Exin Ex Machina

by G. S. Jennsen

  He hadn’t been lying to her all this time. She knew this not due to any specific fact available to her from the memory, but because she’d sensed him in the memory. She’d gotten a fleeting glimpse at his soul, and whatever else he may or may not be, he hadn’t been lying when he said he’d loved her.

  And because she knew her own face and what it showed of her own soul, she knew he also hadn’t been lying he said she’d loved him in return.

  Feeling his eyes on her now was like reversing the hall of mirrors so she stood on the receiving end of the gaze she’d seen herself through. She glanced down at her wet clothes and bedraggled appearance. How could he see any trace of that poised, elegant woman in her?

  She wanted so badly to keep calling the woman a stranger, but his perception of her rippled through her mind, transforming the woman into someone she both longed and feared to recognize.

  He stood stiffly by the wall. “I wish you didn’t believe you needed to leave, but I accept it. If you…decide you want help tracking down the source of the augment virutox…you know how to reach me.” Flat. Defeated. Gutted. The woman in the memory would never have inflicted such pain on him.

  A ping from Perrin arrived, the alert flashing in her virtual vision as if begging for her attention. She shut all personal notifications off.

  Then, without consciously deciding to do it, she turned fully away from the door and began to walk slowly toward him. “I’m sorry she’s gone. I’m sorry I can’t bring her back for you.”

  His jaw flexed, but he didn’t respond. She understood why he remained silent. She understood him—too stubborn to concede the truth, suddenly taciturn with someone he was loathe to admit he might not know at all.

  But she craved the look of adoration, of intimacy, that he’d bestowed on her in the memory. It conveyed comfort, the safety of unrestricted devotion, a sense of belonging—three things she’d never experienced. Not this time around.

  She stepped closer and, as if in a daze, brought a hand up to reach for his cheek, so like in the memory, seeking what was lost—

  —his hand snapped up and grabbed her wrist. “Do not toy with me, Nika. I’m begging you. Go, or stay, but don’t do this to me. I’m on the ragged edge here. If you touch me like you mean it, then walk away, I will not survive the closing of the door behind you.”

  She nodded in understanding, and his hand loosened its hold on her wrist. As soon as it did, she swiftly closed the remaining distance to press her palm to his cheek and her lips to his. Carefully, tentatively.

  His lips hinted at anything but gentleness. Was this how it had felt from her perspective when he’d kissed her? Warm, firm, holding at bay a flood of passion but only just.

  His hand landed atop hers, and instead of yanking it away, he pressed it more tightly against his skin.

  Like coming home. Impossible. Gone. Yet….

  She drew back a fraction, letting her eyes meet his—then she was drowning in the fervency of their desperation, hope and desire. His. Hers. They blended together in her mind and their bodies until it didn’t matter.

  Everything happened at once as one of his hands wound into her wet and tangled hair, both of hers buried themselves in his far softer locks, and their lips met once more. His other hand pressed into her back, holding her close.

  He needed her. She knew this, even if the nature of ‘her’ remained in question. She needed…to believe. Believe that she had been real before. That she’d existed, and his embrace proved it.

  Her own sensations—tangible, visceral, newly potent—gradually overcame the lingering, haunting memory of his. Need flowed between them in a reinforcing feedback loop, and her desire spiked to match his.

  Was doing this fair to him? She wasn’t the woman he loved…but right now she felt rather like it.

  Was doing this fair to her? On the other side waited renewed angst and a bitter struggle…his teeth teased across her jaw on the way to her neck…oh, fuck it. She didn’t care.

  Her hand slid down from his cheek and past his collar to part the seam of his shirt, but she paused when she reached his heart. It beat madly in his chest, racing, out of control. The earnestness it betrayed froze her for an instant, but before he could do something stupid like stop her, she continued on the rest of the way down to open his shirt fully then flattened her palm against his burning skin.

  “Why?” His voice was low and rough, bearing little resemblance to the deliberate, measured tone she’d come to associate with him.

  Her lips dipped below his chin to his throat. “I want to feel what she felt.”

  His chest expanded beneath her hand as he sucked in a breath. “I can oblige.”

  He spun her around and pinned her against the wall. His hands dropped to the hem of her shirt, but instead of yanking it upward, his palms roved underneath the material, warming her damp skin as the shirt up inched along the path of his wrists.

  She gasped when his fingertips brushed across a nipple—then her shirt was over her head and on the floor. She urged his shirt over his shoulders in turn and let it fall away. His skin pressed against hers, kindling a new wave of heady sensations…and the urgent need for more. More skin, more touching. More everything.

  Her fingertips fumbled for the waistband of his pants—and she felt him tremble beneath her touch.

  He tilted her chin up until her eyes met his. “Nika….”

  The raw, frayed emotion bleeding from his voice with the simple utterance of her name nearly sent her scrambling back for the door…only she didn’t want to leave, dammit. She brought both hands up to stroke his face. “I need you to be here, with me, now. Don’t make love to a ghost.”

  He smiled, and she realized the desolation of earlier had vanished to reveal the first genuinely open, mirthful expression she’d seen him wear in the short time she’d known him. “There’s nothing ghostly about you.”

  She wasn’t entirely sure that was the answer she’d been looking for, or a real answer at all, but as he lifted her up into his arms and she wound her legs around his hips, it faded into irrelevance.

  More hall then a door frame passed at the edges of her perception, then the plush cushioning of what must be his bed met her back. He followed her down, his mouth roving down her neck to wind across her chest, suckling each nipple in turn.

  His tongue expertly teased her skin along the way, and he seemed to sense her desires nanoseconds before she did. His hands cupped her ass, and she eagerly lifted up to allow him to peel the rain-soaked designer pants off an agonizing centimeter at a time.

  When they finally released her toes and landed on the floor, his lips and his tongue reversed their path, caressing her with an intimacy and familiarity no stranger could fake.

  He knew exactly how to touch her, where to touch her—of course he did, but for her this was the first time being at his mercy, and the blissful agony overwhelmed her.

  She reached for him—and the next second he was there, naked and hovering a mere breath above her. “Oh, how I have missed you.”

  Her heart answered him in return, even as her mind insisted it was impossible that she had missed him and her body insisted that she just wanted him. She let the first two argue it out while she followed the siren call of the third and drew him closer, into her arms and her body.

  Dashiel chuckled warmly and trailed a fingertip down from my collarbone, tracing a path between my breasts then letting it dance across my abdomen. “I was a little worried when you said you were going in for an up-gen, even a minor one, but you’re exactly the same.”

  “This is not true. I am now twenty-two percent more patient with official procedures, filings, reviews and all things bureaucracy.”

  “Got in trouble for bitching because some new exploratory world approval was taking too long, did you?”

  I rolled my eyes and shifted onto my side, encouraging his fingertip to continue on to my hip. “Something like that.” I grinned mischievously. “I’m also thirty-six percent more attracted to
men who have chestnut hair with amber highlights and hazel irises, so look out.”

  “Oh?” His lips hummed against my shoulder. “And here I thought you had already maxed that one out.”

  “I had. I guess we’ll get to find out what happens when I overload it.” My mouth found his in renewed hunger for the pleasures his touch offered as my arms drew him against me. “Yes, again.”

  Nika blinked, confused and disoriented. Was she awake, or asleep? Had it been a dream or, somehow, a memory?

  Nika locked her ankles together at the small of my back and yanked me closer. Her arms were stretched out over the rim of the pool, and her eyes danced with even greater mischief than usual.

  I bit my lip as my skin met hers, but faked nonchalance to reach behind her and retrieve our shared drink. Beyond the ledge, a cliff plummeted to the ocean far below, where rocks brought turmoil to the lapping waves.

  I tipped the glass to her lips first, and shuddered in anticipation as she licked them, leaving tiny bubbles of champagne clinging to them along the path of her tongue. I hurriedly took a sip as well, then fumbled around trying to return the glass to the ledge.

  As soon as I removed my hand from the glass, it toppled into the water.

  She laughed as we watched it float away. “Oh no, we’re out of champagne.”

  I had a meeting on Ebisu in five hours with a theater company about a rather novel deployment of a stand-alone local nex network. I now embraced the reality that I would be handling it on no sleep.

  “Whatever shall we do without more champagne? Wait, I have an idea.” I grasped her hips and shifted her body to my liking. Another centimeter and I would slip inside her. “Yes, again.”

  Dashiel opened his eyes, shocked to find his bedroom ceiling above him instead of an unobstructed night sky.

  No, that was a memory. But how? He’d erased the details of that night over three years ago in a fit of despair heightened by enough doses to remove him from his right mind. Yet here it was, as clear in his mind as if it were happening now.

  Nika blinked again. This was the same bed beneath her, the same delightfully warm skin pressed against her chest.

  It must have been a dream…but no dream had ever felt so real.

  She looked up to find Dashiel gazing at her, an odd expression on his face. His right hand was wrapped around her left, their fingertips touching.

  She smiled hesitantly. “I must have dozed off for a few minutes.”

  “Me, too.” Then he gripped her thighs and hoisted her up until his lips met hers. Passion drove the kiss to unexpected fervor, and she couldn’t honestly say from which of them it originated.

  When he finally drew back for a breath, she stretched a leg over his hips and sidled fully atop him. He entwined one of his hands into her hair, and they both spoke at once.

  “Yes, again.”

  29

  * * *

  Ryan: “Two hostiles in the next corridor. Security-grade dynes. Stun bomb incoming.”

  Ryan leaned out into the hallway long enough to lob a grenade toward the approaching dynes, then flattened back against the wall. Three seconds later he felt the tickle of the outer edges of the stun bomb’s range, followed by the clattering sound of collapsing frames.

  WheatleyBot swung into the hallway in scan mode and surveyed the results. Sure enough, the two dynes lay entangled in one another on the floor.

  Ryan: “Hostiles down.”

  Ava: “Carson, Team 2 status?”

  Silence answered.

  Ava: “Carson, report.”

  Carson: “Eh, we’ve got a slight spiderbot infestation problem in the control room. Stand by.”

  Ava: “Just EMP the room.”

  Carson: “Can’t. It will fry the systems along with the spiderbots, and then we won’t be able to get the maintenance door open for you. Stand by.”

  Ava: “Fine, we’ll get in the hard way.”

  Carson: “Give us ten more seconds—”

  Ava: “Taking point. Team 1, move ahead.”

  Ava rushed forward into the hallway, weaponized arm raised, and Ryan followed.

  The next hallway opened up into the anteroom of the prisoner wing. Ava shot the head off the dyne staffing the security checkpoint, then shot up the module powering the force field barrier until it exploded and the force field fizzled away.

  Ryan: “Well, now everyone knows we’re here.”

  Ava: “So we move faster. Into the prisoner wing.”

  Ryan: “Let me scope it first.”

  Ava: “No time.”

  She charged through the shell of the former barrier and into the wing it had guarded. Ryan again followed, WheatleyBot orbiting his head to scan in every direction.

  Carson: “Maggie configured a targeted EM pulse for the spiderbots. Control room is clear. The maintenance door should be open in fifteen seconds.”

  Ava: “Too late. Team 2, retreat and guard the exit route—”

  Maggie: “Ava, give us a chance to—”

  Ryan: “Incoming from the intersection ahead!”

  A combat mecha unit rounded the corner ten meters ahead of them.

  Ryan dropped to a knee and bent his left arm in front of him to manifest a force field shield. WheatleyBot, behind me!

  Ava did not adopt a similar defensive position. Instead she sprinted forward, arm firing, and leapt up onto the mecha. Blood spurted out an exit wound in the back of her shoulder, but she maintained a steady stream of energy point-blank into the mecha’s chest. Then a blade unfurled from her other hand, and she jabbed it into the mecha’s neck.

  Ryan’s shield sparked and hissed under the torrent of the mecha’s fire. He’d like to help, but everything in his arsenal would likely take out Ava along with the mecha. All he could do at present was survive the onslaught.

  WheatleyBot shrieked a warning.

  Ryan: “We’ve got more incoming from our rear!”

  As the mecha collapsed in a wreck to the floor, Ava climbed off it and stumbled in Ryan’s direction. Her right shoulder sagged and the weaponized arm hung limply at her side. She used her left hand to hold up her right arm and pointed the weapon over his head at the advancing hostiles.

  Carson: “The maintenance door is open, if anyone cares.”

  The walls and the hostiles faded away, and the lights of the training room replaced them.

  Ryan stood and shut down WheatleyBot. After a second Ava joined him, all traces of physical damage gone from her body. Across the room, Carson and Maggie displayed matching poses: arms crossed over their chests, scowls on their faces.

  Joaquim leaned against the wall and considered them in some consternation. “Ava, what did you learn from this exercise?”

  “That I need to install the Glaser tech in my left arm, too.”

  “No. Want to try for a better answer?”

  She sighed in resignation. “That I shouldn’t get impatient. Give the other teams time to do their jobs. But Maggie and Carson were taking entirely too long, and during that time we were exposed.”

  Maggie took several steps toward her sister. “You are so infuriating—!”

  Joaquim waved her off. “True on all counts, Ava. In the heat of the moment, decisions are rarely clear-cut. You still have to make a judgment call. In this case, you should have given Carson and Maggie their ten seconds. Why?”

  Ava shrugged.

  Joaquim worked to keep the frustration off his face. He was teaching, not commanding. And when teaching—if not when commanding—he needed to make allowances for the fact that everyone was distracted and on edge since Parc’s arrest. And for the fact that they had to make mistakes in order to learn from them.

  “Because you didn’t have the firepower needed to neutralize the hostile forces that were almost guaranteed to come your way once you started shooting up the place. This was presented as a stealth infiltration operation for a reason. You can’t always simply shoot everything—also, you need to give someone else a chance to shoot something from
time to time. Everyone needs the practice.”

  He nodded to himself as much as to the group. “All right. We’ll run it again with new variables, so don’t expect the same surprises. Expect different ones. Ava, you’re following orders this round. Carson, you’ve got the lead—”

  The door to the training room opened, and Perrin peeked in. “Sorry to interrupt, guys. Joaquim, can I talk to you for a minute?”

  “Take five, everybody. Maybe think about what you can do better in the next round.” He trailed Perrin out the door. “What’s up? How did the meeting with the new recruit go?”

  “What? Oh, it went well enough. He’s a good guy and a decent candidate, or he will be once he gets his head straight.” She spun back to face him, but her body kept fidgeting. “Nika’s not answering any pings.”

  Shit. He’d hoped the training session would prevent him from sitting around anxiously stewing over Nika’s meeting with Ridani all night. The diversion had worked, right up until now.

  He immediately pinged her himself, then tried to project a lack of concern for Perrin’s benefit while he waited for a response. “I’m sure she’s fine. Nika was right—she can take care of herself. I expect she’s got a lot being thrown at her is all—”

  “She’s probably banging him, right?”

  Joaquim huffed a breath. “Or that, yes.” Nika was normally more cautious than that with strangers, but where her past was concerned, it was possible the rules got thrown out the window. Of course, if Perrin was right, Nika could have done them the courtesy of an ‘I’ll be a while’ check-in first. Or after. Or sometime.

  Perrin smiled, which did nothing to mask the worry the rest of her body language projected. “I bet that’s it. I mean, it’s not like we can expect her to be updating us constantly when she’s in the middle of a whirlwind romantic reunion.”

  Her chin dropped, and she stared at her hands. “It’s just, her locator isn’t on, either. I realize the meeting wasn’t technically an operation, and she never turns it on during personal time. So it doesn’t mean anything.” Her eyes rose beneath a knotted brow to gaze up at him hopefully. “Right?”