Page 47

It was V-512, the ranger from the debrief. He stood on her doorstep in his long brown duster with his hat in his hands. Behind him, in the dusty lane between the habitat blocks, a robot horse stood waiting patiently.

“Ms. Valente,” he said. His voice was deep and formal and calm. “May I come in?”

She hesitated briefly. Then she stepped back and let him in. He had to duck his head to get through the door. He stood in the middle of her tiny room, filling most of it. He looked around once, taking in the narrow bed and the little window and the tablet. Then he looked directly at her, his grey eyes very steady.

“You were lying in there,” he said, and her heart lurched painfully.

“Why would you say that?”

“Your respiration and heartbeat changed.”

Damn. She had heard the stories about cyborg senses, like everyone had. She hadn’t believed half of them.

“Are you going to report me?” she asked.

“No.” His mouth moved. It wasn’t quite a smile, but it was close. “We are going to help you.”

She stared at him blankly. “We?”

He didn’t answer immediately. He reached into the pocket of his duster and took out a small, battered data chip, and held it out to her.

“There are others,” he said. “You are not the first person to find something beneath the surface that GenCon should not have. There are people who remember what GenCon did to us before, and do not intend to let it happen again.”

She stared numbly at the chip without taking it. “How could you possibly know what I found?”

“I do not know. I am guessing.” He turned his hat slowly in his hands. “But there have been other… discoveries. Living things where living things should not exist.”

“Living things?” she asked cautiously.

“Plants. And other things,” he continued before she could give a sigh of relief. “Not so long ago, a geochemist named Alina Falkner found a cavern in the hills near Border Town. What she found there is alive and well, and GenCon never learned of it. Since then she has kept a record of every place on Mars that has recorded seismic anomalies. This town has been on her list for months.”

“Anomalies,” she said faintly.

“Most of those places come to nothing. But then a woman fell into the ground here. She lived for nearly two weeks on six protein bars, in a cave that GenCon’s instruments said was full of water. She came up healthy, and she lied about it. I sent word to the others the day they pulled you out.”

He looked at her with those calm grey eyes. “I will ask you one question, Ms. Valente, and you do not have to answer it. Does the one who kept you alive down there have scales?”

She didn’t say a word, but her heart gave a hard, startled thump, and she knew he heard it.

“I thought so,” he said gently. “Dr. Falkner’s is golden. His name is Rhyx.”

She sat down very suddenly on the edge of the bed. V-512 crouched in front of her, and set the chip in her hand, and closed her fingers around it.

“She sent this for you,” he said.

Her hands were shaking so badly it took her three tries to slot the chip into her tablet. When she did, a message opened. There was no video, only a voice. A woman’s voice, low and warm and a little rough, as if she had recorded it in a hurry.

“I don’t know your name,” Alina Falkner said. “They haven’t told me, and that’s probably for the best. I don’t know for certain what you found down there, either. But they told me you came up healthy and lied to GenCon about it.” There was a pause, and a soft breath. “I did the same, once. It was the best decision I ever made. So if I’m right about you, listen to me. He isn’t the last. Protect him.”

The message ended abruptly.

She sat there with the tablet in her lap and tears running down her face again, and she didn’t even try to stop them.

He isn’t the last. He had been alone for so long. He had sung into the dark every night for months, and no one had ever answered. And all that time, somewhere out there, others like him had been slowly waking up.

“He isn’t the last,” she repeated unsteadily. “That’s what she said. How many are there?”

“Two that we know of, before yours,” V-512 said. “Dr. Falkner’s, in the hills. And one that a woman found not long ago, under the ice at the pole.”