She snorted. “I’ve been dealing with my brother since we were in the womb. If there are any new assholes to be ripped, I’m more than capable of doing it myself, but thank you for the offer.”
“Okay. Just checking. Offer’s there anyhow.”
She nodded, watching what he was doing with fascination. What she assumed was the message strip appeared on screen, in wireframe format. Zero moved his hands and the model moved around, spinning so they could look at it from every angle.
“What are you doing?”
“I have it set up in a virtual container within the computer core.”
His voice was distracted, with that mechanical inflection that told her his attention was somewhere else. It was the smallest change, so small she doubted many people would pick it up, but… yeah, for some reason she was hypersensitive about anything to do with the big cyborg.
“It’s completely self-contained. No way out of the container, and no way off the ship.”
“Okay…”
“Which means if opening the message does something it shouldn’t—like ping our location, or worse, try and upload an overload sequence to our engine core—we’ll see it within the container.”
Ah. That made sense. “And it won’t be able to actually do those things? It’ll just think it has?”
“Bingo.” He shot a finger gun at her. “And that will mean it’s not a message at all, but a trap. Which means we’ll really need to go have a chat with your brother, and I am calling dibs on new asshole ripping.”
She chuckled. “If that happens, he’s all yours. When do we find out?”
“Now.”
Zero moved his hands, and the diagram of the message strip glowed on the screen. It turned around and up and over and then moved to the side, a small screen emerging like a speech bubble. The logo of the comms-service rotated slowly.
“Okay. No pings, no viruses.” He frowned. “There’s something called a ‘read receipt’ that wants to send a message back to the stream server?”
“Yeah, that’s normal. Ignore it.” So her brother really had sent her a message. She wondered what he wanted. “How do I play the message?”
“Just tap the screen. You can play it right there in the container just the same as normal.”
Reaching out, she tapped the screen and opened the message. The view changed, the logo dissolving to be replaced by her brother’s face.
She was used to seeing a smug, arrogant expression on Eric’s face but instead, he looked… scared? His gaze darted around him as he spoke, the screen shaking as though he was walking.
“Eris… I don’t know if this will get to you,” he said, slightly out of breath. That was normal. Eric had never been one for exercising anything other than his brain.
“I don’t know who else to turn to. There’s… shit, hold on…” He turned the screen, and they had a brief view of a corridor wall and a door. Then they were plunged into darkness. The sounds of a muffled conversation reached them and then heavy footsteps and the sound of a door opening and closing.
“Fuck... that was close.” Eric’s face reappeared on screen, pinched and worried. He looked exhausted like he hadn’t slept properly in weeks. The room was dark around him but she could make enough out to recognize a lab.
“Eris, this project I’m on… It’s not what they said it was. We made a breakthrough and… and… shit. They have a person here, Eris. An alien, I think anyway. She’s…” He swallowed, looking like he was about to throw up. “They’re experimenting on her. I have to help her. Do something, but people who ask questions here disappear and I think they’re onto me.”
He stopped talking for a second, looking up toward where the door must be. “Shit. They’re coming. Please, Eris, you have to help. You have to stop them. I’ve sent you an encrypted data-pack buried in this message… enough evidence to bury these assholes for good.”
The screen flickered as a sequence of numbers overlaid across Eric’s face for a second.
“I gotta go. I’m gonna try and get out of this place and go underground. If I don’t make it…” His expression altered, self-recrimination in his eyes. “I’m sorry for being a shit brother and an even shittier twin. I should have been there for you. I love you. Okay?”
She sat in stunned silence as the screen went blank, eyes wide as she stared at the screen. The revolving logo returned but she didn’t see it. Then her chin lifted.
Never mind about the attempt on her life, her brother was in trouble.
And nothing in creation would stop her from helping him.
14
“Yes… Humans are pricks, what do you think I’ve been telling you?” Sparky demanded, his arms folded across his chest as he glared around the briefing room.
It was actually the back part of the Sprite’s bridge, behind the command and station console. The space allowed just enough room for them all around the holo-table if they didn’t mind getting cozy.
“Yeah, well… we didn’t think you meant actual pricks,” T’Raal muttered in self-defense, rubbing at the back of his neck. He still wore a stunned expression after Zero had shown them the data Eric had sent over. Proof of a secret government project, experimenting on an unknown woman.
An unknown alien woman.
“Nope. We are, in fact, actual pricks.” Sparky barked a hard laugh. “We’ve been killing each other for thousands of years before we decided strapping ourselves to rockets to go look at the stars was a good idea. And then we just brought all that shittiness with us. How else do you explain that lot on Praxis? Or places like Mirax? If you ask me, the first thing some of us were going to do when we saw an alien was take it apart to see how it worked.”
Eris folded her arms, not arguing with Sparky as the two
