CHAPTER 13

ARTEMIS

I had groupies.

Or, rather, Dave Junior had groupies, but I liked to think they were here for me, too.

I wasn’t sure what it was about him that made the other women in camp gravitate towards him, but I had made my way to the wrecked ship after last night’s altercation with my newest buddy in tow, and about half of them trailed behind me. Currently, they were squatting in a semi-circle around the pile of scrap I’d managed to find while Dave Junior was eyeing it up like it was the most fascinating thing in the Intergalactic Union.

Really, it was just useless metal. I was making a note of what parts had been scraped off when the ship had gone down so I could remould the metal into the correct shapes. It was largely a superficial job, but there were a few holes here and there that needed a more thorough patching up. I didn’t know what kind of metal it was, but it was a match to the ship and that was what gave it its usefulness.

They were picking up the pieces and letting him examine them with such focus and intent that I just let them have at it while I decided which hole to fill first.

I decided to get the biggest done first. It was large enough that even Foryk could have climbed through with ease. Unfortunately for Junior, I needed to take away his toys to melt into one larger piece I could cut down to size. Then I’d weld it over the hole and voila, problem solved.

With how easy this was turning out to be, I was still tensely prepared for the other shoe to drop. I wasn’t particularly superstitious, especially considering I hadn’t been taught any superstitions growing up under the thumb of either a dispassionate orphanage or The Program.

I approached the women ooh- ing and aah- ing over the heaps of metal for Dave Junior’s sake with an amused smirk tilting up my lips. I knew they’d been held captive inside The Program and its facilities, but I would’ve thought they’d have been more wary of the local wildlife than this. Sure, Junior was adorable, but he was constantly snapping at anyone who dared get too close to me. It was an issue when it came to Libby, and both of them spent more time glaring at the other than trying to bond, but I found their bickering immensely amusing.

Right now, though, Junior was allowing them closer to him than ever before, clearing foregoing his previous aggressiveness (and clinginess) in exchange for the cooing and attention. And he seemed to be enjoying sniffing and batting at the metal scraps like they were his own personal toys.

I hoped the women would take a page out of Junior’s book and, with time and patience, take the opportunity to grow more confident to explore the outside world. There was so much for them to see, and I felt strangely compelled in that moment to ensure they were able to experience it. They weren’t Libby, but I still felt a sense of protectiveness over them like they were my family, too.

Extended family borne from shared experiences, but family, nonetheless.

‘Sorry, ladies,’ I cut in. ‘I need those now.’

I could tell they didn’t want to hand them over, but their eagerness to watch me while I worked overcame any reluctancy.

‘What are you doing with them?’ asked Francesca. She was sitting to the side, mostly avoiding social interaction. Her partner, Marcella, stood close by while still allowing her her space.

Libby was also sitting nearby, but it was clear there was some sort of wall between them that hadn’t been present the night before. I made a mental note to talk to Libby to make sure everything was okay. Their interactions weren’t really adding up to me.

I explained my plans.

‘Can I watch?’

I shrugged. ‘Sure, just don’t get too close. It’s gonna get hot and I don’t want you to burn yourself.’

I’d purposefully stacked the scraps near a foliage-free clearing so that I could use the rocks to melt the metal without setting fire to the surrounding trees. ‘Okay, stand back everyone, it’s about to get hot. Libs, can you hold Junior back, please?’

She complied with clear reluctance and positioned herself in front of the infantile creature. He let us all know of his displeasure through a series of high-pitched bleating and half-formed growls, but I tuned him out, trusting my best friend to keep him at a safe distance.

I was used to an audience when I used my abilities, my life spent like a fish in a bowl while scientists bent over me with keen eyes and scrutinised me. Yet, this time things were different. These women didn’t know what to expect from me, they had no clue how my abilities worked, nor were they taking notes to determine what needed to be changed, improved upon or removed. It was just me, the metal, and my hands.

I rubbed them together – for effect since it didn’t actually do anything – and watched as they heated up. It always hurt. My flesh was still flesh and burned just like everything else, and while I could withstand a greater temperature than most without incurring an injury, this type of metal would require some pretty extreme heat to melt.

I ignored the gasps when my skin started to bubble and blacken, and I quickly understood that whatever this metal substance was held a higher melting temperature than I had anticipated. This wasn’t going to be pretty.

Within a few ticks the entire flesh covering my hands had disappeared from the burnt bones beneath. They glinted from beneath the charring, the metallic implants that had been painstakingly grafted into my bones still managing to gleam in the light. The pain was a distant factor in the back of my mind as I focused on my task that quickly disappeared once my nerve endings were fully singed off. It was a sight and sensation I had become desensitised to after the never-ending tests performed by the scientists revealed the unseen parts of me too many times to count, though I still hated to do it to myself. In the moment I was fine, but I knew what my nightmares would revolve around tonight.

It didn’t take long to melt everything down into a more useable and malleable shape, and I stepped back when I was done to inspect my work. I held my skeletal hands out in front of me to prevent my clothes from catching fire, and within a click or two they were completely healed like nothing had even happened. The entire process happened quicker than I was used to, but I was learning to expect the unexpected when it came to my abilities. Who was I to complain about even faster healing?

I turned back around to face the crowd only to find them standing there, eyes wide with horror and mouths gaping in sheer terror. Libby was holding Dave Junior back who seemed to be trying to reach me, and a couple of the women stepped forward as if to check on me, too. I couldn’t fathom why they would try to get closer when I’d already warned them to stay clear for their own safety.

‘She’s fine!’ Libby kept shouting at them as she worked to keep Junior from rushing me. I watched them struggle for a little longer before the words finally pierced the others’ panic-induced barriers. ‘Look,’ she pointed at me. ‘She’s already healed. She’s fine.’

‘Fuck me! What in the burning stars?’ Francesca exclaimed, collapsing against the purple trunk of a tree closer than the one she’d been leaning against before. Her face had paled from an already white shade to almost translucent and had taken on a rather alarming green tint.

In fact, most of the women now had a similar greenish hue, and a few even bent over to heave up their last meals.

‘What?’ I asked, suddenly self-conscious. It wasn’t like they hadn’t grown up being tortured and experimented on by The Program just like me. Their reactions made no sense and it made me feel like a freak where I had expected to be understood.

‘What did they do to you?’ asked the blonde. I knew I should really start to learn their names, but I couldn’t care less about that while they stared at me in abject horror.

‘That’s rude, Christine,’ her brunette friend scolded, and the blonde – Christine – at least had the decency to look remorseful. However, she didn’t take back her question, and all of them were looking to me while they awaited my answer.

‘I-I don’t know what you mean…’ I stuttered, my words tiny and unsure even though it was the truth. While I hadn’t dug deeper into the gory details I’d been more open with these women than I’d ever been with anyone other than Libby in my entire life. Not even T knew the extent of what I’d been through and he’d been present for a lot of the aftermath, so showing these women not only what I could do but the repercussions was a huge leap. One that seemed to be dropping me on my ass.

‘I’ll tell you what,’ came a voice I was unfamiliar with. It belonged to a woman I’d seen around but hadn’t interacted with yet, and I was suddenly even more nervous about what she was going to say. ‘I’m glad she’s on our side and not theirs. ’

Okay, that wasn’t so bad…

‘What about you?’ Francesca asked, though this time her question wasn’t directed towards me.

I watched with a growing feeling of dread and sadness as Libby’s face fell, and I knew without having to ask that she was experiencing a sense of betrayal. I still wasn’t a hundred percent sure what was going on between them – their interactions so far had been inconsistent and confusing – but I suspected their dynamic had just shifted in the wrong direction.

‘I can do some of the things she can do, but not all,’ she began, then she met my eyes with a question in hers. I thought it over one last time having considered telling them a little more about our past, but ultimately gave her a tiny nod as my permission to continue. She released Dave Junior who ran right for me, inspecting my hands with an innocent curiosity only a youngling could achieve when he realised they were perfectly fine.

‘We’d been partnered the same way as the rest of you. We grew up undergoing the same experiments, but we were separated a few solars ago. We tried to escape and while Artemis got out, I got caught. She was eventually caught later on and we were reunited, but they’d put me in the breeding program and tinkered with my nanites while hers had been left alone for the two solars she was free.’

All of them frowned at her response, the confusion clear behind their eyes. It only succeeded in making me more confused as well.

‘You escaped once before?’ Christine’s friend asked, her eyes bright as she took in the new information. ‘How?’

I shook my head and scratched Junior’s when he nudged at me for attention. The brunette’s focus was in the wrong place. ‘That’s not important.’

Libby jumped back in to elaborate. ‘It’s what happened as a result of her time away that’s important.’

Christine’s frown was oddly identical to her friend’s, and the effect was unnerving. ‘What do you mean?’

I explained how my nanites went rogue after being left alone for so long.

They remained silent, processing what I’d just admitted and its implications. After what seemed like a lifetime Francesca was the one to speak up again.

‘Spell it out for us, Artemis. What does that mean?’

‘It means they couldn’t conduct the same experiments on me as Libby anymore. They had to find a way around it.’ I showed them the tattoos. ‘They turned their experiments into nanites that they then tattooed into my skin. I don’t know if they’ve reacted to my previous nanites or what, but I have new abilities that Libby doesn’t possess because of it.’

‘Can you melt things, too?’ Francesca asked Libby, looking like the answer would determine some sort of outcome I wasn’t privy to.

‘Yes,’ she admitted warily, watching the redhead’s reaction closely. ‘The shields and her healing rates are entirely unique to her, I don't have any of the tattoos, but I can do everything else she can do.’

Francesca’s expression was shut down and unreadable, which only seemed to rachet up the tension in Libby’s shoulders.

The entire interaction was making everyone nervous, and the brunette woman finally stepped forward and cleared her throat. ‘The Program altered our DNA. We don’t know much, but from what we’ve been able to gather they isolated certain genetic markers within each of us individually and tampered with it. Either to enhance something they’d deemed useful or remove something they deemed useless or harmful. As such, we have heightened senses and an increased ability to heal. They were also able to identify and isolate certain evolutionary traits and bring them back.’

Both girls pulled their long hair away from their necks to reveal a matching set of lines bisecting their throats on either side.

‘These are gills, which give us the ability to breathe under water,’ Christine stated, though the shock factor had already seemed to wear off from my own admissions. Apparently, at this point there wasn’t much that The Program had done that could shock us.

Francesca surprised us then by stepping forward, her previously locked-down expression now scrunched into a fearful trepidation. After closing her eyes and taking a deep breath, she let it out slowly as her gaze caught on Libby first where it lingered, then the rest of us. When she started to strip out of her clothes, Libby looked like she was about to protest but was holding herself back. I came to stand beside her and intertwined our hands as a show of silent support for whatever emotional turmoil was eating at her.

When Francesca was stark naked, her reasons for exposing herself were evident. Shiny yellow scales rippled across her skin in large patches, some of which were bisected with a darker brown pattern. She blinked her eyes and her pupils, previously round, narrowed into vertical slits. Then she opened her mouth and flicked out her tongue. Her long, thin , forked tongue.

‘Marcie and I were a part of their animal grafting experiments. They spliced our DNA and merged it with an animal’s. So, I’m part snake. Marcie’s part chameleon. We have certain non-physical attributes of those animals as well.’

‘Like what?’ asked Libby, her voice calm and steady despite the tautness in her muscles.

‘Like I have the ability to see UV light when I slit my pupils.’

‘And Marcella?’

‘Marcie doesn’t look like she has any physical differences normally, but her eyes function independently and she can shift the colour of her skin and hair to blend in with her surroundings.’

‘Okay, that’s kind of awesome,’ said Libby, the excitement clear in her tone. Her comment caused an amused reaction from the rest of us and effectively cut through the tension.

‘I bet Karmella was also fused with an animal. She certainly hisses like a cat,’ one woman joked.

‘She’s part lioness,’ Francesca admitted with a sheepish smile. ‘We were raised in the same facility.’

‘You were allowed to interact with each other?’ I asked, surprised to find that something else had in fact taken me off guard.

‘Sure,’ she said, her brows furrowed. ‘We had communal areas, like the cafeteria and the entertainment rooms.’

‘Cafeteria and entertainment rooms,’ Libby muttered under her breath, her tone blatantly envious.

‘Didn’t you have communal areas in your facility?’ Francesca asked, drawing everyone’s attention back to us. There was a note of alarm in her voice.

Libby seemed to shrink in on herself at the question, so I wrapped an arm around her protectively and answered for the both of us.

‘We were kept separate from the other subjects. We were only ever permitted to leave our cell when they needed us for their experiments, and they only ever took us one at a time. Any interactions with other subjects were a part of an experiment, and they pitted us against one another.’

‘Pitted you against… to what end?’ asked the brunette, her eyes large and pitying. I hated it. I also didn’t want to answer that question. All it would do would cause a rift between us since I was beginning to understand that while these women had suffered immensely, they hadn’t gone through half of what Libby and I had. Hadn’t been forced to do the terrible things we’d done.

I would bet everything that their hands were clean of blood and their consciences clear of guilt.

I made a point to look up at the sky, taking note of the position of the sun. ‘I should get back to work. If you want me to get your babies back then I’ll need the ship flight-ready as soon as possible and we’ll run out of daylight if we keep yapping.’

My attempt to divert the conversation was obvious, but they took the hint and dropped it. The crowd dispersed as they went their separate ways, choosing to leave me alone to finish my tasks. I had a feeling it was more to avoid watching my flesh burn off again than anything else, and after what I’d just discovered about their time in The Program I didn’t blame them.

Libby stayed even closer by after that, much to Dave Junior’s annoyance. The conversation had somehow knocked her confidence in a major way and I didn’t know what to do to help other than be there for her.

We changed tactics since she was taking a more active role with her assistance, and we welded the metal into place together. Her hands took a few more clicks to heal than mine, so after a while I took over the heating while she held things in place.

Thankfully, Junior seemed to catch onto our enhanced healing quickly enough and didn’t worry about the state of our hands. He also kept his distance after the first time he’d snuck too close and felt the heat. Instead, he plonked his cute little butt down and curled up to take a nap while we worked.

We worked in silence until sundown, surprisingly getting the entire external fixes completed. We’d even managed to heave the massive thing onto its side to fix up the bottom, our strength between us just enough to make the adjustment.

‘The external stuff is done. Now I just need to get inside to check the systems are working correctly,’ I said unnecessarily just to break the silence.

‘Do you need help with that?’

I couldn’t tell if she was asking to help or asking if she could leave, so I chose the middle ground. ‘Need might be a strong word. I can manage it on my own, but I wouldn’t say no to some extra help.’

‘Do you think we can get it done tonight?’ she asked, a small glimmer of hope flickering behind her eyes for the first time since whatever that was between her and Francesca.

‘It’s possible, but I don’t want to be out here in the middle of the night. Too many unknowns and I don’t know if The Program is aware of this ship or not. It could be a trap.’

I doubted it since they hadn’t found us yet, but better safe than sorry.

‘You have a point,’ she agreed, clearly thinking along the same lines.

‘We can give it a look-over tomorrow morning and see what needs to be fixed. I didn’t see any issues before, but that was just a cursory glance.’

‘Okay. Tomorrow then.’

She started the trek back to the cave, her demeanour ringing more than one alarm bell. Normally she would have been chatting my ear off, but there was an obvious slump to her shoulders and a dullness to her eyes that if didn’t clear up soon would become rather alarming. She wasn’t herself.

Perhaps I was overthinking things with Francesca and Libby was just drowning in the gaping hole of Baldr’s absence. Or maybe it was all piling on top of her and crushing her under its weight. Either way, I needed to bring Bal home to alleviate some of that stress.

Before I followed Libby back to the cave I gave the ship one last once-over, and I couldn’t wait to see Bal’s expression at the experience of being inside it. Of flying through space. Of reuniting with his mother. Of freedom.

Junior yawned and nudged me forward, letting me know he was also eager to get home.

Soon, Bal. You’ll be home soon.