Read Online Ally by Karen Traviss - Free Book Online Page B

artifact to its component elements. That’s the only way you’ll get control of your future. Hold the Dry Above.
    You dream, said Saib.
    Lindsay’s spirits sank further with each meter she moved away from the sunlight above. Her own ability to cope with the last few weeks under water stunned her and she tried not to think about it too closely in case reality crowded in on her again and it all came unraveled in screaming, water-choked hysteria. As long as she didn’t think her resolve had come from Shan’s borrowed genes, she was fine: that was her ultimate fear. She didn’t want those memories and attitudes smuggled in with c’naatat through Ade Bennett’s blood. She needed her courage to be her own. It was all she had left.
    Shan must have struggled for sanity like this when she was floating in space.
    Lindsay seized that. If Shan could take it, then so could she.
    Get your people together, Saib, Lindsay said. Tell them that they have to get used to the Dry Above.
    The Temporary City, Bezer’ej: biohazard lab
    â€œThis is too fucking weird for me.”
    Shan hovered at Shapakti’s elbow, and for a moment Ade saw the detective she must have been in her police days:harrying the lab for forensics, grimly impatient, working something through in her mind that showed in the twitch of muscle in her jaw.
    He had to say it. It was a boil to be lanced: you infected Lindsay and Rayat, and now look what’s happened. Just when he thought Shan had forgiven him, he was back in the shit again. “So…what if it is an altered bezeri, Boss?”
    â€œNo idea,” she said wearily. “How do you track a creature that can go anywhere? And what do we do when we find them—shoot them? And what if it’s a sheven instead? Jesus H. Christ. What a fucking mess.”
    Ade glanced at Aras, who stood quietly in the corner of the laboratory watching Shapakti with his head slightly to one side like he was lost in thought. Aras raised his eyes from the bench Shapakti was working at and met Ade’s stare. He shrugged—just a micro-movement of the muscles, nothing more. Then he lowered his head a fraction. I don’t know and I wish I did. Ade understood right away; they were so well attuned now that he didn’t have to ask.
    â€œAras, I need an answer,” said Shan.
    â€œTo what question?”
    â€œIf the bezeri are infected, what options do we have?”
    â€œIf you’re asking if infected bezeri represent a risk that I would feel justified in removing, I don’t know.”
    Ade thought about the bezeri’s recently revealed history—overfishing and genocide, very human sins that he understood pretty well—and knew what was going through Shan’s mind. It was going through his too. They’ll do it again.
    â€œThey don’t have a history of being environmentally responsible,” Shan said quietly. Shapakti peered down at the glass tray, head cocking left and right. Shan wasn’t giving him a lot of room. “Not a good start, is it?”
    â€œA few weeks ago,” said Aras, “you wanted to save them.”
    â€œA few weeks ago, they weren’t bloody c’naatat. ” She was starting to get that shutdown look, turning back into a Superintendent Frankland about to break bad news, talking to necessary strangers. “And I didn’t know they had form forbeing environmental vandals.”
    Her next request would be for a grenade that could frag a four-meter heap of gel. Ade knew it.
    â€œLook,” said Shapakti. He could switch to English with more ease than Ade could manage wess’u. “Observe the cells.”
    When the biologist tilted the tray a little, Ade could see that it was actually an image like a microscope display. It looked like tiny radial hairbrushes scattered between a mass of tangled wires and misshapen lumps.
    â€œShit,” said Shan. “ Shit. ”
    â€œWhat is it, Boss?