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“Don’t worry about it,” Kaia said. “He wouldn’t have let me get to Heaven.”
The doctor shook her head. “He told us to Upload you if you died.”
Kaia’s mouth hung open. After what she’d done, she had fully considered her chances of being Uploaded onColossalto be nil. Did he just want her Uploaded so he could torment her some more in their future?
“Well, tell him I’m fine.”
“We just did. Let’s just say he didn’t seem comforted. This man is going to kill us all.”
Kaia began to push herself off the bed, pain shooting through her plastered rib. That wasn’t what made her freeze and look down at herself though.
“I can’t move my arm.”
“Dislocation and nerve damage.”
“From the knife?”
“From the rest of the assault.” She pressed Kaia back into the bed. “You’re in no condition to go anywhere, Mrs. Halena. Once power’s fully restored, we can get you into the regenerator, but for now you need to stay put.”
The rest of the assault.
They thought Orion did this to her, stabbing and all. Kaia’s mouth went dry as she looked down at herself, spotting blue and red welts peeking from under her hospital gown.
“This… The knife wasn’t him,” she said.
“Okay.”
“Itwasn’t,” Kaia insisted at the skeptical look on the woman’s face.
She glanced at her wrist. Her comms bracelet was gone. She had to talk to him.
“Get me…” she began to ask for a comms line but stopped short.
Orion was fixated to the point of severe distraction. Not only that, but he also told them to Upload her if Loran had killed her. He obviously wasn’t in his right mind. And now he was all alone up there, figuring out how to pilot a fucking colony ship months earlier than expected because his mother decided to screw them all over. Hearing that Kaia was fine wouldn’t be enough, not even in her ownvoice. Not for what she needed to say.
Kaia felt sick even thinking about it.
“Implant a Neurosync.”
“Now?” the male doctor asked, giving his companion an exasperated scowl as another violent tremor rocked the ship. They didn’t understand. The lights flickered and hissed overhead. Only half of them came back on.
“Just fucking do it.”
CHAPTER63
ORION
Power outage on the prison deck,the subvoc came through as high prio among incessant chatter of compromised systems. All the humans through which the artificial alerts were filtered sat within the command center, but the space itself was silent save for the occasional curse. The tension was distinct, and it was making Orion see red.
He was plugged in for the first time. He had to be—the frequency of his commands was such that slamming his palm on a gene reader each time he needed authorization would be untenable. Instead, he had a sampler plugged into a newly installed socket at his inner wrist in, collecting a thin flow of blood on a continuous basis.
Reroute CRD power to prison deck.
Better to leave the residents in the dark for a while than have prisoners on the loose.
Power outage in grain store.
God fucking damn it.
