Nerves of Steel

by Lee Hayton

  I wasn’t even ugly in the way that girls would befriend so they’d look prettier when they stood next to me. No, if they brought me along, it somehow made them uglier, too.

  Back in my day—and this was the late sixties we’re talking about—getting a husband was the prime motivation for every girl at school. I’m not even talking about high school here. The expectation was upon us right from first grade.

  If I hadn’t had my magical talents to keep me company, I would have been alone.

  When my granddad ran out of lessons, he found another instructor for me. Despite being weak, the telekinesis power I possessed was still an extraordinary thing. Once I worked out how to use it to manipulate the tiny pathways in the human brain, my ability escalated mightily.

  While flunking out of high school, I had managed to attract the attention of some pretty big players. The government back then had a major hard-on for the field of “mind-control.” They brought me on board about the same time they began experimenting with LSD and trained men to stare at goats. I fitted right in. That in itself was a significant first for me.

  Within six months at the CIA, I had the government eating out of the palm of my hand. My small talent for magic outperformed every metric they set for me. Best of all, I’d found a neat new sideline.

  Why take the risk of a bad acid trip, when I could send you flying into space for the price of admission to your party and a seat at the table with the cool kids? All right, there was a lot of angst fueling me, but nobody ever thought to ask me about my motives. I sent people flying on a natural high, and that was all they needed to know to write my name at the top of every invite list.

  Does everybody look back at their teenage self and want to cry at their pathetic-ness?

  When I started to charge money, as well—the side-effect of being raised in a society drenched with capitalism along with the belief that it was a good thing—my fortune skyrocketed. The invite list grew longer, not shorter. I discovered that people love to pay for things. Give them a choice between a favor for free and an exorbitant price tag, and they’ll pull out their credit card, every time.

  Everything was sweet, then I dropped a tab of acid before going to see Easy Rider. That movie tempted me onto my first motorcycle. Turned out, instead of Peter Fonda, it should have been gravity that I paid attention to. One greasy patch of shade on a turn and most of my old body had been spread like jam on the asphalt of Highmoon Mountain Road.

  My then-current boyfriend had been hanging onto the back of me. Like a warrior, he was yelling at the top of his lungs one second before the rear wheel skidded out. I lay staring at his shattered skull when a guy walked over to me and said, “They’re gonna make it. Dig, man. They’re gonna make it.”

  Turned out, the only one who had made it was me. When I woke up in the hospital after extensive modifications, my employers insisted that the thing inside my head was worth a lot more than the six-million-dollar man reconstruction job that the agency had laid on me. Apparently, that had been a lie so that I didn’t get upset while I was on the path to recovery. When I had graduated into the I’m-well-and-I’d-like-to-go-back-home-mode, my employers changed their tune.

  I discovered what hell was when they pulled out the mobility chip from my head. It trapped my body motionless while the rest of me clicked over as usual. Imagine residing in a state of total paralysis until somebody decided to slip a vital part of your brain back in. That had been me.

  Queen of the world to queen of the dung heap in one move.

  Agility didn’t matter when you were incapacitated. Strength wasn’t an asset when you were frozen in place. I couldn’t fight anybody off. I couldn’t protest the places they took me or the things they did.

  I didn’t ask for this body.

  This blonde bombshell frame was the one they wanted me to have.

  I hadn’t seen where they took Norman, but I ended up back in the same cells that housed me the first time I was a prisoner. Back then, I still had the dream of being free to live on. Now, I wasn’t as certain.

  The guards didn’t bother to snap my shackles to the hitching rings in the cell. I couldn’t move unless they wanted me to. The extra security was pointless.

  Lazy buggers probably couldn’t be bothered to bend over. Judging by their body shape, squatting would blow out their knees.

  Seconds dragged by, turning into minutes with reluctance and shying away from hours altogether. I’d forgotten what it felt like. Not that I couldn’t recall the horror of being held a prisoner in my own body—that stood out clearly in my mind. The endless minutiae of each passing tick of the clock, though, I’d thought that was carved in stone inside my head, but the memory turned out to be wisps of smoke.

  The real thing ripped the images in my mind into tatters, tore them to tiny shreds. I wondered about the other memories I held onto, the other unspeakable things the guards could do. Would they also be worse than my recollections? If so, it seemed that death would be a blessing.

  Not that death was a choice I could take. No need to remove my belt and shoelaces—I couldn’t doing anything without permission.

  The window on the side wall told me the time with the changing light. Darkness bled into the silver glow of moonlight and then brightened into dawn.

  Tick-tock. I counted down the seconds to daylight, then wondered why it mattered. There was no reprieve from my nightmare. Bright light couldn’t blow away the shadows of this bad dream.

  “Asha Smith?” a voice said from the corridor outside my cell. I didn’t recognize it, and I couldn’t turn to look. I also couldn’t answer, so if he was asking me for confirmation, he was out of luck.

  A rattle of the bars signaled the unlocking of my cage. The view in front of me tilted as the doctor tipped me onto my back.

  “I’m just going to look you over. See how much damage you’ve managed to do to yourself.”

  His hands moved across my body—poking, prying, lifting, bending. When he took away the skull-plate hiding the computer integration with my brain, he whistled, long and slow. In appreciation of the original work or in despair at the neglect, I couldn’t tell.

  “All in all, you’re in pretty good shape,” he said finally, putting me back the way he’d found me. “I’m sure Doctor Peters will be pleased.”

  Since I didn’t know who Doctor Peters was, I really didn’t care.

  The man left the cell, locking the door behind him, as though otherwise, I would escape. Or maybe he was locking me safely away from prying hands. Either way, it didn’t matter. I went back to the engrossing task of studying the play of light across the cell walls. This day was proving to be quite a drag.

  Once they put the chip back in my head, I could strong-arm my way out of there. I played out the scene in my imagination, knowing that in real life, I’d never get the chance. If only they lined up in rows, I could dispatch them one by one. Of course, no villain ever did that. Not even the stupid ones.

  The man checking me over—I presume he was a doctor, but given how young he looked, who could tell—had left me tipped at a slight angle. As the rays of light strengthened into the midday sun, then began the long fade into the afternoon, my body slid over to one side. Each hour, one inch further. Gravity put on an even lazier performance than time. If I’d had anything else to concentrate on, I mightn’t have even noticed the slow slide.

  “Can I visit with the prisoner?” a new voice said, male again. “I’ve never seen a model this old in action.”

  Well, fuck you, too, youngster. Way to make a woman feel every day of her advancing age.

  The request appeared to be denied—no one entered the cell. Footsteps came, footsteps went, the sun crawled along the wall of my cage.

  Although I couldn’t see him, the guard placed as a warden to my cell did a sterling job throughout the day. He shifted in his seat, he belched, he farted. He denied repeated requests for visitation.

  Keep doing that, my man, and you’ll occupy a special place in my heart.r />
  When the light began to splinter into the colors of late afternoon, there was a shift change. It seemed to be propelled by small talk, all of it as riveting as drying paint.

  The sun crept up the wall of my cell, then blipped out when it reached the window horizon. A fainter glow lingered for a while before the room plunged into night.

  The guard on duty went to sleep. A luxury that I wished I could indulge in. Instead, my mind ticked over a thousand useless things, regaling me with tales of what would have happened if I’d just done everything differently.

  As a change from pondering my misery, I focused on the dreadful fate that Norman would currently be enduring. No individual cells for vampires—he’d be cast into the common pit.

  The chains securing my wrists and ankles together were heavy and had grazed against my skin when the doctor moved me. The ones securing Norman would be worse. They’d burn, no matter how still he tried to keep. The silver fused into the steel was there to sap the vampires’ strength enough so that they wouldn’t run. The burning was an unpleasant side effect.

  Down in his cell, there wouldn’t be windows to track the time of day with. To put a vampire into a cell with a window was a death sentence. If guards were ever forced to such lengths that they destroyed a valuable slave, then they filmed it to show to the other vampires later.

  Not that I knew this firsthand. These were just a few facts I’d gleaned when Norman talked about it. Like me, he kept his mouth shut about what he’d experienced most of the time.

  Back when I was a kid, construction crews built the city during the day. There’d be the high-pitched wolf-whistles when a pretty lady walked along the street. The incessant hammering when I tried to sleep in for a change.

  Now, the crews were made up of vampires, and the city constructed itself at night. The difference made the town feel like a living thing, mold in your fridge, growing by stealth whenever you weren’t looking.

  No more wolf-whistles when a short skirt walked by, just the occasional groan or whimper if a vampire angled himself wrong against his chains. The hammering was still a given, but now it lulled the high-rise neighborhoods to sleep.

  At least a few decades back, the city council had the sense to pass some ordinances. It meant that vampires couldn’t use jackhammers. Burly men with constant headaches still got the joy of using those during the day.

  A shift change roused me out of a stupor of sadness, pining for things that I hadn’t given a damn about while they were still there. This time, the mindless drivel of guard small-talk took place alongside the tantalizing smell of coffee. Before I could inhale my fill, the guard disposed of it and settled down to a day of work. Or what passed for work around these parts.

  I wondered what the higher-ups were doing now. Did the empire have regulations to comply with before they could put me back to work?

  Once upon a time, I’d willingly performed jobs for them, just happy to have my take-home pay. If I worked for them now, I doubted they’d even bother to record the wages. Considering that I’d never last long enough to pay off the debt, it seemed ridiculous to keep a running tab.

  The thought of all those wasted coins being entered in an endless ledger turned my heart to stone. The empire would charge their clients a fee so exponentially higher than the one I’d charged when free on the streets, the difference would make your eyes water. Still, the column would never make a dent. My rebuild total had so many zeroes that it looked like someone fell asleep on the keyboard.

  I thought of the card in my pocket and the number I’d now never be able to ring. Even if I got a guard alone when I was mobile, the deadline would have come and gone by the end of the day.

  Freedom. The thought had been nice for the few seconds I could entertain it. Not just the ability to live a life outside of shackles and cages but to exist knowing there was no one around the corner hungering to turn me in.

  No price tag. No bounty hunters. No desperate chases to a safe place that didn’t offer any more security than the area before.

  A foolish dream. For the moment, I’d be happy to just be able to move.

  The light softened, taking on the pinkish hue that dusted the sun as it neared the horizon. Red skies at night, shepherd’s delight.

  Another shift change coming up. I heard the shuffle of footsteps along the corridor, and the jingle of keys as the guard behind the desk stood.

  “Hey.” The sharp tone of the male guard raised my blood pressure. “What are you doing here?”

  Fight or flight responses coursed through my body, though I was helpless to do either.

  “You can’t—”

  The guard’s voice cut off mid-sentence, replaced by a wet splatter and a teakettle whistle fading into a moist gurgle. Terror sprinted through my bloodstream. A scream rang out, but only in my mind.

  The cage door rattled. Along with the jingle of keys, it was the scariest sound in the world. If sheer will could move an inert body, then I would have been flying up the walls.

  A hand touched my knee, fingers twiddled in my line of sight. Tilted as I was, their owner had to take another step before my frozen eyes could see her frame. A tall ginger-haired woman, splashed with clashing crimson blood, who soon squatted in front of me. She lifted up my arm and let it go, frowning when it stayed in place.

  “Why aren’t you moving?” she asked. Her eyes looked deep into mine, searching for an answer. After a minute’s silence, she seemed to understand that my lack of motion extended to my tongue. The next moment, her hands pawed all over me. Feeling down the front of my blouse, sliding around the waistband of my jeans, reaching into my pockets. She pulled out the business card, only glancing at it for a second before she replaced it and continued the search.

  Honestly. What sort of idiot thought that the prison officers would go to the trouble of immobilizing me, only to leave the chip sitting somewhere on my person? On the other hand, since I couldn’t move, I supposed it made as much sense to leave it there as anywhere else.

  The woman made a hissing sound when her search came up empty. She pushed on my shoulder until I sat upright again and studied my face for another long moment.

  Awkward. Staring straight at someone wasn’t on the top of my list of fun activities.

  The woman scampered out of sight, leaving me alone. Her touch on the old stone floors was so light that I barely heard her move, I just knew that she had when the cage door rattled.

  “What a mess,” she said from the guard’s desk. Considering it was her handiwork, I would have expected more satisfaction. Drawers squeaked open and then banged shut as the woman continued her search.

  Does she even know what she’s looking for?

  The idea struck like a dull ice pick in the center of my forehead, producing an instant headache. The noise the woman made was minimal, but that didn’t mean somebody wouldn’t be along soon to investigate.

  I didn’t know her or understand her purpose, but the fact that the woman killed a guard and wanted me to move meant she must be on my side. If that changed after I had my mobility chip, well… I could deal with that situation later.

  Come on! How many bloody places are there to hide the damn thing?

  If the woman knew what she was looking for.

  If it was even hidden near the guard for her to find.

  The jingle of keys came again. I could imagine her lifting the ring still looped through the guard’s belt. Judging from the lack of sounds since the gurgling, make that the dead guard’s belt.

  “Bingo!”

  A second later, the woman squatted in front of me again. She didn’t bother to meet my blank stare this time. Instead, her brow furrowed in concentration as her fingers felt the ridges all over my skull.

  She knows what the chip is. She knows where to put it. Although the knowledge was of immediate advantage to me, it set up a warning beacon turning in slow circles inside my head.

  It didn’t take long before the ginger-haired woman pressed against the side panel
just below my ear, and the empty slot opened up. Her face leaned so close to mine as she clicked the chip into place that I was reminded of a lover’s kiss. The soft exhalation of her breath lifted the tiny curled hairs on the side of my forehead.

  Then the mobility chip whirred, and I pushed her away. I jerked up and retreated to stand under the window, my feet wide for balance, my arms up in a defensive fighting stance.

  “Who are you? What do you want?”

  The woman frowned and reached for me, looking puzzled when I jerked away.

  “I want to get you the hell out of here. Hurry up, we need to get a move on before the next guard on duty arrives to find his friend dead.”

  She stretched her hand out toward me again, and I batted it away.

  “Who are you?” I repeated. “Who sent you to rescue me?”

  To my surprise, the woman tilted her head back to laugh, hands on hips, the unexpected noise reverberating around the chamber.

  “For goodness’ sake, Asha,” she said, looking me in the eye once more. “Do you really not recognize me?”

  I shook my head and then frowned. “Nika? Is that you?”

  The smile grew wider as the woman shook her head. “Open your eyes, Asha. I’ve been living in your house for the past week. Miss Tiddles? Remember me?”

  My eyes widened in astonishment as her laughter rang out again.

  Chapter Twelve

  My mind whirred with so many questions that it came close to bursting open. Since an explosion of Asha over the cell walls would do no one any good, I pulled myself together by ignoring the strange woman.

  Cat or insane asylum escapee—we could debate that when I’d gotten the hell out of this prison. I ripped the cuffs off my wrists and tore the shackles from my ankles.

  A way out. That was where my focus needed to be, and so that was where I directed my attention. The walk through to the cells hadn’t been long. An exit door would be within easy reach.