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The
woman on the other side of the orange and blue crackling field
narrowed her gaze. “You must remain under medical
observation.”

Nida
shook her head repeatedly, and it didn’t matter that her ears and
the side of her face kept bashing up against the hard edge of her
bed; she couldn’t stop. “Take me home before it is too late. Take
me home,” she demanded, her voice trilling with a certainty her
addled mind and body should not possess.

“Cadet
Harper, you cannot go home. You have been in a serious accident,
and we must . . . do what we can to help you,”
the woman paused, appearing to choose her words
carefully.

“I
know I wasn’t in an accident,” Nida managed, all certainty and
command gone from her tone.

She
felt like herself again.

“You
need to rest,” the woman began.

“I
have to go back to Remus 12. Now. Before it’s too late. I have to
go back,” Nida repeated, again her voice brimming with energy and
authority.

The
woman’s eyes narrowed even further. “You are confused. We will do
what we can to look after you. But you need to rest.”

“I
need to leave,” Nida looked at the woman, trying to convey her
desperation with every flicker of her dancing gaze.

“You
need to calm down,” the woman countered, “there are only so many
drugs we can pump into your system, especially with
your . . . specific injuries.” The woman stared
at Nida’s chest.

Nida
looked down, following her gaze.

The
implant.

She
could remember the terrible rush of tingles like knife pricks in
her skin. That horrible sensation had rushed up, pushing into her
implant, and now she brought up her trembling fingers and placed
them on the smooth metal surface jutting out from her
neck.

It was
dented, as if somebody had bashed it with a hammer or pounded on it
with their fist.

It was
also blue. A faint, persistent glimmer glowed across its
surface.

Stranger than that, there were thin tendrils of glowing,
bright blue light branching off from the implant, through her skin,
up her neck, and down her chest.

She
bucked with panic, clutching at her flesh, pulling down the thin
collar of her hospital gown as she tracked the pattern penetrating
further down her body.

“Calm
down,” the woman pressed closer towards the crackling veil of the
force field, her eyes growing wide.

“What
the hell is this? What is this?” Nida clutched at those blue,
glowing, branching veins, dragging her fingernails across them. But
no matter what she did, no matter how hard she pressed or groped,
the glow would not fade. In fact, at her frantic attempts to remove
it, it only blazed brighter.

“Calm
down,” the woman shouted, her voice pitching into a scream. It
echoed around the room, and the tone of her sudden desperation was
so clear it alone made Nida stop.

She
turned and stared at the woman.

“You’re being transported to the Jupiter Substation,” she
noted, incapable of blinking as she stared at Nida with a
frightfully complex, calculating gaze.

“What?”

“As
soon as we find some way to stabilise these fields, you will be
transported,” the woman repeated.

“To
the Jupiter Substation?” Nida finally stopped trying to rake the
blue energy from her veins, and instead let her trembling fingers
clutch into fists.

The
Jupiter Substation was one of the Academy’s most secure facilities,
and was used to house its most dangerous experiments.

“You
need to calm down and let us handle this. We know what we are
doing. Now just rest back, close your eyes, and try to go back to
sleep,” the woman commanded, but there was a distinct pleading note
to her tone.

“Sleep?” Nida repeated the word, flabbergasted it could be
suggested.

She
couldn’t sleep. She had to find out what was going on to
her . . . . No.

No.

She
had to get back to her home.

To
Remus 12.

That
thought impressed itself upon her with all the power of a
supernova.

Yes,
she had to get back.

With
that certainty offering her a rare calm, she closed her eyes, lay
back down, and waited.

She
did not know what she waited for; all she knew was that sometime
soon she would act.

Yet it
was not Nida that knew that fact. Rather the certainty belonged to
that overpowering sense that told her she had to return to a planet
barren and devoid of life, yet one that held the key to
everything.

Carson
Blake

When
he received a call from Admiral Forest early in the morning, he
answered immediately. He had barely slept the night before, and the
little fitful slumber he had managed to take only served to make
him all the more tired. Nonetheless, he managed to answer with a
curt “hello.”

Admiral Forest did not bother with pleasantries; she told him
immediately that his ship had been cleared, and that a priority-one
transport lane had been opened up for him. True to her promise last
night, she was going to send him to Remus 12.

Then
Forest cleared her throat, and an unusual, hesitant silence
descended over the line.

Carson
stood there, ramrod straight, his hands clasped behind his back,
staring at the computer panel in his lounge room.

“We
are moving her to the Jupiter Substation,” Forest suddenly
announced.

Carson
lost all of his hard-won composure, and his hands fell hard at his
sides as surprise slackened his features. “What?” he stuttered, all
control lost from his voice too.

“We
need to isolate her. We also need to study her properly, and the
only way to do that is by taking her to the Jupiter Substation. We
simply cannot run the risk that . . . she has
been infected by something that can be transmitted to other
telekinetic implants. It’s the safest thing to do,” Forest added in
a firm voice that told him she would not compromise on her
decision.

Slowly
he clamped his teeth together, concentrating on the sensation of
compression and tension rather than what Forest had just
said.

“We
must isolate this,” Forest repeated, but it was unclear what this
referred to. Was it the situation as a
whole . . . or was it just Nida?

They
were treating her as if she was diseased, like the strange effects
ailing her implant could be picked up by somebody else.

He
wanted to tell Forest that was cold, almost inhuman, but he didn’t.
Because deep down under his swirling and turbid emotions, he could
understand her point.

The
Academy could not run the risk of this spreading, so right now they
were treating it like an infection. And the first thing you did
with an infection was you isolated the patient. Hence the Jupiter
Substation.

Still,
the thought that Nida would be transported there made him cold with
worry. The Substation was where the Academy took all of its most
dangerous subjects. From unknown alien life forms, to confiscated
technology, the Substation was built to withstand
danger.

This
was yet another signal that what was happening here was now deadly
serious.

And
yet, all Carson could think of was how downright innocent, if
awkward, Nida seemed. She didn’t deserve to be at the centre of
this. In fact, it just seemed plain odd that she was. Odd, and
unlucky.

“Carson,” the Admiral abruptly used his first name, “are you
paying attention?”

With a
quick blink, he realised he had zoned out, and he cleared his
throat and nodded his head. “When do I leave?” he asked, deciding
to concentrate on the one thing he could achieve. He had absolutely
no chance of stopping Nida from being transported to the Jupiter
Substation, but he could return to Remus 12. He could look for that
scanner, and he could bring it back and find out what secrets it
held.

That
thought alone strengthened his resolve more than all of the weapons
in the United Galactic Coalition could.

“Whenever you’re ready,” Forest announced.

Carson
nodded, then realised he ought to offer a salute, and snapped his
stiff hand to his brow. “Thank you, Admiral. I will be in
touch.”

“As
will I. This is . . . ,” she trailed off, and
briefly, she stepped away from the view screen, as if she no longer
wished to be seen. Then, with a resounding sigh, she came back into
view. Her eyes were hooded in shadow, and it was clear she hadn’t
slept a wink last night.
“Lieutenant . . . Carson,” she used his first
name, “good luck. God knows we need some good luck right
now.”

The
Admiral looked as if she wanted to end the call, but Carson stepped
forward. “What else have they found out? Have they been able to
remove the implant?” His questions were probably stupid considering
the Admiral had already told him Nida was being transferred to
Jupiter Substation. And the Academy would hardly bother
transferring her unless there was still a damn good reason to do
so.

The
Admiral shook her head, and it was a bitter move. “We have been
unable to remove the implant. Whatever
is . . . attacking it, will not let us. The
Cadet is currently inside a stasis field, and as soon as we
stabilise it, she will be transported. And, before you ask, no, we
do not know anything more. We have no idea what that energy is, we
have no idea where she picked it up from, and we have no idea what
it will do to her or the implant.”

Carson
didn’t know how to reply, and even if he had thought of the best
and sagest wisdom to impart in that moment, he wouldn’t have been
able to force himself to speak. He was rendered to the spot with
surprise and deep, deep, bone-shaking shock.

With a
brief goodbye, Admiral Lara Forest ended the call, leaving Carson
alone in his apartment, staring at nothing but an empty computer
panel.

His
gaze fixed on the spot where the Admiral’s face had once been, and
he slowly blinked, squeezing his eyes as tightly closed as he
could.

“This
doesn’t make sense,” he told his empty apartment in a hesitant,
wavering voice.

“Energy? A blue light attacking her implant?” he said aloud
again. “Someone must have some idea what’s going on.”

For a
brief, paranoid moment, he wondered if they really did. If Forest
and the other heads of the Academy knew exactly what had happened
to Nida, but for now, they were keeping that information to
themselves.

As
Carson pondered that fact, he quickly realised it couldn’t be true.
Forest was stalwart and hardy, even under immense stress, yet right
now, she was visibly cracking. No, she didn’t know what was
happening any more than he did.

In
fact, none of them would find out until and unless he returned to
Remus 12 and found his scanner.

It
held the key.

He
knew it did.

Clutching his once loose and sticky palms into tight fists, he
rammed them against his legs and blinked. Then he whirled on his
foot and headed for the door. He didn’t even bother collecting any
personal items; he simply strode through the halls of his apartment
block until he reached the nearest lift. Then he rode it down to
the ground floor and made his way across the Academy to the main
ship dock. There he found the small cruiser the Admiral had set
aside for him.

He
quickly scouted out the engineer refuelling and restocking his
ship, and once Carson confirmed his vessel would be ready within
five minutes, he finally started to relax.

But
only just.

He
couldn’t deny this incredible sense of impending doom that was
descending on him from above like the thickest, blackest, and most
stifling of clouds.

He was
running out of time. Which was a terrifying concept considering he
didn’t even know how much time he had left, let alone how quickly
he was running out of it. Yet he could not deny that with every
second he stood there and waited for his ship to be ready, it felt
as if he were throwing away the most precious resource he had
left.

He
tried to distract himself with watching the ship dock around him.
Usually it was a startling sight. An enormous ring-shaped building
with an open roof that led straight up to an unrivalled view of the
picturesque blue sky above.

Within
the building itself were multiple levels, all made of enormous,
reinforced metal floors that could slide back into the sides of the
building to allow ships docked on the lower levels to
leave.

It was
a testament to technology, and showed just how powerful the
Galactic Coalition Academy was. There was no other ship-docking
complex like this on Earth, and the majority of Academy traffic
came through here.

Well,
at least the majority of the spaceship traffic that actually landed
on Earth. The larger vessels, from the enormous Coalition cruisers
to the gigantic survey ships and resource transports, never landed
on the planet. They always remained in space, only ever taking up
orbit around the world, but never descending to the
surface.