Nerves of Steel

by Lee Hayton

  The twinkle in her eye was at odds with the stern twist of her mouth. Where Nika was concerned, I opted to go with her worried lips.

  “I don’t know that I can handle any more trouble,” I said. “We’re packed up as it is, ready to leave.”

  She nodded. “There’s a chance that bounty might disappear if you play your cards right.”

  Nika dropped her voice almost an octave, lessening the volume at the same time. “I’ve got a contact willing to work with you who makes the Pennyworths look like chump change. Whatever you need to be gone, he has the power to make disappear.”

  Nika held her fingertips up to her mouth and blew, exploding them out wide. “Poof.”

  “Who is this mysterious player?”

  She giggled and held a finger up to her lips. “I can’t tell you. You need to let me know if you want the job, then I’ll set the whole thing up.”

  When I hesitated, looking down at my watch and thinking about Norman, she continued, “There’re other names I can hand him, you know. I’ve only thought of you first because I owe you.”

  Nika frowned at me, her face stern until it collapsed into laughter. “Well, that, and you’re in a shitstorm of trouble, right about now.”

  A shitstorm that wasn’t going to let up just because Norman and I skipped town.

  “Okay,” I said. “But I need to get an advance on any monies owing and make sure Norman and I are settled in a new place.” I nodded at the phone she held, ready to dial. “If he’s fine with that, then once we’ve shifted out, I’ll be willing to do any job he wants me to put my mind to. It’s only worth it if me and Norman end up safe and free, though. No deal otherwise.”

  Nika snorted. “Believe me, honey, this guy could snap his fingers and buy you and Norman your own town if he wanted to. If you just want a new apartment, it’s done.”

  She dialed and held the phone up to her ear. When a voice answered, instead of entering into a conversation, Nika pulled the mobile away and pressed a sequence of numbers on the keypad.

  “What are you doing?” I asked just as she hung up.

  “You can go home now,” Nika said, smiling broadly. “I’ve told him you want the job.”

  “What about my conditions?”

  Nika shrugged. “Tell him yourself, honey. He’s on his way to your apartment. By the time you get home, he’ll be waiting for you.”

  Chapter Ten

  If I was meant to recognize the man standing in my kitchen, then I failed. Apart from being the most nondescript person I’d laid eyes on in a while, he didn’t have anything about him to be recognized. Medium brown hair, medium height, eyes somewhere in the middle ground between brown and blue.

  How was that even possible? I looked again, but still ended up without knowing for sure. In the lowering afternoon light, they twinkled blue before plunging down into the shadows of brown.

  Norman was nowhere to be seen. As I walked through to the kitchen to greet my employer, I gave a surreptitious kick to the reinforced case. The thing didn’t move. I guessed that was his new haunt for the time being. Lord knows where he’d stored Miss Tiddles.

  “Nika told me that you had a job for me?”

  The man stared, his head tilted to one side. I noticed that he wore gloves, the tip of his right forefinger held a light coating of dust. He followed my gaze, and his mouth curled up in a moue of distaste. With one swipe on the back of his trouser leg, the specks departed. The faint look of disgust remained.

  “She told me that you had a way with chemicals.” His voice was high and thin, belonging to a man inches skinnier and taller. After speaking he made a strange noise, buzzing his lips and letting the vibration echo up the back of his nose. “Hmmmmm.”

  “That’s true,” I said. His manner gave me pause, and I hesitated, not rounding out my explanation the way I usually would. “If you tell me what you’re after, I’ll be able to tell you if I can help.”

  “You can help.”

  He was staring down at his shoes, one eyebrow raised and his eyes widening with horror. I guessed from his expression he’d found the patch where I’d spilled the lemonade last week. It gets a bit sticky, all that sugar drying in the afternoon sun.

  “Who else lives here?”

  I gave a start and immediately felt a flush of shame that I was so jumpy. The automatic lie—I live alone—sprang to my lips, but I didn’t bother to utter them. The man’s OCD eyes had picked up something, probably many things. It was too late to mislead him, and I’d just look untrustworthy if I tried.

  “I have a roommate, but he’s not here at the moment. It won’t interfere with any job you have for me.”

  The man turned and surveyed the room in a slow spin that I followed until it made me dizzy. “I’ll take your word for that. There’ll be consequences if you’re wrong.”

  After two minutes spent in this man’s company, I’d never felt so dirty. With perfect clarity, I could envisage how he saw my home, coated with a thin layer of grime.

  But what of it? I wasn’t asking him for a favor, he was asking me.

  “What is it that you want me to do?”

  When the man didn’t immediately respond, I took one step toward him. Suddenly, two bodyguards peeled off from the curtains and the wallpaper, stepping forward to halt my progress. Although the man waved them back into position, the threat of their bulky presence remained.

  “We potentially have a problem with some of the escaping vampires who have been running over the border.” The man rubbed his thumb and forefinger together again, his nostrils flaring, perhaps at the memory of dust.

  “What sort of trouble?”

  The man snorted. “It seems they’ve got a strange idea in their heads that they can raise an army and overthrow their ‘oppressors.’” He put the word in air-quotes, the mockery oozing out of every pore.

  “As you said, I deal in chemicals.” I shrugged and shook my head. “There’s not much I can do with a bunch of crazy ideas.”

  The man smiled. “You can make them feel better, no?”

  “I can make anybody feel anything,” I shot back. “I still don’t see what good that can do.”

  The man stepped forward, walking off the sticky kitchen floor and standing a foot in front of me. Although he stared straight at my face, I couldn’t meet his roving eyes.

  “You go to one of their meetings and make their leader feel calmer, less inclined to cause trouble,” he said. “Send them all on a small trip into happyville if you have to. Anything to help them forget their plans.”

  “I can’t do—”

  I had been about to explain that there was a limit on the numbers I could treat at any one time. One raised forefinger stopped me.

  “I don’t need to hear your objections or your concerns.” He leaned forward, staring into my eyes with such intensity that I had to look away. “All I need is for you to do what you can. Put your skills to their most effective use once you assess the situation.”

  He smiled, an inappropriate dimple marking his face as human for one brief second before the expression dropped into the blankness of an automaton again.

  “When you have them nicely distracted, I have men who can clear up the rest.” He brushed his gloved hand along the front of his trousers as though flicking a meddlesome piece of dust away.

  The suitcase on the floor behind me gave a sudden thump.

  I managed not to jump, not to show any indication I’d noticed anything. When the two guards bounced forward again, I looked at each of them with the raised eyebrows of surprise.

  “I’ll need to think about this,” I said. “I’m in the middle of moving, so it won’t happen today.”

  The man tilted his head to one side. “Your friend mentioned that you might be in-between accommodations.”

  In the time it took me to get here, Nika could easily have contacted this man again and discussed my living arrangements over the phone. She could have done that. I didn’t believe for a second that she had.


  Somehow, this odd fellow had known about my impending move already. A decision that I hadn’t discussed with anybody except the person currently curled up in the suitcase.

  Even amongst the people I knew who dealt with secrets and information for a living, this man was good.

  “Where do I reach you?” I asked. “When I’ve made a decision about the job offer?”

  A click of his fingers and one of the man’s bodyguards stepped forward, pressing a card into my hand. “That’s the number to call me when you’re ready to do the job.”

  I looked at the details. A phone number and address.

  Before I could ask, he continued, “That’s the address where the free vampires are meeting to cook up their harebrained plans. Their next scheduled appointment is two days from now. I’ll expect a call to accept before then.”

  He nodded at his two men, and they walked to the door, one holding it open, the other venturing out into the corridor and signaling that it was clear.

  “Wait a moment,” I said. “What’s the payment you’re offering?”

  The man glanced at the suitcase on the floor behind me, then looked at my welded-together face.

  “The bounty on you and your friend’s head will disappear,” he said. “The debt to the government will be wiped clean, and the empire won’t come after you again.”

  He paused, letting the silence fill and expand the room until I found it hard to breathe.

  “You might want to make that decision quickly.” He glanced over at the window where the late afternoon had merged into the evening. “I heard there’s some people calling you in already.”

  “And if the empire catches us, I can agree to this job, and you’ll ensure that we’re let go?”

  He laughed without any other sign of amusement. “I can’t stop the empire from doing anything it wants, not until you’ve done the job we’ve agreed on.” He tapped his gloved finger on the card in my hand. “Make sure you call this number sooner rather than later.”

  The thud from the suitcase again. The man kept his gaze fixed on mine, both of us pretending we didn’t hear.

  “Two days. Then the offer goes away.”

  I nodded as he walked by me, turning when he reached the door. “Can I ask you for your name?”

  He smiled, thinning out his lips to the point they almost disappeared. “You can ask.”

  With a snap of his fingers, he and his bodyguards walked out the door.

  Norman stamped his foot with frustration. “You’re not seriously considering doing it?”

  From the moment Norman had burst free of the suitcase, he’d practically been frothing at the mouth.

  “If you stop those vampires, they’ll lose their best chance at getting into negotiations for freedom.”

  “Doesn’t sound like they’re negotiating,” I said. “You said it yourself, the vampires’ plan is an impossible dream.”

  My voice was so soft that it was close to disappearing altogether. Its frailty meant Norman had to stop pacing and concentrate long enough to listen.

  “They don’t have the infrastructure set up,” I reminded him. “They don’t have the resources or the numbers. Even if they managed to get half the country to join in their crusade, they wouldn't be able to hold an army together long enough to send them on one coordinated plan of attack.”

  Norman walked closer, pointing his finger into my face. “They obviously have enough going on that the empire is worried. Why else would their goons be here asking for your help?”

  I shook my head, raising my hand up to press against my forehead and closed my eyes. “Taking care of a problem so that nobody gets hurt isn’t the same as believing they’ll actually be able to do something.”

  I fingered the card that I’d tucked into my front jeans pocket. “And I don’t think they were from the empire or the government.”

  Norman flung his hands up into the air. Whatever. “I can’t believe that you’d go and work for them after everything we’ve been through.”

  This time, it was my turn to shove my finger into Norman’s face. “First off, we don’t know who he works for. Second, I haven’t agreed. If you hadn’t pushed for me to ask about this stupid plot to begin with, I’d have my money from the Pennyworths in my pocket, and we wouldn’t be in this mess!”

  “Sure,” Norman shouted back. “That would suit you just fine, wouldn’t it? The first time in decades that my people have gotten close to fighting their way to freedom and you’re concerned about one stinking commission. Boo-fucking-hoo.”

  “It’s the money from my stinking commissions that’s kept us afloat all these years. What the hell do you bring to the table? Your pleasant company? Your witty repartee?”

  “If your species was enslaved, perhaps you’d be lacking on the after-dinner conversation, too,” Norman yelled so hard that spittle flew from his mouth.

  “Don’t forget, I was also a slave to the government.” I stopped, panting because all the yelling had used up my breath. “We escaped that facility together, remember? This isn’t an easy decision for me to make, either, but wouldn’t you prefer to live out the rest of your life without a price tag on your head?”

  “Not at the cost of my entire race!” Norman scowled and shoved his hands deep into his pockets. “Besides, if you trust them to offer you that, you’re even stupider than your blonde head makes you look!”

  My hands curled into fists of frustration, nails biting deep into my palms. “You heard him.”

  “Yeah,” Norman said, his voice mocking, “I heard him. I don’t care what words came out of that man’s mouth, the only promise he made was trouble.”

  “And what the fuck do we have to lose?”

  I waved my hand around the cramped apartment, taking in the water stain creeping over the ceiling and the threadbare carpet on the floor. “This is a dump, and we can’t even stay here beyond tonight. I don’t know where you think we’re going to end up, but it’s probably going to make this shit-heap look like a palace.”

  Norman snorted. “Well, I’m sorry that your high living standards are trampling all over your ethics.”

  “You heard the man.” I stopped and cleared my throat, lowering the volume when I resumed. “The vampires are planning on fighting. No matter what meager numbers they get together, in their desperation, they’ll do people a lot of damage. Not the soldier bots, not the guards”—I waved my hand toward the window—“normal people out on the streets. Where the hell does ethics fit into that?”

  “The human race owes us,” Norman shouted. “We’ve been locked up in chains for a hundred years. It’s about time you got a taste of your own medicine.”

  I shook my head. “Stop lumping me in with the humans. I’m a cyborg. Thanks to the chip in my head, I was a captive, too.”

  “You were a captive because you’re too stupid to learn how to steer a motorcycle and you asked them to give you an upgrade, so you were pretty.” Norman stared at me from a face that I didn’t recognize. Not anymore. “If you’d just gone for a slap-up job like everyone else on the hospital wing, you’d have worked off your debt in a couple of years.”

  The horror of the thought stole my breath away. I staggered back, feeling for the sofa behind me so that when I fell, I didn’t land on the floor. The cat had to scoot out of the way quickly, but at least my ass landed somewhere soft.

  For a moment, I couldn’t speak. My mouth opened and closed uselessly. After long minutes stretched out silently, I squeaked, “You think that I chose this?”

  My hand waved over the length of my body like I was a saleswoman at a car dealership. As my appalled brain tried to work it through my mouth fell open—I couldn’t shove my thoughts past the disbelief. “You think that I wanted to be a captive of the government and look like this?”

  I couldn’t read Norman’s expression, I was too lost in his betrayal to pay attention to such minor things. Likewise, the knock on the door went unheeded. The whispering through the keyhole didn’t register beyond
a bleep.

  My eyes were wide, frightened. “Have you really lived with me all this time thinking that I brought this on myself?”

  A crash in the corridor outside finally broke through and got my attention. My legs were shaking so much that I wobbled when I stood. It took me too long to cross to the door and look through the keyhole.

  The crash was Earnest, our landlord. My best guess was that he’d been trying to warn us when the jackboots pushed him aside. His body was crumpled on the floor. From the agony on his face and the way he clutched his side, the blow that knocked him over had crushed his ribs.

  “Jackboots,” I yelled to Norman. “Get back.”

  There wasn’t time to get to the window, let alone shimmy across to reach the fire escape. I clenched my muscles to form a shield and waited for the door to be kicked down.

  A second later, it was.

  Soldiers swarmed into the apartment. These weren’t the easily confused bots from The Waterside, these were humans with suits engineered to withstand firepower and the crushing weight of a tank.

  When I tried to stop them passing by me to catch Norman, they swatted me aside like a fly. One boot on my neck kept me down while they cuffed my hands and shackled my legs.

  Pointless.

  Despite fighting, I knew that I couldn’t win, and I knew what came next. Even with my desperate struggles, I could do nothing to stop them opening the panel on the side of my head. When they removed my mobility chip, all struggling ceased. My mechanized body was no longer mine to control.

  Chapter Eleven

  Once upon a time, I was a god.

  Okay, maybe that’s a stretch, but it felt like it at the time. No matter what I did or where I went, everybody wanted me. They wanted me to do things for them, to them, with them. They enjoyed doing things to me.

  First off, understand that I’d been an ugly kid. At school, the other children had teased me for being plain, being fat, and having a lopsided face that always looked shifty. My hair swarmed with grease, no matter how many times my mother forced me to wash it. My lips naturally twisted into a scowl when I tried to smile.