Traders Wild - Chapter 4
On the ride back, I tried my best to calm my thoughts and organize my mind, because I could tell that being privy to all my incoherent, tangled thoughts was wearing on Sam. Every time I started to mentally flip out, his hand would reach up to rub at his temples, and I could almost physically feel his pain at the barrage of emotions and thoughts that he’d previously been able to block out.
By the time we got back to the motel, we were both worn out, but this conversation needed to happen anyway.
I collapsed onto the bed as soon as the room door swung shut behind us, absently rubbing at my knee - there was a nice bruise forming there from slamming it into the pavement earlier. Sam paused to shove the security bolt on the door into its slot, then sank slowly down into the shabby chair across from me.
Both of us stared at our hands for a little while, and eventually, I summoned up the nerve to say something.
“Do you think this is real, what we’re remembering?”
He nodded, and although he didn’t look up, his voice was steady as he responded.
“It’s real. I just can’t believe it took me this long to figure it out.”
Okay, what the hell did he mean by that? My look of consternation must have shown on my face… Oh. Wait. He could read my mind… Anyway, he went on to answer my unasked question without any hesitation.
“They wiped our memories, Dean. Or, more properly, they altered them. That’s one of the Coalition’s most closely guarded secrets, even among agents - that a telepath can do more than just read minds. They would have needed a strong telepath to make it work though, someone with much more training than I’ve ever received.”
I started to interrupt him, because even though I believed what he was saying, there was still no way to prove that it had happened to us…
“That’s a great theory, but…”
“It leaves marks, Dean, if you know what to look for. They’re hard to see, which is why I missed them when I first read you, and then you asked me to stay out, so I wasn’t looking anymore. But now… they’re there - faint traces of where someone altered your childhood memories.”
He had finally brought his gaze up to meet mine, and I could feel how badly he wanted me to believe him.
“Okay. But what about you? If you’re my brother, you’re a Trader, and that means you don’t age like humans do. Even if they did wipe your memories of being a kid, don’t you think you would have noticed when everyone else got old and you didn’t?”
His gaze darkened at that, but I knew he wasn’t angry at me, but with the people who’d played around in our minds.
“You know how I said your mind has faint traces of tampering? That’s not true of mine. They train us never to look inside our own minds, tell us we could go insane if we do; now I know why. It’s a mess up there - alteration after alteration, like giant scars in my memory, not just of my childhood, but everywhere.”
I could see how hurt he was by what the people he’d trusted had done to him, by the realization that he had been lied to and manipulated all these years. And, call it brotherly instincts, I guess, I wanted nothing more than to trap those agents in a room and beat the shit out of them for what they’d done.
He shook his head slightly at that, and I remembered too late that my head wasn’t my own anymore. This time, though, I was okay with that - knowing he was my brother, knowing how he’d been duped and used, that changed everything.
There was a long silence then, because what do you say to your long-lost brother? Sorry you had your memories wiped, want to play some vid-games?
The uneasy quiet was broken by the loud chirp of his comm, and we both jumped slightly at the sudden noise. He quickly shifted to grab the comm and check the incoming message. I knew it was trouble before he said anything, could sense the sudden increase in tension in the room as he scanned the text rolling across the screen, so I was half expecting the news he delivered.
“There’s been another murder. Or at least another death, this one at Gordon Trade, so it’s almost certain to be a retaliation by the ISC.”
“Well, we knew it was coming…”
“Dean, they’re sending in more agents to stop this before it becomes an all-out war. And one of them is the telepath who trained me.”
Okay, that was a problem. Somehow, I didn’t think the Coalition would take kindly to the fact that we’d figured out what they’d been doing to our memories. And with another telepath on the way, one who’d probably been so steeped in Coalition rhetoric that there’d be no chance of swaying him to our side, there was no chance of hiding what we knew. There was only one answer…
“We need to get out of here.”
“You need to run.”
We spoke on top of each other, and as what he’d said sank in, I was having none of it.
“I’m not leaving without you, Sam.”
He shook his head vehemently in response.
“You have to. There’s a chance that I can block out your part in this, that I can keep them from seeing that you remembered too. They’ll just assume you ran after I went off mission, and they won’t try too hard to catch you. Either way, you’ll be far from here before they start looking for you.”
“Not happening, Sam. Whatever happens, I’m not losing you again.”
After a hundred years alone, there was no way I was ever going to let my brother go. I’d never really had family that I could remember, and finding out I had a brother, seeing even snatches of the memories we’d shared… Trust me, there was not a chance in hell that he could talk me into leaving him behind.
Apparently he could sense how strong my resolve was, since the determined look faded from his face, and he heaved a resigned sigh. Maybe this whole mind-reading thing could be good for something…
“Now that’s settled, how much time do we have to disappear?”
He shrugged slightly.
“I’m not sure - it depends on where they’re coming from. But no more than twenty-four hours, that’s for certain, and probably closer to eight or ten.”
I could tell he still wanted to convince me to run alone, that I could move faster that way, but he pursed his lips and kept whatever arguments he’d thought of to himself.
“We’ve got time then. Let’s see… we’ll need supplies, new ident-cards, some sort of falsified flight plan and shipping manifest to throw off anyone who tries to follow us…”
***************
Thanks to my network of less-than-exemplary citizens, it took us less than six hours to pull together all the necessities for disappearing. Our new ident-cards and ship’s papers passed their first test with flying colors, and we shoved off from the Garrula spaceport without any trouble. According to the flight plan we’d filed, we were on the Eagle’s Flight, heading toward the center of the galaxy to deliver a cargo of hand-crafted pottery to Empora.
In reality, my ship was now running under the name Lucky Star, and our real destination was Arcton, a moderately populated planet right on the edge of the Coalition’s territory. I had old friends there, and if we were lucky, we could find a place to hole up for a while.
Unfortunately, whatever luck I’d had seemed to have run out right about the time I landed on Garrula.
We’d barely been on Arcton for three days when I woke up to see my face gracing the morning news broadcast, right alongside Sam’s. Apparently we were now wanted men, with a bounty of two hundred million creds on our heads.
I started to make a wisecrack about being worth more than that, but Sam stopped me.
“It’s not funny, Dean. We’re not safe here. And you can bet your life that the Coalition has telepaths scouring Garrula right now, looking for anyone who might have given us help. Even if no one here calls in to claim the bounty, they’ll still be coming for us. It’s just a matter of time.”
My brother, ever the optimist… But I couldn’t deny that he was right. We had a few days, maybe a week at best, before there’d be Coalition agents hot on our trail again. And even if we ran again, there was no where to run to that wasn’t just as dangerous. Unless…
“Sam - how sure are you that the stuff we’re remembering is real? Because I think I know where we go next.”
Over the last week, both of our memories had started slowly filling in the gaps, and the other night I’d been hit with a particularly long (and painful) set of flashes. But if they were really true, those bits of a past life might just save us now.
“Oh, it’s real. I’m certain of that. But memories distort over time, Dean, so we can’t be sure of anything…”
I nodded impatiently - he’d repeated that phrase a lot these last few days, and I understood, I really did, but when you have no other options, sometimes you reach for whatever you can find.
“Okay, but… think about what I saw a couple nights ago about the rebellion?”
“You said you remembered overhearing some adults talking about a brief uprising of Traders that was crushed by Coalition forces... But Dean, you were just a kid, and for all you know you heard wrong…”
I leaned forward, willing him to listen.
“But what if I didn’t? What if there really was a rebellion, and the survivors really did strike out for some distant world beyond the reach of the Coalition?”
He just shook his head, still doubting, and I knew it would take more than just a vaguely recalled childhood memory to convince him.
“What if I can find someone else to corroborate the story?”
“What, you, the wanted fugitive, asking around to see if anyone’s heard of a Trader uprising? Okay, fine - you get someone to corroborate, and I might believe it.”
A grin spread across my face, because I had him now. That particular memory had been very vivid, and I’d called up Cas (without letting him know where I was) to ask about it.
“My Overseer told me the rebellion was real enough. And then he went through the records in the Traders’ library, and found stories of a world colonized by Traders - no facts, just rumors, but do we have a better plan, Sam? ‘Cause I feel like this is the best plan we’ve got.”
And I could tell from the look on his face that he didn’t have another answer, didn’t have a better plan, because every other plan involved us running from planet to planet until the Coalition finally caught up to us and had us executed for knowing too much. I wasn’t thrilled about striking out into the unknown following some unsubstantiated rumors, but it was better than dying at the hands of an agent.
Sure, if the rumors weren’t true, we’d die eventually anyway, when we ran out of supplies, but even that would be better than being tortured and executed by the Coalition. And I was choosing to hold onto hope that my luck would change again soon, for the better.
After several moments of silence, during which I was sure he weighed all the possible options, Sam finally gave in.
And so, after three frantic days of trying to accumulate supplies and garner scraps of information about the possible location of this rumored Trader colony, we were finally on board the re-renamed Traders Wild. It seemed like a fitting name, given our circumstances, and Sam had even smiled slightly when he saw it.
As we left Arcton behind and headed toward the vastness of uncharted space, I felt a twinge of regret at the life I was leaving behind, but then again, it had always been a lonely life anyway. Now I knew why I’d never found my soulmate for all those years, because he’d been taken from me. But now, even on the run, I’d never be alone again. My brother - my One - was sitting in the copilot’s chair that had been empty for so long, and even though I wasn't one for sappy statements, I had to admit - having him there felt right.
***************
It was the edge of the known universe, and we soared past it in a millisecond, headed for planets unknown, for civilizations that were only rumors. If we’d been in an old pirate story, the map would have said, “Here There Be Monsters” or some other friendly phrase.
But that was okay with me, because nothing scared me anymore, nothing except losing the man next to me.
And I was never going to let that happen again.
Sure, I didn’t know what would come our way next, but whatever it would be, we’d face it together, and come out on top. And as the stars streaked past in streams of light, as I glanced over at Sam - at my brother - I knew there was nowhere else in the whole universe that I would rather be.
We would make our own memories, together, for a thousand years to come.