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  “Choice?” Coates apparently flipped, his voice rising further. “Nothing here is about choice, Doctor! You of all people should know that. You do not have a choice, you carry out orders!”

  “Hgnh!” There was a sharp intake of pain, and the sound of shuffling bodies.

  Had Coates slapped her? Solomon thought, his fear tripping over into indignation. He might not like Palinov overmuch, but at least she was in his corner. He felt his chest tighten and his muscles tense as he tried to control his anger and stop himself from jumping up and smacking the Warden then and there.

  But no, the Warden hadn’t slapped Palinov.

  “Yes. It’s been a long time since you’ve felt the snap of the command chip, isn’t it, Doctor?” Coates said, as Palinov’s loud breathing started to ease.

  The warden must have shocked her. That meant that Doctor Palinov had one of the implanted chips just like all of the adjuncts, Solomon thought. Did that mean that everyone here in Ganymede—the Outcasts and the staffers—all could be shocked into submission at any time by the warden? Solomon started to reappraise the fate of all those around him a little.

  “I’m sorry for questioning you, Warden Coates.” Palinov sounded subdued, but also sullen.

  “Apology accepted. Just no more mention of this to the general. Not until I say so, clear?” the warden stated.

  “Of course, sir.” Palinov’s voice was low and muted, followed by the sound of angered boots leaving the medical lounge.

  Solomon waited and held his breath. Should he make himself known? Now that he knew that she was under the thrall of the warden just as he was, he wondered if that meant she was more likely to become an ally. Would she tell him what his mutated genes meant? What would happen to him in the future? Or what this ‘Message’ was?

  “Prick,” he heard the Doctor mutter under her breath, clearly passing judgement on her superior officer, before there was the clatter of computer keys and the sound of things being moved around, tidied, and the hiss of the door as she exited the lounge.

  Solomon waited, counted to a hundred, and then a hundred again, before he was sure that she had in fact gone and wasn’t about to suddenly return. He let out a long sigh of relief and slowly unfolded his limbs, wondering if the fact that they hadn’t gone to sleep or gotten pins and needles was another sign of his apparently enhanced genetic structure.

  He cast a look at the terminals and the instrumentation. It was all dark now, and he considered for a moment staying around for a bit longer to try and ferret out more information. No. Don’t push your luck, his more criminal expertise told him.

  Maybe I am getting smarter, he thought as he sidled to the door to make his escape back into the Outcasts bunkrooms. Because now I’m even going to follow my own discerning advice.

  7

  Decisions

  The next day saw Jezebel Wen once again hitting the gymnasium at the crack of the day shift, running through her series of high-intensity exercises with a passion that she hadn’t exhibited before.

  Now I’m the angry one, she considered ruefully, as she dared any of the other combat specialists to spar with her. No one was eager to volunteer to be the first victim, it seemed, as Wen was radiating annoyance in her savage roundhouse kicks and fast jabs on the training mannequins.

  Unfortunately for the other adjunct-Marines, however, ‘choice’ was not a part of Ganymede vocabulary, and by the time the first two-hour shift had ended, at least three of the best fighters in their training circle were now walking with a limp or ringing ears from Wen’s furious blows.

  Get it together, Jezzie, the specialist thought as the green light flared over the door, signaling the end of their shift and the turnover for the next set of regular gymnasium Outcasts to arrive. It also meant that she and the other specialists would have an hour off to recuperate and wash, before everyone came together in an hour and a half’s time for the next set of study lessons.

  Jezebel knew why she was annoyed, of course, although she didn’t want to admit it to herself. The answer was unavoidable, however, as she saw that the next group of Outcast Marines—all there for standard gymnasium exercise—included her own Gold Squad Commander, Solomon Cready.

  The man that I’m supposed to kill.

  He arrived at the back of the group as usual, as Arlo Menier had already made it fairly clear that if any of the other Outcasts not in the Gold Squad were to make friends with his rival, there would be trouble. Not that everyone obeyed Arlo, but he was a big man in a very small world, and his word had enough weight to keep Solomon on his own most of the time.

  Solomon had lost that chip on his shoulder today, Wen saw. He looked almost reflective and thoughtful as he kept to himself and headed for the cross-trainer machines. She wondered if she should say something to him.

  But what exactly are you supposed to say to a man that you’re supposed to kill? This was the type of thought that she wasn’t used to having—not when she had been back on Earth, anyway. What was wrong with her? Was she growing a conscience? How messed up was she, that it took coming to a Confederate Marine bootcamp to grow one!?

  “Jezzie!” She was startled out of her twisted thoughts to see that it was none other than Solomon himself, having seen her by the lockers and hurrying over.

  Oh great. No, not now, Sol. She gritted her teeth and forced her face into a smile. Her previous meditative tranquility, the skill that she had exhibited so well last night, had apparently evaporated this morning. Don’t talk to me, Solomon. Don’t make me like you, for heaven’s sake!

  “Jezzie, I hoped I would see you in here. Look, it’s about the serum. The one I was telling you about.” Solomon looked almost excited, if a bit nervous, which just made Jezebel even angrier.

  “What is it? You mean that crazy conspiracy theory you have about us being secretly injected in the middle of the night?” Wen snapped. Maybe it would make this whole mission go easier if he remained an idiot, she considered.

  “It’s not a conspiracy theory!” Solomon didn’t even look hurt or taken aback by her vehemence. If anything, he looked excited. “Look, I’ve got proof. Well, I haven’t actually got any proof, but I know where some is, and…”

  “I don’t want to hear it, Sol,” she said, shaking her head. “Look. We’re here for twelve years. Twelve long years. Let’s just make sure we don’t go space-crazy before then, shall we?” she said irritably, walking past him and ignoring his surprised look.

  Jezzie couldn’t talk to that man’s face right now. She couldn’t even look at it for any longer than she had to. She was annoyed at Solomon. Annoyed at him for being the mark of her current mission, and annoyed that it wasn’t easier than this. Why couldn’t she just hate him? Why couldn’t the Boss have sent someone else to do it?

  I can’t kill Sol, she told herself once more. She had grown to, well, maybe not like him per se, but she had trained beside him and sparred with him and taken orders from him. She had argued and negotiated and listened—and all of that kind of built up empathy for someone, when you’ve both sweated together.

  No, I won’t do it, she decided. How could she, really? Solomon was her commander, after all. He was almost her friend, if anyone even had friends up here.

  But I have to! She thought about her family. Her hard-working engineer of a father she hadn’t seen for almost fifteen years. He worked as a fabricator in one of the northern province’s factories, churning out units for whichever mega-corp controlled the plant on a given week. He was a traditionalist, a conservative sort of a man who placed a lot of pride in the hard-working, straight and narrow life.

  Which was why he had been the one to kick her out of the family home when he found out just what she was getting up to—running around the streets of Tokyo, beating people up. That was before the Yakuza, of course, when Jezebel had been young and defiant.

  She had hated him back then, she considered as she made her way out of the gymnasium and back to the bunkrooms. She had hated him enough to spend the next
fifteen years as a Yakuza executioner and hadn’t spoken to her father in all of that time.

  Her mother had died when Jezzie was still a baby, a fact that Jezzie had always assumed her father had blamed her for. She had died of the same colicky-sort of cough that a lot of workers got in the northern industrial towns, but Jezzie knew that her pregnancy had weakened her.

  Why should I care about him? Jezzie was thinking about her distant father, who had probably remarried by now, and probably had a whole new, better family than his first tragic one. Maybe he had even moved out of the Asia-Pacific Partnership altogether?

  No, not Dad, Jezzie thought. His pride meant that he would stay in the house that he had bought for his dead wife probably until the day that he died.

  What did she owe him, really, at the end of the day? Her loyalty? Her love? To a man who had done nothing but make her feel trapped, miserable, and ashamed—and then had kicked her out?

  But if Boss Mihashi gets his hands on him… She knew only too well the sorts of terrible things that Mihashi would do to her father. And the idea that Boss Mihashi might not be able to find her father or might spare him out of the goodness of his heart was, of course, ridiculous.

  If I don’t kill Solomon Cready, then my father will die. Probably a very slow and agonizing death, Jezebel thought, over and over.

  “Wen.” Once again, a voice startled her from her torment. This time, it wasn’t her intended target, but it was none other than the staffer in the gray and blue jump-suit that she knew hid his winding dragon tattoo.

  The man that Wen was coming to think of as her Yakuza handler here on Ganymede was busy loading one of his service carts into one of the wall lockers. She could see an arrangement of cleaning products and ventilation pipes inside.

  Jezzie considered just ignoring him, but the image of that tiny command scroll sitting on her pillow made her stop. This guy was able to get to her any time he wanted, after all, so there was no point in avoiding him.

  “What do you want?” she muttered under her breath at him. Others of the Outcasts from her combat specialism session filed past her, completely ignoring them as they stood, apparently chatting.

  “You’re taking your time,” the man stated, not looking at her.

  So he knows just what my job was, she thought. That changed things. Usually only the higher-ups in the Yakuza knew everything about what the lower-down operatives should be doing, not the handlers. Does that mean that this guy is actually a captain of the Yakuza? He didn’t seem like one, though. Even despite his restrained and quiet menace, he didn’t swagger as they usually did. And no captain would ever deign to masquerade as a mere staffer, would they?

  But him knowing the job also meant that he might become compelled to see it through himself, if she failed or refused. Which meant that Solomon would still be in danger, even if she told the man to go frack himself.

  “I couldn’t do it last night,” she said lightly, remembering how she had waited for Solomon to return from whatever nefarious act he was up to last night. She still wasn’t sure if she had been waiting to kill him or simply talk to him. It was something that she hadn’t let her conscious mind work out yet. Unfortunately, she had been interrupted by none other than Warden Coates and Doctor Palinov, following after Solomon.

  Jezebel was sure that her commander was going to get caught, but apparently not. He was better at that sneaking thing than I had given him credit for, she was forced to admit.

  “I know. But there are always opportunities,” the man said lightly, fiddling with the cart to load it into some sort of self-powering battery charge unit, before drawing out a small personal data-screen and laying it angled on the top of the unit so that Jezebel Wen could clearly see the images on the screen.

  It was surveillance footage. Of the station, which surprised her, as Jezebel hadn’t seen any such obvious cameras during her night jaunt.

  From the angle of the image, it appeared to be coming from one of the light fittings, displaying an empty front atrium with all of the doors in and out clearly visible. Then a shadow moved at one of the doors, and it whisked open to show an image of Solomon Cready, moving fast and quietly across the screen to the medical lounges.

  “This was taken from last night,” the man stated, wiping a hand over the screen to show the same image once again, but this time without Cready as another shadow emerged from the food hall door. Jezzie recognized herself as she had ghosted after Solomon, before being unable to follow thanks to not being able to pass through the medical lounge glass doors.

  Oh no, Jezzie thought. If they had both been caught on internal surveillance cameras, then it was only a matter of time before Warden Coates would know.

  Luckily for both Jezzie and Solomon however, that was not to be the case.

  “This is the only footage on the station,” the man stated in an eerily calm voice. “I deleted and re-looped the cameras on the mainframe, thinking that last night was you fulfilling your orders…” A pause. “It clearly wasn’t.”

  “I got disturbed, the warden and Doctor Palinov—” Jezzie started to hiss, but a cold, measured look from the staffer silenced her. Contained in that scowl were all the years of training of a Yakuza. There are never any excuses for the likes of us, it said.

  “You have twenty-four hours,” the man stated, making the screen vanish with a wave of his hand and slamming the wall locker shut.

  Twenty-four hours until what? Jezzie was thinking, too shocked to say anything, or to call out after the man as he turned to walk away. Until they kill her father? Or until he releases the footage of her out of her bunk in the middle of the night?

  Or before he took matters into his own hands and decided to kill Solomon himself? None of the options were anything that she wanted to face.

  8

  Joachim

  Solomon was now aware of his body in a way that he had never been before as he went through the rest of the day’s training sessions and lessons. His hour and a half of gymnasium saw him paying less and less attention to the other adjuncts around him as he tried to measure his own recovery rate, his strength, speed, and stamina to see if it really had improved.

  He thought that they had, but it was hard to tell if that was from half a year of sustained physical training and the apparently ‘perfect metabolic environment’ that they were supposed to live in here, or from Serum 21.

  It wasn’t until he saw Arlo Menier using just his arms to ascend the climbing wall that Solomon was starting to think that yeah, maybe there is something to all this Complex-strand DNA variant 21 stuff.

  He knew that Arlo was a strong guy. After all, the Frenchman was built like a gladiator, tall and wedge-shaped. Once Solomon had started noticing it, though, he saw evidence of the Outcasts’ improved genetic code everywhere. To one side of the hall, Karamov—his own squad member—had just collapsed after circuit training. Solomon counted the seconds as he watched Karamov pant, wipe his brow for a couple of seconds, and then apparently jump up to his feet once more to have a final lap.

  How’s that for recovery time? Solomon thought.

  Still more adjunct-Marines appeared to be reaping the benefits of Serum 21. There was one Marine who had just apparently lifted his personal best at the weight sets as he loudly whooped and punched the air. There was a Green Squad member who had been on one of the available running machines solidly since they had all started their session and had apparently not slowed or stopped from his medium-fast sprint.

  Holy crap, Solomon thought. He realized that he was truly looking at the Outcasts for the first time. Warden Coates, he hated to say, had been kind of right when he had said that he was going to turn them into an elite fighting unit, one of the best fighting units since the Spartans. Solomon looked around him in frank amazement as he saw his comrades and colleagues in comparison to who he had been back in new Kowloon.

  If I had met any of these guys back then… Solomon thought that they would have appeared to be top-athletes, possibly even supe
rhuman, to the likes of him.

  Which was precisely when the price of their newfound abilities became painfully obvious as Joachim, one of the regular adjuncts without a specialism from White Squad, suddenly fell off his treadmill.

  At first, no one reacted, but Solomon was already moving across the floor of the gymnasium by the time that everyone else noticed the white bubbles forming on the side of Adjunct-Marine Joachim’s mouth.

  Solomon reached his side first, to find a man whose limbs were busy shaking and locking into tight positions every few seconds. “Joachim!” Solomon called out nervously. Weren’t you supposed to support their heads? He realized he had no idea what to do in this situation. “Medic!” he shouted, just as the other Outcasts started to realize that something very wrong was happening in their midst. “Someone get a medic!” Solomon shouted again.

  The man’s hands were like curled claws as he was gripped by seizures and fits right there before Solomon’s eyes. Keep the airways open, Solomon thought, remembering his first aid training, and reached to steady Joachim’s head.

  “Huh…” Just as Joachim’s shaking suddenly subsided, his body relaxed, and his eyes closed as gently and as peacefully as if he was going to sleep.

  “No!” Solomon said, quickly reaching for a pulse, but it was already too late. Joachim from White Squad had died, right here in front of them.

  CLANG! CLANG CLANG! The klaxons above the door sounded, and they hissed open to spill a small gaggle of fast-running staffers, heading straight to Solomon and Joachim, to separate them and push Solomon out of the way.

  “ATTENTION, ladies and gents!” the very familiar and also very unwelcome tones of Warden Coates cut through the commotion. “Let the boys in gray work. Clear a space! That means you, Cready!” Coates was bawling at them, and although Solomon had no real wish to be electrocuted again, he didn’t back away from Joachim’s body as the warden strode forward into the room, behind the staffers.