Kismet

by Watts Martin

  Most of the people in the gallery get up and meander toward the exits, talking excitedly. Dupree taps on her bracelet, and her eyes lose focus as she studies whatever’s coming up on her HUD.

  Jack makes his way to her side, looking angry. Great. Sky’s hurt, he’s angry. “Nakimura’s hired help was a mole for Purity, and you knew?”

  “Don’t say ‘mole.’ It’s offensive.” Ansel looks at Jack, then at Gail. “But why didn’t you say something before now?”

  She hasn’t shut off her biomods yet and they’re starting to hurt. “Because he threatened me, okay? He threatened all of you—”

  Something moves outside, on the street, and she isn’t sure what it is but it’s not right. She slams herself to the ground, pulling Jack and Ansel with her hard and fast enough that she probably hurts them.

  Two deafening, simultaneous cracks sound: one behind her and over her head, one in front of the room. Then a flash. A dull bang. Fireworks.

  Screams.

  The room fills with white smoke. It’s sour, acidic, poisonous. Tear gas? There’s a loud bang right behind her, more screams. Street noises.

  Jack wheezes. He sits up, then sinks down, coughing. She can’t see. Is his head bleeding?

  Her muscles really hurt. Other things hurt. Maybe she’s bleeding too. No. It doesn’t matter. Something’s on fire. Retune her vision, shift spectrum, she needs to get to the table—

  People are running. In? Out? Light behind her. Part of the wall’s come down. Small, sharp pops from an electric pistol. There: infrared. It helps a little. She turns to Ansel. He’s terrified, trying to cover his muzzle. She catches his eye, puts her hand down low to the floor. Stay down. He nods.

  Then she starts crawling forward, keeping her hand over her nose, her mouth shut. Jack’s beside her. He moves like he can see as well as she—right, he has biomods too. She’s just never seen him have to use them before.

  She can see the table. It’s burning. Dupree is the only one still there, slumped forward, head resting where the databox had been. Eyes open. Oh God. Blood’s running down her leg and she isn’t moving. Nakimura’s sprawled under the table. Ritchie, the old cat, is crumpled next to him.

  what’s going on I can’t see where mom fell somebody help

  People scramble out, other people scramble in. As the smoke clears she can see they’re Ring security forces. And PFS. She thinks she recognizes Wolfe, but it’s hard to tell. Keeping her eyes open rubs sandpaper on them. Alarms ring buzz shriek inside the building and out on the street.

  Nakimura’s bleeding. Side? Arm? It looks bad. She scrambles toward him—

  She sees Sky. Mara’s Wounds. Her sister had tried to get to the gallery rather than trying to get to an exit.

  To get to Gail.

  “Sky.” She drops to the wolf’s side. Bleeding, too, from wounds on her back, across one side of her face.

  Her nerves scream at her. She’s past the limits for keeping her biomods ramped up like this. She shuts them down and instantly pain floods her body, not just from the sudden crash but from her own cuts there and there and there and—

  No time. She has to trust nothing she has is serious. She checks over the wolf’s body, looking at the wounds. Medics should be here by now. Why aren’t they here yet? No. They are here. She sees them. Is Sky breathing?

  what’s wrong with mommy she isn’t

  Yes. She’s breathing. She thinks. “Sky.” She says it louder, trying to keep her voice from sounding high and fluttery and shaky, and she cradles the wolf’s head in her lap. “Sky!”

  The wolf’s eyes open. After a second she focuses on Gail.

  She lets out a sharp, ragged sigh. “Jesus. It’s okay. It’ll be okay.” She looks around frantically. “Hey! She’s wounded!”

  “Everyone’s wounded,” someone yells back. She isn’t sure if they’re a doctor. Dammit, that’s not—

  Sky makes a noise, a groan, a whisper, like she’s trying to say something. But the sound is wrong. Gail snaps her attention back down.

  “I…” the wolf chokes out. “G…” Pink foam dribbles out of her mouth, and she convulses.

  Gail trembles violently. Then she starts wailing.

  Chapter 21

  As far as waiting rooms go, this one is visually nice, at least as nice as the teachers’ lounge. Much more cheerful and less institutional than the hospital she’s been to on Panorica. But the air cleaning system runs so hard it feels like a faint breeze, and it’s cold. It doesn’t smell like citrus or floral “neutral” scents; it doesn’t smell like disinfectant, either. It smells like nothing. It’s like distilled water. It’s unsettling.

  Jack has contact bandages in a half-dozen places and he’s limping, but he’s been talking with Wolfe and Jollenbeck, conferring with doctors. About ten minutes ago he ran down a hallway that they won’t let Gail go down, not yet. Apparently, everyone’s forgotten he’s been suspended. Maybe Taylor’s the only one who’d have put up a fuss, and he’s in a bed down that hallway. So is Nakimura. And Ritchie and Saganey.

  And Sky.

  When her eyes blur with tears—again, dammit—Ansel squeezes her hand, but doesn’t say anything. He’s more banged up than Jack is. For that matter, so is she. It’s been about two hours since they treated her, just one of nearly two dozen with minor physical injuries. She can feel each individual cut and gash they’ve squeezed bandage cream into, especially where a piece of shrapnel sliced her tail. They told her she was lucky it hadn’t been taken clean off; the therapy for that is longer and more painful. The goo’s supposed to be an anesthetic, too. If it is, she can’t imagine how much pain she’d be in right now without it.

  A doctor, a tigress a good fifteen centimeters taller than Gail, walks toward them from the don’t-go-down-there hallway. She has short black hair and vibrant green fur that looks subtly slicked down. Gail remembers hearing somewhere that totemic doctors use special treatments to keep their fur in place, rather than letting it float merrily into places it shouldn’t be. She smells faintly of antiseptic. Jack’s following her a meter behind. They pull up chairs.

  Something in her face must have just fallen, her ears flagged, because Jack quickly says, “Sky’s still alive.”

  She lets out a breath, nodding numbly.

  The doctor speaks in that gentle please-don’t-make-a-scene way a true professional has when she’s telling you unpleasant things. “We’ve been able to talk to Mr. Nakimura, as you suggested.”

  She didn’t suggest it, she screamed it. They didn’t understand what she meant until Ritchie—not Saganey, not Nakimura, not Taylor—showed the same symptoms. “And?”

  “We won’t be able to confirm if Sky’s been poisoned by Kali until laboratory technicians from Keces arrive, but we’re following their treatment protocol until then. Hemodialysis, fluids.” The tigress takes a deep breath, looking frightened herself for just a moment until the calm veneer snaps back into place. “We’re trying to stave off multiple organ failure. The therapies we have for this are slowing it down. But they’re not stopping it.”

  “And Ritchie’s showing the same thing.”

  “Mr. Ritchie was older, and he took more physical injuries than Sky did.” She sighs. “That complicated his treatment. He passed away an hour ago.”

  She closes her eyes. Saganey is the most badly injured, she’d heard—except for poor Karen Dupree, dead before the medics even arrived. But Saganey isn’t poisoned. Saganey isn’t a totemic. “No one else is showing signs of…whatever it is?” Like Ansel? Like Gail herself?

  “Three others.” She stands up. “The techs from Keces won’t be here for another five hours. We can call you as soon as they get here, but you don’t have to stay if you don’t want to.”

  “I’ll stay.” If she was the one in the hospital bed, Sky would be sitting guard over her no matter how many doctors tried to keep her away.

  The tigress nods. “I’m Doctor Allen. If you need anything—or if any of your injuries start causing you any
more pain than they are now—ask for me.”

  When she leaves, Gail stares up at the ceiling. “This is my fault. That’s what everyone says at a moment like this, right? That’s so melodramatic. But it really is my fault.”

  Ansel puts a hand on her shoulder. “You’re not the one who launched a mortar attack.”

  “I could have warned them earlier.”

  “You could have, yes. But would that have stopped them? Maybe they’d have gotten bigger explosives and there’d be dozens dead instead of just two. And I don’t think there’s any reason not to think they wouldn’t have still gone after Sky in retaliation. And maybe Nevada and her husband. Maybe me.”

  She rubs her face. That all makes sense, but none of it helps. “God. Why aren’t my organs failing?”

  Ansel winces. “Don’t say that.”

  “No, no, I don’t mean it that way. I mean, why is it just the ones who were sitting close to the bomb who got contaminated? Why aren’t we poisoned, too?”

  His ears pin back.

  “We’ll ask Quanta when they get here.”

  She looks up at Jack. “You mean Keces.”

  “I mean Quanta. Getting them to be more cooperative only took them facing charges for terrorism, murder and attempted murder from both the RJC and the PFS.”

  Gail closes her eyes again, shaking her head. “I don’t think they did any of this.”

  “I know what your theory is. But if what was used in the attack was really Kali, there are only two sources we know of.”

  “Yeah.” She slumps in her seat. "Did they get anything from video?"

  "Not enough. It looks like the strike team was only four people wearing photocamo and they didn’t stay together."

  She groans.

  Jack leans forward, looking at her worriedly. “Are you sure you don’t want to go home?”

  Home. Sky’s place? Dani might let her go back to Kismet and curl up in a little ball. But she shakes her head. “I’m going to stay here until…until we know something.”

  “Then you’re all coming with me to get food in the hospital cafeteria.”

  Ansel smiles weakly. “Hasn’t the day been hard enough?”

  Gail shakes her head. “I don’t want food.”

  “None of us have had lunch, you and I have both run on biomods longer than we should have, and it’s past fifteen o’clock. You want food. And Doctor Allen says the food’s pretty good for a hospital cafeteria.”

  “That’s a four-star recommendation if I ever heard one.” Ansel grunts and gets to his feet, putting his hat back on, and holds his hand out for Gail.

  “No.”

  “Yes.” He wiggles his fingers. “Jack’s right and I’m prepared to be annoying about this until you give in.”

  Sighing, she takes his hand, allowing herself to be led down a different hallway toward the cafeteria. Here, at least, there’s scent again. It smells good. Maybe she really is starving.

  For a hospital, the food’s good. She thinks. She’s not paying that close attention to it.

  Around twenty o’clock Gail falls asleep for about a half hour, waking up with a crick in her neck and a momentary terror that she’d been woken up by a new alarm, a scream, a cry for help. But nobody’s screaming, nothing’s buzzing. It’s just her by herself in the waiting room, soft music playing somewhere. Ansel’s fallen asleep two seats away.

  She gets up, wobbling. Her tail still stings, but none of her other injuries hurt at all, the nanobots in the bandage cream mostly finished with their work. The bioplastic skins should dissolve by tomorrow. She got obscenely lucky. Almost everyone—except for the ones right at the front—did.

  None of the doctors seem to be around. She heads down the hallway she’s not supposed to go down without permission.

  Glances into the first couple of rooms she passes show them empty. The first occupied one is Nakimura’s. Two people she’s never seen before hover over him: cisform, one man and one woman, both wearing white coats and thin blue surgical gloves. It looks like they’re talking with him rather than checking on his condition. Doctors, or Keces’ lab technicians? Maybe they showed up and Doctor Allen didn’t call her. Or maybe they’re from Quanta, there to make sure he doesn’t recover. If her hypothesis from earlier about how all the pieces fit together is true, that would make no sense, but she’s just about given up on worrying whether things make sense at all today. She watches a moment. It doesn’t look like they’re doing anything nefarious, but she doesn’t really know what she’s looking at.

  “Can I help you?”

  Startled, she turns to look up at the nurse who asked the question, a young cisform who looks like he could be Nakimura’s son. “I—I was looking for Bright Sky’s room. I know it’s down this hallway.”

  He checks the smartpaper tablet he’s carrying. “This is room 112. She’s in room 115, so two doors down on the other side of the hallway. But she’s not accepting any visitors.”

  “I know. I mean, I know she’s not in any condition to see me. But I want to see her.”

  He hesitates. “I’ll have to ask Doctor Allen. If you can wait back in the waiting room?”

  “Sure.” She points into Nakimura’s room. “But are the people in there talking to him from Keces Industries?”

  Now he looks bewildered. “I don’t know, ma’am. Do you know this patient, too?”

  “Yeah. You could say he’s an old boss. Can I say hi?” Without waiting for permission, she opens the door and sticks her head in.

  Abruptly, the two white-coated people stop talking and turn. One’s holding a metal case. Both their coats sport embroidered Keces Biotechnics logos.

  “Didn’t mean to interrupt. Just checking on how Mr. Nakimura’s doing.”

  “Ma’am,” the nurse says from behind her, “you can’t—”

  “Ms. Simmons. I should recover, thank you,” Nakimura murmurs, barely above a whisper. “My associates and I are finished with our conversation, and they are here to assist Doctor Allen.”

  Gail turns to the flustered nurse. “You heard the man. Is Allen in with Sky?”

  “She should be.”

  “Great. Let’s all go to room 115.”

  The nurse swallows and hurries down the hallway ahead of them.

  As the two follow Gail out of the room, she points at the briefcase. “Do you have the countermeasure to Kali in there? Or whatever it is Kali produces.”

  They exchange brief glances with one another.

  “I know it’s top secret, but I’m pretty looped in.”

  “Yes, we’ve been told about you.” The woman answers. “We…might. The most current batch of Kinetitox we had was destroyed in the attacks on our facilities, but we still had a few vials of an older run. How well it’ll work depends on the version deployed here.”

  Doctor Allen’s striding toward them from Sky’s room. “Kinetitox?” She lifts her brows skeptically.

  “Not our name. We’re not the marketing department.”

  “Can you tell me more about the exposure?” The man addresses Allen, not Gail.

  “The RJC forensic team found three shells. One they described as a phosphorus grenade, another as a CS gas grenade. The third has our mystery agent in it, and we think the reason we’ve only had six cases is that it didn’t disperse properly.” She holds the door of room 115 open.

  “We need to analyze that to confirm it’s Q200.”

  Q200? The weapon Kali produces is called Q200? The code names were so much cooler. Before she can say anything flippant, though, Gail walks into the room and her heart leaps into her throat.

  If you want to make someone look fragile, no matter how strong they are, how indomitable, put them in a thin green hospital gown, stretch them out on a metal-framed bed, and run a network of tubes between their body and bedside machines. This room doesn’t smell like the rest of the hospital, the carefully controlled scent of nothing. This room smells like chemicals and fear.

  Sky’s eyes are closed, body perfec
tly still but for very slow, shallow breathing, an occasional whisker twitch. Even without all the medical equipment surrounding her, you wouldn’t look at her and think “pleasant sleep.” She looks troubled. She looks like someone chained by nightmares.

  “She’s on strong sedatives.” Doctor Allen puts her hand on Gail’s shoulder briefly. “She’s resting as peacefully as she’s able to.”

  Do not say that. That’s what you say about people who are dying. She’s going to be okay.

  The woman from Keces sets the case down on a counter and opens it, revealing a set of dismayingly ordinary vials. No glow, no odd colors, just clear liquid. The man’s already studying a display projected over Sky’s bedside, swiping through the revealed data. “Got it. It’s Q200. Ah…” He glances at Gail, then motions the other tech closer.

  She looks over his shoulder. “Fuckers,” she mutters. “So it hits totemic signature tags just like Shakti.”

  Totemic what?

  Even though the tigress has walked to Sky’s bedside, she registers the rat’s confusion. “Companies that perform the genetic work that goes into totemics leave genetic signatures.”

  “Are you saying my DNA’s been rewritten to have ‘Copyright Keces Industries’ in it somewhere?”

  “In a sense, but it’s less for copyright protection than for medical diagnostics.” As the man speaks he steps away; his partner takes over the data swiping.

  Doctor Allen nods. “With the myriad of potential transformations, it’s useful to get an instant record of them from the patient’s body. I’d never thought of that as a potential attack vector.” She sounds tired.

  “It wasn’t the intended design.” The woman’s tone is positively dehumidifying. “The nanobots find those signature tags, decode them, and write a new program for themselves to modify a fetus in utero. It’s the most complicated biotech we’ve ever produced. It’s frankly amazing. The weaponized version just lops off everything after the decoding step and replaces it with a bacterial payload.” Her tone makes it clear this is the scientific equivalent of urinating on a Picasso.

  Bacterial? Gail stares at the woman, then at Sky. “That’s just a bacterial infection? Is it contagious?”