thirty-eight.
It meant that when Katie was seventy, Charlie would look forty-five.
And when Katie was ninety, if Katie made it to ninety, Charlie would look and feel...
"Approximately fifty-one," Kess said quietly.
It was clear she'd already run these calculations.
"I knew that would be what you'd want to know first. And based on the information you gave me in your initial visit with your family history, I was able to calculate that when your sister reaches the end of an average human lifespan, you will appear to be in your late forties. "
Charlie looked at the flat line on the display and thought about Katie's face at twenty-three, with brown hair that curled when it rained.
The bracelet on Charlie's wrist, blue and green and gold and red, tied at a gas station outside Flagstaff with Helen's double-knot.
She was going to outlive her sister by decades, possibly even a century.
And it had nothing to do with space or the fact that she was light years from Earth.
It was because her body had been rewritten at the cellular level by a broken piece of alien technology.
And it had just taken the clock that connected her to everyone she'd ever loved on Earth and smashed it into the ground.
"Is there a treatment?" Charlie asked.
“I asked the same question,” Reyna's voice arose like a siren from the door. Low, controlled, but demanding.
"And as I said, there is nothing to treat, Captain," Kess said. "There is technically nothing unhealthy with Charlie. Her cells have just... mutated. It's not a disease." Kess turned directly to Charlie now. "It is a permanent biological alteration."
Charlie watched Reyna nod once, her own markings holding their solid gold color.
But she watched as something moved behind the Captain's eyes, quick and unguarded.
Reyna's gaze flicked from Kess to Charlie and back, and for a fraction of a second, her expression shifted to the same look she wore when a mission went sideways.
She looked to be calculating what she could do in the next five minutes, the next five hours, the next five days, after this information. Already building a plan.
"There is one additional implication," Kess said.
"Of course there is," Charlie said flatly. It did a good job of hiding the fear simmering under her already fragile composure.
"When the Coalition reviewed your displacement initially, the repatriation recommendation automatically assumed that we'd be returning an otherwise unaltered human, aside from the 40 light-years of travel, to a non-contact planet. That you would be biologically indistinguishable from other humans."
"Initially."
"Charlie, the truth is that the assumption is no longer medically accurate. The other side of that truth is Earth is non-contact. The Coalition cannot, knowingly, introduce irrefutable evidence of extraterrestrial technology or biology into a non-contact civilization."
Charlie suddenly knew where this was going. And she wasn't prepared in the slightest to hear it.
"Your altered lifespan would be impossible to conceal over decades on Earth. Simple things such as medical records, government documentation similar just to your ID card, typical human aging patterns, and institutional scrutiny. There are just too many exposure points."
Charlie looked at the display behind Kess while she continued, but Charlie heard none of it.
She knew exposure points. You didn't build a system without knowing where it could fail, where the weaknesses were, the ones that could cause the whole collapse of the system, let alone an entire project.
Her mind flashed to moments in a timeline on Earth over years, then decades.
Her license photo that didn't age right, a medical file where the wrong doctor noticed the wrong thing.
Then Katie. Katie at fifty, then sixty, still lying for a sister who looked like the past had refused to let her go.
"Stop," Charlie said.
Kess stopped mid-sentence. Charlie heard Reyna take half a step forward but then stop herself.
"So," Charlie said, her voice still working somehow. "The gist of this whole explanation is simply that I can't go home."
No one answered, at least, not fast enough. And that, in and of itself, was the answer hiding in plain sight.
"Yes, Charlie. The Coalition, while sympathetic to your situation, cannot in good conscience return you to Earth under your current status, as well as per non-contact protocol," Kess said slowly, her voice stern and straightforward.
Charlie let out one breath that nearly became a laugh. "That is an impressive way of saying 'you're stuck in space, Earthling.'"
"Charlie," Reyna started.
"Charlie," Kess said, speaking over Reyna. "The truth is that returning you would place you at a significant risk, possibly even for your own health. We just don’t know. But yes, it would also constitute a breach of non-contact law."
"So, I'm not only stranded in a world where I'm the only one, I'm also a contamination risk," Charlie scoffed, a bitter laugh threatening to erupt. But she kept it held down.
Reyna moved towards her this time, one full step. "Charlie, no, neither." Low and immediate, the first thing in the room that hadn't sounded like data.
Charlie finally looked at her. And that was a massive, overwhelmingly huge mistake.
Reyna looked at her, but it was not with the face of the Captain of the Emberkind receiving operational news.
It was Reyna, looking at Charlie, while something terrible happened in front of her that she could do nothing about.
Charlie saw it, but she couldn't handle it, not right now. Because, at the sight of Reyna looking at her like she cared, the thing inside Charlie, the piece she'd been holding together by a thread, suddenly began to twist.
"I contacted Admiral Vondra when Kess confirmed the third scan to me," Reyna said, quickly. "I asked her what options remained."
Options. Charlie almost laughed to herself. She knew what people meant by 'options' after the principal route had failed. These alternatives, workarounds, dare she say, damage control. They were pointless. Filler for those that didn't want to admit yet that there was no recourse.
The bottom line was that any 'options' offered her did not mean home.
"That was thoughtful," Charlie remarked. She had meant it to sound normal. But instead, it came out with enough distance that Reyna's face changed.
"Charlie," Kess said, "I know this is substantial."
Substantial. Charlie actually let out a dry, demeaning laugh. That was a good word choice. Useful. But not large enough for this.
"No," Charlie finally said. She'd had enough.
Her pulse beat in her throat and her wrist, right beneath Katie's bracelet where Helen's double-knot rested against her skin.
"No, don't do that. Please don't tell me I'm healthy and then tell me I'm evidence.
Don't tell me there's nothing wrong with me and then explain, very carefully, how I can never go home because my body is now a diplomatic incident for the fucking Coalition of deep space. "
Reyna's hand lifted slightly at her side, but she didn't reach. Charlie saw it anyway, and she hated that she saw it. She couldn't bear it any longer.
"Thank you, Kess." She made her voice even. She was proud of that.
"Charlie, if you need—"