by JC Hay
Heat washed her face, her pulse rhythmically thumping in her ears. She'd been so stupid. So vulnerable. The hit was supposed to take the edge off, not rip her open and make her start sympathizing with the hired muscle. It was supposed to dull her feelings, ratchet her tension down. Not leave her so tightly wound that her heartbeat thundered through the whole of the container.
She blinked and took a deep breath. She needed to calm down. The drugs were messing with her. It couldn't be her pulse in her ears. It was outside the container, and too rapid to be any human heartbeat. Her brain refocused. Helicopter. Twin rotor. She eased back to the front of the car, careful to keep her weight on the reinforced side of the hood to minimize the metal popping.
Zar hadn't moved. She brushed a hand against him to locate him, then leaned close so she could whisper, "The port crew is leaving."
Once they'd been flown back to Port Louis, the ship would be on automation, moving through its preplanned path and only being crewed again once it reached its destination. There were alarms and motion detectors, of course, to prevent exactly the sort of thing they were doing, but it had taken her only minutes in the bridge to take control of those. They'd be sending back an all clear no matter what happened on the ship.
The helicopter's rotors sped up their thumping chatter, then started to recede. When she couldn't hear it anymore, she dropped her hand from his arm. A moment of giddy pride bloomed behind her ribs, and relief washed through her. She hopped onto her tiptoes and kissed the corner of his mouth before she could clamp down on the response. Stubble rasped against her lips, and he gasped in quiet surprise.
She stepped back before her brain could do too much with the information. It was stupid, and sloppy. Not like her to let the drugs chew away her inhibitions so thoroughly. Swallowing back her stupidity, she pushed open the door to the container. Light flooded in, leaving them both shielding their faces and blinking. When she'd recovered, she looked at him and smiled. "Well, Zar? The ship is ours."
Zar let his head hang forward while the water sluiced over his neck and shoulders. The heat soaked into him, taking out the tension in his muscles even if it did little to quiet his mind.
She'd kissed him. He played through the fraction of time in his mind again. It had been impulse, certainly, and the drugs probably, but the electric jolt that had surged down his spine and straight to his groin hadn't been. Stupid as it was, he could see himself barreling along the same idiotic pathways as before, as though he were eager for the pain any attachment he developed was certain to deliver. She'd made it clear this wasn't anything more than a business arrangement for her and that she was at best unwilling to have much contact with him.
Then why had she kissed him?
He flattened his palm against the wall of the shower stall and willed himself to think of anything else. Tried to bury it under the memories of Nassau and the hell that had created for him. It didn't work. After being viewed as a threat, or worse, subhuman because of his cybernetic arm, even the briefest act of kindness was too bright to ignore. Then again, she wore her enhancements like a badge of honor. The thing that set her apart from everyone else. When he'd been in the ring, he'd had the same attitude. All the cyborg fighters did—people paid big money because of those differences, and he'd embraced it.
When he'd replaced his arm, he'd envisioned the new limb as a middle finger to the rest of the world—matte black, and banded with polished metal to highlight its otherness, his arm had been his signature when he stepped into the ring. Even against his equally enhanced opponents, he'd been feared. They'd announced the bones he'd shattered alongside his other fight statistics, building his mystique and adding to the legend that followed him from arena to arena.
Then Nassau had happened, and he was reminded exactly why enhanced fighting stayed in the tacit underground. He wasn't supposed to be among people. Society stomped out any attempt to climb out of the shadows, like they did an incursion by roaches. Without mercy, and without stopping until you learned your place.
Zar sluiced the water over his face and told himself that Yashilla wasn't any different. At best, she saw him as a means to an end. A way for her to earn a larger-than-average paycheck, nothing more.
He couldn't be more.
She couldn't be more. Despite the tangle of thorns that twisted in his gut at the thought. Despite the fact that his desire to protect her was in danger of pushing past professional interest. To want anything more was to set himself up for disappointment. Or worse.
At least he had the brief kiss to remember. Behind closed doors and alone, it was easy to imagine a different future, where he turned into her kiss and found her not just eager but willing. Easy to pretend she'd find his cybernetic arm arousing instead of repulsive, or the way she'd press against him as he held her. Easy to hear the tiny noises she'd make as he filled her and she urged him on.
His cock ached from how hard he'd become, and he glared down at it, as though it had a mind of its own. He turned the water hotter and wrapped his hand around the base of his shaft. The pressure sent a wave of pleasure skating along his nerves. What he wanted in private was his, even if he'd never have it. He could allow himself the fantasy of being desirable. Of being wanted for more than his lethality. Each stroke brought a flood of images and sounds to race through his mind, urging him faster or deeper, or both.
His metal hand dented the plastic of the stall as he drove himself harder, fighting against completion until his climax crashed through him like an explosion, buckling his knees and making him gasp out loud from the intensity of pleasure.
Zar leaned into the spray of water, letting his breathing slow and his pulse return to normal. His nerves still buzzed with the last remnants of his orgasm, but that was all he'd take with him out of the privacy of the shower. He couldn't think about Yashilla as anything more than a client. For both of their sakes.
Chapter Four
Y
ashilla didn't turn to watch Zar as he worked at the water boiler. Didn't have to, technically, since the camera feed covered that corner of the room and she could stare at him without turning around. Like all the other ship's data feeds, she monitored; since the ship was set to report all clear regardless, someone had to make sure that problems didn't arise.
Besides, after three days, the routine had been established. Zar came in from his afternoon run on deck, and then made lunch for both of them. And she made the effort to ignore him. After the mistake of trying to kiss him, he'd pulled away. Small talk had been minimal and only at meals. Otherwise, he kept to his own devices.
She'd almost convinced herself she liked it that way. And not that she looked forward to the meals together.
She closed the feed tracking their position via GPS and opened one of the few maps Venkat had shared of the Bulwark. "What's for lunch?"
Zar gave another of his easy smiles, which sent a rush of warmth through her chest. He read off the two foil packets he carried. "Looks like lentils and rice, or vegetable korma." He set each packet on the scarred composite tabletop so they were equally spaced between them and sat opposite her.
The first day, she had protested his taking care of food prep, even knowing the effort wasn't especially difficult, but she'd decided it wasn't worth fighting over. Plus, she had to admit, it was the best she'd eaten in months. It wasn't that she couldn't afford to eat—those days were well and truly behind her—but she just forgot. Joshi had always teased her about being more interested in the 'Net than the real world, but he wasn't far wrong. There was always another thread to pull, another rabbit hole to chase down, and meatspace was just so complicated.
The thought of Joshi made her smile. He'd been genuinely happy the last time she'd seen him; he and Netta Schulmann had been leaving for the Maldives, where they'd spend time recovering from whatever the hell her treatment had done to his body. Yashilla had a full course of the drugs herself—insurance against the terrifying concept that she might start to reject her implants—but she hadn't started
it yet. Netta had assured her that there was almost no chance that the treatment would interfere with her connectivity, but "almost none" was still "some", and the last thing Yashilla wanted was to lose touch with the 'Net.
"There's an odd smile," Zar said before eating a spoonful of the lentils and rice. "What's up?"
"Thinking about old boyfriends." She surprised herself with the admission. Zar was dangerously easy to talk to. Knowledge, as she well knew, was power that others could use.
He chuckled and grabbed a bottle of hot sauce from the holder on the table. With a tilt of his head he indicated the bottle and the package, and she gave him a quick nod. "It's not like you could make it too hot for me."
"That almost sounds like a challenge." He added a generous amount of the pepper sauce to the container and stirred it into the mix. After taking another taste, he nodded in acceptance. "So. We were talking about your boyfriends."
"No we weren't. And he's an ex anyway." She dragged the korma packet closer. It wasn't a perfect version of the dish, but it did smell good. And as Zar had indicated, during their first freeze-dried meal, enough hot sauce made anything palatable. She snagged the bottle and upped the heat without waiting for his permission. "No regrets there. We were better friends than lovers. And we weren't always great at being friends."
"What happened?"
His face was neutral, but she could hear the curiosity in his voice. She took another bite to bide her time and started in. "You know how they say men and women can't just be friends? Because sex screws it up?"
"That's bullshit."
"Agreed," she replied. "But that's what happened with him and I. We were perfectly happy as friends. We tried adding sex to the mix, and it didn't work out." Yashilla chewed her lip and stirred the korma absently, the scrape of the foil packet loud in the relative silence. She'd left out her biggest sin—that she'd tried to use sex to keep him when it looked like Joshi was leaving. That she'd threatened to sell him out to a rival when that hadn't worked. That her fear had allowed her to ruin what had been her only healthy relationship. She blew a breath out in frustration.
She looked up to see Zar watching her as he ate. No judgment on his face, only sympathy. "Losing someone you care about hurts." A simple sentence but spoken in a voice that carried the sound of experience. "But it happens. That's not a reflection on you."
She snorted, shaking her head to clear it. What he didn't know about her could fill petabytes. "He came back anyway. It took a long time, but we're back to being friends. So, since this is apparently therapy hour, what about you?"
He laughed softly, took another spoonful of food. "I'm an open book. WYSIWYG."
"Hardly. You hide your arm for starters. If you were truly 'what you see is what you get', you wouldn't keep it hidden away."
His stillness made her nervous. She'd pushed and ruined the ease that had developed between them. She could count her heartbeats in the silence that blanketed the table.
"People don't react well to obvious limb replacements. Still." He poked into the packet absently before adding, "Once you're not the entertainment, you're a threat."
"So the fighting came after the arm? Or before?"
He blinked and tilted his head. "Dare I ask how you learned about that?"
"I ran facial recognition on you against the 'Net. One of the hits was some grainy crowd video from an underground cyborg fight."
"Hm." He nodded and went back to his food. Yashilla almost thought that was the end of the conversation, but after a few minutes' silence he added more. "The fights aren't as glamorous as people think. And as far as the arm's concerned...I don't like to talk about it. It's from the past."
"And yet you're carrying it with you. People get modified all the time, for all kinds of reasons. So what if they're afraid of you. They should be scared, same as the dinosaurs should have seen the threat when mammals showed up on the scene. The world is changing. Humanity has to change with it, or die out." Look at me, she wanted to add. She had more computing power sitting in her skull than the corporates had used to send people to Mars. The limits of human frailty were fast disappearing. At least physically.
Emotionally, we're still just apes.
"They had a reason to be afraid." He took a deep breath. "I had something of a reputation. The arm reinforced that reputation. I left the ring so I could be something, someone different." He ate a big spoonful of the rice and lentils to end his sentence.
"May I see it?" She indicated the array of ports at the back of her skull, the tattooed skin of her temples. "I'm showing mine."
He snorted, and the sound broke into laughter that alleviated the tension in the room. "I'll show you mine if you show me yours? Really?"
Making him laugh felt great, not just because he had a deep, resonant voice and an infectious smile. Seeing him happy left warmth in her chest that had nothing to do with the fiery sauce she'd added to her lunch. "If it works..."
He stood up, and she held her breath for a moment, thinking she'd pushed it too far and he was leaving. Then he crossed his arms, grabbed the hem of his Henley, and peeled the shirt up over his head. And she was holding her breath for an entirely different reason.
Gods damn. He was glorious.
Muscle rippled across his chest and bulged along his left arm. His right arm, as she'd glimpsed in grainy eyecam footage, stole her breath. Sleek and matte black, the composite surface had been engraved to resemble tattoo work. The inlay was done in the black as well, but gloss, calling attention to its expense and adding to its menace. By contrast, all the metal fittings had been finished in polished chrome. More metal extended across his back and down his spine, anchoring the limb in place so it wouldn't tear free from his body, with black striations to mimic musculature.
Yashilla resisted the urge to reach out and touch it. "It's custom?" As soon as she uttered the words she felt like an idiot. Of course it was custom. She knew all the major manufacturers, and nothing she'd seen came close to looking like that.
He nodded anyway. "The chassis is an Utada, from Mechanical Horizons. The chrome was done by an auto shop."
"And the shell?"
His chest swelled a little, and her mouth went dry. "One of a kind. I engraved each piece. Inlaid the onyx along the big pieces. The little ones..." He held out his hand, where the shell on each finger was just as elaborately decorated. "Those are just a paint effect, but it looks close enough."
She let her eyes drift up to the meat-machine interface, where lost muscle mass could make it look lopsided, but even there he was perfection. "It's beautiful. I can't imagine hiding it."
The pride drained out of his expression. "It's not who I am. Not anymore. If you knew about the fights, that means you know what I did. Before."
The word carried weight. Before he became a bodyguard. Before whatever happened in Nassau. Before he started hiding his magnificent arm. Or the rest of him. She knew all about before. "The boxing? Do I seem like I'd judge? People do what they have to do. Or what they enjoy. Or both. Whichever it was for you, it's nothing to be ashamed of."
"I went to great lengths to make sure it stood out. It's clearly not something I'm ashamed of."
She didn't know him well, but even she knew a lie when she heard one. "Then why?"
He went silent. Chrome sparkled between his knuckles as he clenched his fist. "Because it's unique, and CorpServ has eyes everywhere. I don't want them to recognize this until it's time for them to see it. And then it'll be too late."
He had a lot more unique identifiers than his arm, but she didn't have the heart to break that news to him. If he'd avoided Corporate Services' attention thus far, it's because he was beneath their notice. They might be corporates, but they had hackers that could match her skill. If she had been able to find him, then they shouldn't have any problem with it. She opened her mouth to say something, when she realized the depth of the silence, and ice flooded into her stomach.
Yashilla shoved up her sleeve and began tapping commands i
nto the interface before the implant had finished lighting up. "The engines are off."
"CorpServ?" And damn if he didn't sound eager at the prospect. Whatever they'd done to him, whatever he owed them for, she almost felt sorry for them.
"Not necessarily. Plenty of pirates in these waters." It was part of why shipping vessels went to automation once they were out of port. Cheaper than paying ransoms or hiring slow-haul crew. The ship would have defenses to take care of small boats before they could board, but they were part of the security system—which she'd bypassed to hide their own presence. So was the distress signal that would call for help if it recognized people onboard.
Security cameras across the ship began feeding to her visual field, alerting her to where in the ship the pirates were taking up position. Before she could say anything, Zar cracked the knuckles on his meat hand and smiled. "I'm going to go take care of it. Help me out?" He strode through the door and out of the room.
Zar made it to the bulkhead at the end of the hall before the chat window opened up in the lower corner of his vision.
You didn't leave a way for me to contact you.
He chuckled, muttering low enough for the mic to pick it up. "And yet we're still talking. I knew you'd find me." The dictation software on his bodycomp converted his words to text and sent them back after he paused. "You're clever like that." She'd learned about his past, after all. He still couldn't believe how he'd acted. Strutting. Showing off like when he'd been prizefighting, equal parts danger and bluster. He rolled his eyes.
