Chapter 4 : Covering Tracks
The briefing room smelled like recycled air and stale coffee — the second-worst coffee I'd encountered in two bodies, both of them technically dead. Grace stood at the front with a holographic terrain map bleeding topographical lines across the conference table. Two other avatar drivers occupied chairs on the far side: a broad-shouldered woman named Park and a wiry man named Gallagher, both in human form, their avatars dormant in the link bay.
I sat in the corner designated for drivers currently in avatar bodies. The chair groaned. My tail draped over the armrest and tapped the floor in a rhythm I couldn't control — a nervous tic, apparently, hardwired into James Chen's motor cortex.
"Sector 7." Grace tapped the map. A section of dense rainforest east of Hell's Gate expanded into three-dimensional relief. "Chen requested solo specimen collection in this quadrant. Standard protocol for new drivers — we assess field competency under controlled conditions. Comms check every thirty minutes. Deviation from assigned grid results in immediate recall."
She looked at me. Specifically at the shadows under my eyes that even blue skin couldn't hide.
"Questions?"
"What's the threat assessment for that sector?" Park asked, pulling up her own datapad.
"Low to moderate. Hexapede herds, some prolemuris activity in the canopy. No recorded thanator sightings in eighteen months. Viperwolf packs were mapped last quarter — two packs, well within normal territorial boundaries."
Grace flipped to a logistics slide. Equipment lists, emergency protocols, extraction procedures. Routine. The kind of meeting that happened a hundred times at Hell's Gate, sending avatar drivers into the jungle to poke plants while armed escorts waited at the perimeter.
But her eyes kept drifting back to me.
The meeting ended. Park and Gallagher filed out, discussing lunch plans in the mess hall. I stood — carefully, because standing too fast in this body meant risking the overhead lighting fixtures — and gathered the specimen kit from the equipment rack by the door.
"Chen."
Grace's voice stopped me at the threshold. She waited until the corridor cleared, then closed the briefing room door with her hip, arms crossed, coffee still in hand.
"The greenhouse. At three in the morning."
"I told you—"
"You told me you couldn't sleep and wanted to watch bioluminescence. That's a half-answer and we both know it." She sipped her coffee. "I've been on Pandora for eleven years. I've seen new drivers do stupid things. Walk outside without exopacks, try to pet viperwolves, fall out of link chairs. But none of them have ever broken into my restricted specimen lab in the middle of the night."
"She's not going to let this go. Give her something real. Something she can hold instead of suspicion."
"My sister died."
The words came out before the plan finished forming. Not my sister — James Chen's sister. The detail from his personnel file that Patel's records had buried in a subsection: Transfer request motivation: death of sibling (Mei Chen, age 27, cervical cancer, 2149).
Grace's posture shifted. The crossed arms loosened half an inch.
"James Chen requested transfer to Pandora three months after she passed. The evaluation board flagged it as potential grief-motivated decision-making, but his scores were solid enough to approve." I looked at the floor. Not hard to fake vulnerability when the vulnerability was real — just borrowed from the wrong person. "I came here because Earth didn't have anything left for me. And then I get here, and the one thing that connects me to this world — my human body — is dead too. So I couldn't sleep. And the greenhouse... the bioluminescence... it reminded me of something alive."
Silence. Grace studied me the way she studied specimens — looking for structure beneath surface.
"Mei," she said quietly. "I didn't know her name."
"Most people don't."
She drained her coffee. Set the cup on the table with a deliberate click.
"Grief is normal, Chen. What's not normal is wandering into restricted areas without authorization. I can't protect you from scrutiny if you give them ammunition." She paused. "You know about Selfridge's new policy?"
"No."
"Morning announcement, seven o'clock. All personnel channels." She pulled out her datapad and played an audio clip. Parker Selfridge's voice — nasal, corporate, every syllable weighed for legal liability — filled the room.
"...reminder that avatar drivers represent a significant capital investment by the Resources Development Administration. Any personnel exhibiting signs of psychological instability, including but not limited to erratic behavior, unauthorized facility access, sleep disturbances, or emotional dysregulation, will be subject to mandatory evaluation and potential program removal. This is not optional. Pandora is not a place for people who aren't at their best. Selfridge out."
The clip ended. My tail stopped tapping.
"Erratic behavior," I repeated. "Unauthorized facility access. Sleep disturbances."
"Three for three." Grace wasn't smiling. "Max Patel filed your grief assessment yesterday. It's clean — he's giving you the benefit of the doubt. But if someone reports the greenhouse visit, or if your sleepwalking happens again near a security camera—"
"It won't."
"—then Selfridge pulls you from the program. Thirty-day evaluation period doesn't mean thirty days of chances, Chen. It means thirty days of being watched."
The expedition kit hung from my shoulder. Twelve kilograms of specimen containers, sensors, and sample bags — the tools of a scientist I wasn't, assigned to gather data I didn't need, to maintain a cover that was already fraying at the edges.
"Twenty-eight days left. Maybe fewer, if Selfridge is looking for reasons to cut costs."
"The expedition," I said. "Sector 7. You approved it."
"I did."
"Why? If you think I'm unstable—"
Grace picked up her cup, examined the empty interior, set it down again. A woman buying time with a prop.
"Because James Chen's pre-deployment file shows a researcher who was passionate about Pandoran bioluminescence. Specifically, neural-active flora in low-traffic sectors. Sector 7 matches his published research interests." She met my eyes. "If you come back with good specimens and a coherent field report, that's data. Data I can use to argue for your continued participation. Understand?"
"Understood."
"Don't make me regret this."
She left. The briefing room hummed with the absence of her attention — a pressure lifting, like surfacing from deep water.
I spent the next hour in the avatar barracks, James Chen's personnel file open on a borrowed datapad. His academic history. His research publications. His recommendation letters. Three years of correspondence with the avatar program, every message carefully crafted to justify a seat on a ship that took six years to reach its destination.
Mei Chen's obituary was attached to the transfer request. Twenty-seven. Cancer. A paragraph about her work in biomedical engineering, her love of hiking, a memorial fund in her name.
"She was real. She had a life, and it ended, and her brother came to Pandora because of it. And now I'm wearing his grief like a costume."
The datapad screen blurred. I blinked — hard — and memorized another detail. Favorite research methodology: in situ neural mapping using portable EEG analogues. Academic advisor: Dr. Elaine Portman, University of British Columbia. Publication record: six peer-reviewed papers, two in Pandoran Xenobiology Quarterly.
James Chen had been thorough. Meticulous. The kind of person who prepared for every contingency.
Except the one that killed him.
The expedition approval sat in my inbox, confirmed and time-stamped. Sector 7, Grid Reference 47-East, authorized for solo operation with comms check every thirty minutes. A patch of jungle nobody cared about, three hours' walk from the compound, in a sector that Grace's own data showed was neurally active.
I closed the file. Packed the kit. Checked the time.
Tomorrow morning, James Chen would walk into the jungle to collect plant samples. And Chase Sinclair would look for something that no specimen container could hold.
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