Equinox (26 page)

“Finally.” Pip reached for one. “I was about to bust your door down. And for the record, I don’t have to try.” He winked at Rosie and skidded a vial across the bench to Dalton.

Pip might be all cheek, but he was grey with exhaustion and his fingers fumbled as he tried to rip open the pack.

“Give it to me.” Rosie easily snatched it from his grasp. He didn’t protest. She ripped it open with her teeth and handed him the vial.

“Thanks. Nothing like a bit of saliva to help the healing.” He gave her a faint, private smile and their fingers brushed as he took it. Her stomach flipped and heat rushed up her neck. She looked away quickly.

“You need a hand?” she said to Dalton, but he was already pressing the vial to the inside of his arm. The self injector made a tiny hissing noise.

“Think I’ve got it.” He was faring better than Pip, but not by much.

“Now we’ve all played doctor,” Cassie said, “what’s to eat?”

“Give a man a chance to repair, will you?” Pip said.

“Show me a man and I will.” She opened one of the containers. “This looks like some kind of curry.”

“Tomato salad and curry then,” Dalton said.

Cassie gave him a seductive smile. “Sounds tasty.” She leaned on the counter, squeezing her cleavage together. Rosie was amazed by her subtle-as-a-meteorite flirting. Dalton just seemed amused, but girls probably flirted with him all the time. It irritated her. In fact, everything about Cassie annoyed her.

Rosie’s head began to ache again, despite the pain blockers. She rubbed at her forehead. Perfect.
Please, implant, choose now to stick a spike in my brain
. She looked up to see Pip watching her and abruptly dropped her hand.

“What?” It came out more harshly than she meant.

“Nothing. I’ll get some plates.” He went to a cupboard, but it was obvious he’d noticed her annoyance and drawn some conclusions from it which were all wrong.

Pip heated the curry and they sat around the bench eating.

“First things first,” Dalton said. “The reason Rosie and I were coming here was because of the implant Riley put in her brain.”

“I’m sorry, what?” Cassie’s spoon clattered onto her plate. Rosie realised of course she wouldn’t know about that.

“Your brother’s idea of a backup plan,” Pip said. “He put a cortex implant in her skull to store all his precious information and didn’t tell her. He also didn’t tell her that little detail of you having to be dead to ever get it out.”

“That doesn’t sound like him.” Cassie frowned.

“Yeah, it does. I keep telling you how he operates, but you don’t want to hear it.”

“That’s because you’re wrong. Besides, cortex implants are the safest kind there are.”

“Unless they malfunction.” Pip shook his head. “Seriously Cass, you gotta knock Riley off that pedestal.”

“How do you know it’s malfunctioning?” asked Cassie.

“I got too close to an explosion and I think it did something to it. I’m seeing flashes of information, words, numbers, and it kind of hurts,” Rosie said.

“Kind of is an understatement.” Dalton pushed his empty plate aside. “Rosie, you passed out.”

She ignored him. “The point is, we came here because Riley left a message in it that I think was set to activate if he disappeared.”

“Saying?” Cassie prompted her.

“It came out disjointed. I thought maybe it meant he would be up here as well, but …” She paused.

Cassie’s expression tightened. “Clearly he’s not.”

“Are you sure?” Dalton said. “He might think contacting you would be too risky.”

“He’s not here.” Cassie’s tone was blunt. “And before you ask, no, I have no idea where he would go. So what did the message say?”

“The gist of it was to come to Gondwana Nation, we think. Maybe because tech up here could decode the implant,” Rosie said.

“So it’s got to have information about the base on it,” said Cassie. “I bet he figured out what they’re doing there. It might even tell us where he’s gone.”

Rosie didn’t like the hopeful tone she got at that idea. “I doubt he’d leave any clues,” she said. “It’s not his style.” She glanced at Dalton. “I saw a few other words. Pantheon and Equinox Gate.”

Cassie’s eyes lit up. “Are you saying he might have figured out who the Pantheon are?”

“I don’t know.” Rosie pushed her half-eaten meal aside. Her head was throbbing and she had no patience for guessing games. “Look, this is what I know. Riley isn’t here. Helios is and nobody likes that. It looks like the best way of keeping a million or so people alive is to get the Helios base shut down before the Yalgu Warriors do it their way, agreed?”

“And what about Sulawayo?” Dalton said. “She said she was going to take over the base.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Pip said. “She’s still Helios, whatever she might be trying to sell.”

“Who’s Sulawayo?” Cassie said.

Rosie sighed and went through a short explanation about how Sulawayo had been a double agent working for Riley and Helios, and had tried to abduct her after the train. “She said she still wanted to work with Riley, that it was her who warned him the rest of Helios had found him, and that’s why he ran off, but–”

“We can’t trust her,” Pip said. “We don’t know her real agenda. Trust me, if I know Helios, it’s not all unicorns and rainbows.”

Rosie bit her lip. “Still, if Sulawayo’s telling the truth, a split in Helios could be an advantage.”

“Pip’s right; we can’t team up with her,” Dalton said.

“So what do we do?” Cassie said.

Rosie’s head was aching so much it was difficult to think.

“Rosie, you okay?” Pip said.

A faint roaring sound had started in her ears. She tried to respond, but his face seemed to grow longer and wave about like a flower underwater. She pushed her stool out, sensing what was coming, hoping she could get to the sofa quickly enough. Nope.

“Shit!” She heard Pip’s low-voiced curse and the bang of a stool hitting a cupboard.

“Catch her!” Dalton said and the planet tilted. Pip’s arms went around her, but it wasn’t enough to stop the roaring dark, glowing green with words, swallowing her up.

Rosie opened her eyes to a grey ceiling, the sound of rain thrumming on the roof and a low steady beeping. Her first reaction was to be royally pissed off at having fainted again but that was quickly overtaken by resonating pain that spread down her spine to her feet. Even her toenails ached. And then came the realisation she couldn’t move. Not at all.

The slow steady beeping rose in time with her frantic heartbeat.

“Don’t panic like a little girl; it’s only temporary.” Cassie’s face appeared above her. Her blond hair was wet and slicked back in a ponytail. She couldn’t have sounded less comforting.

“Your bedside manner sucks,” Rosie said. She’d intended it to be cutting but she was breathing so fast it came out all high.

“Get a grip, Black.” Cassie put a cool hand on her arm.

“Where am I?”

“In the medical lab. We had to bring you here through the rain. Thanks so much.”

“Where are Pip and Dalton?”

Cassie made a face. “I sent them out. Useless, the two of them. Pip shouting at me and Dalton shouting at him. It’s a wonder I got you stable at all.”

“You?” Rosie did not like the sound of that.

“Relax.” Cassie passed a handheld scanner over her torso as if she did it every day. “I’ve been Lakisha’s assistant since I was twelve; I know what I’m doing. That’s Doctor Lakisha, by the way.”

Despite her appalling lack of compassion, Cassie’s brusque confidence was making Rosie calmer. “Being an assistant doesn’t make you a doctor,” Rosie said.

“No, but I will be, one day,” Cassie said absently. She put the handheld down and picked up a long wand-like device that hummed. She slipped a hand under Rosie’s neck and lifted her head like she was handling a bunch of seaweed – breakable, fragile seaweed, but weed just the same. She ran the wand up the back of Rosie’s neck to the base of her skull. “You know, both my parents were scientists, geniuses, and they passed all that brilliance to me. I can be anything I choose, really.”

“Can you choose not to be a bitch?”

Cassie took the wand away and smiled. “Move your fingers.”

Rosie tried and was filled with relief when she could.

“It will take a while for everything to come back, but it will.”

“Why did you paralyse me?”

“You went into a kind of seizure and in their effort to hold you down the boys might have broken your bones. It seemed like the better choice.” She looked amused. “Scared the crap out of them. You were almost frothing at the mouth and everything.”

Fabulous, bet that looked great
. Rosie tried lifting an arm, found she could, and pushed some hair off her face. “Why weren’t you scared?” she asked.

“That’s not the sort of thing that scares me.”

“Can you do anything about the pain?”

“How bad is it?”

“Get someone to drop a jumper on you, that should cover it.”

Cassie tapped the wand against her palm. “I don’t know if you’ll want to do this, but I might have an idea of how to fix the implant, or at least stop it doing this to you.”

“And that is?”

Cassie looked the tiniest bit reticent. “There’s an imager here in the lab that’s capable of accessing the implant. It should allow me to have a go at reprogramming the nanos, stop it hurting you. The only thing is, I’ve never actually used it myself, but I have worked with Lakisha when she has. I know how it works.”

“But?” Rosie winced as a fresh wave of pain washed over her skull.

“I could make things worse. Or, well …” Clearly, there was chance she could kill her.

This just got better and better, but Rosie knew she was reaching the end of her endurance. “Let’s just get it over with.”

“I’ll get one of the boys to move you. Wait there.”

Funny. Rosie tried to lift a leg, but it felt as heavy as a planet.

“Hey, how you going?”

Dalton came in, followed by Pip. Pip looked furious and scared at the same time, his hands tucked up into his armpits.

“Bring her to the chair.” Cassie spoke from somewhere behind him.

Dalton picked Rosie up. “Don’t worry; I won’t drop you.”

The pain was getting overwhelming and Rosie couldn’t speak. Through half-closed lids she saw a huge room sectioned by long tables covered in equipment and high-tech medical machines.

“This way.” Cassie led them through a set of doors.

In the next room was a long recliner with a scanner device suspended above it. One wall was a projection space.

Dalton put her down in the chair and stepped back.

Cassie said, “You might want to put the restraints on her arms and legs, just in case.”

“I thought you said you’d stopped that problem.” Pip’s voice was loaded with apprehension and more than a little anger.

Cassie turned from where she was activating the computers. “It’s probably unnecessary, but I’d rather be safe than not.”

“Just do it,” Rosie said. To her utmost fury she felt tears slipping down her cheeks, uncontrollable now because of the pain.

Dalton stepped forwards, but Pip was faster. “I’ll do it.” He pushed him back and Dalton didn’t protest. Pip gently buckled a set of soft restraints over her arms and legs. She hated the feeling. His hand lingered on her wrist. “Okay,” he said.

Rosie stared at him, suddenly terribly frightened. The restraints, the pain – it was all too much. He did something then that was totally out of character. As if there was no one else in the room, he tenderly wiped the tears from her cheeks with his thumb, looking her steadily in the eyes. “It’ll be all right,” he said softly. “I’ll be right here, okay?”

The pulse of fear in her throat dimmed. “Okay,” she whispered.

“This is touching, but Pip, you’re in the way,” Cassie said.

Pip drew back and a faint humming filled the room. The lights dimmed as the device over Rosie’s head dropped steadily towards her. It was a circular tube with hundreds of tiny eyelets on it that looked like cameras. It stopped just centimetres from her face and began to rotate.

“Close your eyes, Rosie,” Cassie said.

A spike of white-hot light lanced through her retina and she screamed. It felt as if someone was slowly pushing a fine blazing needle through the front of her head to the back. It spread so deep she lost all sense of where she was. Tears streamed from her eyes and the band of agony spread through her skull like molasses, pain oozing through all her nerve endings.

“What’re you doing?”

Dimly, she heard Pip’s voice and Cassie shouting back, “No, it will stop in a minute. Don’t touch her!”

The pain intensified and then suddenly it was gone. She shuddered, trying to draw breath. Then she stilled as something amazing happened. She opened her eyes and instead of seeing the room she saw brilliant colours, a wheel of light and a spiral of circling numbers. It should have been confusing, but it made sense to her. She saw through them to what they meant. She was filled with a sense of euphoria as her brain was flooded with endorphins.

“I’m okay,” she whispered. “I’m okay, it’s …” She couldn’t describe it. Pip and Dalton were little more than shadows beyond the lights, but she wasn’t afraid. She blinked and tried thinking a command to see the files for the Helios base. One of the number sets zoomed towards her and expanded, and suddenly there they were. Plans, information. She knew what Helios was doing up there. Holy crap. She roamed over the information, closed the file, then practised opening it again. Easy.

She went back to the spiral and a long index appeared. File after file. All that Riley had found out about Helios over the ten years he’d been tracking them, investigating everything they did. And there were files on all of them as well. Pip, her, Dalton, even Aunt Essie and Cassie, plus names she didn’t know. Then she saw the word Pantheon. She focused on that, tried to open it, but an electric spark shocked her like a slap. She tried again and the shock intensified. She pushed at it and this time the recoil was much, much stronger. A long sharp sliver of pain slipped into her brain. She screamed and a shudder ripped through her. There was a wrenching, pulling sensation, like bone ripped from a socket, and the light was gone, the implant snapping closed. The sharper pain vanished to be replaced by a duller pedestrian ache. She opened her eyes, panting, her pulse running high.