A Memory in the Black (The New Aeneid Cycle) (39 page)

A short while and one cracked PDA password later, Marc slid the connection into Felix's implant. "You're sure this is going to work like you think it is?"

Um, no?

"
Yeah." Felix said anyway with a smile. "Should be just fine." He gave Caitlin's hand a squeeze, unsure if he was trying to comfort her or himself more.

Flynn
moved in from where he'd been working in the rover's cockpit and crouched by Gideon's body. "Do you want to explain to me just what this is doing again?"

"Assuming we understand at all," Felix began, pointing to Gideon's implant, "he's got the two sets of memories right now
—Gideon's own and the more, er, muted ones from Curwen's brain. That's one more set than it can handle, and the implant is. . . sort of a booster to stabilize them both." Felix considered an analogy about a plate-spinner keeping multiple plates balanced at once by alternately spinning them back up to speed, but he didn't feel like explaining what a plate-spinner was to them in the first place. "Except that did, er, bad things, so they switched it to just boost Curwen's."

"Letting Gideon's decay," Caitlin added.

"Right. Eventually fading to the point where they'll be gone entirely." Felix picked up Ondrea's modulator. "What
this
does is link up to the implant and reprogram it to boost only Gideon's memories, which Ondrea thinks should recover. Provided it's not too late. According to what we found in her notes here, this particular doohickey—"

"Memory engram storage core," Marc corrected regarding the doohickey to which Felix was pointing.

"—
thingy
—is an additional memory space that'll give Gideon's engrams more, ah, 'distance' to be boosted, so to speak. I think."

"You think."

"Well, pretty sure, based on everything she told us and what we, ah, borrowed." He waved the stolen PDA. "Sort of an acceleration ramp, maybe. To help them recover from going so long without a boost."

Felix didn't quite understand it, but there was enough to at least give them a pretty educated guess at the results, if not the specific cause. From what he gathered, Gideon had a bit of an advantage with his own memories as they were specifically "written" into his new brain. As a result, the boost was the only thing keeping Curwen's memories in existence at all, and they'd likely decay much faster. He was curious to see how that mi
ght affect Gideon's personality. Or, at least, that's what he was looking forward to in order to distract him from thinking about what might go wrong.

Caitlin scowled. "Felix, can you give me your word that this is safe?"

"I'll be fine. We need to do this."

"Can you give me your word?"

He smiled ruefully. "No. And it's not very nice of you to take advantage of that little quirk of mine."

"Aye, and
it's not very good of you to take a risk like this without telling me the truth."

"I just don't see that we've got much choice."

"I didn't say we have, Felix."

"All we're really doing is substituting my implant for the memory doohickey, and I haven't been going to monthly check-ups on this thing for so long without learning at least a bit about how it works. It's got enough space to loop Gideon through the way it needs to. It's just going through the implant, not my own brain."

Probably. His implant was obviously wired to his brain, and the fact that it gave him a photographic memory as an unexpected side effect had him uneasy as to what this might do. Still, it wasn't going to erase anything in his implant. If there were side effects, they'd likely be temporary.

He hoped.

The fact that they needed Gideon to save their collective asses pushed him into taking the risk sooner than he might have otherwise. Besides, if he thought about it too much he might chicken out entirely. Felix just hoped he understood as much of what insight he'd managed to glean during Neal's check-ups of his own implant as he thought he did. Thank God for stolen glances and a photographic memory.

"All set," Marc announced with something of a lack of confidence. "If we're going to do this, we'd better do it."

Felix grinned. "I'm just racking up all sorts of new experiences today, huh? Suppose I ought to lie down." He shifted to do so, and Caitlin moved to give him her lap in which to rest his head. "Fifteen minutes."

"Fifteen minutes," she nodded.

Felix gave Marc a thumbs-up. "Here's hoping I don't pass out."

Marc bega
n the sequence on the modulator. The effect was immediate: nothing happened.

"Um," Felix began, "go ahead?"

"It's working," Marc said. "At least it thinks it is. Nothing on your end?"

Felix swallowed. "Not yet."

"Perhaps it's just reprogramming Gideon's implant first?" Caitlin said. "Or perhaps you won't even notice it?"

"Well that'd be
disappoi—" Felix gasped at a new sensation. "Ohh. . . I think I'm becoming a god."

He had just a moment to realize they likely wouldn't get the reference, another moment to decide he probably should
n't tell them he was jokingly quoting the dying words of the Roman Emperor Justinian, and then, as the burst of sensation and color swam behind his eyes, he completely forgot he'd said anything at all to be explained.

He looked up at Caitlin. Marc was there too, with something in his hand, and
Flynn, and. . . Gideon? They found him? Wait, where
were
they? He glanced over in confusion that turned frantic upon seeing a connection between Gideon and his own implant. What the hell was happening? Something was wrong with his memory, that much was clear.

That was the only thing that was clear.

His impulse to ask Caitlin what was going on—Caitlin, who was looking down at him in a way that wasn't exactly calming—was forgotten as rapidly as it came as Felix looked around with renewed confusion. Gideon? He was alive! Wait, where
were
they?

Memory failure?
It must be. Something was wrong. He had to get up, find a way to get to Horizon for a check; or maybe he was already on the way? Get a grip! He needed to remember, needed to fight to hold onto things. Short term, short term memory was the problem—

And then he knew nothing but a wave of vertigo and an entire cascade of memories that couldn't possibly be his.
They came in a rush, jumping like lightning through his mind and triggering others that snapped at their heels. Flashes of Ondrea's face and parts of Northgate mixed with other people and places at once both new and familiar, and all coming and going so fast! It was a roller coaster that took him along a spider web in all directions at once and far too quickly to even comprehend. It was all Felix could do not to drown in the myriad of associations that rolled him, wave after wave of nauseating fascination. . .

A
nd then it stopped, and he was back in the rover.

Or was he?

He couldn't put a name to any of the faces that watched him so intently. He knew them, he was just talking to them about connecting his implant to Gideon's, but. . .

In a flash he knew his own memory was in jeopardy. How many times had he realized it and forgotten in the last few minutes? The man on the floor of the rover struggled to recall himself, how they'd gotten to Omicron, anything, but s
o much was lost!

Keep it together, keep it together
. . .

He drew a blank!

Heart in his throat, he looked up with a frightened grin at the woman in whose lap he rested. "Okay, which one of you wants to tell me my name?"

If they gave an answer, Felix only heard it for a moment before he forgot what it was and was again overtaken by another's memories. They came slower this time, but much more vividly: Isaac, his twin, lying on a morgue slab as he identified the body, cold and still in the harsh white light. Ondrea yelling at him in the blackness of his apartment, trying to keep him from risking his life and doing what he had to do. Pulling two gangers from a terrified woman caught in an alley behind the Arena, red neon reflecting in their eyes as they tried to escape retribution. Each one he saw, heard, sensed, in vivid reca
ll as if they were his own—Were they his own?—yet there was no emotion save for the knowledge that he—no, that Gideon—had felt a certain way at the time the memory was made. Recall, but no passion.

Sense, but no spirit.

Understanding, but no empathy.

In a moment of lucidity, Felix realized they were more vivid than those of the donor whose memories Fe
lix carried in his own implant—memories he couldn't for the life of him recall anymore!

He focused, trying to recall everything he knew thanks to the donor's memory: movie references from the twentieth century, knowledge of Welsh, the details of the "
Bangor incident," but all he could remember was that he once knew those things. The information itself was gone.

No! Jaw fixed stoically, Felix tried to hide his panic from the others. It would come back! It'd be fine, wouldn't it? Wouldn
't he? This was just temporary. This was just until Gideon's engrams had accelerated back up to—

Instantly he
remembered jumping to his feet and stripping off the monitor connections. "You've made me into a slave, Ondrea!"

"Gid, you're not a slave!" she protested.
"We're indebted to them, yes, but you're not a slave!"

"
We
?" he shot. They were using him, he remembered thinking. Marquand was using him! They toyed with his health, his body, his brain! "They didn't force you into service!" He wouldn't let them use him. He couldn't! But did he have a choice? They'd taken his life hostage. . .

Felix gasped as the memory faded and released him, but only for a moment. He was Felix Hiatt
. He was here with Caitlin, Flynn, and Marc, trying to, to. . . To what? His world receded like an expiring candle until there was only. . .

Nothing. There was nothing. He was nothing, remembered nothing, thought nothing, knew nothing.

It was taking longer than she w
as expecting. At least, Caitlin worried, it seemed to be, and the ordeal was taking a visible toll on Felix. Having to watch him endure it with barely the faintest clue of what he experienced lengthened each second. Felix was spending those fifteen agonizing minutes shifting from vacant stares to silent alarm to actually asking questions that clearly showed he had no clue what was going on. Though lucid moments came, they went just as rapidly before she could help comfort him or even learn what he was dealing with.

The yelling didn't start until midway in. Felix jolted her with a sudden cry of "Isaac!" He thrashed wildly, stopping moments after she and the others recovered from their surprise enough to steady him. Twice more he cried out something she could only attribute to Gideon's memory. His last shout, long and wordless, was the worst. The only one she couldn't attribute to Gideon, Caitlin feared that it was Felix himself yelling out of his own pain and horror. She fought against the idea that it had all gone horribly wrong, yet she could do nothing more but wait.

Had she swapped Gideon's safety for Felix's? She refused the idea purchase, ignoring the familiar twinge in her stomach. She and Felix had already been in trouble. Now they were only doing what was needed to fix it.

Somehow knowing that failed
to help. Lying in her lap, his eyes now shut, Felix was the one in greater danger. As Michael put a hand on her shoulder, Caitlin gripped Felix's hand tighter, trying to assure him she was there, trying not to think about the rest.

And then Marc announced it was over. He double-checked something on Ondrea's modulator before disconnecting the links. Yet Felix remained still.

"What's wrong?" she asked. "Why's he still out?"

"I don't know."

"Felix?" she tried. "Felix, wake up, ducks."

He was breathing, but
he didn't stir beyond that. She stifled the urge to repeat her question to Marc, but the need to do so must've shown in her face.

"I don't know," he said. "
Let's give him a few minutes, maybe."

She shifted, trying to stand. "
Help me get him comfortable. The seat ought to be better than the floor now that he's stopped thrashing."
Come on Felix, you foolish git, wake up!

Gideon sat up rail-straight before Caitlin
could even kneel. She'd been so focused on Felix she wasn't prepared to think about Gideon, and he didn't give them much time.

"Tell me what's happened," he demanded.

Michael stood as she and Marc tried to get Felix up. "Gideon?" Caitlin tried.

In a flash he stood to match Michael.
"Tell me what happened
now.
We're on the Moon, yes?"

"Yes," the other answered. "And we're in trouble. All of us. We need your help."

Caitlin got Felix onto the bench and checked again to make sure he was still breathing. When she turned to the others, Gideon was staring at Michael.

"I don't know you," said Gideon. "
What happened? Why was I out?" He yanked the connections from his mind. "Tell me the meaning of this!"

Reluctantly, she left Felix's side and touched Michael's arm
with a whisper for him to help Felix. "Do you remember me, Gideon?" After his nod, she went on. "Good. Then, quickly, we're on the Moon and we just saved your life. All of us, but Felix especially. Do you remember him?"

Gideon scowled. "I can remember everything up to being on
Sunrise when— Where is Ondrea? Is she all right?"

"She's doing better than we are. She sent us and
I promise she was recovering when we left her. But for the moment, you need to listen to us."

Caitlin brought him up to date, and then let Marc deal with the details of what Felix had done and the general situation with Omicron. The reconstructed man took it all in. To her surprise, he seemed to recall at least vague details of how he'd gotten there since leaving Sunrise. As far as Caitlin could tell, the procedure had worked; he was more Gideon than he'd been in the airlock, and—though it was too early to truly be sure—less prone to the confusion that haunted him at her house. The free flow of information took the edge off of his aggression, which soon melted away to uncertainty as they told him what they needed him to do now that he was better.

"Marquand used me," he said when they were done. "Used me, used Ondrea, then killed me and sent me here. Now you want to use me."

Michael moved to speak, but Caitlin cut him off. "Not use you, Gideon. But we need you. Those people trapped in Omicron need you. When you came to The Scry, you were risking your life every night to help people you didn't even know."

"That was different."

"I don't see how."

"It was my choice. Since they
did what they did to me, it's all been manipulation."

Caitlin hardened. "Yes,
well I understand that, Gideon, but quite frankly we risked a bloody hell of a lot to come here and save you. Felix—I still don't know what's wrong with him, what's happened to him since he risked his mind to save yours. A moment ago it was you lying there broken and running out of time, and now it's him."

She
pushed into Gideon's space, her jaw set. "We can't do a bloody thing for him here, and we can't leave until we help the others. So yes, I can see that you've been manipulated, but frankly there's no time for you to brood about it. You're the only person who can help."

"I'm not ungrateful."

"But?"

"But.
 . . I don't know what."

She
gave Gideon a moment to consider it as he watched them, but that was all she was willing to give. "Gideon—"

"I will help.
For now."

She
let out a breath. "Thank you. Michael?"

She withdrew to Felix to let
Michael explain the tactical details of which she didn't much care at the moment. The cover to Felix's implant was still open. She swept her fingertips along his ear before pressing it back into place. "Come on, Felix," she whispered close, "wake up. I could use one of your cheeky comments about now."

Michael was speaking behind her.
"And just so we're clear, once we make it to the core, just shut it down. Is that going to be a problem?"

"Why should it be?"

"We know what Marquand sent you here to do."

"I don't know what it could do to your systems," Marc added. "You try to link into it and we've got a whole new problem."

"Don't talk to me about Marquand," Gideon told them. For a moment his gaze settled on Felix, and then on Caitlin where she knelt beside him. "We should go. Now."

Gideon immediately showed his advantage over Michael in the corridor outside Primary Control. While Michael stood where Marc had before, Gideon extended a tendril from his forearm that snaked out just enough to curl around the corner and peer toward the turrets' position with a tiny camera.

Still peering, Gideon spoke to him over the suit comms. "They remain, guarding the door as you claimed."

"They didn't fire until I shot at them."

Gideon pulled the tendril back. "Saving ammunition,
I expect."

"That's
what I figured, yeah. Though I didn't get beyond the corner, either. They might fire if we get closer."

Gideon turned back toward him. "They may not detect me at all." Hearing the man speak without moving his lips continued to be off-putting. With Gideon needing no suit and therefore having no air to carry sound to a mic, the only way he could communicate was by sending a synthesis of his voice
directly via radio frequency. Michael supposed he shouldn't be surprised that Gideon's artificial body had such a thing built in, but seeing it in action was still creepy. "Wait here."

Micha
el nodded with some reluctance and reminded himself that it wasn't Gideon he was supposed to be protecting but rather the AoA's cause. Betrayed by Marquand or not, he wasn't sure Gideon wouldn't try something to get a piece of what they'd sent him to Omicron for in the first place. He'd borrowed Ondrea Noble's stunner from Caitlin before they left the rover. Once they got inside the control room, he wouldn't let Gideon out of his sight.

"Keep me in the loop," Michael
said. "I obviously can't hear anything and I can't see anything unless I stick my head around the corner."

Gideon stared a moment before nodding
. "Electronic counter-measures active. Engaging chameleon system. It may work if I'm slow enough." His bodysuit, skin, and even his hair shifted to match the corridor wall, and he slipped around the corner out of sight.

"No reaction f
rom the turrets. Moving forward. Approaching closer. Five feet, no reaction. Moving slowly."

Michael resisted the urge to look. Gideon had to move roughly thirty feet up the corridor
before he reached the turrets.

"T
en feet."

If he could make it all the way withou
t being seen, he'd be able to—

"Taking fire!"

"Run!"

Michael watched helplessly as bullets
punched into the end of the hall beside him. Moments later Gideon sprang back around the corner and pressed flat to the wall.

Braced for the turrets to follow, Michael had no time to give him more than a glance. "Are you hit?"

"I do not believe so. They may follow. Be ready!"

"I
am
." Why did Gideon turn back? From what the others had said, he could take on anything.

"The ECM likely kept them from fixing my position, but they could sense me enough to know I was there somewhere."

"Suppressing fire."

"T
hough there was no way to pass them without being hit." He slipped the camera around the corner again. "They're maintaining position."

"I thought they built you to take that kind of thing."

Gideon turned to him sharply. "They did not
build
—" He demonstrably popped the small cannon barrel he'd used to threaten them in the airlock. "That is hardly small-arms fire they're using, and this will not do much against them." He pulled the camera back and then headed past Michael back the way they'd come. "Follow me."

"What? We're not just giving up!"

"There may be a way around them. From the outside."

"
We don't have time to look for 'may be.'"

"I am not a
tank! We need alternatives."

Michael gritted his teeth. "We have to hur
ry." He ushered Gideon to go on and then followed as quickly as the suit allowed.

Once outside, getting atop the exterior of the structure was a quick process with Gideon's help. The raised section that housed the control room was easily found,
but finding a way inside wasn't quite so simple. Aside from a few protrusions, the top of the complex was covered in a thin layer of lunar soil that Michael figured helped to disguise the place from any distant observation. As soon as they climbed up, they began to brush through it as quickly as they could in an attempt to find some sort of exterior hatch, covered window, or anything that might help them.

It didn't take long.

"Look." Michael pointed to the corner of the roof where a section of soil was already cleared. The two rushed over for a closer look and spotted a closed rectangular hatch that appeared to lead right down into Primary Control.

"Outer seal is missing," Gideon sai
d. "Explosive bolts. There." He pointed down to the lower section. A thin plating that matched the hatch's shape lay in the soil where it had landed.

There was no room for an airlock of any sort. "Some sort of hatch for emergency docking, or maybe building expansion. Th
is is how the room got vented."

The computer must've blown the protective seal and opened the inner hatch to space before closing it again. Gideon tried
to open it. It wouldn't budge. Michael pointed to a keypad near the handle. "Do you remember those codes?"

Gideon reached for the keypad and
then hesitated as if trying to pick the proper sequence. "No."

"You're sure?"

"They're gone."

It wasn't a perfect test, but it put Michael more at ease. Maybe the mole's memories really were gone. He moved closer
and punched in the code Marc had given him.

"This one might work," Michael said.
The lock released, and the hatch was open a moment later. The vacuum-bloated body of a dead ESA technician lay immediately below, staring up at them with bloodshot eyes.

There was no immediate response from below.

Gideon didn't wait long. "Stay here."

Not terribly likely, Michael thought. "Sounds familiar. There might be cameras in there."

"They won't see me."