The ship's security panels didn't normally show up on the maps Yukari had, but it wasn't hard to adjust her layouts of the Daedalus to make them appear. They seemed kind of sparse, once she could see them all in one place on a map. The nearest one was all the way on the other side of the deck, and that gave Yukari plenty of room to worry. There was no telling anymore what they might stumble into on the way.
All the same, she didn't feel worried. She wasn't feeling much of anything, really, other than a vague sense of anger boiling away in stomach. It was as if the rest of her had been stripped away. She found it odd, even if she wasn't analyzing it consciously.
She also found it odd how Ia had kept quiet the whole time they were walking. Something in the way Ia carried herself tipped Yukari off, something in the way she kept glancing to the side with a peculiar nervousness. Yukari could tell Ia was uneasy, could tell she wanted to say something, and yet all the same she wouldn't just speak up.
It was driving Yukari crazy. Or maybe crazier. She wasn't sure which.
"You wanna just say it already?" Yukari spoke up, piercing the stagnant, silent air around them both.
"I'm sorry?" Ia said, surprised
"Look, Ia, I know you've got something you want to say. How about you just say it already, okay? C'mon, put my mind at ease."
Ia's gaze shifted about a moment.
"You're dismissing what we saw too quickly, Yukari," she said. "You're shutting out something important."
"All that's 'important' right now is getting off this ship, right? Whatever bulk of forged BS we saw back there doesn't mean a damn for that."
"But you're so fixated on denying what we saw. Isn't that—"
"It doesn't matter, okay? All right, whatever. Forget I brought it up. We can work it out once we're off this goddamn ship."
Yukari tried to turn and walk off, but a firm grip on her shoulder stopped her—Ia's hand anchoring her in place.
Yukari looked back, and her heart sank. Ia's eyes radiated a desperate sadness. Just looking at that pure image of broiling emotion made Yukari want to punch holes in the nearest wall, and yet all the same she couldn't take her eyes off for the transient beauty she found there.
"It does matter, Yukari," Ia said, in a soft, knowing sort of voice.
"I don't know what you're thinking right now, but I promise you, none of that crap means anything, all right?" Yukari swore she felt the air grow colder around her; something in Ia's voice had her on edge, made her feel as though the both of them were being watched. "I mean, even if it's true, than what does that even mean?"
"You already know that," Ia said. Her lips, so soft and delicate, quivered to match the defeat in her voice; for all Yukari could tell she was trying to hold herself together. "You already know all that it would mean. No, what it does mean."
"You. Are. Human, Ia. Okay? I'm not buying anything else. Nothing else makes any sense."
"You've seen more than enough to prove just the opposite. Think about it all. What you believe now is based on nothing more than what you want to believe."
Yukari's throat pounded, the air around her growing more sweltering. Her eyes were glued to Ia's, her mind fixed on this woman who had captured her every emotion in so little time. It had happened because Ia was so pure, it had seemed; she was innocence, she was beauty, she was a blank slate.
Ia was her one ray of light. And Yukari was afraid of having to go back to the darkness—the darkness of herself, of being alone and being just another cog in the corporate system.
She hated thinking about it. But she knew that Ia was right: Yukari was afraid, too, of letting Ia become a mere cog herself. No, afraid of more than that—of letting Ia become something designed to be a cog, something raised in a lab to do out of genetics what Yukari did out of necessity.
All along, Yukari had seen freedom in Ia: freedom from loneliness, from her set paths, from the darkness itself. To think otherwise would have been to force Ia into the exact same trap she herself was stuck inside. And to even consider any of this—that would be for Yukari to let Ia be something designed to be trapped.
So denial was really all Yukari had left. She was going to cling to it, one way or another. She had no other choice.
"Please, Ia, I need for you to stop telling me that," Yukari said, the words a mere murmur. She felt something heavy tugging at her voice, her throat tensing up as though her tears were about to overflow. "Stop telling me I'm wrong for believe in who you are. I just want...one person I can trust, okay? And I know that person's you. I have known that, I want to keep knowing that."
Ia shook her head. Her eyes, blue and dark as the void of space, stabbed deep into Yukari's heart.
"I wanted that, too, Yukari. I was wrong. We both were."
"Can you really tell me that? To just throw away everything I've thought of you?"
A twitch tugged at Ia's lips, her eyes catching only the shadows from the dimly-lit corridor.
"You have to. And so do I."
She threw a hand up in front of Yukari's face. Instantly, images flew up in Yukari's eyes, as though through her own neural interface: menus colliding with each other, bursts of static, distorted glimpses of video. Yukari reeled at the sudden shift into virtual space, fighting to keep her focus on what was real, on what she knew.
Finally the visions blurred, started to converge on one another. Yukari saw glass in front of her, what looked like a rounded sheet. The light shimmered around her, and what shapes she could make out were hazy, indistinct. Slowly the shapes started to clear themselves into being: there were people on the other side of that pane of glass, barely visible through the shimmering light that surrounded her—people in white coats, leaning in closer to Yukari, sometimes swiping at the air.
"I remember all this now," came Ia's voice, gentle and smooth. "They were examining me from outside that womb of glass. I barely understood who they were or what they were doing. I suppose they designed me to see them that way, at first. In time they gave me the ability to understand with greater perception."
And Yukari felt the world of liquid and glass that surrounded her expand; she seemed able to see from different angles all at once, able to feel her very mind spread throughout digital pathways, then to feel a flood of information surge its way back inside her head.
"But they gave me that ability for a purpose: they wanted my mind to be something different from what they possessed in their heads, different indeed from what you have, Yukari. They designed me to be able to connect with their databases from my very mind, without the need of any implants or equipment whatsoever. I never learned how they achieved this. I suspect they didn't consider giving me that information important for the experiment they were conducting."
The images pounded inside Yukari's brain, her every sense struggling to keep up with the overflow of data. She recoiled inside at Ia's words. Experiment. Developed. Yukari wanted to tell her again that it wasn't true, tell her that didn't have to mean anything. But under the weight of this deluge of perception, she couldn't so much as open her mouth.
"They were designing me for something quite practical: they wanted as human an element as possible to replace the pilots of scout vessels, yet without the risk of a completely human element. I was that middle step. I was to have been the first in a line of such workers."
And then messages, lines of text flashed inside Yukari's eyes like lights shining out from inside her skull. In an instant she read paragraphs of detailed information in messages addressed from company execs; there were business plans, project orders, worries over how to keep a flow of employees coming in, frustrations over AI projects not being up to snuff for observational purposes. Then a series of pages that described something revolutionary: recreations of the human brain, augmented, inside a body with genetics built from scratch.
Yukari wanted to shut it all out. She wanted to close her eyes and scream the information out of her head, but it all forced its way into her brain anyway. The lines of text sped before her eyes in long streams, until the sound of Ia's voice broke through again and Yukari only saw vague images behind a thick pane of glass.
"And to that end, they gave me all this, Yukari—these senses, this vast ability to connect with their machines in the most organic way possible. I could feel how beautiful and efficient they found this gift. After a time, I came to understand myself how significant this sense they'd given me was."
The whirlwind of sensory information suddenly dissipated, and Yukari found herself standing before Ia in the empty corridor. Ia's eyes, like layered glass barely keeping back a blue hurricane of emotion, shot through Yukari's heart all over again.
"But that ability wasn't all they gave to me." Yukari now heard Ia's words as normal, originating from outside her ears instead of from within her mind. "While they were working on me, they had been developing something to tie me to their own purposes—something to make greater benefit of these abilities they grew within me."
Yukari shivered inside as she found her voice working once more.
"...A program," she said. "Software made to keep you in check. That's what that scientist was talking about in that vid. When he mentioned a 'control program.'"
"A program they called 'Project Ananke.' I remember hearing that name, from time to time. Both inside my head and from outside it."
Yukari shuddered at the name alone.
"Sure, they called it that. Means the personification of fate, if you go by ancient Greek stuff."
"A fitting name, isn't it?" Ia asked. "Fate. Then it becomes my fate. It's become the fate of all those who developed it, certainly, but as it began, they only thought it would be the fate of one being alone. And then of others, too, who would be developed the same way I was."
"But, how did it even become that powerful?" Yukari said. "If it was only designed to control one specific being, then..."
"Then there had to be an outside factor," Ia said. "There must have been something which was able to alter the very code of the program and give it power beyond its original capabilities. And we both know there was only one entity aboard this ship that was capable of doing that: an entity capable of interacting with programs at the most fundamental of levels."
Staring into the cold, dead blue eyes of that woman who she loved more deeply than anyone else, Yukari could only pulsate with dread, with a primal terror.
"Ia...No, you can't mean that..."
"I do," Ia cut in. "I was the one who made the Ananke program grow so powerful. There is no other possibility. Conscious or not, I made that program grow to overpower the neurals of the personnel on this ship, and now it's trying to spread to all other digital pathways that exist. It wants to control all life as it was originally intended to control me."
"But, that wasn't your fault, Ia. You don't have to blame yourself for that."
"Maybe not. But the fact itself means so much."
"Like what? That you don't mean anything anymore? Ia, c'mon, you have to know that's not true."
Shaking her head, Ia gave a long sigh—a tired sound, one of exhaustion, with no hint of frustration in it.
"It means that I am the key to all this disaster," she said. "Somehow, consciously or not, I caused all the damage we've seen on this ship, and I created the consciousness which this control program now possesses. It means that I'm the final factor which the Ananke program desires to consolidate, because it knows the influence I'm capable of wielding. That's why it's followed us so tenaciously, Yukari. The program wants to use me to expand its control. It's drawn to me from its very programming."
"But that doesn't matter, Ia," Yukari said. She could feel her throat starting to tighten, as if choking her from the inside. "We've escaped it so far, and we can keep escaping it. All we have to do is get off this ship, like we said we would. Together."
"Why don't you see it?" Ia shouted, her voice ringing through the sterile halls with a sudden, desperate force. Her eyes stared Yukari down with terrible resolve. "Yukari, if I am together with you, I am a danger to you. As long as I'm with you, I'll draw the control program towards you." Breathing heavily, she shook her head, teeth briefly clenched and her whole body tense with anger. "And even if we escape it, I am a danger to you, Yukari. If I could bring disaster such as this upon so many, who's to say I won't do the same to you? How can we know I won't end up forcing my way into your mind?"
The floor beneath Yukari seemed to shift. She swallowed, tried taking the smallest of steps forward, just enough to erase some bit of distance between herself and Ia.
"I can take that risk," Yukari said, fighting to find her voice. "You're not a damn bomb, Ia. You're someone I trust. More than that—you're someone I love."
She reached a hand out toward Ia's. A sudden sting of pain shot through it as she felt Ia slap her away. She looked up again, into blue eyes welling with tears.
"I love you, too," Ia said. Her voice was suddenly weak, her body still visible tense yet now without even a trace of her former fury. "That's why I can't put you through any more of this madness, Yukari. And why I owe it to you to set things right."
Yukari could only stare, frozen in place. Inside she fought for her voice to return to her, fought to find words to even think, but felt a horrible numbness sweep through both her mind and body.
"I can create a distraction for you, and then you'll have a window to leave," Ia said. "If the control program finds me, I believe it will focus itself entirely on forcing itself into my mind. It will be drawn to do that, from its original programming. That will give you an opening in the Daedalus's security network. You can use that chance to break into the system and authorize your own ship's escape. You'll finally be safe, Yukari."
A piercing chill of panic and pain shot through Yukari's insides.
"I don't want that," she said. Her voice was quiet, nearly silenced by the choking tightness in her throat, and she could feel already the warm rush of saltwater gathering in her eyes. "Please, Ia, you can't just throw yourself away."
"It's your best way out," Ia said, her own tension disappearing from her posture, cold composure taking its place. "And it's all I can do for you now. I was meant to be the first in a line of sacrifices for the sake of humanity—the first in a series of workers to take the place of you and all other scouts like you. If they had perfected me, there would have been no need for you or any other person to endure the trials of voyaging through the void ever again." She took a long, slow breath as she closed her eyes. "I've failed that to fulfill that original purpose. But I can still be of use to you. Perhaps even to the rest of humanity. Perhaps I can bring the control program to a halt when it consumes me."
"Stop talking like that!" Yukari said, forcing the words through her tears. "I don't want you to be some sacrifice, just another tool this company throws away." She shook, trembled with the raw emotion brewing inside of her. "Ia...please, I...I love you. I need you."
Ia opened her eyes, the sea-blue now radiating an eerie calm. With a sad smile, she slowly shook her head.
"I'm sorry, Yukari. But I simply can't weigh you down any longer."
She took a step backward and shoved her hand toward the nearby wall. Instantly, a shower of sparks spewed from its bursting nano-carbonite panels, a flood of electricity gushing out before Yukari's eyes. Instinctively, she covered her face with her arms, blocking out the surge of light and heat that enveloped her entire body.
A moment later, the heat subsided. Yukari brought her arms down, opening her eyes. The hallway before her was completely empty.
Her heart sank. Every inch of her body felt anchored in place. For all she tried to move herself, her eyes stayed fixed on the spot where that silver-haired being had been standing—only seconds ago, yet what felt like an age long past.
"Ia..." Yukari murmured, no longer bothering to fight the tears rolling down her cheeks one after another. "Ia...don't leave me..."
A/N: A big thank you again to Genki Collective for her tireless beta efforts.