Ghost station, p.27
Ghost Station, page 27
“She’s freakishly strong,” Kate pants.
The second dose does nothing except make Liana angrier. She manages to slither forward, and Ophelia catches a glimpse of her face, straining, red, but again curiously empty. No anger or fear or even pain. Thin streams of saliva slip from the corner of her mouth and down her chin.
“Doctor!” Ethan says.
“Okay, okay!” Ophelia leans forward once again with the hypo. This is all she has—three doses per vial. One of them should have easily taken down Liana. It should have taken down Ethan or Suresh, either of them much taller and heavier. Too much sedation might compromise Liana’s breathing.
But this time, Liana finally goes still. Ethan, after a moment, levers himself up cautiously, prepared to drop down again if needed. When Liana doesn’t move, he pushes up to his knees beside her.
“Turn her on her—”
Before Ophelia can finish, Ethan’s already rolling Liana over to her side.
To Ophelia’s shock and horror, Liana’s eyes are open now, her gaze focusing on Ophelia. The confusion and fear Ophelia was looking for earlier run rampant. “What … why?” Liana manages, as tears well up and roll across her face, the bridge of her nose.
“Oh my God, Liana.” She’s back. Ophelia grabs for her hand to comfort her, but her fingers are cold and limp.
“Are you all right? What happened?” Kate demands, crouching next to Liana.
Liana makes a terrified whimpering sound. “I hear it. Don’t you hear it?”
Everyone goes still. The only noises are Liana’s panting and the wind moaning around the hab.
“It’s the wind, love,” Kate says gently. “Just the wind.”
“No, no, no, nooo.” Liana shakes her head, a tiny movement. “It’s in me,” she whispers, just before her body goes limp. Her head lands hard on the patterned metal floor with a reverberating thump.
* * *
It’s in me. It’s in me. Liana had one brief moment of awareness before she was gone again. Unconscious, this time, and unmoving.
Thinking as she paces the central hub, Ophelia tugs hard at the delicate chain around her neck, the tiny metal bird in flight, warm against her fingers. Her necklace from Dulcie, whom she might never see again.
The pain in Ophelia’s head has receded to a dull roar. Her ribs ache, but she’s otherwise fine. Except for the overwhelming feeling that they’re making a mistake.
It’s in me.
Maybe Liana noticed the bumps on her arm and never said anything. Maybe she felt them on the back of her neck earlier today.
But Ophelia can’t shake the feeling that Liana was talking about a level beyond the merely tactile.
It’s in me. It’s in all of them now. Just to varying degrees.
“Doctor?” Ethan’s voice brings Ophelia back to herself.
She turns to find him at the A side entrance. He looks exhausted, hair ruffled, a thin red line of a scratch on his left cheek. He and Suresh have moved Liana to Ophelia’s office.
“We’re ready. I would…” He pauses, seeming to search for the words. “I would appreciate your willingness to assist, if it becomes necessary.”
If Liana wakes up. If she doesn’t. Ophelia’s not sure which he means. She doesn’t think she wants to know. She’s so far afield from where she expected to be. That—admittedly overly bright—vision of sessions in an office, with team members walking out feeling relieved, more rested, safer, none of that has even remotely come true.
Instead she’s preparing to help with an impromptu surgery. Of all the kinds of surgery she’s ever considered assisting with, which is to say none, impromptu would be the lowest on the list. She’s never felt more helpless in her life, not even when she was hiding behind that HRU, praying her father wouldn’t find her.
“I think we have to consider this might not be something we can just remove,” Ophelia says.
Ethan raises his eyebrows. “This was your suggestion, Doctor.”
“I know, but with what I saw—what we saw…” Ophelia corrects herself. “We’re talking about multiple systems affected. Movement. Speech. Intent.”
“Sleepwalking is—”
“Involves unconscious rote activity, usually. Maybe acting out a dream or nightmare. Not like this.” Ophelia hesitates. “I’m saying Liana might be in there still, but she was not making the decisions. Not when she was running for the airlock door.”
And that’s what’s going to happen to all of them. Slowly descending into madness, at best. Or quite possibly being perfectly aware but unable to move or speak while something else acts as them instead.
“You don’t know that. You don’t know what she was seeing or experiencing,” he points out. “But even if that’s the case, that’s all the more reason we need to try to save her.”
“She can’t even give consent to what we’re about to try,” Ophelia argues.
Disbelief flashes across his face. “Are you seriously suggesting that we need to protect ourselves legally from trying to save her life?”
“I’m not worried about lawsuits, Ethan! I’m worried we’re going to kill her. I’m not an expert at any of this. Neither are you.” Ophelia already has so many deaths on her conscience, she doesn’t know that she can stand one more. Not if Liana can’t even consent; that seems wrong.
“Sadly, we are suffering a shortage of experts in any number of areas here,” Ethan says wearily. “I still have a responsibility to my people. If it helps, I’m going to do this whether you’re with me or not. Because if we don’t figure this out, none of us are getting out of here alive.” He scrubs his hands over his face. “Sometimes all we have is the ugly decision.”
Ophelia bristles. “I’m not afraid of making—”
“It’s not cowardice. It’s selfishness. You’re still hiding. And I don’t have time for it. You don’t want to be your father, Ophelia? Don’t be him. You don’t like being a Bray? Make your own choices.”
His blasé attitude sets the remnants of Ophelia’s patience alight. “You don’t think I am? I’ve been fighting my whole life. To be better, to do better. You have no idea what it was like.”
“You’re telling me, the kid from the Lunar Valley slums, that I have no idea what it’s like to fight?” He folds his arms across his chest, eyebrows arched. “To be despised and pitied at the same time?”
Ophelia’s face heats. “Being poor isn’t criminal.”
“Neither is being rich,” he says. “Or the child of someone who was criminal.”
He’s right, of course. Neither of those things is illegal, but for the effects of such, they might as well be.
“Who makes the rules, Ophelia? If you’re trying to prove yourself, who decides when you’re done? When you’ve crossed the finish line?”
She rocks back on her heels, breath stolen.
“If she dies”—he jerks his thumb back toward Liana—“but you weren’t involved, does that make it better? Does that make it okay?”
“No, of course not!”
He shakes his head. “Then what are you doing?”
“I…”
He pivots and strides off toward the A side, without waiting for her answer, which she doesn’t have anyway.
Her hands ball into fists. Ethan doesn’t get it. He can’t. It’s not as if she’s cornered the market on dysfunctional families, or even violent ones. But there is something to be said for being the blue-chip stock for both. It’s a unique intersection of self-loathing and societal obsequiousness mixed equally with disgust. How is anyone supposed to claw themselves free of that? She’s done everything she can to make a space for herself, separate from both aspects of her heritage, while still trying to make up for both.
It’s impossible. Who she is always comes back to haunt her, one way or another, literally or figuratively.
But that question. Who decides when you’re done? She feels it resonating through the middle of her, an emptiness vibrating from an unexpected blow, shaking and reordering things as it moves through. An earthquake of personal revelation, impossible to ignore.
He meant it, she’s sure, as sarcasm. But in truth, it never occurred to her.
He’s correct—no one is ever going to come up to her and say, “Enough. You’re enough. It’s okay that you’re Field Bledsoe’s daughter. That you’re a Bray and you’ve been given great privilege despite not deserving it or being wanted by the Brays themselves.”
That will never happen. For a variety of reasons, not the least of which is how few people know those details about her.
Ophelia blinks, processing that.
It’s not that she’s been anticipating this moment, exactly, more that she figured one day she would feel it, that she would reach some point in her life, some threshold or mountaintop where she would look around and realize that she’d accomplished what she set out to do. Attained a position that everyone would universally agree was above critique, beyond failure.
A snort of self-deprecating laughter escapes her, and Ophelia slaps a hand over her mouth, even as her eyes well with tears.
What the fuck, Phe. How did I miss this? Physician heal thyself. There is no finish line because she never set one. She just kept moving the tape with every accomplishment, with every attempt, because no one was there telling her she was done. Telling her she was enough.
But who would have done that anyway? Her mother? No. Her uncle, her grandmother? Please. And there’s literally no one else in her life whose word she could accept, because no one else knows who she is.
Except, now, Ethan Severin.
Who makes the rules? Another of his questions that Ophelia doesn’t have the answer to. But she knows what she wants the answer to be, what it should be.
Me.
26
The Portable Medical Unit is a bird-shaped device with the “wings” in a downward position to support the central body, which is a long, flat panel containing various instruments on the underside and a settings panel on the top. The wings can be extended or collapsed to fit the position needed.
It’s designed for simple procedures while the team is on location, away from assignment. Healing sprains and minor fractures, treating frostbite, removing a bad tooth. Theoretically, it can mend clean breaks as well, but Ophelia isn’t sure that she would trust her leg to it, especially in a running-for-your-life situation.
From what she knows, it’s mostly for stitches. Hands and fingers. The occasional split lip, like Suresh’s, or split skin beneath a black eye.
“Here. ‘Foreign object removal.’” Suresh points to the settings, and Ethan bats his hand away.
“I’ve got it,” he says. “Step back.”
Liana is resting on the lab table on her stomach, her head turned to the side. Her eyelids are twitching with movement, but her breathing is slow and regular. For now. The PMU is positioned over the back of her neck, where, even from the doorway, Ophelia can see the bumps shifting and moving beneath her skin, roiling as though they can sense what’s about to happen.
Ethan adjusts the wings, bringing the instruments closer to Liana’s vulnerable neck. So many nerves and veins, so many ways to cause permanent damage.
I hate this. “Maybe we should try it on one of us first, on the arm. On one of us who still has the … bumps.”
“If it’s a progression, we may not have time,” Kate says flatly, swaying slightly in place. “Mine are gone, so are yours. If they’re moving through the body, what happens if Liana’s go deeper?”
Even though Ophelia had suspected at the time that Kate was lying about the bumps on her arm, her tacit admission of doing so still triggers a flare of irritation in Ophelia. She mentally stamps it out. Kate lying was not helpful, no. But there are bigger issues at hand.
Ethan rocks the device back and forth, ensuring its stability, and then, after a brief hesitation, he selects the menu option that Suresh indicated.
A faint blue light emerges from the instrument panel, a scan, moving left to right and then top to bottom.
Ophelia holds her breath, waiting. When it locks on, a matching blue X will appear on the desired area, asking Ethan to confirm.
Instead, it gives a distressed beep. “Target not identified,” it announces, and the light vanishes.
“Something’s wrong.” Ethan frowns. “It won’t lock on.”
“Just override it. It did that last time, too, remember? It didn’t want to pull the metal from my hand because it was too close to some nerve,” Suresh says, waving his hand, palm up. A jagged white scar decorates his skin. “I’m fine. Just a little numb.”
Jesus.
“It’s probably because they’re moving too much,” Ophelia offers. “Safety restrictions on foreign body removal are more stringent.”
The three of them, Ethan, Kate, and Suresh, turn to stare at her.
“What?” Ophelia shifts uncomfortably. “I took some training on it a few years ago. I wanted to know what my R&E patients were going through when they were away from home.” Work is—was—her life.
Kate looks vaguely impressed—or that much closer to passing out. She’s been hitting the “engine cleaner” hard. Suresh sucks his teeth in annoyance.
“Suggestions?” Ethan asks after a moment.
Well, I wouldn’t fucking override the safeties. “Try to stabilize the target.”
Ethan backs away from the PMU, holding his hand out in a gesture for Ophelia to take over.
“No,” she says with a shudder. Cutting into someone, to help or not, is a bridge too far. A bridge too close to her father.
Ethan stares at her, mouth tight in frustration.
If you don’t want to be your father, don’t be him. As if it’s that simple.
With a sigh, Ophelia finds a pair of long tweezers in the Kellerson pack. And that’s how she ends up at the front of the PMU with Ethan back at the controls.
“Ready?” Ophelia asks.
He nods.
She tries to remember the exact instructions from the training. In that scenario, it was a patient who was moving too much and couldn’t, for whatever reason, be sedated. Not exactly their situation here.
Her heart is beating so hard that the tweezers shake with her pulse as she zeroes in on the largest squirming mass beneath Liana’s skin.
She’s terrified that she’s going to fuck up. That she’s going to make a mistake that ends with Liana dead and Ophelia covered in her blood. But at the same time, Ophelia can’t just hand this off to someone else. Suresh is a little too careless for her taste, and Kate is, she’s fairly sure, too drunk.
Ophelia takes a deep breath and blows it out, then closes the tweezers around a bump, which looks like nothing so harmless now. It lurches left and then right, trying to escape her grip.
“Now,” she tells Ethan.
The blue light reappears, scanning past her tweezers, correctly identifying them as surgical tools, and focuses on her prey.
That bright blue X appears exactly where it should. “Target locked,” the PMU announces.
“We got it,” Ethan says with obvious relief.
The PMU unleashes a cascade of instruments, including a laser scalpel and tweezers, miniature versions of the ones Ophe- lia’s holding.
With a faint buzz, the laser scalpel zips a neat line across Liana’s skin, right through the blue X, releasing the smell of burned flesh, and after a second, the first red beads of blood.
Ophelia swallows hard, looks away.
“Steady, Ophelia,” Ethan says.
Her headache, never quite gone, grows in strength until she can feel pain in her jaw, shooting down her tense neck muscles as well. But she keeps as still as she can.
The PMU deploys tweezers with a click-click-click. We’re almost done. Please let us be almost done.
“What the fuck is that? What is it?” Suresh demands.
“It looks … it looks like an exoskeleton.” Ethan.
Ophelia’s gaze snaps back to the PMU. Bugs.
Beneath the blood, she gets a glimpse of a black, shiny-edged … thing. It doesn’t look like an insect to her; the lines are too straight. But the shiny surface does resemble a carapace of some sort. Then again, any bugs here are probably not like any they’ve ever seen before.
The PMU’s tweezers have caught it, even as it attempts to squirm deeper.
“Where is it going?” Suresh leans closer, scratching at his arm. “God!” He glares down at his elbow.
The pain in Ophelia’s head increases to lightning bolt strength and intensity. “I think we should hurry,” she says. Nausea is building to the point of no return.
“Does anyone else feel ill?” Kate murmurs. When Ophelia glances up, she’s pressing her hand to her head.
Could be the drinking. But … Ethan is pale and sweaty as well, a vein in his forehead pulsing.
The PMU pulls at the thing in Liana, and for a moment Ophelia sees it clearly, gone solid and still.
She gasps. It’s not a bug, not at all. How is that possible? How is that here?
Then the invader seems to collapse under the pressure of the tweezers, spilling in little fuzzy lines back down to the incision.
Ophelia yanks her hands back. “Get it out, get it out!”
But even in the few seconds it takes the PMU to move a containment vial into place, it’s too late. The thing has poured itself, like animated black sand, back into the incision and vanished.
Kate retreats to the corridor, her hand clapped over her mouth. A moment later, the sound of retching follows. The throbbing in Ophelia’s head feels like movement now, like tiny knives slicing into her brain as they hack their way in deeper.
That’s it. It’s over.
“Close it,” Ophelia says softly. “Before she loses any more blood.”
“No, wait, we didn’t get it out,” Suresh protests, clawing at his arm without seeming to even realize it. He looks from her to Ethan and back again.
Ethan, however, is focused on Ophelia. “Birch’s sample.”
She nods, relief mixing with despair. He saw the same thing she did, recognized it.
