Arrows of Time - Kim Falconer [40]
He pressed his temples. He could imagine her awake, the few moments of consciousness he’d observed extrapolating into vivid scenes in his mind. He could hear her talking in that strange accent, angry as she pushed her long red hair back, flashing those hazel-green eyes, gesticulating, fervent, exciting, erotic. She looked to him like a dancer or an artist, a siren out of myth with her slender body and graceful fingers, the nails painted the colour of blood. But she carried the scars and images of another culture—perhaps an ancient tribe not unaccustomed to the hunt, battle, or ritual journeys. What are you thinking? There are no such things any more.
He’d studied it, though, knew they had existed once. He’d found texts and sacred documents that suggested a people long ago who might have looked like her, been like her. Images of those tattoos were found on cave walls and stone slabs thousands of years old. Could she have been kept in cryo? Perhaps discovered in some frozen archaeological site and reanimated? That might explain the peculiar physiological response—or lack of response—to his treatments. It would explain a lot of things. But if someone had found her, it posed a more difficult question. It would mean there were scientists either outside of ASSIST’s auspices, acting on their own, which was dangerous enough, or they were ASSIST-sanctioned and he didn’t know about it—worse still. What secrets are they keeping?
He sensed in his Jane Doe something familiar, something compelling. He had to investigate. He had to find out. Could she have been born outside the State? When? How had she survived? Where was her family? If she doesn’t recover, we’ll never know.
He sighed. Maybe he was wrong about her. Maybe she was a rebel who had spent time in the underground. He shook his head. The fleeting glimpse of her when she awoke carried a sense of power. It reached up towards him, without words. It grabbed him, throttled him. Just like before…It was so much like before, it was uncanny, though that was many years ago. Wasn’t it? His memory could play tricks at this age. He rubbed his brow, the old ache returning.
There had been a case like this some time ago, but the strange thing was, when he went to look up her records, they were gone. He couldn’t cross-reference, and he couldn’t be sure of his recollection. Was it accurate? He knew how selective ‘memory’ could be. Besides, you could buy a memory these days for less than a week’s wage. Could he have been tampered with? Was that other woman, that other case, real at all? He could recall only fragments.
Before he’d become head of his department, when he was a young intern, the medtechs had brought her in. At least, that was how he saw it in his mind. The similarities were so striking he’d have thought them almost the same person if it hadn’t been so many years earlier. Both women were unconscious. Both had very long hair, wide-set eyes, unusual costumes, and skin tattooed with strange, compelling images. Though the artwork was different, they looked to have been done by the same artist, or the same type of artist.
The first Jane Doe had a profoundly beautiful image of an extinct species on her upper arm, a large feline with tall ears and glinting eyes. Its tail wrapped around her bicep, an embrace. The current Jane Doe had different body art. Her images looked more mythical than real, but both of these women had heart conditions that did not respond to treatment. The first woman had died almost immediately, leaving him no wiser as to her origin. Everett scratched his head, a flash of memory returning.
He’d put her