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Celestial Souls, Book I: Christine
Chapter Fourteen: Integration

Everything I had been told about events and places and people of these ‘alien’ cultures seemed to come back very slowly on the ride. The Nisekem, the Erebians, the Ladowaci, dead royalty – they all seemed to blur together into a mass I couldn’t quite pick out. Where we going to any of those places, or had Mr. Dessler and Ruth exaggerated their importance? Maybe they were little backwater places that didn’t really have anything of note. And where were those places?

We hit a speed bump, going far too quickly; everyone seemed to wake with a jolt. I grunted as Sylvia slammed into me, sending me slamming into the wall; pain was starting to seep in, a dull ache.

Theophanes reached over and half-tugged her off of me, with some difficulty.

“That wasn’t as light as it could have been,” he noted, half to Marcus and half to me, “She and the mother are still out.”

“They’ll wake up,” he said nonchalantly, grabbing onto the door as the van rattled. “Jesus, Dakarai, watch what you’re doing!”

“You wanna get there on time or not?”

“I wanna get there in one piece.”

“And you will, so quit whining.”

I distinctly heard Marcus mutter “Jackass!”

There was silence. Serena was stony-faced, Theophanes merely uncomfortable from sitting on my mother’s feet. Passing headlight occasionally flashed enough light inside to get an idea of what was going on; if my eyes didn’t deceive me (and they might’ve been) Thom was asleep, or feigning sleep very well. I sighed, leaning my head against the hard wall.

“Cheer up,” Theophanes said quietly, reaching over and patting my knee, “We’re going to a safe place.”

“But why? And why them?” I said, gesturing to my mostly-unconscious family.

“We were told everyone that needed to go would be at the store around six,” Marcus said. “So we just took who was there.”

“You must’ve expected resistance – why else would you have phasers? Er, guns, I mean?”

“They’re a standard sidearm,” one of the men said. “We carry them at all times.”

“We were also told that we were returning several people and integrating some others,” Marcus added, “I assumed that meant you, and since your family was there – them too.”

“Who gave you that order?” Theophanes said. “We never came to a consensus.”

“Carmen,” he said. “Well, she didn’t order it, but she suggested it, and I suggested it to my CO, and he was okay with it, so...here we are.”

“You do not take orders from Carmen,” Serena sniffed.

“You’re right. I just take suggestions, and she was really insistent upon it.”

“Where...is Carmen?” I said, remembering the previous Tuesday. ‘You’re not going to work today’ suddenly took on a greater meaning in the van.

“At the headquarters,” Marcus said.

“We might not make it to HQ if the traffic gets any worse,” Dakarai noted, “Would any of you ladies back there mind if I took a shortcut?”

“If it’s anything like that last one, then yes,” Marcus said.

“Slow down,” one of his companions noted, “There’s a cop car. I dunno if they’re one of us.”

“’One of us’?” I repeated.

“Yeah, er...the less you think about that, the better. At least right now,” Marcus said, tensing up as Dakarai made a sharp turn. The streetlights seemed to vanish, and the van plunged into darkness. I was quiet the rest of the ride, which became considerably more bumpy, grabbing onto whatever I could until, after what seemed like ages, the road smoothed out. It was still dark, even darker than it was before I couldn’t even see my hand in front of my face.

Outside, there was a loud noise that made me jump. Theophanes patted me on the knee again, as if that would get me to calm down, but it didn’t. The noise was a loud mechanical whirring, followed by clanking and clanking, and all the while the darkness got even darker...

Until the lights flicked on. I squinted through the nearest window; it looked to be a very large garage. Several other, similar, vans were there. They looked to be empty.

Dakarai and his team stepped out first, opening the back doors and ushering us out. I glanced around – it looked to be less of a garage and more of an indoor parking lot, though a very small one at that. A few people were milling about a door at one end, and one of them men in the group called to one of the men over there. Two of them came over, carrying what looked to be collapsible wheelchairs.

“Hey, kid,” Marcus was saying, nudging Thom, “Wake up. We’re here.”

“How the hell could he have fallen asleep through that?” I said. “Thom! Wake up!”

He mumbled something that sounded distinctly like ‘shut your face, Chris’.

“Hey now, that’s no way to talk to a lady,” Marcus said, “Get up. You can sleep on the shuttle.”

Eventually Thom was roused, looking pissed off. Mama and Sylvia, still not completely awake, were pushed about in the wheelchairs.

“We have to hurry,” one of the men said, “The shuttle leaves any minute—”

“What about our stuff?” I said, having just realised it.

“That’s not important,” he said.

“But my mom’s got medications and stuff she needs to take—”

“We can have people go back for that later,” he said, “And we can deal with that in the meantime. Come on!”

At the doorway on the wall was a tunnel. It wasn’t much wider than the hallway in the Dessler’s basement; lined with dim yellowish lights and apparently constructed of metal, it reminded me heavily of some weird military bunker. Marcus took the lead, followed by myself – Theophanes, Serena, and the rest of the men were taking up the rear, and I suspected this was because it prevented me from running away. As if I would have with my mother and sister half-conscious in a wheelchair.

I was reminded, vaguely, of a plane. There were some airport terminals that connected the place to the airport by means of a tunnel, never having to step outside. When we finally reached the other door, it felt suspiciously like that; stepping over a ledge with a gap in it where the shuttle and the garage connected, stepping into something – it didn’t seem quite like a plane – where the air was warm and rather musty. The little hallway I found myself in was narrow, and the fact that there were several uniformed people there – guards, pilots, I didn’t know – mostly dark-skinned, but others were paler; some of them talking in a strange language, others in sing-song tongue.

It was certainly a strange plane-like-thing; there were several rows of seats, with criss-crossing seatbelts and no windows. That was rather bizarre. I was shoved into one, several people helped my mother and Sylvia into one, and everyone else seemed to walk in and pick a seat of their choosing, like it was no big deal. Theophanes even requested a newspaper, and I knew that only because one of the uniformed men passed him one; he opened it and began to read as if absolutely nothing was wrong.

“Hey, where’s everyone else?” I said. “I thought you said there were other people here.”

“There are,” a uniformed woman said, seating herself next to me; her black hair was cut very short, close to her head. “They’re in another section.”

“How many people are you bringing there?”

“Lots,” she said.

There were several loud noises then – hissing noises, clanking noises, whirring noises. Around me – underneath me, to the side, I couldn’t tell – an engine rumbled. I felt myself tense up. This felt odd. With knowledge of aliens I had half-expected to be beamed up, not sitting in, for all intents and purposes, was a funny-looking plane.

I felt movement underneath us, and quickly felt the usual pressure of gravity as the plane took off. I wished there were windows. I would have liked to see where we were going.

It more than likely was the plane, but I felt ill as we climbed higher and higher. It could have been nerves too, but I was likely feeling airsick. Between the woman and me, my mother slowly came to.

“Huh?” was the first thing she said. “Am I on a plane?”

“Yes,” the woman said clearly. “Would you like a drink?”

“Yes,” my mother groaned, fear creeping into her voice, “A shot of vodka if you can get it.”

The woman smiled, as if my mother had told a very funny joke. She was given water instead, as was Sylvia when she came to. Sylvia didn’t look pleased.

“Where are we going?” she snapped. “I don’t have my passport on me.”

“You won’t need passports,” the woman said. “We’re just making a stopover at our HQ.”

“And where’s that?”

“Rather far off,” she said, “We don’t want to be seen.”

My stomach began to rumble. My watch read that it was close to seven, and I hadn’t eaten yet. Not that I felt very hungry with the airsickness, but I was going to be a wreck by the time I got to wherever their little headquarters was.

“You look rather pale,” the woman next to me said, “Do you need anything?”

My stomach lurched. “You wouldn’t have anything for motion sickness, would you?”

She gestured someone over with a wave of her long, dark finger, and they talked for a moment before the man disappeared for a moment. When he came back he was holding a syringe.

“You don’t have anything in pill for—ow!”

“We stock the bare minimum for emergencies,” he said. I winced, placing the offered cotton ball over the pinprick. A little bit of blood was seeping up.

“Besides, this works faster,” the woman said.

I couldn’t describe the journey, as I had no idea. All the while the air in the cabin was warm – too warm – and musty, and even though I was very hungry and not very tired, I found myself drifting off...

I dreamt. Nothing I could remember; just the same disjointed, bizarre stuff that I’d been seeing every time I closed my eyes. When I woke up, my watch read it was about...two in the morning? And we were still flying? I glanced over to the woman next to me just to see if this was normal, but she had nodded off herself, her head bobbing a little bit with the plane’s movements. Everyone else appeared to be the same way; there were only one or two people moving about the cabin, and they didn’t look in my direction.

I didn’t want to go back to sleep, so I stayed up and waited. Finally, I felt the weightless sensation of a plane descending – more than ever I wanted to know where we were. Finally, when my watch read five-past-three, the shuttle came to a stop. But even then we didn’t leave right away. It was half an hour before we could do that, tired and marched out by amazingly cheerful crewmen. I couldn’t see where we were going, as there was another tunnel in the way. The only thing I noted was that it was much colder than when I’d left. I shivered.

Starting to feel tired myself, I stumbled about until I found I’d been offered a bed – in a ward, it looked like; there were rows upon rows of beds, divided by flimsy little cubicle-like walls, and I fell fast asleep.

It didn’t last long; I was jolted awake at eight, allowed five minutes for a badly-needed shower, and then we were herded like cattle to a dining hall. I glanced around seeing a lot of unfamiliar faces, and no one I knew – a hand grabbed me, and I jumped, but it was another uniformed woman directing me over to where (finally) I saw everyone. I mean everyone. My family was there, yes, and Serena and Theophanes and a very tired-looking Ruth, Carmen and a scared-looking girl I didn’t recognise, but also Mrs. Dessler and a stony-looking Eric were there too; Mr. Dessler were nowhere to be found. I wondered what happened to him.

“Morning, hon,” Ruth said, stifling a yawn as I staggered up to the back of the line. “Rough flight?”

“Ruth, where the hell are we?”

“A temporary Helian HQ,” Ruth muttered, “Somewhere in Europe. Don’t ask me where, hon, army history ain’t my speciality.”

“I think people’d notice if there was this giant place here—”

“It’s an abandoned underground bunker from the Second World War,” Theophanes said, “They just...appropriated it. I believe we’re somewhere in northern Russia.”

“Hon, you can ask all the questions you like, but wait until after I’ve had my coffee,” Ruth said.

When I had received breakfast – oatmeal; I saw large vats of them in the back, and some other things that were easy to distribute – yoghurt, some fruit, and juice, as well as what I was told were calcium supplements – I was again herded over to a table. I tore into the food, starving, but neither my mother nor Sylvia looked like they wanted to eat.

“Starving yourself won’t get you home any quicker,” Marcus said, now wearing the same beige-y uniform as the majority of people there; he slid into a seat near Theophanes, who looked somewhat disgruntled and went back to doing the crossword in the paper.

“I’ve been taken against my will to this – this place,” Sylvia said, “If I want to starve myself in protest then I’m well within my rights!”

“Okay, but you only get meals when they give them,” Marcus said. “I’d eat something if I were you.”

Sylvia picked at the oatmeal. The unknown girl, her black hair dishevelled, stared at her sourly, and said something in French. I was never good with French, and all I was able to pick out was that she was referring to Sylvia, asking her something I didn’t know. There was an awkward pause; did this girl only speak French?

“Parlez-vous anglaise?” Mrs. Dessler finally broke the silence. There was another awkward pause. “I studied French in school,” she said, seemingly trying to muster up as much dignity as she could in her situation.

“A little bit,” the girl muttered in a heavy Quebecois accent.

“What’s your name?” Marcus said. “Toi – er, no, ta nom? God I hate this language.”

“It’s votre nom,” she said tonelessly, “Julie Béliveau. Yours?”

“Marcus Barke.”

“Why am I ‘ere?”

“Well, I’m gonna explain that in a minute – okay, usually when you get here they assign you – you, as a group – a guide, of sorts. Since Dakarai’s being a lazy asshole, I’m getting his duties. We’ve got a couple of days before a window opens – God, I’m bad at this, right, you don’t know what that is. Well, let’s just say, where we’re going, the fastest way to get there only comes about during certain times of the year. Not to say you can’t get there other times, but this way is the fastest. Anyway, that window of opportunity doesn’t open up until...er...today’s Friday? Not until Monday at the earliest. We’re stuck here until then.”

“You still didn’t explain why we’re here,” Mrs. Dessler said, pulling her jacket tighter around her. “And where is my husband?”

“Um...listen, I’m just here to help you guys adjust. I dunno where they took him. I know they took him away because he was pretty damn aggressive when we came across him, and, er, they usually take them into holding. I’ll see if I can find out for you.”

“You’d better,” she said.

“Right, well – like I said, eat up, because after breakfast you guys have a lot to do.”

“Like what?” Carmen said.

“Inoculations, mostly. There’s a couple of mandatory ones your planet doesn’t have. Um...what else, what else...”

“‘Your planet’?” Mrs. Dessler said.

“Not all humans come from Earth. That’s like putting all your eggs in one basket. Anyway, today we mostly get the medical stuff out of the way – immunization, physicals, medications, if that’s what you need – it’s not as unpleasant as it sounds.”

Everyone, or most of them, had ashen looks on their faces that suggested, yes, it was just as bad as he had said. I was still trying to figure out what was going on, and I was going to be poked and prodded in the meanwhile? Not my idea of a fun day.

“So eat up because you’ll need the strength,” Marcus added.

Sure enough, while everyone else was finishing up breakfast and (I assume) heading to their duties, or whatever it was the uniformed people did, Marcus led everyone at our table to somewhere. The base was very confusing; we wove in and out through several corridors until we came to a hastily-made waiting room. Shortly down the hall I heard yelling, and it was a very familiar voice – not a language I recognised, but the voice was familiar.

“Konnie!” Ruth barked, having trailed along with us. She then barked something out in the sing-song language. From the hallway, Konstancja barked right back. Ruth strode into the room as if she belonged there, and after quite a bit of yelling—

“What’re they saying?” my mother said.

“Dunno,” I said. “You kinda get used to tuning it out.”

— Ruth re-emerged from the room, a furious Konstancja beside her, and a tiny, crying baby in her arms.

“What was the issue?” Marcus said, looking wary.

“She didn’t want the babe to be poked with needles.”

“You wait!” Konstancja seethed. “You wait until child strong enough to handle it!”

She sat down on the nearest chair, still seething, and tried to soothe the boy. I darted over for a closer look; she glanced up at me, her pale eyes gleaming in the light, and said nothing. I glanced down. The boy was a perfectly normal baby, with the wrinkly, reddish-pink skin of a newborn; he had tufts of nondescript brownish hair, but not a lot. Huh. He had come out...well, white. I half-expected him to have purplish skin like her.

“Congratulations,” I said quietly, “What’s his name?”

She said it. “I did not have to wait long. Name came quickly. Means ‘white snow’.”

“What is it?”

“Albasthó,” she repeated. “Similar to his grandfather.”

“Are you next?” a rather wearied looking woman said, presumably the doctor.

“Uh...”

“You’re standing near the front,” she said, “so I’m gonna assume you’re next.”

I was then whisked away to the back, while my mother, even in her state, couldn’t help but snicker. Oh, sure, it was all well and good when it wasn’t her undergoing it. I shivered a bit – the room was too cold for my liking – as I was whisked behind a screen and told to change into a gown. It was all very...regulated; I was weighed, measured, checked for disease, and a bunch of other things I didn’t want to really remember, all done very quickly. It reminded me too much of the hospital, and as with then, I decided focusing on the ceiling would be a good idea, examining every inch of the white ceiling.

All the while the doctor wrote out things on some clipboard, before finally ending the whole thing with needles. Only two of them, and then I was told to change back into my wrinkled clothes and wait in the waiting room.

“For what?”

“For any allergic reactions,” she said, as if it should have been obvious.

Although it was sore where the needles had been injected, there were no obvious signs that I could notice, and I spent the time sitting near Ruth and Konstancja, and watch everyone else go in. There was a male doctor there too, but as it was only Eric, he didn’t have much work to do. When Eric came out, he sat as far away from me as possible. Well. Was he still trying to claim he didn’t want to be involved? It was hard to say that now.

The wait for everyone to go through was very long, it seemed. Finally, once everyone was done and accounted for, we were led to another area, less formal than the other one. Several doctors (I assumed) were sitting around a table, tinkering with something very tiny; I couldn’t see exactly what it was, but some of them were in little baggies off to the side.

“I’m bad at this bit,” Marcus muttered, fiddling with the zipper to his beige jumpsuit. “Okay, this section, is...er...”

And he looked painfully awkward.

“Implants,” one of the doctors said, not even looking up, “Aural implants. Temporary ones; you stick ‘em in your ear like earbuds.”

“And what’ll that do?” I said. No one else seemed to be asking it.

“Translators,” the man said, “Rough ones. It’ll give you the gist; your mind fills in the rest.”

“Is there an alternative?” Mrs. Dessler said warily.

“Yeah, spend a few years becoming fluent in divine-tongue, but who has that kind of time?”

A light went off in my mind. This would be an answer, wouldn’t it? I could finally know what everyone seemed to be talking about so intently. Knowing my luck, all the hushed conversations would be gone now and I would be no wiser than I was before, but it was worth a try.

“I’ll go first,” I said.

“Chris, are you mad?” Mama demanded. “You want something stuck in your brain?”

“Yes,” I said without thinking. I walked over – even now, I could hear Ruth muttering something lyrical to Theophanes – steeling myself for the worst. Maybe I’d have to be put under like with the memory-suppressing device. One of the doctors opened up an unopened baggie and pulled something small out with long tweezers.

“Do we have to watch this?” Mama said.

Sitting down at the offered chair, I was sorely disappointed when she just slipped them in my ears. It was really rather awkward; I could forget I was wearing earbuds but these clung to an odd bit of the ear canal, pretty deep in, and there was a weight, a sensation of grip that I couldn’t get used to. Instinctively my finger went to my ear to try and dig the offending piece out. I was aware cleaning my ears with my finger was disgusting, but I didn’t see a cotton swab around.

“Don’t jostle it,” she said, in English, “You’ll get used to it.”

Ruth and Theophanes were still talking, and it was no more understandable than before.

“It’s not working.”

“Give me a minute to start it up, would you?”

The only thing I noticed from the start was a faint humming, but even that faded and it was just like before. Except not. I glanced over at the two of them in the back; they had dropped their voices to a barely-audible whisper, leaning very close so that only they could hear. Ruth didn’t look like she minded too much. I frowned. There went that idea.

“Hey, say something in sing-song language,” I said. They glanced at me; Ruth arched an eyebrow.

It was a little like watching a badly-dubbed film; I saw their lips forming the foreign phrases, I heard them speak the sing-song tongue, and yet...I understood. It wasn’t with the fluency that I understood German; it was more words came to mind, and I automatically corrected it to be grammatically proper.

What Ruth said was something with a lot of rolled rs; what came to mind – I didn’t hear it in my ears, just...in my mind – was literally along the lines of ‘You know rude cancel conversations honeycomb’ – bad translation all around – and after a moment of confusion I understood it to mean ‘You know it’s rude to interrupt conversations, hon’.

“Cool,” I said, grinning.

“These are only supposed to be temporary,” Marcus stressed, looking a little calmer now, “Just so you’re not clueless until you become fluent enough in the language. Then you can take them out.”

With a great deal of apprehension, everyone else eventually got ‘implants’ as well. I could see utterly baffled looks on their faces as they tried to make sense of what was going on, for now the doctors were speaking phrases – slow, simple ones that didn’t lose too much in translation – in sing-song language. It was like my life had suddenly become a bad dub. I could almost forget the situation with the sheer entertainment of it. (Naturally, Ruth and Theophanes had reverted to another language entirely. Damn).

The novelty wore off by dinnertime, where, as soon as I was in earshot, my head was filled with bad translations of boring conversations. ‘Do you see’ and then there would be a name of some sort ‘motion picture?’ ‘No. Sergeant’ another-unpronounceable-name ‘sit astride it’s donkey’. Now multiply those bland conversations by a factor of ten; I was beginning to think whoever had programmed the thing needed to go back and work on it some more.

“I’m getting a ‘eadache,” Julie said, pawing at her ears. And then she said something in French which the translator and my mind interpreted as ‘I’m getting fed up. I want to go home’. I was surprised it translated French, of all things.

The second day there, Thanatos showed up. I was surprised I didn’t notice him until he was, literally, right behind me. I had been shivering non-stop, even with a blanket; I had probably interpreted the inevitable shudder as just a reaction to the cold, and all of a sudden, I heard a smooth: “Hello, Christine.” It was in English, too.

He was there again, radiant as always even in such dingy surroundings. Again he was underdressed for the weather, considering we were underground during a Russian winter.

“Hello,” I said, feeling the usual tension creep up. I pulled the blanket tighter around my shoulders. “...I wasn’t expecting to see you here.”

He smiled, very warmly; I shuddered again, for no reason. “I am unfortunately here on business. Would you happen to know where dear Ruth is?”

“Nope,” I admitted. “She just sorta wandered off. I’ve been sitting here for hours at this point.”

A hint of a frown appeared on his face. “By yourself?”

“Yeah. Everyone else has other stuff to do.”

“Would you like it if I kept you company?” he asked, plucking something between his thumb and forefinger – I didn’t see anything, but a moment later a tiny little ball of light was there, no bigger than a small marble; he flicked it away like someone might flick a piece of lint, and it soared through the air, out of sight. “It will be a while until Ruth receives my message.”

My mind instinctively wanted to say ‘no’, although he would probably ask why, and I would have no good explanation for him. Instead, I wrapped the blanket tighter, fighting the urge to shudder again – I still had no idea why I did that – and moved over on the bed (more of a cot, really) to allow him to sit down. “Sure,” I heard myself say. He sat down tentatively beside me; thankfully he kept a pretty good gap between us.

“You are being integrated,” he said. It wasn’t a question.

“I guess so.”

“Do you know why?”

“Nope. Something to do with Ruth and Theophanes.”

“How strange. Usually they are very quick to inform the person.”

“...you wouldn’t happen to know why, would you?”

“I have a theory,” he said, “But it is just that – a guess.”

“What is it?”

He frowned a bit; the expression didn’t suit him. “My theory is that the ultimate reason you are here is connected to the Desslers. I know Alexander is being sought after because he is using weapons which are contraband, and they likely wished to confiscate them.”

“...that’s it?”

“It is far more difficult than it seems to track a single man down on a planet of billions. I am guessing there are other reasons, too, but I cannot say what.”

I frowned. “And how do I come into all of this?”

“Mere association,” he said. “Perhaps only mildly at first, when you only knew them on an ‘acquaintance’ basis, but with your capture and subsequent remembrance of the suppressed portions, you will likely prove useful. I expect you will be questioned on that subject, if you have not been already. Nothing large, I would assume. All they want to know is if he has the weapons they speculate he has.”

“Oh,” I said. I could guess easily that he was a wanted man; why else would Serena be chasing him down so intently? But what I couldn’t understand was how contraband weapons was a serious enough charge that Serena felt like she had to personally track him down. There was still something I didn’t understand. All right, a lot of things. Like Serena, for instance. I didn’t get her and her insistence at all, and she wasn’t exactly quick with an explanation, either. This did explain a little why Mr. Dessler was being hunted – yeah, he’d done something illegal there too, and I could see that.

“And what about...Ruth and Theophanes?”

“What about them?”

“They were pretty intent on finding Mr. Dessler too. They didn’t know it was him, mind you, but they were all gung-ho ‘bout it.”

“They have their own motives. Personal ones. Is it not my place to explain what, but let me just say that they were being less altruistic than others.”

It was my turn to frown. “That doesn’t sound right.”

“If I could tell you everything, I would. But to do so without their blessing would be an invasion of their privacy, and I respect them too much to consider that.”

“And Serena? What about her?”

“I respect her too.”

My frown grew deeper. “Do you have any idea how frustrating it is, being herded around like sheep without a clue as to what’s going on?”

“I can imagine,” he said. “Think of your mother. She has even less idea than you did! You at least had the notion of integration in your head, even if you were unsure of what, exactly, it entailed.”

“Yeah,” I said. “That doesn’t make it any better.”

Thanatos reached over, slowly, and delicately placed a hand on my shoulder. I fought the urge to gasp; even through the blanket, my sweater, and a jacket, his hand was incredibly warm. Too warm for a normal human being; it was almost as if he had an incredibly high fever all the time. He squeezed my shoulder very lightly, and it was like his warmth and his light had transferred into me; if I looked down at my hands I was sure they would be almost as radiant as his...

“Ah, Christine,” he said, “I cannot say much, but I can assure you of this: everything will fall into place eventually.”

It took effort to speak; the warmth was pleasant, almost overpowering. “Can we bump ‘eventually’ up to ‘now’?”

“Mm, I think not. Let me just say there are issues at the moment. I am sure you will discover what they are once you ascend.”

“Why not now?”

“Because that is what the colonel of the base ordered. Be patient; there is not much time left to wait.”

I hoped so. Out of the darkness of the base, a little light appeared, no bigger than a speck of dust, but growing in size as it steadily approached. It came across us, still very small, and landed on Thanatos’ outstretched finger. He paused, thinking something. I wished I knew what it was about.

“It appears Ruth has my message,” he said finally. “I should take my leave now. Business before pleasure, you know.”

He stood, removing his hand from my shoulder as he did. Slowly, the light and the warmth seemed to fade from my body, turning the base grey and lifeless again.

“Good day to you,” he finally added, before turning around and walking off. I watched him go, watched him until he was too far away to see, and then I returned to wrapping my blanket around myself, wondering where everyone was.

“You’d think they’d have a little variety here,” Mama said lightly, poking at her oatmeal. She seemed to be taking the same view I had: just going along for the ride.

Sylvia was less optimistic. “The gulags aren’t known for their cooking.”

“Or their coffee,” Ruth said, scowling down at her coffee cup. “This tastes like mud.”

“Probably is,” my mother said.

It seemed like everyone I knew had gathered together at the one table, whereas everyone else, mostly women and men in beige uniforms; the few not dressed in such weren’t anyone I recognised. Konstancja sat near the end, balancing a spoon in her left hand and Albasthó in her right as she fed him. It looked like a very complicated arrangement.

“Could not make oatmeal either,” Konstancja said, in what seemed to be considered cheerful for her. “Taste like paper.”

She had the decency to throw a thin blanket over the baby so she wouldn’t be exposing herself to the table, but it still seemed to make the Desslers uncomfortable (well, pretty much all of the men). I could see Eric, trying very politely not to look in that general direction – unfortunately that meant he wasn’t looking at me either, and I hoped very badly he would get some sense knocked into his head because there was no way he could pretend he wasn’t ‘involved’ now.

Mrs. Dessler gave a critical glance to Konstancja, pursing her lips in distaste. Maybe it was the very public display that made her uncomfortable. But Konstancja matched her distasteful look, and she went back to her food.

“Okay,” Marcus said, sliding into the nearest seat, “I’ve got your passports. Just temporary ones, of course, but it’ll be enough to get you through the border checks.”

Theophanes frowned. “Since when did the Helians institute border checkpoints?”

“Since the Donumians started hanging ‘round the area,” Marcus said, glancing around to see if anyone was eavesdropping. I leaned in closer. “They don’t want people to know because they’re worried there’d be panic.”

Theophanes looked very interested. “Are they hostile?”

“I don’t know, I’m not on the ship. We’ll find out once we get there – the Heliodora’s being real stingy with her contact. All I know is that we’ll be leaving not long from now.”

He passed out the ‘passports’, which were little more than a sheet of basic information printed on a heavy cardstock. I glanced down at mine – it was written in English and in (what I assumed) what sing-song language; the script looked slightly different from the flowing cursive I saw at the store. Name: SCHUMACHER, Christine Anne, mine read, Date of birth: 1987/05/10. There were several portions I didn’t understand, portions that looked to be something for a digital scanner to read.

“Don’t passports usually have pictures?” Sylvia grumbled, looking at hers.

“When you get the real ones you will,” he said, “Right now it’s got your fingerprint and retinal scan on there; there’s no way anyone could impersonate you.”

Sylvia didn’t look especially convinced.

After breakfast was a flurry of activity; people were packing up their things and sending them off on some sort of conveyor belt. I sat on my little cot in the ‘ward’, watching people around me. I had absolutely nothing with me except the clothes on my back and the passport, which I kept firmly in my hands. Eventually Marcus came up to me, looking ready to go with his uniform and an array of equipment on his back.

“Come on,” he said over the din, “We’re leaving now.”

I found myself back in the shuttle I’d come in on, and if that wasn’t it, it was close enough that I couldn’t tell. It had the same drab walls, same bare-bones look, and the same seats with the criss-cross straps that were pressing uncomfortably against my chest. Marcus took a seat beside me; it seemed like everyone had been paired off with an officer of some kind. I didn’t know what for; it wasn’t like we could have run off.

I was given an anti-nausea injection before we took off this time.

Something felt different this time around; it wasn’t exactly like a plane. It felt like a plane at first, with the weightlessness and the pressure on my chest...but then it got worse. I closed my eyes and tried to breathe, feeling very stifled all of a sudden. Was it just me, or was it getting uncomfortably hot in the place? I could feel the sweat coming off me.

‘Ascend’ was the word Thanatos had used. And Mr. Dessler had talked so easily, so smoothly about ‘alien’ countries. It was only reasonable that they would have had to go into space to get there, right? They couldn’t just beam them up; that was fiction, that was not real. But this was.

My muscles were very tense, clinging to the edge of the armrest. It was too hot; I was dying in my sweater there and yet I couldn’t take it off, couldn’t claw my way out of the straps—

“Christine, calm down,” Marcus said. “It’ll get better in a few minutes.”

“I think I’m melting,” I choked out, feeling sweat trickle down. Marcus dabbed at my forehead with a handkerchief.

“You’re not melting,” he said. “Close your eyes and try to relax.”

Worse and worse; I was in a furnace and I couldn’t get out; I was being burnt alive; I was melting and by the time we reached there I would be nothing but a little puddle of goo and some clothes...

Then, it faded. Slowly, gradually, the temperature cooled, the pressure faded, and I was left with a feeling of weightlessness. I felt myself exhale, slowly. That was an ordeal I didn’t want to go through again if I could help it. My sweater was now sticking to my body, and that was rather uncomfortable, but it was getter better. No worse than any other flight I’d been on.

“Hey, um,” I said, “sorry about the whole...freaking out. I wasn’t expecting that.”

“That’s okay,” he said. “You’re not the first person who’s freaked out. It is rather uncomfortable.”

“You didn’t freak out,” I said, slowly opening my eyes again.

“I’ve been through so many atmospheres that I can tolerate it.”

It took me a moment to start breathing again as I looked around – no gravity. At all. Anything that wasn’t bolted down, and there wasn’t much in the sparse cabin, was now floating about, drifting through the air like it was caught in a wave. A few officers that weren’t strapped down were flying about trying to retrieve them.

Marcus dabbed at my forehead again, then his own, with the handkerchief.

I was so fascinated watching everything float – it was like I was underwater, except with a great degree more nausea – and trying not to hurl that it seemed like no time at all before we arrived. I couldn’t explain how, but the instant we were there – wherever ‘there’ was – gravity seemed to come back. Slowly at first, but eventually it was there, my stomach stopped churning, and everyone made to get up.

“Can we get out now?” I said. The ship was still warm.

“Nope,” Marcus said. “Decontamination comes first, and that’ll take a while.”

I glanced around the cabin – Julie was rendered dumbstruck by the whole encounter, still sitting and making absolutely no attempt to get up, still gaping. I craned my neck to try and see my mother or Sylvia, but I couldn’t spot them. I knew they were there, but they were somewhere in the back.

So I was in space now? Or had we arrived on a planet? No, it couldn’t have been that; the ride hadn’t been that long, and it would have taken years upon years to get anywhere. So we obviously had to still be in space, and I didn’t know how to feel about that. It seemed so momentous, so...groundbreaking. But there were so many people around me, all of them used to the idea, like they’d come and gone plenty of times before. I was just a number.

Like most things – everything, really – about integration, I had no idea what decontamination entailed. But I quickly found out the hard way. Finally, when it was time for us to go, my passport was taken by a woman and punched into a machine, then handed back. I had no idea what this did, but didn’t have time to worry; we were separated by sex and then shoved into a changing room, where it (and my clothing) was taken by a female guard and set aside. To say it was awkward was an understatement; even in the change rooms at school, I always had something on...

The water in the next room was too hot for my liking; I let out a screech as it stung my skin, followed by some sort of soap. It fell from the ceiling, and there was absolutely no way to avoid it; the whole room was soaked. I forced myself to walk through it, watching my skin turn a bright reddish-pink in protest. Finally, in the last room I was offered a towel and clothes. Not my clothes, unfortunately; it was a jumpsuit that was far too big. I rolled up the sleeves and cuffs and it still felt awkward.

Ruth was outside the door when I stumbled out, and she was trying her hardest not to laugh. It was all very easy for her – her ugly jumpsuit fit very well.

“You look like a ghost, hon,” she said.

“Easy for you to say,” I said. “What the hell is this, chemical warfare?”

“Something like that,” she said.

I was again herded to a quieter area; there was nothing there save for a bench. I was alone; Ruth had apparently not seen fit to join me. But I heard footsteps just then, and looked up towards the door. It was Eric, his hair still plastered to his forehead. He paused, lingering in the doorway. Goddamn. Was he just going to stand there and gawk?

He was upset, I could see that. His right hand was groping for where his dog tag chain would have been, but there was nothing there, and that seemed to make it even worse. He was compensating by fiddling with the edge of the collar, but that appeared to be a poor substitute. All right, perhaps I had been too hard on him. All he’d known was that his grandfather was on the run – not about the alien bits. He had yelled at me, though; I was still sore over that.

“Hey,” I said. No use in him just standing there.

“...Hey,” he rasped, taking a step forward into the room.

“You look like hell.”

“Everyone does.”

Finally, he sat down on the bench across from me.

“You look cheerful,” he noted, his right hand going rather nuts in the absence of his necklace. “Did you know this was gonna happen?”

“I’d heard a little bit ‘bout it. I didn’t think it would happen to me. Or you.”

He frowned. “Some warning would’ve—forget it.”

“I wasn’t expecting your grandfather to get into a fistfight,” I said, a bit too harshly; he recoiled at the mention. “If he hadn’t maybe these people wouldn’tve panicked.”

“Yeah, well...I wasn’t expecting him to try and kidnap anyone with Nana sitting right there,” he said, tensing up. “How did she not notice? She’s pretty sharp about something like that but she didn’t mention a thing...”

He trailed off. “D’you have any idea where we are?”

“In space, I think. I dunno.”

“There’d be no gravity if we were still in space,” he said. “We must’ve landed...somewhere...”

Konstancja chose that moment to walk in, her head held high, sitting down on the same bench as I was. She was still clutching her son, wrapped in a dry towel; he was crying. She was making little attempt at soothing him, clutching him close and rocking very slightly, but not really trying to talk to him or anything. The room was small and his cries were weak, but it was still enough to get under my skin.

“Can you please quiet him?” I said, my jaw clenching.

“He will calm down at his pace,” she said.

“Try and speed that pace up,” I said. Konstancja shot me a cool look that reminded me far too much of Carly. I didn’t want to be reminded of her at the moment.

Eric had gone silent. I glanced at him; the edge of his jumpsuit was getting rather frayed looking; he was attempting to wind the threads around his finger, but they were too short for that. I sighed, leaning forward. Was this going to be over soon? I didn’t want to be stuck in a room with a crying baby and a moody Eric. Especially not Eric. It’d been so nice up until visiting his place, then it had all went downhill...

More and more people filtered in – my mother, a shell-shocked Julie, Carmen (who didn’t look quite as shocked as everyone else; she had a heads-up), Sylvia, Mrs. Dessler... Ruth and Theophanes were conspicuous by their absence. But eventually we were all sitting down, mostly in silence, huddled together in rough groups.

It was with relief when Marcus came back, dressed in his beige jumpsuit, black combat boots stomping on the ground. We were given our passports back – but not our clothes; what the hell were they doing with them?

“I suppose I should be the first to introduce you to the H.M.S. Heliodora,” he said. “She’s mostly a research vessel now. I dunno what she researches; I’m just a grunt down in Engineering. Anyway. I’ve talked to the captain ‘bout your arrival. She’s got...a few questions for some of you.”

I tensed, waiting for the inevitable. I didn’t especially want to be questioned on anything, but I had nothing to hide. To my surprise, Mrs. Dessler and Eric were brought forth first. Leaning back, I waited for them to return. They didn’t.

Konstancja was next, a look of permanent disdain on her face. She didn’t come back either.

Carmen and Julie were next. That just left my family, and we sat together in the little area, a sense of dread coming over me.

“Christine?” Marcus said, beckoning me over. “Come on. Dakarai’ll help your family get settled in, and hopefully he’ll do it without being a complete jackass,” he said pointedly.

We began to walk, and I forced myself to be close to his heels; the corridors were rather narrow and suffocating.

“Where...are we?” I finally said.

“The cargo bay,” he said. “The only real place big enough to do decon in. We’re going upwards and forwards to the captain’s office.”

“Not the bridge?”

“And why would the captain let you on the bridge? This isn’t television,” he said with a bit of a grin. “Don’t worry, he’s a damn fine captain. Just wants to ask you a few questions about the Desslers, is all.”

“Where...are they?”

“She sent the wife and kid to sickbay – ‘bout the only place with enough spare beds – and Mr. Dessler’s been placed in the brig.”

I felt myself blanch. “Is he going on trial?”

“Not yet. They need to bring in lawyers.”

I couldn’t keep up with where we were going; it was a maze of dark, dingy corridors that were gradually replaced with slightly nicer corridors. Though even the nicer ones were still metallic and riveted; they had just been given some nice coats of paint and were much wider. I tried to take in everything – doors, walls, dŽcor – but we were walking too quickly to do that. Signs and symbols flashed before us, from digital displays to signs on the wall to labels, and it was all written in the same flowing script that I couldn’t make out.

Finally, after what seemed like ages, we came across what had to have been an office. There was a plaque on the door that I couldn’t read; Marcus knocked. I dimly heard ‘come in’.

“What’s her name?” I hissed at Marcus.

“Captain Nyanti,” he hissed right back. “She speaks English, don’t worry.”

Marcus opened the door – I had half-expected it to slide open when I got close enough, like mall doors – and ushered me in, stopping to salute. Captain Nyanti, who was a very tall and dark woman, returned the salute and apparently dismissed him. I stood, awkwardly in the doorway. I felt very stupid standing there in my baggy jumpsuit, which amounted to an adult-size onesie; she stood there, tall and proud, in a much more well-tailored cream jumpsuit, rank insignia on her arms. Off to the side, another soldier was sitting there, what could only be a laptop on her lap, transcribing everything.

“Please, Miss...Schumacher, is it?” she said; she had a heavy British accent, which surprised me. I had heard many accents, but to hear a clearly British one was...unsettling. I couldn’t explain why; it seemed too...normal.

I couldn’t really muster up the will to speak; I nodded.

“Please, sit down,” she said, gesturing to a chair in front of her desk. I sat, the fabric of the jumpsuit making an awkward rustling noise as I moved. I glanced at a plaque on her desk, surprised and relieved to find it was (partially) written in a language I knew: Capt. Corrine Nyanti.

“I want to ask you a few questions about an Alexander Dessler,” she said crisply, taking a seat at her desk. “You know him?”

“A...a little bit,” I said. “I’m...friends with his grandson.”

“You’ve met?”

“Only once,” I said. Did she know of the kidnappings?

She raised an eyebrow. “Are you aware he confessed to holding you captive for nearly three days?”

“No, “ I said automatically, “Er, well, yes, he did hold me hostage. When I said ‘no’ it was because I didn’t know he’d confessed to it—”

“I understand what you were getting at,” she said, “While you were there, did you notice the presence of any unusual objects?”

A lot of them, Captain, I wanted to say. A lot of them. But that would have sounded rude, and I was rather intimidated by her. It might have been the height, it might have been the poker face she was pulling off, or it might have been just the whole damn experience; at any rate, I felt obliged to choose my words carefully: “A few things,” I said slowly – then, before she could ask, “A weird gun. It made a humming noise and he used it to knock me out for some time. And there was a little box-like device that he used to mess around with my memory.”

All the while, the soldier was typing away, the keys clacking busily in the background. Captain Nyanti then opened a drawer in her desk, pulling out Mr. Dessler’s phaser, bagged in what I assumed was some sort of container for evidence. “Is this it?”

“Yeah. That’s the new one.”

“Do explain.”

“He had an...older one,” I said – I was gonna get it now, wasn’t I? “And it was kinda like that except it looked more boxy. The battery went dead, and he couldn’t recharge it anymore. I, um, had heard rumours that the shop I worked at sold laser guns like that, and, er, he suggested I ‘help’ him get a new one. That one.”

I chanced a look at the captain’s face. Her face was still calm and set, but her eyes didn’t look judgemental. It was a stupid thing to think of, but for a moment I thought it might not have been so bad.

“I see. And how did you hear these rumours?”

Or not. “Well, this man – I think his name was Kyriaka—”

“Colonel Kyriaka?” she said; I nodded and she gave a command to the typing soldier. “My apologies. Please continue.”

“Well, anyway, there was a room in the back of the store and it had a cabinet in there. I had taken him and his wife back there to get something, and he was looking inside the cabinet. He said they looked like guns.”

“And who was the owner of the store?”

Oh crap. I had done it now; there was no way I wouldn’t get Ruth in trouble. “Ruth Kendrick. She’s on the ship too.”

She looked ever-so-slightly puzzled for a moment, before understanding settled on her features. “Ah. You must be referring to Empress Ruth of Erebe? Hm.”

It was my turn to be puzzled now. Empress? I had no idea Ruth was an empress, and if she was, what the hell was she doing in a little town in Ontario? She had never struck me as especially regal – but now that I thought about it, Theophanes could have been an emperor. A nice one. He just had that sort of way around him. But what were they doing there? I struggled to think back to the store. Exile. They were in exile; that was what Thanatos had said. Recognition came to me; that was why they had been so hesitant to talk of it. It had been highly personal – and political. Maybe they didn’t like politics.

“You weren’t aware of their status?” Nyanti said. “How odd. Mr. Dessler also confessed to informing you and two others of the existence of other systems. I would have expected them to tell you.”

“No,” I said slowly, unsure where she was headed. “They were...kinda weird with information. Told me about Erebe, mostly. They never mentioned that.”

“They never mentioned they were harbouring a Ladowaci hostage?”

“I didn’t know she was a Ladowaci or a hostage until a few days ago,” I admitted. “She never said anything about it.”

If my eyes weren’t tricking me, there was a hint of amusement in Nyanti’s eyes. “According to Cosmonaut Barke you were one of the calmer ones during the integration process; I made the assumptions that you had already been filled in on most of the details.”

I honestly didn’t know what to say to that. “Um, no?” I offered. “I sort of knew the idea behind integration – wasn’t expecting it to actually happen.”

“Interesting,” Nyanti said. “I’ll have to rectify that.”

Thank God. At least someone was willing to talk.

“But, back to business – you admit your memory was tampered with, and yet you remember quite a bit. How is that?”

“I was told it...didn’t ‘take’. I tried hard to remember. It just kinda came...crashing back a few weeks ago.”

“And did you inform police?”

“No,” I admitted. “Things sort of...happened after then and – d’you want me to continue? Well, this girl named Serena – I haven’t seen her but she has to be here somewhere ‘cause she was with us when we were taken to the base – was looking for Mr. Dessler as well.”

“Why?”

“I honestly haven’t a clue,” I said. It was the only thing I felt confidant enough to say. “The most I got out of it was that her bosses were looking for him, and I think it had something to do with the kidnapping, but even I don’t know. She always said she was legally bound to silence – or something like that.”

The questions went on for a little while longer, but I didn’t see any threat from the captain. She asked, I spoke, the typist typed. Finally, when all was said and done, she leaned back in your chair.

“Congratulations,” she said lightly, “You’re one of the few in your party not being charged with something or other. We’ll be docking at Nisekem in a day or so for fuel and supplies, and I will properly decide what should be done then. Until then, you and your family – Barke did say your family was with you, am I correct?” (I nodded; the tiniest hint of a frown formed on her face). “Yes, yes – you will be in sickbay. There, in the case you should fall ill, you will be able to receive proper care and quarantine, if necessary. Do you have any questions?”

“Plenty,” I admitted, “but I don’t think you could answer most of them.”

“If you’re talking about your...lack of knowledge,” she said, “that will be corrected. We don’t just send people out there with no clue where they are! Is there anything else?”

“Oh, good,” I said, “And, er, just one more – are you from...Earth? I mean, not to be offensive but you speak very good English and I wasn’t expecting that—”

“Relax,” she said. “Contrary to what my crew think, I don’t bite. Yes, I was born in England to two Helian expatriates. There’s no shame in being from there.”

“I never thought there was. I just...wasn’t expecting a British accent.”

She smiled drily. “It throws many people off-guard. Now, if there are no more questions, you are dismissed. Cosmonaut Barke will take you to sickbay.”

Marcus was still standing on guard outside the door when I stepped out, not looking especially alert. He straightened up momentarily when the door opened, taking on the rigid posture of a guard, but quickly relaxed when he actually bothered to look at me.

“Right,” he said, “You’re scot-free?”

“’Parently. I’m going to sickbay?”

“Yeah. Come on – this way.”

And we made our way through the labyrinth that was the Heliodora. All the while I was thinking back to Theophanes and Ruth – Emperor! Empress! I knew they were very secretive, but this was unexpected. It wasn’t like it was personal; I was sure everyone knew who they were, so what was the point of keeping it hush-hush on Earth? I didn’t know, but it made me wonder what else had they kept from me?

It seemed like I would be finding out exactly how much very soon.