Chapter 31 #2
The thought became elusive, replaced by the immediacy of the moment.
“I’m making soup,” she answered, continuing to chop and drop the bits into the pot.
“Your machine would make soup.”
“Doing it myself is relaxing, focuses me. Foster—”
Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud went the knife. She knew what came next. The lab. The blood test. Her lips went numb with horror.
But then the scene reversed. She couldn’t stop it, and it landed somewhere even worse.
Iax stood in front of her, only a meter away, exactly as he had the morning after he’d first arrived.
Pure terror crawled across her skin. Her heart lived in her throat and pounded in her head. They would see it all. Everything. They controlled her mind like a media feed, and she had no way to stop it.
“Are you going to change me into Calypson?” she asked him.
“No,” he replied, his voice monotone.
No, no, no! Wynn choked on the memory. She couldn’t go down this path. Her life depended on it.
They can’t know. She looked upward, wanting to see the roof of the box, but she saw the ceiling of her outpost instead.
“You are already Calypson,” he added, and Wynn’s heart dropped.
This can’t be happening. They shouldn’t be able to dig out her secrets this way. There was too much he’d told her that even she didn’t understand.
She dug her fingers into her arm. Anything to stop where this vision headed.
The images swirled and sped backwards again.
She knelt in her fields, watching a meteor careen toward the surface, its vapor trail a mark against the coming storm clouds.
Time moved backward further, to when she was at the Science Academy, being interviewed.
It lasted only a moment, then she returned to her fields.
A snarl and a howl echoed all around her.
“No,” she whispered. She couldn’t live through it again, especially in this mockery of her memories.
A sob of frustration escaped her. She closed her eyes and dug her fingernails in deeper, wanting to draw blood.
The scene settled, and she stood in her outpost. A growl snapped through the surrounding space, and she jumped. Sunshine beamed through the transparent doors of the decontamination zone. The stillness made the fine hairs on her arms stand on end.
Another growl rattled around her, followed by a howl. Her heart surged into her throat. She knew this moment in time, saw it continually in her nightmares, and never wanted to be here again.
She tried to think of something else, anything else: her parents, her favorite color, the first boy she kissed. She dug her fingernails deeper into her skin, gasping at the pain. Tears pricked her eyes, then spilled over.
She ran toward the outpost, stumbling between the rows of dirt. Her heart pounded, her lungs straining with each breath. Tossing a quick glance over her shoulder, she searched behind her. There was another form in a UV-suit out there, too far to distinguish.
Foster. The four forms that blended so well with the brown landscape obscured his body. His screams echoed in her helmet while she ran until she heard nothing but her own sobs.
He’d sacrificed himself so she could get to safety.
Wynn’s knees buckled, and she collapsed to her knees, but the scene continued.
Safely ensconced in the decontamination room, she watched as one beast dragged his decimated body closer. Like it wanted to mess with her.
Intelligent monsters. A sour taste filled her mouth.
Wynn turned away and closed her eyes. Her breaths left her lips in short bursts, anxiety and panic climbing through her chest. She covered her head with her hands, and the howling gave way to silence.
She didn’t move for a long moment, too fearful of what she would see if she looked. When the quiet echoed between her ears, she lifted her head.
Her life continued to play, but it had reversed past the point of Foster’s death. It slowed, and she was making soup with him. Her heart caught at seeing him well and whole, a smile on his face when he looked at her while dicing an onion.
Everything sped up again. She arrived at the outpost for the first time and warmed at the welcoming smile on Foster’s face and the kind crinkle of his eyes. Everything is going to be okay.
More movement, and she returned to the moment she found out she landed the position on Earth, a swell of elation making her heady.
The colors and shapes sped up, then slowed once more.
“Dr. Wynn Lambdin.”
She was back on Asia Prime on the day of her graduation. The ceilings of the auditorium soared above her, light spilling inside from the skylights to cast a golden glow over the hundreds of spectators.
The ceremony commentator stood beside her, and she saw herself decked out in her graduation gown and hat.
“Dr. Wynn Lambdin. Advanced Sciences. Biology, Botany, and Genetics.” Hand extended, she accepted the digital diploma from her professor into her PALM, and shook his hand.
The world around her swirled, and changed. She no longer stood in an auditorium, but a familiar corridor with two doors on the right and one on the left—her childhood home.
“Wynn!” someone shouted from behind her.
She spun around, and her breath caught in her throat. Her father strode toward her. Alive. Her heart thundered in her chest. It turned to panic when he didn’t stop, but walked right through her body.
“Wynn! Where are you?”
She spun in the other direction and watched him walk into her old room. There was a squeal of delight, like she’d been hiding on purpose. Wynn barely remembered this moment. How would she see it now?
Her feet moved to follow, to see what she looked like, how long ago it was, but the scene shifted and morphed. The ground beneath her remained solid, but she swayed while the images spun.
The swirl of gray changed into smudges of viridian and turquoise, then solidified into a green space. It took her a second to recognize it, an atrium in the middle of four levels of classrooms, the school she’d attended for her primary education.
The scene changed again, dragging fragments of her memories along with shards of locations she barely remembered: a friend’s house, a restaurant, a vacation destination.
Everything spun together, then slowed.
Singsong voices echoed. “Wynn. Wynn. She has no kin. Wynn. Wynn. Put her in the bin.”
She stood in a place she didn’t remember, a room in a station that gave an institutional feel—not quite a school. Something else. Something colder.
A small girl sat in the center of a group of children. So small. A baby, really. She was curled into a ball, arms around her shins, and head tucked into her knees. Short black hair crowned a hidden face.
The children around her, six of them, all older, skipped around, shouting the same line repeatedly. “Wynn. Wynn. She has no kin. Wynn. Wynn. Put her in the bin.”
That’s me.
But she was so young she had no memory of this.
Was it real?
With everything else she’d seen, she had to guess that it was. Except if she couldn’t remember it, how was this box reconstructing it?
She flexed her fingers against the wall. Not right. The gray, institutional carpet spread before her, but beneath her feet she felt the padded material of the box.
Nothing here was right.
Why would she be here? It felt like an orphanage, but she wasn’t adopted. Her parents had never told her that. She had baby pictures. They’d told her the story of her birth, how they’d almost had her in the shuttle because her mother’s labor had developed so quickly.
Had it been a lie?
Wynn reached up and swiped a stray tear from her cheek.
An adult, a woman wearing light pink civilian clothing, entered the room, breaking up the children and their taunts. They scattered, racing out into the corridor. The woman bent down, picked up the toddler and left through the same door as the rabid children.
Wynn stepped forward, intending to follow, when everything accelerated in reverse once more.
There was a ship she didn’t recognize, children she didn’t know.
They were all squished together, holding each other.
A feeling of fear swelled inside her, so poignant Wynn knew she must be reliving the experience.
But she didn’t remember being here either.
A boy looked at her, and his eyes glinted.
Wynn’s breath stalled in her throat. Who was he? She didn’t know. Though his eyes glinted, he didn’t look like Iax, or anyone else she’d ever met in her life.
Then the scene reversed again, so fast she could hardly catch it.
An eerie blackness enveloped the cube, a hazy sort of image.
She squinted to see better. Light emerged in a narrow sliver, amid sounds both muffled and loud.
Pain. Fear. Confusion. Too bright. A piercing wail made her cover her ears with her hands.
A face emerged through the chaos. Eyes glinted.
Wynn’s breath caught in her throat. She knew that face from the history banks.
Briar Galloway. Leader of the Calypsons.
Another familiar face filled her sight, then another.
She was in a lab of some type, being passed from one emotionless face to the next.
The wailing continued, and she realized she was the one doing it.
My birth?
Wynn’s skin went hot and cold at the same time.
No. No. No.
She wouldn’t believe it. This couldn’t be the place of her origin, even though it continued to play in front of her like she was part of a newsreel.
If the CORE didn’t kill her for this, then they would lock her up forever.
Terror choked the breath right out of her until her vision spotted.
The memory paused, then sped up in fast forward. Wynn gasped a breath as she sat in the shuttle with other children; she curled into a ball while others taunted her; then she was in her house, being tossed into the air by her father. Squeals of delight echoed so loudly, her chest ached.
Further she traveled, to grade school, secondary school, and beyond. Her post-secondary education whirred by in a blink, then everything slowed.
She was right back at her outpost, everything as crystal clear as the day she’d lived it the first time. Muttering to herself, she frantically pulled on a UV-suit, her hands shaking. Rain splattered against the decontamination room’s doors like someone threw buckets against them.
And she was going out in that, to help the stranger to the outpost.
A cold sweat broke out across Wynn’s skin. Stars above. Whoever was in charge could watch everything that transpired between her and Iax in real time.
She didn’t think her terror could increase even more, but in this moment, her dread for him exceeded her worry for herself. The damage was already done for her, but for him? They would hunt him down.
She had to do something.
The memory kept playing; the doors opened to allow her outside. She didn’t understand how she’d completed the task the first time, with the wind and rain slapping against her body so violently.
Everything accelerated a moment, past where she tucked her shoulder under his armpit, then helped him to the door.
It slowed again as they went through decontamination, stripping as they went, then sped up again to where she lowered his naked body onto Foster’s bed.
Then she was back again, treating his wounds as best she could, and making him comfortable.
Events jumped ahead, and she woke the next morning, went in search of him. When she found the bed empty, the memory jerked erratically, then paused. Wynn stood on the verge of the lab’s door, not moving forward or back.
“What’s happening?” she whispered, not sure she wanted the answer.
The memory jerked forward, then back, then forward again.
Then, all at once, the memory stopped. The images faded away.
And Wynn stood alone in a small white box. Her arm throbbed where she’d dug her nails in, blood beading on her skin.
Now that they’d discovered the truth about her, she knew the worst was yet to come.