Someone to Remember Me: The Anniversary Edition (39 page)

“We’ve stopped moving,” he said to the others, restraining the alarm that was building within him. Ninety-Nine’s gaze was fixated on the darkening sky above and her face wore a grim expression, suggesting that the ship’s abrupt halt had not surprised her.

“Why would we stop moving?” Eight asked. Irritated with the ship’s apparent lack of obedience, she led the group back into the vessel’s navigation center where a noticeable change in lighting had occurred. None of the glass panels or screens that had previously depicted ship schematics, diagnostics, or velocity outputs were active. Each was as black and dark as the oncoming night at sea.

A synthetic female voice, unmistakably familiar to Seven, remarked, “Nighttime protocol activated. Please, for the safety of this vessel and its passengers, follow the illuminated walkways. Thank you. Nighttime protocol activated. Please, for the safety of this vessel and its passengers, follow the illuminated walkways.” The AdvISOR’s voice continued on a loop, polite but firm, as its instructions echoed through the navigation center.

“What’s happening? Where are we supposed to go?” Null asked Nine in a voice that trembled. Nine grabbed her hand tightly and offered a weak smile in answer.

“No chairs…” Ninety-Nine mumbled, studying the navigation center with extraordinarily vacant eyes. She paced its length and width, circling the room several times, and with each pass the defeat that roiled away from her intensified. Gathering her thoughts, she insisted to the others, “We should follow the AdvISOR’s instructions. I’m certain that the ship won’t move again unless we do.”

“I don’t like this…” Twenty protested loudly, announcing the group’s shared misgivings. “The AdvISOR promised us a free ride to safety. Doesn’t anyone else remember that part?”

“What’s the nighttime protocol that it keeps rambling on about?” asked Nine.

Eight shrugged. “I don’t know. The AdvISOR didn’t say anything about this at Grand Cross. Apparently it didn’t want us to know that there were conditions until we were out at sea.”

“We need to follow the instructions. There’s no way of knowing what’s going to happen if we don’t,” Ninety-Nine asserted and gestured at the darkened screens.
The Mortal Coil
was depriving them of all stimuli except for the AdvISOR’s repeated instructions and helpful lighting.

No other options available to them, Seven led the way out of the navigation center.

Orange lighting strips built into the floor guided them out the back of the cabin and into the body of the ship. Earlier, when he had boarded with Eight, Seven had noticed that the vessel’s sterilized white hallways shone with a phosphorescent blue that pulsed along the corridor walls. In the aftermath of the ship’s halt, that light had transformed into a strobing orange. Helpful, if somewhat alarming as well.

“What’re we doing in here?” Nine demanded, annoyed that the guidance lights had escorted them directly into the cargo-hold of
The Mortal Coil
. Gathered ahead of Seven and his companions were the hundreds of aisles of stasis tanks in which the Rebel Clones and the remainder of the Rose Twelve slumbered. Whatever new world the ship wanted to sail towards, they would remain oblivious to the trip until after it had happened.

“
The Mortal Coil
is only one kind of ship: a sleeper ship,” Eight announced to the group from Seven’s side. Her hand clawed into his and he bit his lip against the pain.

“Sleeper ship? What are you talking about?” Nine demanded.

“The ship doesn’t need our input. The AdvISOR built it to follow an autopilot program. The nighttime protocol must be part of that program. Everyone aboard goes into stasis. That’s why there aren’t any proper bedrooms or chairs aboard
The Mortal Coil
,” Ninety-Nine’s explanation was level but pained.

“But why wait until now?” an almost hysterical Null raged.

“Because night is falling,” Ninety-Nine answered, unsatisfactorily to everyone except herself. Ninety-Nine alone understood the true reasoning behind the implementation of the AdvISOR’s nighttime protocol and why it required their unwilling relocation to the ship’s rotund cargo bay. Noticing her confused friends, she added, “The AdvISOR doesn’t want us to see the stars. To the right eyes, their positions and movements, if charted correctly, could guide us back to Haven.” What went unspoken in that moment was the fact that Ninety-Nine implicitly meant herself; that she had intended to chart the night skies in an effort to retain at least a basic understanding of the path they were to travel.

“Are you saying that—” Null was interrupted by the sudden dimming of the cargo bay’s lights as another set of guidance lights in the floor blinked on. Again, they were orange, and again the AdvISOR’s synthetic voice spoke to them.

“Please, for the safety of this vessel and its passengers, follow the illuminated walkways to your stasis tubes. Thank you. Please, for the safety of this vessel and its passengers, follow the illuminated walkways to your stasis tubes. Thank you,” the voice continued on another loop, goading Seven and the others down to an aisle of unoccupied stasis tubes.

“This must be a joke, right? Are you kidding me?” Twenty shouted at the vaulted ceiling.

“We have to sleep through the journey? Why do we have to sleep through it? What if we don’t wake up?” Null chattered.

Seven wasn’t sure that he understood the reasons, either. How could the AdvISOR think that this was necessary? Especially after everything they had endured to get away from Haven? Why would they ever want to go back? Seven’s gaze happened across Ninety-Nine, who obviously felt guilty for understanding the AdvISOR’s intent, and the meaning began to reach him.

It came down to the consequences of pursuing dangerous knowledge. The Builders, the Founders, and Tobias Clay had each allowed terrible knowledge to present a very real danger in their respective times. While Ninety-Nine only meant to sate her sense of curiosity and wonder by plotting their journey, what damage might be done by the knowledge of Haven’s location a hundred generations from now?

“We have to do it,” Seven concluded. He reached out and squeezed Null’s shoulder to reassure her of their safety. “If the AdvISOR wanted us dead then we’d be dead already. It wouldn’t go to these lengths for it.”

Eight spoke next. “If the Founders had destroyed the Sphere, really destroyed it in the first place, then none of this would have happened.” Her eyes examined the row of empty stasis tubes, full of distrust, but her voice was conciliatory.

“…the last trial of the Rose Twelve,” Null said, her resentment apparent to all. “What is the AdvISOR risking? What is the AdvISOR doing while we’re out here being asked to entrust it with our lives?”

“This isn’t about the AdvISOR. It’s about us and what we’re willing to do to keep the past from repeating itself again,” Seven asserted. “We’re the Founders. It’s our responsibility to do what it takes to keep…” his voice faltered at the sight of thousands of stasis tubes that contained just as many slumbering clones. Did he mean what he was about to say? Did he understand the scope of the responsibility he was about to assume? Seven’s resolve hardened as he continued, “It’s our responsibility to keep our people safe. From us. From themselves. From the future, if we have to.”

He saw that his words had the desired effect. Bitter resignation set in across the waking members of the Rose Twelve, an unhappy acceptance of what must be done to keep the cycle of enslavement from starting anew. Seven didn’t like the way this felt; how going to sleep had come to feel like an ending rather than a beginning. A separation rather than a reunion.

“Recession commencing,” the AdvISOR’s voice announced. One by one, the stasis tubes lowered themselves into the floor. In seconds the cargo-hold was empty except for the six machines left standing upright, their glass tubes lowered so that they could step inside.

“It’ll fill with an anesthetic-nutrient bath. Once you’re in, it’ll sedate you and keep you from starving to death,” Nine explained in an earnest attempt to comfort Null. “Our spare bodies were kept in machines like these. Nothing to worry about.” But Null wasn’t interested in talking. She clamped her face against Nine’s and Seven looked away, trying to afford them whatever privacy was possible in the massive, empty cargo-hold.

“See you on the other side,” Null whispered to Nine, gracefully stepping into the first of the remaining stasis machines. Glass rose and sealed Null inside as a murky green liquid filled the interior and obscured her from view. Then, the machine lowered itself into the deck so that it was indistinguishable from the surrounding floor. It was all that Seven could do to hope that she wasn’t being drowned to death.

“Eight-Four-Two-Zero. Hibernation status: Active,” the AdvISOR’s voice echoed through the empty hold. Seven wondered when it had stopped verbally harassing them into using the stasis tubes. An uncomfortable silence overtook the remaining survivors, who exchanged increasingly strained glances with one another.

“It was worth it, if only for that,” Nine said with a longing stare at where Null had been seconds earlier. Without ceremony he stepped into the machine that was closest to Null’s. “It’s certainly been…interesting,” he said in parting. He closed his eyes and balled his fists as the nutrient bath rushed up around him.

“Two-Eight-Eight-Nine. Hibernation status: Active,” the AdvISOR chimed.

“I’ll go next,” Ninety-Nine sighed. “I know I shouldn’t feel this way but I am…disappointed that we won’t ever know where Haven was,” and, for the briefest moment, Seven thought he saw Ninety-Nine regard Twenty with the slightest accusatory gaze.

“Smart girl like you? I’m sure you’ll figure it out,” Twenty drawled. With dramatic chivalry he escorted her into an empty tube, the glass cutting her off from them. When the nutrient bath started filling the tube Seven could see her mind at work; analyzing and cataloging the experience for further examination upon her return to the waking world.

“Fascinating,” she whispered, her head dipping beneath the liquid’s surface and vanishing from sight. Her machine lowered into the deck, gone. Seven knew she was asleep before the manufactured voice announced it.

“Eight-Eight-Nine-Nine. Hibernation status: Active.”

Twenty regarded the cargo-hold of
The Mortal Coil
with the utmost spite “We were promised a new world,” he muttered beneath his breath. “It had better be worth it.”

“It already is,” Eight answered for Seven. “Your turn?” she asked Twenty, even though the three of them knew it wasn’t a question. He shrugged.

“I guess it’s all relative in the end. We could be asleep for months but, to us, seconds will have passed when we wake up.” He rubbed his forehead. “And everyone else will be awake, too, can you imagine that?”

“Something tells me we’ll manage,” Eight chuckled. Twenty considered her answer.

“We will,” he agreed at length. Looking at Seven as if the other man had won a longstanding argument, he added, “We’re the Founders, after all.”

Seven nodded. There was so much that he wanted to say to Twenty; the morose artist who was also his closest friend through multiple lives. What thanks could Seven offer that would possibly do his friend justice? Twenty didn’t wait, he couldn’t wait, the separation was as bothersome for him as it was for Seven. With an unceremonious and suitably awkward motion, Twenty hopped into the empty stasis tube that awaited him, the glass sealing behind him and the thick, gelatinous green liquid claiming him.

“Real graceful,” Seven mumbled.

“Two-Five-Two-Zero. Hibernation status: Active.”

The journey ended as it began. Together but alone. Seven and Eight enjoyed a brief silence in the immensely empty cargo-bay of
The Mortal Coil
, relishing the momentary privacy before, in what would feel like seconds at the most, they woke up with everyone else.

Seven found it hard to believe that the only thing left to do was rest. To sleep. To wake to another world and another age. Perhaps, without her, it might have been an intimidating prospect. Seven crossed the short distance between them and wrapped his arms around her.

Not until they were holding each other tightly did Seven realize that they were both shaking.

“I’m a little scared,” he admitted to her.

“So am I,” she whispered into his chest. “How many years has it been, Seven? Two thousand? Null told me that in her memory, you died after defeating the Builders. I was alone. Then, five centuries ago I kept you away. Are we finally together? Or is this just…another obstacle?”

Seven kissed her for as long as he could, finally surfacing for air and asking, “What do you think?”

She pondered his question. “Maybe the curse that destroyed Haven wasn’t cloning but immortality itself? How can you truly live if you never die?” Eight ran her hand through his hair and his skin crackled at her touch. As if the ages had waited patiently, but anxiously, for every touch and every kiss they shared. Eight kissed him on the cheek and whispered, “I’m done living forever, but I’m not done living.” She backed away from him and he knew he had to let her go. One last time, one last parting, and they would be together until the end of their finite and priceless mortal lives. “I love you, Seven.”

Eight, who had broken the world for him, who had rescued him from death, and was venturing into a new world at his side. Seven opened his mouth to say something, he wasn’t sure what but he was compelled to try, and she smiled at his speechless countenance as she took her spot inside the machine. He gathered enough sense to process it; to realize it.