Transcendent (9781311909442) (21 page)

Palla’s face floated through the darkness,
telling her that she’d be okay. She gasped again. Palla had been
with her. She remembered that much. In the pre-op room. Lily
relaxed into the bed. There were a lot of holes but she hoped she
could put them together. She licked her lips but her tongue was
just as dry as they were.

“Chips?”

She nodded. A moment later, she felt one of
the frozen chips against her lips. She opened her lips and sucked
on it. It had a faint cherry taste to it and melted quickly. She
swallowed and winced, but already it made her throat feel
better.

“Why can’t I see?” she asked. Her voice was
rough but she could do more than whisper now.

“The unit’s turned off,” the voice
responded. “Don’t worry, though; they’ll activate it as soon as
you’re out of recovery.”

Lily reached down to feel for a blanket.
There was nothing on her but she did locate the tubes that were
stuck in her arms. She reached for them and said, “Then get me out
of here.”

“Cadet, you need to relax and let us do our
job,” the man informed her. “I will tranq you and let you sleep it
off otherwise.”

Lily hesitated. It wasn’t his threat that
made her pause; it was his voice. “Karl?” she asked.

“No, not Karl. I’m Jax. Dr. Jax Kioch,” he
said. “Here, have another chip. It’ll help.”

Lily accepted the chip and considered his
voice. He sounded like Karl, one of the cadets in her class. It
couldn’t be; there was no way Karl was qualified in biology and
medicine, but the similarity was eerie.

He ran Lily through a series of tests,
asking her questions and checking to make sure she could feel and
react to everything. When he was finished, he grunted and said,
“Congratulations, Cadet, you’re in excellent shape. Healing nicely
and I see no reason why you can’t return to instruction after a
couple more days of rest.”

“I’m ready now,” Lily said. “Just turn this
on so I can see again.”

“Relax, they’ll do that soon,” he said with
a chuckle. “And don’t worry, once it’s activated there’s no way to
deactivate it, short of having it removed. And trust me, you don’t
want to have it removed.”

Lily shook her head. “No, I don’t.”

He chuckled again and released the
restraints holding her in bed. “Stay here. I see the technician
coming now.”

Lily fished another chip out of the cup he
handed her and sucked on it. Seconds passed before she heard a
single sound of metal against metal. She turned her head to the
right towards the noise and was reproached for it.

“Look ahead, Cadet,” Dr. Kioch said. “I’m
going to remove the rest of the bandage.”

Lily did as she was told and felt the
tugging as he unwrapped a bandage around her head. As it came off,
she could hear the sounds more clearly. She found herself focusing
on every little noise she heard since she couldn’t see
anything.

“This was done a few hours ago?” a new,
female voice asked. “Amazing.”

“I was told it had to be perfect,” Dr. Kioch
said.

“Be careful,” the woman advised. “They’re
going to expect this every time now.”

Jax chuckled, reminding Lily all over again
of Karl. She nibbled on her lip and waited while she felt some
featherlight touches on the side of her head just behind her
temple. It was sore but not painful enough to bother her. “Any
headache?” the doctor asked.

“No, I feel fine.”

“Amazing,” the woman repeated. “Cadet, I’m
going to activate your implant. There’s no easy way to do this, but
I want to warn you that it’s going to be a bit of a shock at
first.”

Lily almost nodded but caught herself and
held her head still. “I’m ready.”

“No, you’re not,” she responded. “On three,
two, one—activating.”

Lily grunted as a searing white light
slammed into her eyes. She squeezed her eyelids shut but it didn’t
help. She cried out and squeezed the arms of the bed while her feet
kicked back and forth on top of the small cot. In seconds that felt
like an eternity, the white light began to pixelate and grow
colorful. It seemed like random patterns at first until Lily
realized that every tiny dot in her vision was cycling through
colors.

She watched, amazed, as her entire field of
view shifted colors, one after another. Millions of colors, she
guessed, for each microscopic pixel in her vision. It was
overwhelming to think of just how many combinations were possible.
The scope of the resolution of human vision left her reeling as she
tried to guess just how capable the human eye was.

The colors faded, leaving an open bay in a
large recovery room. Workers moved behind a central workstation and
a man who bore a striking resemblance to Karl was leaning over her
and staring at her face. Lily gasped again. She could see!

“I take it by the smile and reactions of
your pupils you’re seeing again?” Dr. Kioch asked.

“Yes,” Lily whispered. “Everything looks the
same.”

“You’re plugged into a diagnostic station,
not a vehicle,” the woman said from beside her.

Lily turned and looked at her. Unlike the
doctor, the technician didn’t remind her of anyone. She wore the
same uniform that everyone else did and a popular hairstyle, but
that was it. Lily turned her attention to the diagnostic machine on
the cart.

“Everything looks good,” the technician
said. She smiled at Lily. “Better than good, to be honest with you.
Optimal.”

Lily smiled back at her. “Thank you.”

The woman reached up and unplugged the thin
cable that ran from the new port in the side of Lily’s head and
coiled it back onto her cart. “You’re going to need to keep your
hair short there. I recommend having it permanently depilated, but
it’s up to you.”

Lily nodded. “Okay, I’ll look into it.”

The technician gave her another smile and a
nod and then she pushed her cart back down the hallway to wherever
she was needed next. Lily turned back to the doctor and saw him
working on an infopad.

“I’ve notified the person responsible for
you, Cadet. They should be here shortly. You may change and go as
soon as they arrive,” he said. He turned to glance at her arm and
grimaced. “Oh, and we’ll get those lines out of your arm too. Sorry
about that.”

Lily smirked. “Do you have a brother? You
remind me of another cadet I’ve been training with.”

He spared her a glance and shook his head.
“No. No brothers.”

Lily nodded and leaned back while a nurse
came over and pulled the lines from her arm. A healing agent was
applied and in moments the holes and slight bruising around them
was gone. She smiled and reached up to touch the port in her head.
It felt weird. The same temperature as her head, but hard and
funny. She could tap it and feel the pressure, but she didn’t feel
where she tapped her fingers.

“Lil!”

Lily cranked her head to the side and saw
Palla walking as fast as she could down the hall. She clutched a
bundle under one arm that Lily hoped was her clothes. Lily raised a
hand to wave and then was almost knocked off the small bed when
Palla threw herself on her.

“I thought you said I was going to be okay?”
Lily gasped.

Palla pulled herself off and grinned. “I
did, but that doesn’t mean I’m not glad to see you. Besides, things
happen sometimes, even with the best doctors and facilities.”

Lily’s head tilted for a moment but she let
the odd remark slide. Maybe it made sense; she was a high-profile
student. The highest, she supposed. President Ondalla would want to
make sure she had the best treatment possible. “Those my
clothes?”

“Oh! Yes, here you go. Get changed and I’ll
get you back to our room. You’ve got the rest of the week off to
recover.”

Lily frowned. “I don’t need it.”

“What? Of course you do. You can’t walk
through the station dressed in a hospital tunic!”

Lily laughed. “I meant the week off. I’m
ready to go back now.”

Palla frowned. “At least a couple of
days.”

Lily nodded. “All right, two days.”

Palla grinned and turned to press a button.
Holographic walls shimmered around them, granting her a minimal
level of privacy to change. “Go ahead. Hospitals always give me the
creeps.”

“Um, I can dress myself,” Lily said.

Palla started. “Oh! Right! Sorry. Um, let me
know when you’re ready.”

Lily shook her head as Palla stepped through
the illusory wall and glanced at the clothes left on the foot of
her bed. She sat up slowly, testing herself, and grinned when she
found she felt perfectly normal. She nodded and started tugging the
flimsy open-sided tunic off. She ached to get her own comfortable
uniform back on and get back to her normal routine.

Lily yawned in spite of her recent medically
induced nap. She chuckled and had to admit that a day or two off
might be nice after all. Except that would slow her down from
getting some real biomech training. She frowned. There was nothing
stopping her now except the next generation of simulator training.
She had to finish that as fast as she could.

Lily sighed. Palla was going to be upset
with her when she cut her two-day recovery to one.

Krys looked over from the couch as the door
opened and Shelby walked in. He could tell from the wrinkles around
her eyes and the tension in her cheeks that something was bothering
her. He set his infopad down and stood up at the same time she
released the catch on her utility belt and placed it on the
table.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

She lifted her eyes to his and flared her
nostrils as she let out a sigh. “These night cycles are hard for me
to deal with,” she said.

Krys studied her a moment as she tried to
smile. “I don’t believe you.”

“You don’t?”

“Well, I do,” he backtracked. “I mean I
think there’s more to it.”

She sighed again and walked over to him. He
pulled her into a hug and felt her melt into his grasp. “How can
you be so perceptive?”

Krys smiled into her hair and pressed his
lips against her head to kiss her. “You make it easy.”

She pulled her head back to look at him. A
genuine smile lifted her lips. “I do? How’s that?”

Krys shrugged. “Like I need an excuse to
look at you?”

She laughed and then kissed him on the lips.
Krys felt her pressing harder against him and realized this wasn’t
something casual and affectionate. He let her push him back until
his legs hit the couch and then felt her give him a shove that
showed she was stronger than she looked. Krys landed with a grunt
and looked up in time to grunt again as she straddled his lap and
continued where she’d left off.

Their relationship had grown since the
incident with the blue dress. Over the year that had passed, Krys
had finally worked up the nerve to tell her he liked her. That was
all it took for Shelby. In no time, they spent every spare minute
together, either at his place or hers. Sometimes she even made up
excuses to visit him during the day. Inspections, she called
them.

Through it all, and in spite of how much he
enjoyed being with her, Krys was still holding back. He had
promises he’d made and he went out of his way to keep them. His
irregular drops at the irrigation pump continued and when he could,
he left news for them. He had to scribble down what he could on
clothing that he left for them using charcoal. They could wash it
out; that way the clothing wasn’t ruined.

“What’s gotten into you?” Krys mumbled
during a brief respite when her lips weren’t crushing his.

“Shut up,” she groaned. “I’ve been waiting
too long for this! We can talk later.”

Krys shook his head and managed to push her
back. “This isn’t like you,” he insisted.

Shelby stared at him, her eyes intense and
angry for a moment. Then she closed them and let out a breath. When
she opened them again, they sparkled with moisture. “I’m worried.
No, not worried. Scared.”

“Scared? About what?”

“You,” she said.

Krys recoiled. “What? But you were
just—”

“I want you, Krys,” she said. “And I wanted
to forget everything and finally feel like I had you. I wanted to
make you mine and let the world around us do whatever it wanted to
for as long as it took.”

Krys’s lips moved a few times before he was
able to make words come out of them. “I’m really confused.”

She sighed. “Do you know why I hate the
night cycles here?”

“You’re not afraid of the dark, are
you?”

She smirked. “No. I’m afraid of what’s in
the dark.”

Krys was pretty sure she wasn’t talking
about stubbing her toe on a rock or a chair or something so he
asked, “Huh?”

Shelby stared at him, her eyes moving all
over his face and then connecting with his again. He felt like he
was being accused of something. Did she know about his friends in
the woods? Had he screwed up somewhere and she found out?

“There’s been more attacks,” she said
without breaking their gaze. “More people have died.”

Krys stiffened. “People here?”

She shook her head. “No, not yet. But we
have a convoy headed to the starport with our production from the
last light cycle on it.”

“Okay, um, so that’s got you worried? What
about me? You said you were scared for me? Are you afraid I’ll be
attacked when I go out into the fields to do maintenance or
repairs?”

She shook her head and looked away from him.
“I know, Krys.”

Krys felt his heart skip a beat in his
chest. He stared at her as she looked back at him. A tear spilled
and ran down her cheek and fell on the blue cloth covering her
thigh. His breath caught in his throat as he realized she knew. She
knew, and that meant he was in trouble. Real, serious, firing-squad
level trouble.

“They’re my friends,” Krys said. “I have to
help them!”