by Cecilia Tan
Jho Tagen, Prototype & Implementation Coordinator PORTAL Institute, Conjoint Federation of Governments
Xon blinked, then re-read the white letters searing themselves into the screen. He tested the authenticity of the message’s pathway and origin point, then ran a swift comparison program to ensure the writing style matched that of Tagen’s in public documents.
Pathway: authenticated. Origin point: PORTAL Sector 6A, Terminal 47. Style comparison: 75% official documents, 98% casual.
Xon had rested his hand on Sector 6A’s Terminal 47, before the nineteen-story safe house, before his talent turned on him, before life meant only perplexed chemists and greedy interrogation clients.
Pushing away from the terminal, Xon got to his feet, turning to the vast expanse of the window wall beside his bed. Beyond the ancient, warped glass, dusk had long ago faded; the city had drained of color, reduced to formless black shapes silhouetted by the occasional white glitter of safety lights reflected off rain. No less than eighteen floors had separated him from the city and its inhabitants for four years now, a desperate measure that was not successful so much as it was the least unsuccessful method he had tried. The soft murmur of thoughts, like a hundred children mumbling fitfully in their sleep, followed Xon even now, in the dead of night, sneaking in beneath the blanketing effect of the rain and the ingenuity of his chemist’s creations. Xon had learned to tolerate them at this level; there was no other choice. Silence was not a luxury afforded him. Human contact was out of the question.
Until now.
If Illan’s mental signature were faint enough to go unnoticed by Ops.... Xon shook his head. There was no corollary. He had far surpassed the sensitivity of an average Op years ago. No, no corollary, but if Illan were unreadable to them, the possibility existed that he was unreadable to Xon. The likelihood was slim, but if Xon could bear to stand beside him, to touch him again, to kiss him again....
Xon lowered his head into his hands and wept.
‡
The semi-automatic lay gleaming and primed upon the bed, perfectly maintained, never fired beyond practice. Xon stood at the foot of the bed, half-dressed, glancing between the clock ticking down minutes to Illan's arrival and the lethal, elegant weapon.
We'd use him as a spy , Tagen had said, seven years ago, if he wouldn't trip off every damn Op within five hundred feet. Tagen's neural net had been colored by wistfulness, but also a certain bitter frustration Xon had automatically shielded.
Another minute ticked by on the clock. Xon stared at the semiautomatic, sifting through the hazy memories of the facility, Tagen, the project, Illan.
Illan.
Xon shook his head. Illan would not have agreed to a spy mission. Not at Xon’s expense.
Not the Illan I knew. Seven years can change a man. He could hate me for what I’ve become.
Xon’s fingers shook as he buttoned his pants. It would be impossible to manage this cold.
Inside the slender wooden case from his chemist lay a series of syringes in neatly-labeled foam hollows. Xon selected one from the middle range, willing his hands steady to manage the injection. Once the static skittered through his veins, it all seemed very simple; he would take the maximum precautions and stand down as necessary.
Xon buckled the semi-automatic to his thigh, then shrugged on the calf-length coat that would at least partially hide its girth. Gloves. Dark glasses. All unnecessary buffers, if Tagen’s hopes proved viable.
If Tagen were to be trusted.
“Xon?”
The tinny voice from the front room’s intercom froze Xon in his tracks. He widened his perception in search of the source even as fear-sweat prickled his skin; he had not heard a voice without its split-second thought precursor in years. Logic told him Illan was in the lobby, at the other end of the intercom system, but without the familiar, uncomfortable psychic push of the subject’s surface thoughts, the logic seemed impossibly flawed. Even narrowing his focus revealed little; he found only a small, pulsing sense of life in the lobby, its neural net a faint and distorted ice-green. Xon had had stronger reads off stray cats.
“Xon?”
Xon exhaled, steadying himself, and moved to the intercom. “Yes.”
There was a small pause. Xon searched it for clues; nothing. “Hi. What do I do now?”
“Take the lift to the penthouse.”
“Okay.”
The lift shuddered into motion. Xon rested a hand on the semiautomatic, instinctively regulating his breath to combat the sudden surge of adrenaline. Breathe. Oxygenate. Wait for interpretable signals. As Illan’s signal strengthened with its increasing proximity, Xon began to map it, frowning as he discovered more blank spots than information. It was not at all the neural landscape Xon had perceived in Illan before; his anxiety was familiar, manifesting itself as Xon remembered it, but otherwise the fragmentation was extreme. Xon’s search turned up a scent memory, hyperconsciousness regarding a hand, a half-obscured thought fragment about food. Xon’s automatic effort to expose the information’s web of relativity was useless.
Sweat trickled down Xon’s sides as the ancient lift ticked and popped along its course. He glanced at the smooth steel covering the lift’s access panel. He could halt the lift in seconds; in minutes, he could rewire it to return the car to the lobby and then disable it altogether. He could curl into bed, comforted by the slow tocking of his metronome and another fat syringe of half-effective static, and forget that he had ever agreed to such a risky venture.
The lift doors opened.
Illan still dressed as topsiders had when he went into testing; T-shirt, loose jeans, looser jacket. He’d flipped up the collar to hide his nape ports. “Xon?”
Information poured from Illan’s net now, scattered and random, fragments of numbers, fears, hopes that Xon barely recognized before they slid out of his perception. Xon swallowed down panic, the heavy weight of the semi-automatic against his thigh a bare comfort, and attempted to visually ascertain whether Illan was armed. Such a method felt clumsily arcane, and again Xon harnessed his anxiety, lowered it, cleared his head. It's only the static distorting the fear. Concentrate. Return to emergency skills. Isolate the three primary information variables: eye contact, body language, and facial expression.
The lift doors began to slide shut. Illan stuck a hand out to stop them, remaining in the car. “Xon? Is it okay?”
Subject maintains eye contact. Body language is insufficient for consideration due to holding back the lift door. Facial expression is... Xon shook his head, frustrated. Friendly. Cautious. Guarded. Anxious. Eager. Open.
“Xon?”
Xon exhaled. There was only one way to proceed. “It’s all right.”
“Can I get out?”
Xon nodded again, stepping back to maintain as much distance between them as possible. Illan took a single step forward, just enough to let the lift doors slide shut behind him. “Can you, uh, lose the shades, or is that part of your thing?”
Xon considered, then slid the dark glasses off and into a pocket. Whatever negligible purpose they served as a minor clothing buffer was useless; the fragmentation was too extreme to require such filters.
“There. Now I recognize you.” Illan stared openly, looking Xon up and down. “It’s good to see you.”
Keeping his breath strictly modulated, Xon could keep the lethargic haze of the static at bay as well as the sharper anxiety. In the pseudo-calm it became clear that Illan was attempting appropriate social conversation despite decidedly unusual circumstances. “It’s good to see you, too,” Xon returned. “I haven’t stood this close to someone in four years,” he added, hoping it might explain away elements of his hesitation.
Illan nodded. “It’s been about six for me, unless you count the doctors and techs. And Tagen. I don’t count Tagen,” he grinned.
Xon nodded, though he was unsure of Illan’s point, and Illan’s expression sobered quickly. Subject appears nervous, Xon recognized, relieved that he could pin down the
emotion.
“How does it feel?” Illan asked, shifting his weight from one foot to the other.
Xon considered, searching for a proper approximation to a layperson. “I can determine fragments of thought and emotion, some of which are whole, but for the most part, your neural signature is like that.” Xon pointed to the steel cooler that dominated his kitchenette a few feet away.
Illan laughed, his body language relaxing all at once. “Well, I’ll be sure to tell Tagen you read me as half-human, half-refrigerator. I’m sure it’s only the steel components, but he’ll love it.”
Xon chanced a smile. With Illan in front of him, it was easier to remember the specifics of the last time they met; Illan had always been mischievously forthright. He’d had a self-comfort Xon envied at the time, and Illan hadn’t changed. Though there was no reason to trust him, there was no reason to distrust him, either.
“I’m thinking of a number between one and ten,” Illan offered.
Xon stepped back immediately, breath sticking in his throat as he turned his face away. “Don’t.”
“Why not?”
“Don’t invite me.”
“Xon. If it’s not going to hold, shouldn’t we know now, instead of... later, when we’re in the middle of something?”
The logic of the test was sound. Xon could not allow his anxiety to override that. “True,” he murmured, relieved that as he turned to face Illan again there was no drastic increase in the intensity of his reading as he had feared.
“So I’m thinking of a number. Find it.”
“Don’t use your implants.”
“There wouldn’t be any point.”
Xon closed his eyes. This close, any other man’s net would be screaming the digit, broadcasting it in giant numerals, the input so intense that Xon’s body would begin to shut down out of sheer self-preservation. Often, he plucked long strings of numbers from the brains of the interrogation subjects who were brought to the locked room in his lobby, left there only long enough for Xon to separate out the subject’s thoughts from those of the men who ferried him there. Illan bore no resemblance to those men whatsoever. Xon could feel the faint inward pull of the net that indicated contemplation of itself, proving that the number was not squirreled away on any circuitry. Xon focused, searching for a surface thought to ride in, a spike of emotion that would lead inward, the specific thread of concentration to follow to its source.
Anxiety. The floor of the lift. A half-eaten lunch. Lust.
“I can’t,” Xon murmured, opening his eyes.
“Excellent,” Illan grinned. “It’s really going to work, isn’t it?”
“It may.”
Illan smiled. “It’s good to see you again,” he murmured, and stepped closer. Xon stepped back accordingly, and the smile faded from Illan’s face. “Sorry,” he whispered, glancing away. “It’s been a long time.”
“Tagen isn’t interested in the somatic stimulation anymore?”
“Oh, he is.” Illan nodded, repeatedly. “But it’s worse than using your hand. Pure machinistic orgasm. You know how when you discovered you could jerk off, it was the most wicked thing ever, but it got old when you realized what real sex was like?” Illan shook his head, staring down at his feet. Unusual comfort barriers, Xon diagnosed, likely caused by the artificial social construct of his testing environment. “It’s incredible, what the somatics can do, the physical sensation. But it’s not like being touched.”
Faintly, on the horizon of Illan’s neural net, Xon perceived shame.
“I asked Tagen to help me once,” Illan said, barely more than a whisper. “To touch me.” His lips twisted upward. “He’s not as open to such things as you might think.”
Xon reached out with a gloved hand, swallowing hard as he closed the gap between them to rest his palm against Illan’s upper arm. Illan held very still, watching Xon’s hand, and breathed, “It’s okay?”
“It seems to be.” Lust eased into Xon’s field of perception; the shame faded.
“I missed you,” Illan whispered.
“Come this way,” Xon murmured, gently leading Illan toward the bedroom.
Illan was drawn immediately to the glassed wall, fearlessly pressing up close to the panes. It had taken Xon some time to grow accustomed to the sense of standing on a ledge that the ceiling-to-floor glass allowed, but Illan seemed to need no such acclimatization. “It’s beautiful,” Illan breathed.
“It is.” Xon tugged off his gloves and rested them neatly on their shelf, then shrugged off his coat.
Illan turned, and Xon felt him careen abruptly from wistfulness to sheer terror. “Shit!” Illan yelped, eyes wide on the semi-automatic strapped to Xon’s thigh. “What the fuck, Xon?”
Xon didn’t bother looking up, his fingers working the straps around his thigh. “I have many enemies.”
“In case you haven’t noticed, they’re not here.”
“I could not read your thoughts or motivations. I had to be certain.” Xon frowned lightly; he was indeed certain now, though he could point to no clear reason why.
“Fair enough,” Illan said, the words coming out more slowly; hesitancy, uncertain acceptance. That made sense, Xon decided. In Illan’s shoes, he’d also be dubious of a known criminal packing a semi-automatic.
Illan slipped off his jacket, draping it over one arm of the chair beside the bed, and Xon pulled in a breath. He remembered the trio of ports triangulated just beneath the base of Illan’s skull, but that didn’t make them any less impressive. Illan scratched absently at his forearm, and Xon’s eyes followed the motion to the mini-ports lancing the insides of both of Illan’s wrists. “Those are new,” he noted.
“New?” Illan glanced down, drawing a thumb over the steel. “Well, I guess they’re new to you. Experiments in direct-to-vein porting for chemical injection. Kind of a mega-shunt.”
Xon shook his head, at once appalled and allured. If it were not against his code, a quick and dirty method to facilitate faster static in a crisis would be... “welcome” is not a strong enough word.
“They’re a bitch to clean, though,” Illan continued, in the absent, rambling fashion Xon had come to identify as nervous behavior. “Pseudoalc wipes every day. Sting like fuck. Tagen says the skin’ll toughen up eventually.” He snorted. “It’s been two years.”
“I’m sorry.”
Illan shrugged. “I block out the pain. It’s nothing.” He sat down on the edge of the bed and smiled at Xon, then looked away, a peculiar mixture of affect Xon couldn’t interpret. “I’m nervous.”
“So am I.”
“What happens if this doesn’t work?”
Xon pointed toward two syringes on the nightstand. “I inject one or the other, depending on the state of distress, and you leave as you entered.”
“I hope it doesn’t come to that. It would be a real blow to a guy’s ego if making out with him caused a ‘state of distress’ that required medication.”
“It isn’t specific to—”
“I know. Joking.”
Free of the semi-automatic now, Xon seated himself beside Illan, drawing in a calming breath. Illan smiled again, and Xon returned the expression, uncertain what to say.
Illan rested his hand over Xon’s.
At once, Illan’s emotions flashed transparent. Xon recognized anxiety and lust in equal measures, though he could not determine whether the touch had strengthened the reading or simply touched off a spike in Illan’s emotional level. It didn’t matter. Illan’s hand was warm over his own, slightly damp, and Xon didn’t want him to pull away.
Illan drew Xon’s hand to his cheek, gently settling Xon’s palm against his jaw. “All right?”
Xon nodded. Breathing felt suddenly awkward. He stroked Illan’s skin slowly, taking in texture, warmth, the sheer closeness he’d desired for so long.
“Come on,” Illan whispered. “Kiss me.”
Cautiously, Xon pressed his lips to Illan’s. The quality of the reading did not change, and the kn
owledge galvanized Xon, sent him grabbing for Illan’s ported neck and slanting his mouth awkwardly over Illan’s. Illan’s fingers tangled in his hair, tugging him closer, and Xon’s lust eclipsed the faint haze of Illan’s neural net entirely. Now, there was only the warm hunger of Illan’s mouth, the eager clumsiness of his hands, the burning flush of excitement on the skin beneath Xon’s fingertips.
“I remember the way you taste,” Illan breathed.
Moaning, Xon reached for the hem of Illan’s shirt, hungry for skin now, but Illan rested his hands on Xon’s, stilling them. Puzzled, Xon automatically reached for answers. It wasn’t uncertainty. It was simply a moment of thought for compliance, a luxury Illan could not afford with the men who experimented upon him.
I shouldn’t know that, Xon realized as Illan skimmed off his shirt himself. “It’s not holding.”
Illan blinked at him. “Yes it is, Xon,” he assured, though his tone was less than certain. “You couldn’t find my number when I got here. You still can’t.”
Xon nodded, exhaling a calming breath. It had been years since he’d misinterpreted conjecture for a reading, but these were extraordinary circumstances. He must have simply become confused. He must have.
Illan made a halfhearted attempt at folding his shirt. A mini-port pocking the skin just above his left pec caught Xon’s eye. As Illan twisted to toss his shirt into the chair, Xon took stock of the remainder of Illan’s ports: a regulation-size port was drilled into Illan’s spine three inches below the trinity at his nape, a spot heralded as the future of default port placement ten years ago but quickly abandoned. A row of three ports lay just above Illan’s hipbones, one into spine and two into flesh, for the somatics. “Ten?” Xon hazarded.
Illan tilted his head, and Xon watched intently, disturbed by his inability to determine the purpose of the gesture. “I know your code says all of this is wrong, but don’t feel sorry for me. I like what I do.”
