by C. Gockel
Mairwen, who had been looking out the window, moved to crouch next to him. Her strong features were softened by shadows.
“It’s not safe here,” she said. “Can you walk?”
It took him a moment to understand her English words. Her tone was remarkably even and calm for someone who had just taken out two professional mercs in a matter of seconds. She wasn’t even breathing hard, so the harsh lung sounds must be coming from him.
He nodded and got to his feet awkwardly. She rose as he did, unclipped the tech suppressor from his shirt and pocketed it, grabbed his jacket and percomp from the bed, and glided to the doorway. She stepped over scar-faced merc’s body to look outside. To Luka’s relief, the merc was still alive.
“Let’s go,” she said, and watched him closely as he crossed to her. Apparently satisfied he wasn’t going to collapse, she led him outside.
The central mass of the riot had moved on or broken apart, he couldn’t tell which, leaving the street deserted except for the scattered debris, some of it burning. It was quite surreal in the fog and smoke.
He didn’t remember much about walking away from the hostel or the taxi ride that took them to her apartment building, except the bitter, subzero cold in his veins. He knew he should be worried about shock, but he couldn’t make his pain-soaked brain think of what to do about it. It was doubtless a sign of stress trauma that he felt safer with Mairwen than he would have with a phalanx of bodyguards, especially after she told him she’d neutralized two other mercs in the park before finding him.
She had him sit on a stool at the breakfast bar in her tiny, spartan, sixth-floor apartment. She gently wrapped a flexible freeze pack around his swollen and rapidly bruising left hand, apologizing for not having any painkillers. The fog in his head had begun to clear by the time she put a warm mug of herbal tea in front of him and wrapped his good hand around it. He was still miserably cold.
“Drink,” she said. “You need to decide who to ping and where to get medical treatment.”
He sipped gingerly and found it was too sweet but not too hot, so he took several swallows, paying no mind to its hay-like flavor of dried ryegrass. He knew sugar didn’t work that fast, but he felt better almost immediately.
“Zheer first,” he said. She nodded and put his percomp on the counter in front of him.
He lucked into connecting live and encrypted almost immediately, which meant Zheer was still at the office despite the late hour.
He set the percomp to speaker only and told Zheer what had happened. He glossed over parts he didn’t want to discuss in detail, such as how he’d distracted the telepath, and how Mairwen had taken down three armed kidnappers in only seconds. They both had secrets to keep. He hoped Zheer would infer the riot had been the main reason he’d escaped.
“I think it’s a bad idea for me to report this to the police, at least for now. Being involved in a second violent death case in as many days is liable to get me iced for a week.”
There was a pause. “Only the telepath is dead?”
He looked at Mairwen, who nodded slightly. “As far as we know. The mercs were still alive when we left.”
“As you wish, then. Nothing in Etonver law says you have to report being assaulted, and I doubt the mercs will file charges.”
Her dry tone drew a brief snort out of him.
“I’d like to visit the company’s contract healer. I could go to the nearest urgent care center, but planetary law makes it too helvítis easy for the police and other interested parties to see the records.”
“Of course. I’m sending the authcodes now. Is Morganthur still with you?”
“Yes, she can hear you.” Luka pushed the percomp toward her. His broken hand was aching from the freeze pack, but he kept it on.
“How did you get separated from Foxe on the trail?” Zheer’s tone was chillier than it had been.
Mairwen’s expression was completely closed down. “Two other mercs attacked from behind us on the trail. They delayed me.”
“I see. Then how did you find Foxe so fast? Or at all, for that matter?”
“The mercs walked him to the hostel room. I found witnesses.”
“Lucky for you both, then.” A thread of skepticism in her voice suggested she thought there was more their story. “Luka, any idea on motive?”
“Not really. They went to the trouble and expense of separating me from Morganthur and interrogating me, instead of just disabling or killing one or both of us. Some of the questions were… unexpected, like a new player late to the game, catching up.”
“Interesting. I was inclined to disregard your rather fanciful idea of a hybrid planet, but after this evening’s adventure, I’m rethinking that. In the meantime, can Morganthur stay with you and get you to the healer? Where are you, anyway? We’ll need to get you to a safehouse.”
Mairwen spoke up, which surprised him. “He can stay in my apartment tonight. It’s subleased, and would be difficult to trace. I’ll get him to the healer.”
Zheer approved, promising expense reimbursement and to send secure transport for them both in the morning.
Mairwen used her own cumbersome percomp to call and persuade the healer to treat him that evening. He was content to sit and listen. He liked watching her. She had an indefinable presence and grace that always caught his attention, even when he was exhausted and hurting.
It finally came to him that she hadn’t come away from the evening’s excitement unscathed. Her gait was off, and she was avoiding using her right arm. He was ashamed he hadn’t noticed sooner.
“You need the healer, too,” he told her.
“I’m fine,” she said as she placed a hot bowl of beef and rice soup and a spoon in front of him. It tasted good for being from a pouch, and it felt better in his stomach than the overly sweet tea had. She put her bowl on the counter and ate quickly and efficiently.
“Sure, if by ‘fine’ you mean a posterior dislocation of the right shoulder, a stiff left knee, and a boot-print bruise on your collarbone and neck. You got them in the line of duty, so the company will pay, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
She didn’t say anything, but she didn’t refuse, either. She looked as tired as he’d ever seen her. Another thought occurred to him. “Were you responsible for the riot?”
“No,” she said, then gave him a slight smile. “But I may have nudged it in your direction.”
The taxi trips to and from the healer’s office took twice as long as the treatments themselves. They could have taken the free metro transit and gotten there just as fast. The healer spent most of the time repairing Luka’s broken fingers. He warned him the whole left hand would likely be weak for a few days, and gave him some pain patches.
Luka didn’t see Mairwen’s treatment, but she refused pain meds, saying she was allergic. He suspected it was because she considered herself still on duty, but he counted himself lucky that he’d gotten her to submit to healing at all, and didn’t push it. However much he might instinctively want to look after her, she probably wouldn’t let him.
Mairwen’s apartment was barely furnished except for a monstrously large platform bed in the only bedroom, which she said had come with the place. Luka could see why. It could easily accommodate four or five adults, and removing it would require demolishing a wall or two.
With no windows, and only a closeable solar diffuser on the ceiling, the apartment was ideal for someone who worked the night shift. The space had nothing personal like artwork, holos, or any sense of décor. It could have been quarters in a hostel, except for an older-model, force-isolation exerciser in one corner, and one far wall covered in extra-thick, dark cork. The exerciser hadn’t become a clothes rack or collected dust, so it was likely she actually used it.
He was again sitting at the breakfast bar, watching her clean up the nook that passed for a kitchen. She’d showered and changed out of the slightly bloody running clothes and into loose, wide-legged pants and a long-sleeved loose tank. The drapey, fad
ed black fabric outlined her slim but muscled form as she moved. Thanks to the healer, the bruise on her neck was fading, though it would take time for it to vanish completely.
For once, she wasn’t wearing her wrist knives. He flattened both his hands on the counter to keep them still, grateful for the distraction of the residual pain. He’d been alone with her often in the past ten days, so he didn’t know why being in her apartment now felt intimate and charged. He wanted physical contact with her—a need that left him almost breathless.
“Luka, I owe you an apology.” She stood next to him at the counter. He hadn’t felt her approach, and her voice was quiet.
“What for?” How was it she took him by surprise so often?
“I should have anticipated they’d exploit your routine.” There was vulnerability on her face that he’d never seen before, and she wasn’t skittering away from him like she usually did. His intuition started to stir, and he let his talent guide his question.
“How did you really find me so fast?”
She looked at him consideringly, then seemed to come to a decision.
“I followed your scent. It carried in the fog all along the route they took you. I was afraid they’d kill you if I breached the door, so I had to lure them out.” She gently covered his recently healed left hand with hers and lightly caressed his still swollen and bruised fingers with her thumb. “It gave them time to hurt you.”
His intuition flared arc-white as he made the connections. Her extraordinary hearing and reflexes, her familiarity with death, hidden depths, legends and memes, improbable truths... “If hybrid planets can be real, then so can you. Are you a death tracker?”
He really was amazingly brilliant, Mairwen thought. The dawning wonder in his expression made her cautious brain scream at her to get away, but the rest of her wanted to get closer. She kept her hand on his.
“Yes.”
“Invisible, unstoppable military assassins with amazing supernatural powers, the force of stellar energy at their fingertips?” His gentle teasing eased some of the tension in her. “So mysterious that even the military’s covert ops division knows nothing about them?”
“The Citizen Protection Service knows everything about us,” she said with a touch of acid. “They created us.”
“Created? Like cyberneuro implants, skulljacks, enhancement drugs?” He named the commonly known modifications the CPS gave its Jumpers and minders.
“No.” She wondered what to tell him so he’d understand.
“The CPS discovered a treatment and procedure that only works on a very few people. They can’t tell in advance who it will or won’t work on, so they secretly test as many people as they can get away with. Nothing happens if you fail, but if you’re the one in a billion that passes, you become CPS property. They tell your family and friends you died, they mask your DNA, and a CPS telepath cleans you of as many of your childhood memories as they can and still leave you functional.”
She touched her fingertips to his mistreated knuckles. “We’re hunters, but we don’t always kill.” She gave him a brief, wry smile. “Sometimes we leave the killing to others.”
He topped her hand with his right one, his fingertips cool on the back of her hand. “Are you an uncatalogued minder?” Like he probably was. Unfortunately, she was nothing so normal or benign.
“I’m an alter.”
The shock on his face didn’t surprise her. Ever since the discovery of the grisly horrors that resulted from the secret experiments during the First Wave era, altering humans was considered appallingly immoral and illegal. He deserved to know the whole truth. “The procedure, if you live through it, transforms subtrans-DNA to expand all the senses, inputs, nerves, synapses, to a lot higher than normal humans. The alteration changed my body chemistry and my brain.”
Instead of pulling back from her as if she were contagious, as she’d feared, he pulled her to face him, close enough to feel the heat of his body.
“No wonder you’re so amazing,” he said with such a sweet smile that her heart stuttered. The smile faded. “The CPS wouldn’t have willingly let you go.”
“No. None of us makes it out of the program alive.”
His face showed he recognized the implications of that. She liked that she didn’t have to connect the nodes for him.
He turned her hand over, palm up, and stroked her thumb with his. “What’s it like? The expanded senses part, not the being dead part.”
She’d never tried to describe it before, never imagined wanting to. “Sort of like… turning up the volume on a music player so you can hear every note of every instrument all at once, except that it’s everything. Smells, sounds, colors, images, tastes, touch.”
“Did your extraordinary control come with the alteration, too?” His buttery scent curled up into her nose. The power of his regard when focused on her was dangerously, deliciously potent.
“No,” she said. “Nineteen years of CPS training.”
She tried to read his expression, to see how he was taking it, but all she could think about was the empty, icy feeling in her chest that was spreading to her barely healed shoulder and making it ache, too. The only heat in her came from where his hands held hers. Everything warm had been viciously beaten out of her long ago. “It’s a dangerous process and a brutal program. Only a few of us survive it.”
She fought to keep even uglier memories moldering in their graves where they belonged.
Before she knew what was happening, he was standing with his arms around her, and she felt the warmth of his shoulder against her face, with only his thin knit shirt between them.
“Fyrirgefðu. I’m sorry,” he said softly. His voice rumbling through his chest and his warm breath’s moisture against her skin sent a tremor through her.
She realized her eyes were filled with unshed tears, a peculiar sensation. It was easy to ignore because he felt so very good against her. She slid her arms up his well-muscled back. She drew in the scent of him and listened to the rhythm of his heart. The ice in her chest was melting in the flood caused by his heat.
He stroked her back gently. “How long has it been since you, uh, left school?” The timbre of his voice resonated deep.
“Four years.”
Another tremor ran through her.
“Are you cold?” he asked, and slid a hand up to the nape of her neck. His thumb gently caressed her hairline, and sent tingles through her.
“I’m fine.” She was almost intoxicated by the feel of him, and her breath was ragged as she struggled to clamp down tight controls on her body’s feedback to keep the tremors at bay.
“I think you should look up the meaning of the word ‘fine’ sometime.”
A laugh escaped her, and he tightened his hold on her. “That’s the first time I’ve heard you laugh.”
“I don’t, usually. You’re a bad influence.”
He laughed, and it rippled through his body and into hers. She pulled back so she could see his smile. His amusement changed to a look of intent, and he kissed her. It was warm and cool and wonderful all at once.
She opened her mouth to his, inviting him to deepen the kiss, and an electric shock of pleasure coursed through her at the complex taste of him when their tongues touched. He pulled her in tight against him, and she felt like she was being imprinted by their heat signature. Nothing of what she’d read or seen matched the reality of this moment.
From deep within her arose a trembling that threatened to shake her apart, and she had to break off the kiss and bury her face against his collarbone to get control of it.
His breath was as shallow as hers. “What is it?”
“I didn’t think I was capable of feeling this much for anyone,” she said, then regretted revealing her impairment. The strength of her feelings terrified her. “I’ll be–”
“You’re not going to say ‘fine,’ are you?” He stroked her hair with gentle fingers, and his unhurt hand caressed the small of her back.
She sighed and tr
ied to release her tension. “Sensory overload can cause... problems.” She didn’t want to think about them now. “I’m more susceptible when I’m tired.”
She’d used a lot of energy in tracker mode earlier, but she suspected the strength of the tremors had more to do with the depth of her response to him. The CPS issued dire warnings on the life-threatening dangers of strong emotions, and tried to eradicate them permanently out of all trackers to improve obedience and efficiency. They’d evidently failed with her.
She reluctantly stepped back, and he let her go slowly. He brushed her cheek with the back of his hand. “You’re so beautiful,” he said, his eyes dark with intensity.
She knew she wasn’t, but it pleased her that he thought so.
“So are you,” she said softly. “You need rest. Time to heal.”
“You do, too.” His tone was light, but his expression was an odd mix of concern and invitation.
She shook her head. “I’m on duty. Use the bed.”
She wanted more than anything to curl up next to him, preferably entwined with him for comfort, but it would inevitably lead to other, more interesting activities that she had little experience with and wasn’t sure she could handle. She’d barely handled one potent kiss from him. More important, right now he needed a guard more than he needed a bed companion.
He gave her a long look and started to say something, but hesitated because of whatever he read in her expression. “All right.”
He turned and stepped toward the bedroom. When he turned back, his expression was dark, intense. “Just so we’re clear. I want you, Mairwen.”
She forced her arms to stay at her sides instead of reaching for him. She met his gaze. “Yes,” she said, both acknowledging his desire and expressing her own.
“Until tomorrow, then,” he said, and went into her bedroom.
Tomorrow, she promised herself, as she ate a high-calorie protein bar that could have tasted like ash or ambrosia for all she noticed. Tomorrow, when she would spend as much time as possible with Luka Foxe and memorize every scent, every sound of him, right up until they terminated her for assaulting Malamig.
