Catalyst

by Jody Wallace

  Ah, well, that explained where the mouth was. Pumpkin could easily fit inside that mouth. Wil’s head could easily fit inside that mouth.

  Su whispered a steady stream of curses behind him. “It’s calling its pack. This fucking lock. Rusted shut. They must never use this door.”

  Another keen echoed from a different spot in the tunnel. Then another.

  “Is this tunnel their home?” Wil asked, horrified. How many were there? “Why did we get out of the truck?”

  “Cuz Casada’s guys would have found us in about three seconds?” Su mumbled, as if she had something between her teeth. Then she spat. “These mountains are their hereditary breeding grounds. SPA—that’s the Species Protection Association—thinks they’re the only creatures of their kind in the Rim, so we’re, um, not really supposed to kill them.”

  “I can’t kill it?” Where would he even shoot? The face? It might rattle off a few horns. “If it attacks us, what am I supposed to—oh, hells.”

  The bristleback roared, and Wil recognized the intent in that sound. The animal charged, bouncing from the railing to the wall in the narrow walkway.

  “Aim for the eyes,” Su said, now kicking the door in frustration. “That’ll scare it.”

  Wil squeezed the trigger, and a pulse of electrical heat shot toward the beast. The blast smashed all over its face and it snarled.

  He adjusted the muzzle and tried again, with better accuracy. The pin-shot caught the monster in the nose. It stumbled to a stop, shaking its head and wailing almost like a human.

  And an EE-blast that was not from a bristleback splashed across the concrete near their feet.

  “Casada’s past the fire,” Wil exclaimed. “How are you doing on that door?”

  “Nearly…got it.”

  Another beam of white scorched the walkway, and pieces of masonry spattered the bristleback, making it angrier. It howled. Wil wheeled and squeezed a few rounds down the tunnel before facing off with the monster again.

  Casada or someone shouted, and rifle fire sizzled around them.

  Where should he stand? He couldn’t protect Su from the monsters or the rifles. Angry claws on the concrete alerted him to more bristlebacks approaching, but the beasts galloped past—and toward Casada’s men approaching from the tunnel opening.

  More shouts and rifle fire peppered the tunnel, no longer directed at Wil and Su. One hazard deterred. But the injured bristleback was still keen on eating them.

  The monster threw itself into a run. Wil shot, shot again, the electric beams doing little to deter the beast. Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit!

  Now he sounded like Su.

  “Got it!” Su whipped open the door, grabbed the back of his collar, and dragged him into the service tunnel. They yanked the door shut and slapped the old-fashioned deadbolt into place.

  Outside there was silence. They stared at one another in what Wil interpreted as amazement. He was amazed, anyway, and she was staring back. Was her pulse racing as much as his or did she survive monster attacks every day? What kind of life was this?

  The still-breathing kind, which he was—thanks to her.

  “You did good,” she said, patting him awkwardly on the shoulder. Ancient lights in wire cages dotted the narrow service tunnel that disappeared in two different directions.

  He covered her chilly hand with his own and squeezed. He was up close and personal with beautiful people every day as a dance instructor, but none of them loaned him the clothes off their own backs. None of them made him want to pull them into his arms when the dance didn’t call for it.

  And none of them had saved his life. A couple times, last count. That was probably why he felt like he should kiss Su right now. Just tip up her face and taste that crooked little smile.

  Something huge thundered against the door, and they stepped apart as if caught doing something wrong. The bristleback growled its displeasure. Apparently the monsters didn’t want him to kiss Su, either.

  “It can’t get through,” Su stated. “No thumbs.”

  The bristleback bashed on the door a few times, but the metal held. Luckily it was a door that swung outward or it might be able to bust through. No other sounds penetrated the thick walls, so they couldn’t tell what was happening in the tunnel.

  That didn’t matter. Wil knew who would win that fight. “Casada and his men have thumbs. They can open the door.”

  “On the plus side, they’ll be wading through a lot of angry bristlers first.” Su flicked open a different gizmo on her MUT, pressed it against the door’s keyhole, and fired, melting the lock with a tiny blowtorch. “They won’t be coming through this way. Hey, I think it’s warmer in here.”

  “Adrenaline.” He could almost feel his feet again, but once he did, he doubted he was going to like what he discovered. He stashed the pistol into a pocket in the coveralls, resisting the urge to sort through the rest. None of them held shoes, he was quite certain, or Su would already have produced them. “Now what?”

  “Now we get that tracker out of you or Casada’s going to follow us wherever we go,” Su said. “Take off the coveralls. Are you tired yet?”

  “I forgot all about the tracker. And no, so far, so good.” He wasn’t ashamed of his body, but it was subzero. His toes were ice. The nanobots would be working hard to stave off hypothermia, but they weren’t heaters. Grumbling, he stripped to his waist. “How about we do me in parts?”

  “Fair enough.” Su got out her multitool, flipped her goggles back on, and inspected him carefully. She walked behind him, and he felt the brush of her fingers on his lower back. “Mind if I…” She pushed the coveralls down his ass.

  “That is fucking cold,” he said as frigid air hit his backside and balls. He grabbed the front of the coveralls before they slipped down his legs. His cock shriveled up to about the size of a protein snack, but at least his back was to his companion. “Jesu, woman, I thought you agreed we could do half of me at a time.”

  “I have a hunch.”

  She placed a chilly hand on his lower back, making him yelp. Then she brushed downward to his ass. While the touch of her hand threatened to heat him up in an awkward fashion, he could tell this was no ordinary grope.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “I have good news and bad news.”

  “Bad news first.”

  Her body came close enough to his that he could feel a little of her delicious warmth against his back. “This is going to hurt.”

  It already hurt. The temperature hurt his body, and standing here half naked and shivering in front of Su while people outside this very door wanted to kill them hurt his soul. “I assumed there would be pain. What’s the good news?”

  She drew a circle on the top of his ass cheek. “I found the tracker. Put your hands on the wall in front of you.”

  He did as she asked. “That was quick. Can you zap it? Fry its little circuits?” The whole scenario was beginning to awaken sexual thoughts that had no business being there. Him half naked. A beautiful woman behind him, giving him orders, orders he would soon ignore as he retook the lead. Their pursuers closing in, but their passion overcoming them and…

  “Remember the bad news?” she asked him.

  “Yeah, but… FUCK!”

  Sizzling pain charred through his hip like he’d just broken something. His spirit, perhaps. Warm blood spurted and trickled down his leg. He whirled, the coveralls nearly falling, to put an end to whatever she was doing.

  She held up her multitool, blood dripping from an evil needle, at the end of which was a tiny blue metallic square. The yellow light of the tunnel glinted off her goggles in an eerie fashion. “Got it. Now let me—”

  “Vac, no, you stay where I can see you, woman.” He yanked up the coveralls, sealed them, and glared down at her. “Nanobots can handle the rest.”

  “Oooh, fancy. You get the biannual?” she asked, though her attention was on the tracker. Nanobots didn’t last forever, and those who could afford it got boosted to keep
themselves in prime shape.

  He rubbed the smarting wound through the coveralls, applying pressure to stop the trickle of blood. “As a dancer, it’s vital that I maintain my body and health. Of course I have nanobots.”

  “This is gloss tech.” She turned the tiny tracker one way and another, inspecting it from all angles. She then spun a dial on her goggles and held it closer to her face. “Your Casada has his fingers in all the best pies. I wish I’d found his garbage in that trash heap. I mean…besides you.”

  “His boss is Zev, who runs Gizem Station,” Wil admitted. “They do get the gloss.”

  “Fuck.” She shoved her goggles to her forehead and gazed up at him, wide-eyed. He realized her eyes weren’t completely brown. Gold ringed the irises like a halo. “Even I’ve heard of Zev. If he comes after you, I don’t know you. Never seen you before in my life.”

  “He has nothing to do with this. Casada wants to use Pumpkin’s gifts to overthrow Zev or some other mutiny nonsense. I don’t know. Pumpkin and I just wanted to make a lot of money.” Little did Casada realize Pumpkin only helped who Pumpkin wanted to help, but he’d taken Wil hostage anyway.

  And Wil had known nothing more until he’d woken up in the garbage, rescued by a resilient, one-legged, butt-jabbing trash picker he deeply wanted to impress.

  “Okay.” Su said. “I hope you’re right about Zev not being involved.

  After she dropped his tracking chip to the concrete and crunched it to dust with the heel of her boot, she stared up, as if she could see through however much mountain was above them.

  “What are you looking for?” he asked.

  “I’m looking for a burst of energy,” she said, “because now we have to find the ladders and climb.”

  Chapter 5

  “I was hoping you’d say, now we find dinner and a bunk for the night.” Wil gave her a wry smile, shifting his weight.

  “Are you close to passing out?” Su asked him, alarmed. Her prosthetic leg gave her a boost in many situations, like ass kicking, but carrying an adult human wasn’t one of them. Wil didn’t even deserve to have his ass kicked, as far as she could tell.

  “No, no.” He rubbed a hand over his face, obviously not one hundred percent alert. But she’d meant it when she’d told him that he was doing well. She wouldn’t have expected it of someone as pampered as he looked. “What time is it?”

  When people woke from temp cryo, the period of time before cryo lag hit varied. She would have been flat out by now, but she had low tolerance. She checked her chrono. “You’ve been awake about three hours.”

  “How long before your people get here?”

  “Maybe two more.” She shrugged. “Helping fellow unioneers is in the contract, but most of them will be rummaging in the waste freighter all day. And my union chews rocks.” It had gone rancid with Garza at the head. But it still wasn’t the worst union, and joining it was a choice she’d made herself, not one that had been made for her. “Regardless, we need to get moving.”

  Anyone not currently engaged in picking should answer the alert she’d sent. Her employees at the factory definitely would, but the code lacked details. Once they reached the tunnel, they’d see her destroyed truck and Casada duking it out with a pack of bristlers and do what? Fight? Hide and watch? Call for reinforcements? Write her off as a lost cause?

  The sooner she could alert someone that she was alive, the better. And the sooner she and Wil got hidden, the better. His cryo lag was a concern, as were his bare feet. Every step he took could leave DNA behind.

  Wil seemed to be of the same mind because he said, “I’m going to need shoes.”

  “Agree.” Would maintenance workers stash footwear here? They trotted deeper into the mountain along the service tunnel until they came to a crossway and a set of inner doors. “This should be a supply closet.”

  With the MUT, she picked this lock more handily than the first door since it was less exposed to the weather. And to bristlebacks. Inside, they were in luck. More coveralls, helmets, and pairs of boots hung on hooks around what appeared to be a locker room. Wil found boots and coveralls that fit while Su put her own coveralls back on, still toasty from his body. If this had been a comm room, they could have tapped into a hardwired signal out. Instead she snagged a handheld zapper gun which the maintenance workers used for bristlers, to neutralize them without killing them. It had been one of the requirements that SPA had put in place ages ago in order for them to build in bristleback territory.

  The biggest danger right now was Casada. Too bad she couldn’t make it look like they’d been mauled and carried away by the bristlebacks. But she did have access to Wil’s blood. Hm.

  “Do you still have an open wound?” she asked him. She shoved gloves into her satchel for the ladder climbing portion of their getaway.

  Wil arched an eyebrow. “Why? Do you need to erase the evidence?”

  “I need to leave some. Bet they can scan for your DNA in blood droplets even easier than your footprints. Let’s lay a false trail.” She jerked a thumb toward the door.

  He picked gingerly at the maintenance worker coveralls in the area of his hip. “I can make that happen without you knifing me again.”

  “Bonus.” She hadn’t particularly enjoyed cutting into his fine ass. The very sheen of his brown skin had a well-groomed glow. If she’d have warned him what her method was going to be, he might have refused.

  He paused with his hands on the neck of the padded garment. “Is there any way I could get to my hip without undressing again? I just got my clothes back on.”

  “I noticed.” She waggled her eyebrows. The man was a sight to behold, so she’d beheld it with pleasure.

  “And I noticed you noticing,” he said. “But I seem to recall oversuits aren’t always one piece.”

  She supposed it was cold in here, and she didn’t need another peep show. She showed him the discreet waist fastenings, and he exposed his hip. The wound was small and barely oozing. The tensil-fabric coveralls were watertight, so any blood he’d spurted inside would still be there, soaked into the padding.

  Once they left the supply room and locked it, they flicked blood droplets every couple of meters in the wrong direction until they came to a ladder. There were ladders throughout the service tunnels, some connected to the ventilation shafts. Wil smeared his hand in the blood and smacked on a few fingerprints. Feeling sorry for him since they’d had to reopen the wound, she offered him a bandage from the first aid kit before they headed back.

  Su had become profitable enough to hire a staff at her box factory years ago, but she’d known every one of her people already. Working with Wil as smoothly as if they’d known each other for ages surprised her. Either he was especially cooperative or they were especially compatible.

  Or he was too tired to argue.

  “Think the cat will show up soon?” she asked as they hustled to a new ladder. She couldn’t help but worry about the consequences in the near future, all the hustling she would need to do to recoup her losses and, yeah, keep Wil and the cat safe. Was there any way Casada could figure out who she was based on the truck? Of course he could—money could buy everything, but the question was how long it would take him to find the right person to ask.

  “Pumpkin’s never gone too long,” Wil assured her. He glanced up the ladder shaft, which began on this level. There was no down. “How far does it go?”

  “To the surface, if this is a ventilation ladder.” The Bristleback Range Tunnel doubled as an emergency shelter. It hosted a warren of manmade and natural caverns, big enough to hold lots of people during a disaster or attack. When you had no police force or standing army, people needed places to hole up in times of danger. Not ten years ago, a good number of them had holed up here for sixteen days during a dark season hailstorm that had taken out more than a few power stations and factories.

  They got bad weather and hailers all the time, storms that prevented flight and outdoor labor, but sixteen days was a marathon. She only re
membered one that had been longer, and she’d been a child, her parents still alive, her grandmother home from touring, and her uncle jolly and loud. It had been a holiday for her if not for the adults. The shelters at factories and population centers were usually sufficient during hailers and union disputes, but sanctuaries like Bristleback Range were essential for long-term survival on Trash Planet.

  Donning gloves, they began the ascent. The ladder rose inside a manmade tube intersected by narrow passageways for wiring, storage rooms, and whatever else had been built into the mountain. They switched shafts several times, passing through locked doors, swapping levels, to lay a complicated path for Casada’s men to follow. A few times they tried a comm box, but Su couldn’t get them to function and didn’t have time to rewire one. The popping static indicated the signal was being blocked.

  Wil’s pace grew slower while Su climbed faster, her mechanical leg shunting her from floor to floor, anxious to reach a spot where she could warn her factory with her own comm, which should be able to circumvent any jamming Casada was doing. Was she going to lose everything because she’d decided to help a man she’d found in the trash? She didn’t remember the surface being this high when she’d bunked here during the sixteen-day hailer.

  “Su?” Wil called from further down the ladder. The metallic echo of his voice had a plaintive sound, but she was pretty sure they were almost there. They had to be. “How many…how far before…”

  “Get him off the ladder now,” Pumpkin yowled next to her ear.

  “Yikes!” She hadn’t realized she’d reached another level. The cat, his orange fur fluffed up like feathers, paced around the shaft opening. “You scared me, cat.”

  “Get. Him,” Pumpkin snarled at her, and she didn’t know if the cat was pushing her or if she simply agreed that the situation was urgent, because she found herself sliding down the ladder, letting gravity accelerate her until she reached Wil.

  He was braced with his back against the wall of the tube below the previous floor. She flipped onto the walkway next to his head, her boots hitting the corrugated metal with a loud clang. Wil jerked awake and nearly lost his grip.