Apparitions

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Removing her zero-g combat suit, Kado Betandi had never felt more in need of a hit and she knew it. A little mist, a little simming...maybe then I'll be able to deal with it. She tried not to dwell upon the Killers' last mission. Mistrider Battalion had taken heavy enough casualties but was lucky to be so close to intact. On top of the deaths, she dreaded the upcoming recruitment drive with Major Christopher. Christopher was all right, for a human...but...

The sting of the hypodermic needle took that thought away. Administering mist through a hypospray was tricky at best, and Shanin had always warned her that it took the sense of here-and-now out of the experience as well. Her mother would not be thrilled to discover that she'd graduated to the intravenous vector so quickly. Better not to say anything, even though it meant she still had to wonder whether the rest of the family hallucinated about being their ancestors, too.

Well, it didn't matter. Hypocritical as it was, she didn't feel anything when "her" troops died in a battle that occurred centuries ago. And maybe one day she'd be numb enough not to worry when it happened here-and-now.

Oh, this was one of the really old ones. She shivered. Captain, I'm reading a desert world ahead, readings consistent with Sifenna circa 5000 Pre-Empire...On screen...By Ilhandra, it is...

She fought to come back to herself. This isn't the way it's supposed to be! Shaking off the effects of the drug, she stormed toward the locked safe on the opposite side of her quarters. It took a palm print, retinal scan, and DNA scan as well as a very difficult-to-pronounce password before the door popped open.

Nulls hadn't always been used for simming. Before they became so miserly with energy as to make holodecks illegal, the Athmari had relied on nulls as a means of rendering difficult cases more tractable. Enemies, political dissidents, the violently insane...put nulls on their necks and they became smiling, passive idiots. Then the Mindless Ones came, sweeping everything away. Their homeworlds destroyed, the Athmari had to rely on more economical means of entertainment. Thus, the use of simnulls to induce carefully scripted hallucinations.

Kado lay down on the bed and concentrated on a more pleasant hallucination. Twelve hours later - half an hour after her watch began - Major Christopher pried the door open to find her still lying there, eyes closed and smiling like an idiot.

"Eighty-three. Most of them are with Kado, so it should be easy to settle that. She's been known to be reasonable." Jareth picked up his pace again.

Katya struggled to keep up. "That's if she wakes up. You don't know anything about this Major Christopher, do you." It was a statement, not a question.

"What do you have to say for yourself, Jareth?" It was Sheyrn Pellor. Damn. Jason and Major Christopher were right behind him. "A hundred and six people comatose, and you just stand there? From what I heard, they had to pry you away from the bar."

"Of course your informants are passing around underinflated numbers," Sheyrn sneered. It made his nose ridges bunch up like an accordion. Katya would have laughed at the sight if the Bajoran weren't on such a hair trigger.

"There have been eighty-seven cases reported. We don't know how many more might be trying to tough it out on their own." Christopher said. Kado's muscular second-in-command looked weary but calm.

There was a long pause. Finally, Jason said, "Jareth, Major Christopher and I need to talk to you. Alone."

Sheyrn looked ready to protest. "Pellor, stay out of this. It's none of your business."

Katya took a step toward him. "None of you slavers have been affected by this. It's my colleagues and the mercenary companies that have to deal with this."

"I don't let any of my girls - or boys - use any new drugs until they've been proven safe. No matter where they come from." Katya retorted.

"Please," Jason interjected, "This is getting us nowhere. Let me take care of it."

"Thank you," Katya said. She walked away, with Sheyrn following reluctantly. Jareth and Christopher followed Jason to his office.

"This seems to only be hitting simnull users who also use mist derivatives in high quantity," Christopher explained. "Is there anything unusual about that family of drugs that the null might be reacting to?"

Jareth nodded. "Mist is composed of two chemical groups. One is poisonous to all but, apparently, members of the House of S'aryn. No one knows why the immunity is there, but it seems to be helping Kado. She's still stable?"

"And the rest are dying slowly." Jareth frowned. "The second group is what achieves the hallucinatory effect. By removing the first chemical group and replacing it with something benign, the poison is rendered harmless. Usually, the replacement group is designed so that a watermark can be attached to it, identifying the maker. If this is the work of an Athmari agency, it may be possible to trace an altered drug back to the maker that way. I'd ask Seung Omi; I've never worked with her before but Sheyrn thinks highly of her. He won't question her results."

"But he could question the person who put the watermark there, if there is one," Christopher countered.

"Sheyrn will blame me no matter what. The important thing is convincing everyone else - otherwise, we have to track the designers down alone."

"You're right," Omi said. "There's definitely something odd about this grouping here."

Jareth and Christopher looked at each other. "I believe you, sir." Christopher said.

Christopher, who had recently been appraised of Jareth's true identity, simply nodded. He suddenly found a lump in his throat.

Omi studied the molecular model on the computer screen. "This looks like it bonds with some of the neuroreceptors used by the simnulls. I can't say right now precisely what effect that would have, but it definitely explains why Kado Betandi isn't reacting in the same way."

"Different biochemistry. She was in here several months ago asking about it. Apparently she has some sort of mutation - the neuroreceptors are...different. Gomen, I don't know how to explain quickly." Omi began rotating the image. "Wait a minute. There's something odd bonded to the altered grouping..."

"Nani kore? This is completely non-functional. It looks like...hm. I'm not quite sure what that is supposed to be."

"I know," Jareth growled. Deep cover or not, pretending to be human or not, he was not going to remain silent.

Kado was inside the ancient dream again. She was a man, but she could barely tell it from the body. Tall, thin, with delicate hands and long hair, she could easily believe that her true self was descended from this man.

Some of the other names she remembered from her mother's tales: Callysta, Cullyn, Bianca... And there was another man, whose name she could not remember. Yet. It would take longer to remember it all, and the emotions of all of the dead explorers were clouding her perceptions. This unpopulated expanse of fertile worlds...it was the Core Worlds, back home. This had to be millennia ago. Yet the explorers looked at these worlds and saw them populated already, at a density never matched by her other ancestral hallucinations, even at the Empire's peak.

"Rachael would have liked this," Callysta whispered. Kado was fighting back tears. Why? The false memories of this life were so much more emotionally intense than all the others. She hated this life.

She and the others decided to get some sleep, then examine the planets further. Weary and wanting only to be taken away from that reality, Caden/Kado sank down on his/her bed.

As soon as Kado closed her eyes, Bianca was there. Binkie, the abominable pain who was barely out of her teens but already had the burden of centuries of life. Every time Binkie touched Kado - as she was doing at that moment - the weary currents of her acquired memories hit the older woman like a bag of khada grain.