Текст книги "Cathedral "

Автор книги: Andy Mangels

Соавторы: Michael Martin
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Текущая страница: 19 (всего у книги 23 страниц)

Then Verad’s cold rage welled up from deep within. How dare his old hosts dredge such things up?My nightmares are my own affair.

“You couldn’t be more wrong,” Curzon said. “Soon, half the galaxy will beliving your nightmares.”

“Unless you rejoin with Ezri,” Audrid said. “And warn everyone.”

Why Ezri?

“Because we’re both aboard theDefiant,” Ezri said, her anger palpable. “Look, I don’t like this joining thing any better than you do. But we’re a long way from home. And we can’t afford to wait until a better match turns up.”

But your thoughts are so…jumbled. Disorganized. Unsubtle. I am better off without you.

“Ibid andop. cit. what I just said, slug,” Ezri said. “But I’m willing to take one for the team if you are.”

Tobin laughed, but without any evident humor. “‘Unsubtle thoughts’ ought to be an asset this time, Dax. It seems to me that too much subtlety is what created our mutual problem in the first place.”

“Or at least allowed it to remain hidden for so long,” added Curzon. “Perhaps past the point where it can ever be dealt with. But we gain nothing by waiting.”

“You know what you have to do, Dax,” Audrid said. And with that, all nine of them broke away, swimming in leisurely fashion back into the depths, dwindling and finally vanishing entirely from Dax’s sensorium.

Lost in troubled thought, Dax failed to notice the approach of a multitude of other shapes until they were very close. This time, there were dozens. More naked humanoids, none of whose faces Dax recognized. Among them were many Trills of both sexes, as well as members of various non-Trill species. From what little it could glean of their specific morphologies, Dax concluded that humans, Vulcans, Andorians, Tellarites, Rigelians, Orions, Ferengi, Romulans, Klingons, and even Vorta, and Jem’Hadar were among the bizarre press of flesh. There were also scores of others, from inside and outside the Federation. Members, allies, and enemies, as well as species Dax did not immediately recognize.

And all of them were dead, their bodies shredded and torn by forces Dax had seen on only one previous occasion, long ago. It could scarcely bear to think about it.

A body stirred among the corpses, then swam rapidly toward the symbiont. Dax wondered briefly if its predatory nightmare had finally returned for a day of reckoning.

Then he recognized the approaching being as Ezri Tigan. She had returned.

“So how about it, slug?” she said.

Acceding to the rational impulses of Curzon and Jadzia, Dax came to the decision that it knew could be put off no longer.The time for concealment is past. We will confront the old lies directly. Together.

Ezri’s answering smile was lost in a spray of bubbles as the universe suddenly turned inside out.

22

Ro Laren couldn’t recall a time when she’d been more tired and on edge, at least since she had left the Maquis. Just as in those days, sleep came in brief snatches, and the rest of her time in bed had been spent pondering her future, her evolving relationship with Quark, the religious schism on Bajor, the political rift between Bajor and Cardassia, the upcoming Federation signing, the health of Dizhei and Anichent, the whereabouts of the missing Jake Sisko, the flirtations of Hiziki Gard, and the effect she knew her announcement had had on Kira Nerys. Small wonder that slumber did not come easily.

Still, knowing that today’s proceedings were probably the most significant events she would ever witness, Ro found her body buzzing with energy. She made sure to press her back-up dress tunic, in case the one she was already wearing got stained or damaged. She even carefully styled her hair and applied a modicum of makeup, something she was generally loath to do.

Her morning had so far consisted of three security meetings. The first was the private briefing, held in her security office, that she had promised Hiziki Gard, who somehow managed to be charming despite the horrendous earliness of the hour. The next meeting was held in the wardroom, where she gave a final briefing to almost all of the guards and deputies serving on the station; those who were on duty and could not attend the meeting were given earpieces and a holofeed to enable them to follow the presentation. Sergeants Shul and Etana were tremendously helpful, and she knew she’d be able to rely on them implicitly.

Ro’s third meeting—also held in the wardroom—was with the various security contingents and representatives from the visiting dignitaries. As she surveyed the room, she saw the true diversity of the Federation and its allies; present were Vulcans, a pair of Bynars, two burly Klingons, a jovial-looking Bolian woman, a transparent-skulled Gallamite man, a voluminous female Denobulan, two diplomats from Skorr—and the ever-attentive Gard. Ro was surprised that no Cardassians were in attendance, but given the current impasse in the peace negotiations between her world and theirs, perhaps they were deliberately maintaining a low profile.

The representatives had asked a wide variety of questions, all aimed at safeguarding their respective delegates to the signing. Several of them were concerned about the previous evening’s disturbance in the Bajoran shrine, but Ro explained clearly that the Ohalavaru had been making a religious statement, and that they had expressed no interest whatsoever in interrupting the proceedings today. Most of them, in fact, had already left the station, since there had been little justification for keeping them in custody.

Gard had asked more probing questions, reviewing the capabilities of Ro’s security scanners, the types of weapons being screened, making sure that all personnel were alert for changelings or shrouded Jem’Hadar, and inquiring about the readiness and training of Ro’s deputies. Ro might have taken umbrage at some of the questions had they come from anyone else, but since she knew of Gard’s police background, she felt relatively at ease with his highly specific interrogation.

After being assured that the station’s shields would be up throughout the ceremony as an added precaution, most of the visiting security teams seemed satisfied with Ro’s elaborate measures. Even the Klingons grumbled only slightly, mainly at having to leave their bat’leths, d’k tahgs,and other bladed weapons in their quarters. Ro made a point of going out of her way to prepare each security contingent not to overreact at the sight of Taran’atar. She wondered if the war-weary peoples of the Alpha Quadrant would ever learn to be at ease in the presence of a Jem’Hadar soldier, however benign his current mission.

“Are there any further questions?” Ro asked, winding up the morning’s final security briefing. Seeing none, she was about to adjourn the meeting and release everyone, when she saw Etana reenter the room, an unreadable expression on her face. The deputy made a subtle hand gesture, part of a set of prearranged signals which were well known to every member of Ro’s regular staff. Ro acknowledged Etana with a small nod. Something big is happening, but no lives are in danger.

“Thank you all for your attention and your help in making this historic event go smoothly and safely for all involved,” Ro said, adjourning the meeting. Etana quickly approached her as the wardroom emptied, and they partially turned their backs to the people still leaving.

“The Tragerhas just returned without calling ahead,” Etana said quietly. “Vedek Yeviris aboard. He and Gul Macet are awfully excited about something, but they won’t tell us what it’s all about yet.”

Ro sighed heavily. The last thing she needed right now was another complication.

23

I know this place,Julian thought a moment after the transporter beam released him. And he felt some genuine surprise that this should be so, given everything else he knew he’d forgotten.

Clad only in paper slippers and one of the loose, robe-like garments he recognized from his childhood doctor visits, he stood alone on the shattered stone steps that led to the entrance of the Hagia Sophia. But sixth-century Istanbul’s grandest cathedral was much smaller than it had been during his last visit. Its gleaming dome was far shallower than he remembered it, and now lay many meters closer to the sun-baked street. The structure gave the impression of a scale model, its entire physical footprint now scarcely larger than a Starfleet runabout.

Shrunken down, just like me.

Julian gazed around at the tumble of block buildings flanking the ancient cobblestone streets. Except for the faint echoes of some distant, semimusical noise, the city was utterly still. No people at all were in evidence, not Ezri, Nog, or anyone else. This realization made the small hairs on his neck stand up like vigilant soldiers.

At least Ezri was right about the monsters,he thought, seizing the notion for whatever small comfort it provided.

Perhaps, he thought, his friends had already gone inside the cathedral. That was where they’d said we were all going, after all. Into the cathedral. He knew that they had come here with him in search of healing. And this place was where he kept every cure and remedy he had ever studied.

Whatever he had not yet forgotten was either here, or nowhere.

Julian had to crouch to get through the door to the gallery at the cathedral’s perimeter. Once inside, he bumped his head painfully on the ceiling when he tried to stand up straight. The great gallery was cleared of the rubble he recalled from his previous visit, and it was as empty of people as the surrounding city. But the gallery was now only a narrow corridor, lined with makeshift walls of bricks and plywood. The low ceiling forced him to walk stooped over as he made his way toward the now-tiny staircase—

–which he now saw led up to a library doorway so small that not even Kukalaka would have been able to wriggle through it. There’s no help here,Julian thought, looking back over his shoulder at the way he had come. He saw that the door through which he had entered was now impossibly small as well.

Panic electrified him. Trapped!

He turned his head toward where he remembered a large external window ought to be. It was boarded up, but the wood didn’t look very strong. Curling into a fetal position on the marble floor, Julian braced his back against a gallery wall and pushed his feet against the wood with all his strength. He heard the building itself groan, as though its ancient bricks and mortar were actively struggling against him.

The wooden barrier suddenly gave way in a shower of chips and flinders, and his own momentum launched him like a missile through the window frame—

–and into a large, white, brightly lit chamber. He looked up and saw three people, two human women and a dour-faced Vulcan male, sitting behind a long table, gazing at him in expectation. All of them wore blue Starfleet uniforms.

“Well, MisterBashir?” the Vulcan said. He sounded impatient, and not very much fun. “Which is it? A preganglionic fiber, or a postganglionic nerve?”

Starfleet Medical School,he thought, recalling a particular variety of panic he thought he’d locked safely away years ago. The oral exams.

“I…I’m afraid I don’t know…I can’t recall the answer to that, sir.”

One of the women, a brassy redhead with bright cherry-colored lipstick, glared at him as she pressed a large red button on the side of the table. “Another defective,” she said, her voice dripping with contempt. “He needs to be placed with the others.”

A pair of burly, white-clad hospital orderlies were suddenly flanking him, as though the woman had conjured them from thin air. They took his arms in a firm grasp, lifting him between them so that his feet couldn’t touch the ground. Before he could protest, they had whisked him out of the room and into a long, sterile-looking white corridor.

“This way, sir,” said the one on his right. Julian saw that the man’s collar bore stitching in the shape of three letters: DEE.

“We’ve got the perfect place for you,” said the other one. DUMwas stenciled onto his collar.

They came to a stop before a small, open room whose broad entryway crackled with the telltale blue glow of a security force field. Four people stood, sat, or reclined in the chamber. As the orderlies placed Bashir on his feet and set about lowering the force field, one of the figures in the cell, a black-clad, goateed young man, leaped up onto a table. Atop his head was a wide-brimmed top hat. Tucked into the hatband was a large card bearing the inscription IN THIS STYLE 10/6.He regarded Julian in nervous silence, his eyes brimming with suspicion, his body bowstring-taut.

Julian knew he’d seen the hat before, as well as the lettering on the orderlies’collars. He supposed he’d seen both images, and perhaps some of the other oddities he’d encountered here, in the illustrations from some beloved children’s book whose title he could no longer recall.

The man in the hat, however, he recognized immediately.

“So who’s the new plebe, hmmm?” said the goateed man, his words spilling out like rapid-fire projectiles. “This is a private club, hmmm? We’re not accepting pledges at the moment. Try us again in a few months, hmmm?”

“Take it easy, Jack,” said one of the orderlies, standing in the entryway, the force field now down. Turning to address the other three people in the room, he said, “I want you all to meet Jules. You and he will be seeing a lot of each other from now on.”

“I’m notJules,” Bashir said to the orderlies, who did not appear interested in responding. “My name is Julian.”

“Hi,” said a rotund, sixtyish male with a fringe of wild white hair who stood in the center of the room. He was smiling beatifically and holding a bottle whose neck bore a tag emblazoned with the words DRINK ME.

“I’m Patrick,” he said to Bashir. “Don’t mind Jack here. They say he’s antisocial.” Patrick punctuated the last word by turning the first two fingers of both hands into pantomime quotation marks. “But Jack’s not like me. Or Lauren.” He gestured toward a corner divan on which a young, dark-haired woman was sprawled in a languorous pose.

“Charmed,” said the woman, her body’s contours concealed very little by her tight-fitting scarlet jumpsuit. She smiled up at Julian with a predatory glint in her eyes that made Julian blanch. A silver tea service was arranged on a table beside the divan, and she sat up and began filling a quartet of delicate porcelain cups. “Welcome to our little tea party.”

“I don’t belong here,” Julian said to the orderly nearest him, stammering as he groped for the right words. “These people are having…unintended side effects. From…from their genetic, ah, resequencing.”

The orderly smiled condescendingly. “That’s right, Jules. Just as youare. Or have you already forgotten why you’ve come here?”

Then Julian noticed the silent, sandy-haired young woman who sat alone on a straight-backed chair in the opposite corner. Her eyes were vacant, set in a delicately structured face as pale as a classical marble statue. Sarina Douglas,Julian thought, recalling how someone who looked very much like him had once helped her regain the ability to speak and interact with the world. The romance that they had almost shared now seemed dreamlike, as though it were a memory that belonged to someone else.

Sarina abruptly lifted her eyes and looked around the cell. “I wasn’t asleep,” she said, smiling broadly though her voice was hoarse and weak. “I heard every word you fellows were saying.” Then she locked her gaze with Julian’s. “I’m so glad you’ve decided to join us, Jules.”

“Get in, Jules,” said the smiling orderly.

“Now,” said the other one, who was scowling dangerously.

“No,” Julian said. He took a step back.

“You’re one of usnow, Jules,” Lauren said. Jack and Patrick grinned.

“No!”Julian screamed, backing away from the open cell. The two orderlies approached him. Both were scowling now, their thick biceps rippling beneath their short sleeves. The larger and meaner of the two grabbed for him. Julian twisted to the side without thinking, allowing the big man to overbalance himself and plunge hard onto the tile floor.

Before Julian could move farther, the second orderly had clasped him from behind in a bear hug, holding him fast as the first man began to regain his feet. Julian struggled, but simply didn’t have enough power or leverage to break free.

Suddenly, the orderly’s weight shifted, and the big man sank to his knees, releasing his grip. Julian pushed himself free, fell to the floor, and rolled into a crouch.

Jack gave out a long, ululating war whoop, his arms and legs wrapped around the orderly’s back and shoulders. Though the big man struggled to dislodge his rider, the wiry patient held on with the tenacity of a Tiberian bat.

The force field is still down,Julian realized as he regained his feet. The lunatics are out of the asylum.

He pounded away down the corridor at a flat-out run, a tumult of voices falling away behind him, but there was no immediate pursuit. After several minutes of running, the corridor widened into another room. It was a comfortably appointed lounge, where a man and a woman sat side by side on a low sofa, each of them reading silently. And studiously ignoring one another.

They were much younger than the way he remembered them, so much so that he almost failed to recognize them as Richard and Amsha Bashir, his parents. So intent were they on their respective reading material—Father pored over what appeared to be a blueprint of some sort, while Mother studied an old-fashioned hard-cover thriller—that they both failed to notice his entrance. Not at all unusual, really.A bitter smile came to his lips. Some things never change.

“Hello, Mother,” Julian said. “Father.”

Father looked up from his blueprint and offered Julian an uneasy smile. “Ah, there you are, Jules.”

Mother matched Father’s wan smile. “We were beginning to think you were lost.”

Julian said nothing. Iam lost,he thought, until he began recognizing some of the details of the room’s appointments. The corner chair, upholstered in a scaly gray leather made from the hide of some genetically altered beast. A bas-relief on the wall depicting one of the local eight-legged riding animals. Those details had been among the earliest trophies he’d placed in the Hagia Sophia.

I’m in the waiting room. On Adigeon Prime.

“Why have you brought me here again?” Julian said, glaring at his father.

A scowl creased Father’s swarthy features. “Because it’s necessary, Jules.”

“Because I turned out so dumb, you mean.”

Mother adopted a sad, long-suffering expression. “Because we want you to have a chance to lead a happy, fulfilled life, Jules. And once the procedures are done, that’s exactly what you’ll have.”

Julian struggled against his growing confusion. “We already did this once, Father. When I was six.”

Father rose to his feet, his scowl deepening. “I’d never know it from looking at you now, Jules.”

“Stop calling me that,” Julian said, an arc of rage sparking across some gap in his soul. “I’m Juliannow. I’ve beenJulian ever since I came to understand what you’d done to me here.”

Mother rose and approached Julian, taking both of his hands, holding their palms upward. “Areyou?”

“Am I what?”

“Are you really the same Julian we brought home from Adigeon Prime?”

Julian looked down at his hands, encircled by hers, and studied them. They were the hands of a grown man, rather than those of a six-year-old child. In a rush, he realized that he could no longer remember having come to Adigeon Prime as a child.

Because he had never been here.

Because he had never undergone the “procedures.”

Because he was now the grown man who young, ungenengineered Jules Bashir would have become, had he been left alone, unaltered.

Father eyed the chronometer on his wrist with evident impatience. “Get ready, Jules. The doctors will be coming to examine you any minute now.”

Julian thought about that for a long, silent interval. Perhaps he was being offered a way to recover everything he had lost. Everything that the alien cathedral had taken from him. Or perhaps not.

Procedures. They think I’m nothing without their precious procedures. And maybe they’re right.

Mother held his hands more tightly. Julian saw great tears of disappointment pooling in her eyes. “We only want what’s best for you, Jules. We love you so much—”

He shook her hands away. “You obviously don’t love me the way I am now,”he said, taking a backward step and nearly tripping over his own feet in the process. He felt slow and awkward as well as stupid.

A door across the room opened, and Richard Bashir turned toward the sound, blocking Julian’s view momentarily. Then he turned back, smiling. “The doctors are ready to see you now, Jules.”

Julian’s breath caught in his throat when he saw that the two burly orderlies he had just eluded were standing in the open doorway, menacing glares fixed on their faces, fists as big as cured hams planted on their hips.

Limbs flailing, Julian ran from the room the same way he’d entered.

The air shaft was cold and filthy, but at least he was out of sight. Safe, if only for the moment. His hands shaking, Julian peered through the ventilation grill at the white corridor several meters below. Nobody seemed to be searching for him. He had no idea how long he’d lain in the cramped conduit, and wondered how much longer he could continue to hide. Or if he even should.

Maybe those men only wanted to make me smart, the way Mother and Father said.He wondered how he could ever hope to recover what he’d lost if he remained too frightened to take a chance and let them try.

He recalled how doctors had always frightened him during his childhood, until he’d understood that they were only trying to help him. The death of that poor little girl back on Invernia II, which he had witnessed at the tender age of ten, had occurred because an ion storm had prevented anybody from reaching a doctor in time—and because nobody had known that a local herb could have saved her from the fever that took her life. That sad incident had made him want to become a doctor, a notion that had already been in the back of his mind ever since five-year-old Jules had begun stitching up Kukalaka’s wounds.

Thatmemory hadn’t been taken from him, he realized. He tried to recall exactly what it was that had been hunting down and killing his memories, but couldn’t. All he could come up with was the vague impression that his memories had been somehow related to a church of some sort.

Footfalls echoed loudly in the corridor below, startling Julian into clunking his head into the side of the air shaft. Ignoring the sharp pain, he looked through the grillwork again to see who was coming. The footfalls crescendoed, and a moment later the two large orderlies walked by directly beneath Julian’s vantage point. They were escorting a small figure who appeared to be a patient. He was a frail boy who couldn’t have been older than six. Julian could hear him crying; one of the orderlies appeared to be muttering bland reassurances to the child.

Julian’s heart leaped into his throat when the boy looked up at one of the men, turning his tear-streaked face ceilingward, his eyes bright and alert. The child bore little resemblance to the dull, vacant creature Julian had expected to see. But there was no mistaking his identity.

The weeping, terrified patient was young Jules Bashir. And he was about to undergo, Julian was certain, the “procedures” his parents had arranged.

A short while later, Julian clambered down from the stifling air duct into another corridor, which turned out, thankfully, to be empty. Hearing approaching footfalls, he flattened himself against the wall. Julian knew he had an important task to perform here, but couldn’t quite recall what it was. Trying to think in terms of plans and objectives was proving utterly frustrating.

But there wasn’t time to think as the footfalls grew near. The orderlies, their young charge between them, passed Julian along a perpendicular corridor. He heaved a sigh of relief as they went by without noticing him, then quietly shadowed them through several turns. Luckily, they never turned to look behind them, and the sounds of their passage covered whatever noise Julian’s pursuit was making.

Peering from around a corner, Julian watched as the two large men shepherded young Jules through a door to what appeared to be some sort of lab or infirmary. Moments later, the two men emerged again into the corridor—this time without the child—and walked away, taking no notice of Julian as they disappeared around another bend in the hallway.

Responding intuitively to some vague ghost of a memory, Julian saw that this had to be the place. The place where the doctors changed me.

He moved quietly to the unlocked door, pushed it open, and stepped into the room.

The boy sat in a too-large, swept-back chair. His slight body all but lost in his bulky hospital gown, the child’s slippered feet dangled several centimeters off the sterile floor. His small hands were in his lap, clutching at one another as though each were competing for the protection of the other. Little Jules was facing in Julian’s direction, while a trio of graceful, birdlike Adigeons—evidently doctors or surgeons—handled hypos and tricorders, their white-smocked backs to the door, apparently oblivious to Julian’s presence. The boy, though he clearly had noticed Julian’s entrance immediately, said nothing. He made no sign that might serve to alert the Adigeons.

Clever child.

Julian stood in silence, studying the boy’s dusky eyes—the same eyes that once studied him from the other side of his father’s old-fashioned looking glass—for what seemed like minutes, seeking some justification there for his parents’ fervid desire to remold and remake him. The child’s eyes, though betraying a hard edge of fear, nevertheless smoldered with something irrepressible. This boy seemed to be anything but the afflicted alter ego his parents had assured him that he was so much better off without. Young Jules bore scant resemblance to the cautionary specter that had followed him ever since the day when fifteen-year-old Julian Subatoi Bashir had learned the far-reaching extent of the genetic enhancements his parents had secured for him on Adigeon Prime. The child looked more like the bright if slightly learning-disabled doppelganger who sometimes stalked Julian’s dreams like the ghost of a murdered twin.

Despite the accelerating deterioration of his own intellect and perceptions, Julian knew that he could believe in one simple, objective truth about young Jules simply by meeting his gaze—somebody was in there, a tenacious soul stoking an inner fire.

A pointed question suddenly jolted him: Would his parents’ well-intentioned interference douse those fires?

Julian fell out of his reverie when he noticed that one of the three Adigeons had turned to him. The creature glared at him, its feathery neck ruff rising in agitation. “How did you get in here?”

The other two Adigeons turned to him as well. “Don’t worry, Doctor,” said a second one. “Don’t you recognize him? He’s the mature version of the youngling we’re treating.”

“I see,” said the first Adigeon, scouring Julian from top to bottom with one of its side-mounted, lidless eyes. “Well, we certainly do seem to have made a botch of things, haven’t we?”

“I’ll call the large humans back in to remove him,” said the third physician. “If he interferes with these procedures, even accidentally, who knows what will happen to this child as it matures?”

Who knows?Julian thought, wondering whether he would have fallen so far had he never been forced to climb so high in the first place. Still, what these doctors wanted sounded like what he should want as well. As though it were the whole point of his having come to this place. He wished he could remember more than that.

And that the boy’s pleading eyes didn’t make the whole endeavor feel so completely wrong.

Young Jules sat, watching in silence. But Julian sensed that the boy wasn’t simply staring vacantly. He seemed to be paying very close attention to the tableau before him. Discordant music played quietly in the background, echoing down some distant corridor.

The first Adigeon approached Julian until he could smell the creature’s cool breath. Its aroma was an incongruous mixture of buttered popcorn, peppermint, and Tarkalean tea. “You’re not supposed to be here,” it said.

His arm suddenly tremulous, Julian pointed to the boy—the person he had once been, so long ago. And without being certain why, he came to an utterly visceral decision.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” the Adigeon repeated, raising one of its taloned hands threateningly.

“Neither is he,” Julian said, and then rushed the delicate alien, bowling him over into the other two Adigeons. Surprised, they collapsed in a heap of flapping limbs. Julian knew they wouldn’t stay down long. He only had seconds.

He moved quickly to young Jules, whose eyes had widened in either fright or awe, or perhaps both. The child offered no resistance when Julian took his hand, pulled him to his feet, and marched him through the laboratory door.

They stopped for a moment in the corridor, regarding one another appraisingly. “Thank you,” Jules said. Julian grinned down at the boy. Thankme, he thought. And then they ran together down the corridor.

Past the orderlies, who gave chase but swiftly fell behind, waving lollipops in the air in their impotent rage.

Past a very surprised Richard and Amsha Bashir, whose confused, angry shouts died away as they sprinted across the waiting room, knocking over a potted plant from which sprays of royal red, heart-shaped flowers spilled.

Past the astonished-looking members of the Starfleet Medical oral examination jury. The Vulcan’s mouth made an O of surprise as Jack’s top hat fell from his head.

Julian felt a stitch in his side and stopped to catch his breath. Jules came to a halt beside him, standing in companionable silence. Julian looked up. The Adigeon Prime hospital was gone. Seemingly kilometers above their heads, the wildly intersecting interdimensional geometries of the alien artifact soared, appearing somehow inside out.