A/N: Hugs to my readers in the US 3 Especially for those of you who are going to be affected (or already have been wtf America) by this outpouring of bigotry and hate. Please stay safe, everybody.
For the next three days, she divides her free time between joining Ware while he's on guard, sharing a bottle of his home-made anti-rad brew, and assisting Mai in her duties. Mai is quick and good-humored and pleased to find another mechanical tinkerer, enlisting Kaelyn's help to rework the decontamination hoses to spray irradiated water. Along the way, Kaelyn learns the layout of the shack network, not to mention faces and names.
This she does between the long hours of worship. Kaelyn's knees swell with the imprint of the catwalk beneath them, and Ware often hauls her to her feet afterward with a knowing look.
He doesn't mind her company—and better yet, he doesn't ask questions. They sit together, maintaining their weapons, watching the other zealots on patrol. Ware imparts what advice he can, which usually amounts to some variation of 'stand straight when the Grand Zealot's watching' and 'don't do what I did when I first arrived here'. His faith is humble, grounded, and entirely unlike anything Kaelyn has previously seen in the Children of Atom.
Over those three days, Kaelyn plans. On one hand, a new recruit, unfamiliar with the rules and routines of the commune, might be forgiven for poking where she's not supposed to. On the other, she remembers Richter's loyalty test and the dangerous gleam in Tektus's eyes.
On the fourth day, Kaelyn braves the Vessel again. Tektus sits in his throne, humming low in his throat. When Kaelyn drops to one knee, his eyes open.
"You may rise, child. What can I do for our newest member?"
Kaelyn finds her feet again. "Forgive me, Confessor, but as much as I want to worship with the family here, I burn to catch a glimpse of the Mother again." She'd planned her words with care, recited them until the shape of each one is carved into the walls of her memory. "I don't think I'll ever see her, but I yearn to understand her will, and the might of the Fog."
Tektus considers this. Kaelyn tries not to count the seconds until he grunts. "Go as you must, child. I cannot keep you if Atom wills otherwise."
Kaelyn openly packs her belongings and says her goodbyes. When she reaches the decontamination arches, she crouches behind the wall and peers out the window to the dry dock. Richter is skulking about the Vessel, as his next shift at the entrance isn't until after the evening meal. Plenty of time.
After all, she can't be suspected of breaking into the command center if she's already left.
Kaelyn has already determined the quickest, safest path and practiced over the last few days. Activating her stealth boy, she turns around, creeping along the walls and hiding in the lengthy shadows. She zig zags up the stairs at the back of the chamber to reach the command center where a heavyset zealot stands. Even spiritual fervor can only sustain one for so long; she is, in the tradition of guards everywhere, bored out of her mind.
Hugging the railing, Kaelyn takes it one step at a time. The bottle light at the zealot's feet casts little light, but it may be enough at close range to spot a tell-tale ripple in the air.
Small blessings, the door doesn't creak on its hinges when she eases it inward. Kaelyn has stepped over the threshold when the guard grunts. She holds her breath. Eases one step back and sideways, into shadow. The guard peers into the room, her rifle clutched tight in her hands.
Don't notice the ripple in the air. Don't notice the ripple in the air.
With a shrug, the woman pulls the door shut. True to Deacon's wisdom, she dismisses what can't be easily explained as an oddity.
Kaelyn doesn't sigh in relief, even though she wants to. Just in case the guard can hear it.
Then she turns around and faces the command center's defenses. The US Navy spared no expense; she gapes at the corridor of moving laser tripwires. At first Kaelyn approaches to disarm them, but reconsiders. Best not make it any easier on the Children who might enter after her. With some careful timing, she makes it through the laser field unscathed.
The base's concrete construction has been grafted into the underlying rock, and its only remaining defenses are automated. It's unknown if the protectrons have been reactivated by DiMA or if they still obey their original programming, serving the non-existent US Navy. Either way, the robots attack Kaelyn on sight—if they see her at all before she puts a bullet in their processors. Underneath her robe is her trusty jacket, reinforced with ballistic weave.
At least here the lights are white and the shadows make sense. The tunnels are cold and damp, away from cloying heat of the irradiated pool in the main facility, and bereft of any religious paraphernalia. This is how it's supposed to be—minus a nuclear Armageddon and a civilian traipsing down the corridors.
Kaelyn wonders how offended the military would be if they knew what became of their facility.
The tunnel opens up to a room with proper walls. A bay of computers sits behind a locked security door that doesn't stay locked for long, courtesy of Kaelyn's clever fingers.
At the central U-shaped terminal bay, DiMA's modifications are immediately obvious. A large plastic helmet of sorts is poised above the central computer, like some deep sea predator poised in dark waters. It reminds her of the Memory Den, of all things, with its luxurious loungers. Kaelyn loads the holotape DiMA had given her.
How strange that this isn't even the first time she's going to delve into another entity's memories. Only this time Valentine isn't here to help her. Maybe he would be better suited to this than an organic; his mind must operate closer to a fellow synth's than her hormone-soaked gray matter.
ICE-breaker program loaded...
The helmet descends, powering up with a whine that pierces her brain. Her eyeballs itch and her vision—shifts.
Gone is the terminal bay. In its place are streaks of blue that skim across the limitless horizon, beyond any reference, and she follows the white-hot lines of thought that burn and pulse and beckon. What she follows she doesn't know, for without a here there can be no there. There can be no real without the unreal; both states exist at once.
The architecture you're seeing is data. My data…
Her first awareness is of pain. Her head pounds in quick, agonizing pulses all the worse for its lack of rhythm. She can barely keep her eyes open against the barrage of lights. A hot trail drips down her lips, over her chin. Copper in her throat. She wipes up the nosebleed as best she can, but it doesn't stop flowing. Dimly, she remembers to pinch her nose and tilt her head back. Her neck screeches at the movement.
When she tries to stand, her stiff muscles cry out. But she has to move before she's discovered, before Richter takes his shift.
Burning red light above the door—an exit. This leads her to a catwalk that stretches high above the Vessel. Glimpsing the shacks below with their strings of too-bright stars is a vertiginous experience. Every creak of rust makes her head flare. A nearby door leads to a decrepit store room, and from there a staircase that leads to the decontamination control room.
She's in luck—Sister Patrice is taking soup to the zealots on guard. Kaelyn barely remembers to switch on her stealth boy. Her fingers are thick and clumsy, but the field ripples to life and makes her eyes itch. She catches the door and weasels out, limping to the closest hole in the barrier. No one cares to look twice for a shiver of air in the Fog. She's aided by the miserable conditions that have the zealots huddling under an awning. Rain falls in gentles waves; the clouds have a sick yellow cast. It mists in her hair, on her shoulders. Tracers of blue and green roll across her eyes, so thick she can hardly tell them from the Fog. If she can reach somewhere safe, reach Valentine—
Kaelyn staggers as far as she can before a pair of arms close around her waist. Too late, she realizes her stealth boy has died. She'd fight, but one of the hands is metal. Two yellow pinpricks, as warm as twin suns and twice as bright, pierce the Fog. A voice hurts her skull but it's a familiar baritone. Like an anchor, she sinks.
Valentine sweeps an arm under the backs of her knees and the world lurches. She worries she's going to throw up on his shoulder this time when acid burns her esophagus. No matter how smooth his gait, she bounces in his arms as he picks his way down a slope. Kaelyn presses her face into his shoulder and moans, fevered fingers digging into the front of his coat. It grows dim at last, the air stuffier, for which she's thankful. He sets her down on something soft, to the protest of her spinning head.
There's nothing to do but wait out the pain. Curling up on the mattress, she jams her head under whatever serves as a pillow, but blocking out the light isn't enough. She can't even cry herself to sleep when every breath hurts. Hours chisel away under the acute sensation of a white-hot poker pressing behind her right eye.
When the agony finally relents, she learns that opening her eyes is a mistake. Feeling around her surroundings, she discovers she lies on a damp, oddly-shaped mattress. A coat has been draped over her, and another bundled under her head. There's a needle in the crook of her elbow. Not radaway, for once, but med-x.
Valentine's face swims into view. "How are you feeling?"
She moans. "My head isn't trying to kill me anymore, but that's it."
Her second attempt to open her eyes yields better success. The room that shelters them is a little basement. She isn't lying on a bed, but a couch.
Valentine perches on the edge of the couch, her thigh dipping against his hip. "What happened in there?"
"I'm now an official Child of Atom. They knew about the—" but Valentine has been skeptical of her vision, so she changes it to, "They know DiMA's memories are in the command center but can't get past its defenses. I got in without anyone noticing and downloaded—" she casts about for her bag, even as it sends a warning twinge through her temples.
Valentine catches her hands. "It's okay, doll. I listened to 'em. All of 'em."
Under Valentine's worried gaze, Kaelyn attempts to sit up, managing to put her shoulders against the armrest. Blood rushes away from her head in a nauseating buzz; she blinks away white stars. He offers her water, and she sips enough to wet her mouth. Minutes slide away into the quiet as she focuses on her breathing, willing away the sullen lump in her head that threatens to flare up should she move too fast.
She notices Valentine's mouth is pulled into a grim line. Kaelyn reaches up to touch his lips and completely misses. "What's wrong?"
His eyes flick to her and away, but whatever he sees in her convinces him. He admits, "DiMA really did help me escape, and I turned on him. Then he put me on my ass and left me for dead. But dammit, I can't remember one moment of it!" His hands curl into fists. "First Kenji and now this. I don't know what's wrong with me."
"Shh, shh." Kaelyn tries with her whole hand this time, and manages to touch his jaw. "Maybe you don't remember because you were distressed. Trauma does strange things to memory."
He looks profoundly unhappy. "Could you forget your brother because of one bad event?"
That one actually hurts. Fighting the sting, she ventures, "Maybe DiMA's right and you only have so much memory space."
Valentine's jaw tightens. "I can remember waking up in that trash pile. Jim, the first person to treat me like a, well, a person. But hell, I hardly remember working that case with Kenji. How much could I have forgotten without knowing?"
Kaelyn sits up fully, wincing at a twinge in her neck. Valentine watches her, concern etching itself over his anxiety, and she touches his arm to prove she's all right. "You don't know what you don't know."
He screws his eyes shut tight. "At least DiMA can pick and choose what to forget. Makes me wonder what else I've forgotten—and what memories I'll lose in the future."
Valentine looks to her, then, his eyes tracing the shape of her mouth, the line of her nose, the curve of her brow.
Her stomach flutters. Oh.
"There are some things a man can't forget. Some things he shouldn't forget. Some things he doesn't want to forget. And—hell, doll, this scares me."
Kaelyn touches his face with her fingertips, feeling every gouge and bump from years of wear. She traces the line of his jaw to the edge of his lips with a fingertip. "It's going to be okay, Nick. We have time to come up with something. You could keep a journal or record holotapes. Maybe DiMA can help."
With a sigh at odds with his mechanical nature, Valentine leans into her touch. "DiMA helped me escape, then I turned on him and forgot him entirely. Now—well, I wanted proof we were connected and here it is."
Kaelyn smooths her thumb along his cheek. "Sometimes you can't choose your family, but sometimes you can. It's up to you, Nick. The question is, do you want a brother?"
"A part of me already accepted the old synth as family. Never realized it until I took a listen to those." He jerks his chin at the holotape pile. "Never realized just how it feels to know I'm not alone. But, blast it, what did DiMA do?"
They stare at the innocuous little collection of holotapes on the table. Kaelyn hasn't listened to them—she, for lack of a better term, processed them while inside DiMA's memory banks.
I'm offloading this memory. I cannot bear lying to Confessor Martin and his Children any longer. Better to just forget…
I'm going to remove the kill switch command codes from my memory. I'll bury a hard copy if I need to use it, but I can't keep it close to me. The thought makes me sick…
We just need one of their own who's on our side. I can't let anyone know what I'm about to do. I'll need to set up the equipment far away from Acadia. It'll double as a place to bury the evidence…
Kaelyn drops her head into her hands. Presses her fingers to her brow, her temple, her closed eyelids.
How did she ever want to forget?
Her hands come back black and Valentine chuckles. The sound is scratchy and strained, but genuine. "Hope you weren't needing that makeup for something. Unless the raccoon look suffices?"
"Funny, Valentine." Her efforts to wipe the paint away just smear more of it over her hands. Spying a nearby bowl, she coats the bottom with a precious dribble of water and hunts for a cloth.
Valentine closes his hand over her own. "If you'll allow me."
Kaelyn relinquishes the washer to him and makes room for him on the couch. One metal finger curls under her chin, tilting her face up. She shivers at the first drag of the cloth, shockingly cold and wet. Valentine works slowly, stroke by stroke, cleaning the paint from her skin until the water turns murky. Rivulets of gray water dart down the column of her throat, roll between her breasts. He traverses the bridge of her nose to her other cheek, taking care around her eye, over her forehead, and finally her jaw.
With a sudden smirk, Valentine leans forward to lick a stray droplet from her chin, just below the corner of her mouth. Kaelyn shivers at the feel of his not-quite-wet tongue. He smiles against her skin, and then presses a kiss just under her jaw. She closes her eyes and tilts her head back to grant him easier access to her neck, trembling at the next press of his lips.
Kaelyn rests her hands on his shoulders, toying with the collar of his shirt. "Nick..."
Valentine tucks a lock of hair behind her ear, sliding his mechanical hand around the back of her neck, and presses his forehead against her collarbone. "Tell me you aren't going to get lost in the Fog again. Tell me you aren't going to forget me."
She thinks of Jule, and DiMA, and the price of forgetting.
"I won't." And she means it.