Chapter 44
On the other side of the planet a woman awoke in a comfortable hospital bed in the infirmary of the SnowDancer den. It didn't take her as long as it once had to orientate herself. And she could already move her body into an upright sitting position. She remembered bits and pieces from her past; enough to understand her position in time and space. She had learned she was under the care of a wolf changeling pack in California. And she knew that the world had changed since the time she'd once lived. She had been in cryogenic suspension for hundred years. And she started to understand the whole weight of that fact. Everyone she'd once known was gone. Even though she struggled to remember who that had been, there were splinters of memory. Her parents, friends, some Psy she had worked with and then – Zaid. Yes, she remembered Zaid…sometimes.
"She's awake for hours at a time now. And I think she's getting quickly back to her scientist self. She's peppering us with questions about the world of our time whenever she gets hold of any of us." Alice heard the gentle voice of the woman, who usually took care of her approaching. Followed by the one she had identified as an Arrow at once.
"Then she'll like this." Alice couldn't see what the Arrow thought she'd like, because the voices were still out of sight. But she felt excitement rise. Curiosity had always fueled her as a scientist and in every other aspect of her life.
"Are these the files Walker prepared?" The healer woman – Lara – again. And she remembered she had seen the other Psy, Walker as well. But he was no Arrow. He was a teacher and he had talked to her about her time.
"Yes. He just finished them. They should contain all the information in a way her mind can process." That was when they stepped into the room.
Judd – she remembered his name as she saw him – handed her pile of paper files that – according to their titles – contained a collection of information about the contemporary times. It wasn't just text but also pictures and even charts depicting structures and connections, in short everything she would need to understand this new world she'd awoken to. Logically she should've started with the information about the changelings who currently were her hosts. But somehow a very old interest was stronger and she opened a file on the Psy political system first.
Judd and Lara only stayed long enough to make sure Alice knew how to handle the files. Which she had no problem with of course. Dealing with all kinds of data sources had been her life before. It was an ability she obviously hadn't lost even in a hundred years of being frozen. But just when they'd reached the other room Lara heard Alice's voice whisper.
"Those eyes..." she repeated after the healer had hurried back into the room. To Lara's surprise her fingers gently traced the lines of the face on the page she'd opened. It was Kaleb Krychek's photo.
"He's a cardinal. You remember cardinal Psy don't you?" Could it be she had forgotten about their strange black eyes full of stars? No, she had seen Sascha before.
"No… those eyes…" Her mind seemed to slip away into a different time once again. But then she suddenly asked: "Is that a descendant of the Adelaja family?"
"No, that's Councilor Krychek. The description to the picture is on the next page. Here." Lara reached over to turn the page.
"Councilor Krychek," Alice repeated with disbelief in her voice. "So they finally succeeded... But why Zaid? … No, he wouldn't have let them put me in a box…"
Lara could hear her patients heartbeat accelerate, smell excitement and shock. She tried to pull away the file from Alice's hands thinking maybe the information had been too much too soon, but the other woman held on tight. She grabbed a pen from the bedside table and started to scratch it across the top of the page seemingly without control.
"Alice, calm down we can continue later…" Lara tried again, sensing the stress response that had caused her to fall back into unconsciousness several times before. But it was too late. The file and pen dropped from Alice's hands and he body went limp against the headboard of her bed.
Judd helped to get Alice to a lying position again, while Lara picked up the file. "Hmm… you know what that means?" she asked when he'd finished his task, holding out the page Alice had written on.
Judd found she hadn't just mindlessly scribbled across the headline. Her hand might've trembled but she had clearly changed only three letters in Kaleb's last name. With her alterations it now read KRYONIK instead of KRYCHEK. He knew at once where he'd seen it before.
"As I remember, there was an emblem that said KRYONIK on the lid of her coffin. But that's just the term used for cryonics – cryogenic preservation – in a couple of other languages. I didn't think much of it at the time."
"It might just be her memory going haywire…" Lara started.
"I'll make sure someone looks into it nonetheless," Judd answered. It seemed like too much of a coincidence, considering who he got the coffin with the suspended scientist from. And Alice had been talking about Zaid before…
A few minutes later he called Dorian, the Leopard's computer specialist. He was sure the Net would be cleansed of any usable information but the internet was harder to control even for the Ghost.