Radical Pair
short story prequel to Coreward Impulses
TRIGGER WARNING: HEAVY VIOLENCE
Radical Pair
by Daphne Garrido
They were just so fucking cool.
Paescha couldn’t take it.
Untouchable this one, in her heart.
Those were the thoughts consuming her, as she watched Corrigan trying to wash the blood from their hands.
It had only just happened. Yet, somehow, the blood was already dry and stubborn. She watched them scrubbing.
The focus. The intensity. It took her right back.
Moments ago, a length of time that somehow felt both perpetual and infinitesimal. When she watched them crush that man’s skull on the wall.
That had really just happened. She couldn’t believe it.
The way they’d moved. Without hesitation. Fierce and efficient and brutal. For her.
It took her breath.
They had known this could go bad. They’d game-planned for it extensively.
Still, in her moment she’d frozen. In their moment they’d become everything, all at once. A god, a monster, a savior, a sinner. It was lifechanging to witness. To see it done so ruthlessly. The force. The grace. It was all too much to take at once. So, she was taking it in waves as time rolled on.
They were a fucking god to her heart. Now and forever.
If they made it out of this, she was going to jump them the first fucking chance she got.
Okay, now. Focus.
She had to get her mind together. This was already an improvisation of their plan. Things could go very badly.
“You need to hurry up,” Paescha barked, shock wearing off enough for anxiety to flood in.
Corrigan muttered something under their breath before calling back, “I need you to be cool with me right now.”
She noticed a shake in their hands, in their shoulders, and walked over — not having realized in all her heat — they were coming out of shock themself.
Paescha slid her hands down their arms as she wrapped them in from behind.
Her chest onto their back, she landed her head onto their shoulder.
Tough one, this fella. Brave, strong—biggest feelings inside.
“I’m never going to forget you protecting me like that,” she said matter of factly.
Corrigan paused; a breath, then kept scrubbing.
“Thank you, Cor,” she whispered, “If you weren’t here, I don’t even want to think.”
She turned up and kissed their cheek.
“My brave boy.”
Corrigan was andro in truth, but Paescha often had fun with her words. And they liked it more than they let on.
A wave came in, sweeping through Paescha.
‘They’re coming.” The words flowed directly from the waves, bypassing her conscious mind.
‘Fuck,” Corrigan pushed her arms off them.
They smashed the mirror before them, lodging a dent the size of their fist.
The two of them had military-grade polycarbonite skinsuits which protected from pierces and punctures — bullets and blades — yet left them exposed to blunt traumas and broken bones.
Corrigan’s teeth clinched as they spun past Paescha, pushing their way out of the kitchenette towards the warehouse proper, reaching to their waist and unholstering their hand-cannon.
They stopped at the door. “Where are they coming from. How long?”
Paescha closed her eyes.
It took a moment to open her awareness and center in on the deployment of security officers queued nearby.
“They’re not moving. Holding back.” She tried to judge the distance as best she could from her memory of the facilities.
“They’ll be here in five minutes—when they come.”
“We’re moving,” Corrigan commanded, all business, looking from the doorway to make sure Paescha was ready.
She was.
The two of them sprinted past the corpse Corrigan made earlier, tactical helmet crushed sickeningly inward, dried blood encrusting the edging near the skull.
It wasn’t meant to be like that. He wasn’t supposed to be here. Something somewhere, or someone, had gone sideways.
The two of them were hauling, cutting across the warehouse floor.
They split in opposite directions, circumnavigating the cargo containers blocking their way at full speed.
Flowing back together near the corner offices, Corrigan ran point.
Furiously — moment of trauma well behind them — they put their shoulder through the outer office door.
“Down the hall, to the left, up the stairs,” Paescha shouted out as she caught up.
Corrigan looked back from the doorway, breathing heavily, eyes all fire now.
A little smirk sent shockwaves through Paescha’s heart.
This one was trouble.
They’d only known each other a quarter cycle now. This was the fourth job they’d pulled her in on, third of which had gone bad, second where someone had been killed, but the first where they’d done the killing.
Paescha was proving her merit as a criminal by their side. Having proudly sported the identity of rebel in defiance of the Union’s over-reaching powers of oppression, she had still never crossed lines so clearly. Theft had been her specialty.
On this scale, with these stakes. It was different.
She fucking loved it.
Down the hall, in tight formation with each other, they took the stairs.
No one would be here, as long as that was still true.
Two shots.
Echoing from the end of the hallway at the top of the staircase, the pang of air buzzed her ear, a near miss — seeing at the same time — a prone figure in the shadows down the hall.
“Down!” Corrigan screamed as they dropped to the floor.
Paescha fell just behind them on the top steps.
“These fucks,” Corrigan grumbled ahead of her, aiming their canon.
She closed her eyes. Paescha could feel the shooter. Just one.
They’d known they’d be coming.
“There’s only one of them,” Paescha shouted forward as Corrigan started firing.
Another blast from down the hall.
Too fast to think. Corrigan was rocked back into her and they both crashed down the flight of stairs.
They were a mess of limbs on the staircase landing, atop each other in a heap.
Paescha’s heart shook. “Cor! Oh fuck.”
They moved off her, freeing her from beneath them.
Corrigan screamed.
They reached up and grabbed their shoulder, wrenching it back into the socket with a pop.
They screamed again and slammed their back onto the wall of the stairwell.
No blood. None on the outside.
Paescha could sense the damage inside. That was not going to be a functional arm, but they couldn’t turn back now.
They’d placed all of their chips on this one bet. Their entire livelihood and bankroll as a burgeoning criminal organization, on this one job.
If they didn’t get this done the underground would eat them alive, and they relied on it for everything. It was the lifeblood of any organization here on station. Still, any criminal would rather die at the hands of their competitors, or in combat with Union forces, than to be captured and brainwashed
A far worse fate in Paescha’s summation; to be a puppet of the evil empire. It was the very thing she’d witness happen to those she’d loved, which had brought her to this place — this reckless rebellion, this ruthless criminality. The life of the running dead. Forever hunted. Fate inevitable. The Union always winning eventually.
But not this time.
If it was on her to finish this. She’d do it her way.
Finally, her chance to use it.
A part of her rejoiced as she reached into the nearly hidden zipper pocket above the hip of her skinsuit.
A crystal. Jagged. Glowing bright blue. Cool to the touch. Her cut-fingered gloves and off-white painted nails brightly lit, energies connecting deeply with those of the crystal.
Attuning herself to it, it’s aura grew in brightness.
Her eye’s glazed over, a hazy white.
The crystal shimmered an opalescent sky blue. There it was, a conductor.
It extended out through her hand and far beyond to form a kind of energetic dagger.
Her whole team was scared of this. They thought she’d kill them all.
We’ll see—she thought.
Holding the crystal tight, its extended energy field jutting out of her closed fist— knelt on the bottom step of the flight of stairs beside Corrigan, who was wheezing and coughing—she opened a pocket on her other hip and removed two little shards; clear crystals.
She brought them in her open palm towards the conductor.
Another booming shot echoed down the hallway. Exploding a chunk of micro-plaster into a shower of debris over their heads.
Paescha didn’t flinch. Staring towards Corrigan with glazed eyes.
“Just for show,” she said with a coy smile.
The clear crystal shards in her palm glowed blue, rising from her hand.
Corrigan watched with bated breath, leaning back on the wall, knowing it was Paescha’s turn now.
She closed her eyes.
A soft groan escaped her lips as the feeling of flow stole her breath.
She could see it all.
The crystals shot off faster than Corrigan’s eyes could follow.
Screams. Terrible screams.
Paescha’s jaw hung open—feeling it very differently that the person down the hall.
That was it. She’d killed someone now.
And she’d enjoyed it.
Calling the shards back slowly, she had them rest at the top of the stairs.
The conductor’s aura dimmed. Her eyes unglazed.
She turned to Corrigan. “Just us now.”
Corrigan looked at her with new eyes. Saw her for the first time as she was.
It was her turn to melt their heart with a devilish smirk, biting her lip when she knew it landed, tucking the crystal away.
They were still coming.
She heaved Corrigan from under the shoulder that wasn’t jelly, and the two of them ascended the staircase together.
One arm slung over Paescha, in the most severe pain of their life, Corrigan stared at the mess of blood and guts and bones that laid before them in the corridor.
Paescha didn’t look as they walked through it all, staring straight past. Corrigan turned to see her anew, all over again.
The Vault. That’s what they called it here. The Union’s prison for minds extracted from people whose bodies had been rid of. Space a most valuable commodity—when prison wouldn’t do, when someone wanted to travel light years away, when there were just too many bodies on a station and tough calls had to be made—’exterminating tube-rats,’ she’d once heard it called—the Union made those decisions. Who made the calls? Who knows. Blind bureaucracy. Brutal systems of oppression. Autocracy. Hell in space.
Corrigan raised the key-chip Atom had prepared to a security stripe beside the hearty double doors. They slid open with a hiss.
Here and now, they would offer their dear passed colleague a grace. Yari Yamata; fallen comrade.
Their charge today, a contract from the highest powers of the underground. For the honor they all held in communion with each other, no person would be left for their mind to rot in a Union purgatory.
Beyond claiming this contract’s so highly valued Union credits, Corrigan and Paescha had devised a personal objective; to rid the vault of its Union officers, agents, and soldiers. A little whoopsie to settle the score.
Too many goons held in limbo. Ready to be suited into available bodies, or even drones. Too much wrong being done. Not enough justice. Time for some vengeance. Time for some of them to die. God would sort them. They’d all lost too many friends fighting this fight. While the union sat here on a supply of soldiers that never ran out.
That ended today.
“Atom?” Paescha called, after pressing the com button on her wrist shield.
Static buzzed over the line until a voice emerged, “—coming through.”
“Atom, we’re in.” Paescha said as they took in the vault’s main lab—elegant marble islands with built-in workstations. Rows and rows of servers in the back, and a corner office.
“Sorry… not… try…’ came through the earpiece.
Another piece of the puzzle going wrong. If Atom couldn’t get through, they’d be fucked.
"I knew we should have brought him,” Corrigan said, holding close by the entrance.
“Paescha?” Atom’s voice cut through the fuzz.
“Atom, we’re in,” she said, sense of relief palpable.
“There should be an office in the vault. The central control terminal will be there.”
Corrigan led the way across the space of polished marble tabletops, cannon still unholstered, despite the busted shoulder of their firing arm.
During business hours there would be a half dozen people in here, and a host of security throughout the complex. In preparation for this job they had turned both an employee working here in the vault—who’d gotten them access codes—and a Gen Sec associate who’d created a coverage blackout for security. Or at least, it was supposed to have been that way.
Somewhere, somehow. They’d been given up.
Paescha sensed outwards as she entered the control room behind Corrigan.
Security forces were in the warehouse now. Less than a half dozen. They would be royally screwed here in just a couple minutes.
“Cor, three minutes max.”
“Fuck,” they grumbled, clearly working something out in their mind.
Paescha approached the central control panel. Unzipping her skinsuit from the neck down to her sternum, reaching inside to a hidden pocket. She pulled out a clear, sleeved glove.
Removing her own glove to bare her left hand, she slid on the sleeve.
She firmly pressed her sleeved hand onto the console’s touch screen. Spinning circular reticules surrounded her palm and fingertips before the message displayed—ACCESS GRANTED
A simple user interface booted with three selectable options. INPUT, OUTPUT, ARCHIVE.
“Atom, I’m in.” she said, swapping back gloves.
It was the static again.
“Not this.”
Paescha closed her eyes and felt outwards—oh fuck.
They had a seer.
She could feel them pressing back as she sensed outward. Their whole game was blown. Paescha didn’t know how they’d get out of this one.
The seer was hanging back, not with the incursion team headed their way. Still, they’d be feeding the team information.
Since when did Gen Sec have seers on contract? Why would they be prepped for an emergency response?
This whole job was rigged. They were so fucked.
Atom cut through, “I need you to access…disc-key…scanner.”
Digging back into her skinsuit, she removed a thumbnail-sized circular disk—outer edge lined by a dim grey light.
Where was the sensor… fuck, fuck, fuck…
Paescha was panicking. The minutes they had were turning into seconds, and fast.
If she could just get Atom in, her and Corrigan could jet. He would take over.
There it was. Side of the console. Black sensor strip.
She held the disk-key to the sensor and its light blinked red. On the third blink it went solid green.
The console’s screen flickered, came back, the archive opened, and it started scrolling.
“Got it,” Atom came through clean as a whistle. “I’ll take it from here.”
“Done!” Paescha shouted, spinning away, making haste back into the main vault.
A smash. Another, and another.
Oh fuck. Paescha thought they had more time.
Corrigan leaned forward into another kick.
Paescha saw it was them making the noise, zipping her skinsuit, coming upon them slamming the sole of their boot into an already quite dented, slowly giving way sheet of biofiber wall paneling.
One more kick. Their foot broke through to the maintenance ducts.
A shitty plan is better than no plan.
“This way, kid,” they said, catching their breath but playing it off.
Just as Paescha began crossing the vault towards them, the main doors hissed open behind her. She froze.
Run or fight?
Fight or run?
“Fuck that,“ Paescha declared with a wry smirk and a shake of the head, reaching for her conductor on instinct.
Corrigan’s face went sour as Paescha curled to a crouch behind a marble island, gaining cover from the open doorway.
Her eyes frosted over.
The conductors glow magnified. It’s shimmering blue a stark contrast to the dark and drab interiors.
Her open palm sported five shards this time.
They lit up, floating freely into the air above her head.
Corrigan found their own island to hide behind, as much from Paescha as the coming security team.
Having to remember the hallway from memory, Paescha reconstructed it three dimensionally in her mind. Not knowing where security was, she imagined them everywhere.
Their seer would surely be watching.
Let them.
The five shards blasted out the open doors.
Horrible screams.
She lost track of the shards individually, but was able to sense them as a unit, whipping them around the hallway like the lethal arm of a carnival ride from hell.
More screams. Up and down. Left and right. Everywhere.
Rapid fire, cracks and clangs echoed down the hall into the vault, as the shards no doubt pelted every surface.
A curdling cry.
She felt them down at least two. But…
Within the field of her senses, a tiny yet perceivable consciousness bloomed into existence—tell-tale sign.
Paescha could sense any consciousness in her field, even one born artificially.
“Drone!” she shouted to Corrigan.
They threw themself up onto the marble work-surface, leaning forward onto it, bracing their injured shoulder, helping them aim their cannon.
Furiously, in her mind, Paescha tried to wield the shards into corners of the hallway previously untouched.
A ripping tear of flesh and a crack of bone. More terrible cries.
Just then, a drone—the size of a small suitcase, surrounded by a projected repulsion field that extended its radius meters outward—broke into the vault at speed, firing an automatic energy canon.
High caliber plasma rounds blasted from a glowing purple ball of crackling light, just below its front grill, and were tearing a stream of holes in the floor up to and over the island Paescha crouched behind.
Corrigan was firing immediately. Hopes and prayers with each shot. One would fall away, having struck the repulsion field, creating a short window where another might sneak through. Still, the drone’s hull was far too sturdy for the caliber of round fired by their cannon.
Paescha crouched low, deep within the space of her mind, sensing this all.
She could feel the presence of the drone nearly above her now.
Corrigan ran out onto the vault floor, firing wildly. Trying to narrow the gap, get a round through, or just draw the drone’s attention before it had an angle on their girl.
Paescha screamed—with all her might and focus—intending to bring all five shards back, spinning in a corkscrew pattern, to fly right through the space above her her head.
A single moment later—fury.
Invisibly fast. The crystal shard’s vicious impacts on the servers and the back wall of the vault were seen first. The drone then erupted into a fiery blaze. Bits and shards about. A terrible screeching hum. It veered hard to its left and fell fast and straight into the side wall at a speed which exploded all that was left.
Paescha opened her eyes, the mist over top of them falling away, the shards clinking to the floor near the back wall.
That’s when she saw.
Corrigan. They were down, laying on their side.
She ran over and slid on her knees to a stop beside them.
Rolling them over she saw the blood. A streak of red across their cheek.
Shrapnel from the drone lodged there.
“Fuck!” Paescha screamed.
She felt into her surroundings. The incursion team was down.
Nobody else was coming. The seer still felt at a distance. Probably in a mobile armored unit out on the avenue.
Corrigan’s eyes were opening.
“Hon, you here?” Paescha pleaded.
Corrigan blinked through an empty stare, seeming far off.
Paescha watched them come back to her.
“You here?”
“Yeah,” they finally said, little smile gracing their lips.
“Fucking good, let’s go.”
It wasn’t the first time she’d been in open centrifuge.
This was different here, with them.
Corrigan led the way, carefully lunging from one support bar to the next, taking each handhold, finding purchase with their feet, then looking back as it was her turn to make the little leap of faith.
Each one a danger. Each one a grace. Proud to watch them lead the way.
Every ten meters they leaped together, further from the fading sight of the seer, that much nearer their freedom. Something so intimate about being out here alone like this.
Even with the danger; the fear itself somehow a flavor in the delectable elixir that was the two of them.
Paescha felt safe.
I meant something to say that out here, unharnessed, free to fall to her death as they moved in the blank space outside the habitat ring. Stations this big had outer centrifuges that eclipsed the circumference of the habitable space housed within.
This liminal space between is where they held on for dear life.
It was cold. There was no oxygen. But their skinsuits had plenty. And Corrigan was here. Somehow, it made even this strange place amongst the stars—beneath the thumb of terrible oppression, at the risk of death at any moment, with no safety net—feel like home.
The look in their eyes when she leaped; the worry. Then the relief when she was back with them again. It made her know how they felt, even though they’d never been able to say it. That would always be enough for her. Silently dancing their way along the empty space of Station 17’s grand centrifuge, lost in a time of great suffering, but found again somehow—together.
There already wasn’t much air left.
Atom looked quite the panic—hand and feet tied, laying on his back, inside a large bag of clear plastic sheeting—beginning to realize they weren’t just doing this to scare him.
Surrounded by the shadows of giant storage containers in the back of the recycling plant, their little criminal clan’s home, Corrigan finished setting the vacuum.
Neither of them would enjoy this one.
He’d been a friend. Still, it was the only foolproof way to take care of the problem Atom himself had created.
Corrigan glanced over their shoulder, “It’s all rigged, hon.”
Paescha looked on with grimace and nodded.
“Please!” Atom’s shouting muted by the airtight container.
“Just do it,” Paescha said over his continued pleas.
Corrigan flipped a switch on the small motor, which proceeded to suck the very limited amount of air from the packaging Atom found himself within.
They walked over to stand before Paescha. Not looking. Her eyes watching over their shoulder as the container crinkled tight, and Atom’s continued cries muffled further.
They took her chin with their hand and brought her eyes to theirs, as the screams stopped.
Paescha realized it there; chin held tightly in their firm grip, caught within the unflinching gaze of their beautiful eyes.
She would die for Corrigan someday, one way or another.
The bar was packed but they’d found a table in the back. The two of them tried to stay out of public places, especially here in the grand centrifuges’ recreation district. Too many off duty Union stooges. And they had a reputation.
Hiding in the corner felt just right.
Paescha watched from her table as Corrigan finally got the bar tender’s attention and ordered them drinks.
Somehow, even this was intoxicating, the simplest things. The way they spoke. Moved. It stirred something deep within her. She never wanted to let it go.
They looked back and smiled a big stupid grin.
Prettiest fucking smile that ever existed—she thought.
That’s what she’d die for. Right there.
Atom had imagined he’d take the spoils from their contract. Releasing their underground brethren from purgatory and claiming the reward himself. And so, did complete the job, thank god. However, he failed to delete the conscious minds of the Union’s many corrupt, which they’d planned to destroy. It was his idealism in this matter which had caused him to turn to the authorities.
Now, he’d been the sad victim of a common malfunction, which claimed many lives aboard Union space stations. Trapped in a storage room, without oxygen, found the next day. Oh, so tragic.
Drinks! Corrigan had them.
They came over and set them on the table with those magnificently strong hands.
Their gorgeous face, made all the more handsome by it’s newfound scar, glimmered in the flickering light of the candle on their table.
The shit these two could do together.
Such a strange orbit they were in. A fascinating dance of push and pull.
One thing for certain—the two of them together was not good for the Union.
Together they could bring it all down. Together, this radical pair, could not be stopped.
Looking at them then. Soaking them in.
Paescha could only think one thing.
They needed to fuck.
Apparently, from the moment I started writing shit last October it was all feeling forward towards this ‘nexus point’ where I hope you save me from loosing my gd mind.
Cause I read this last night and felt how meta it was for right now.
Me telling you to hurry your ass up when you’re in shock and stuff lol
Also, did you crush somebodies skull for me recently?? ✨✨
