Wanted and Wired

by Vivien Jackson

  With a swipe of his thumb on the counter, he accessed security camera footage from the landing. Two nonresidents exited the spire lift. Big, rough-looking, and with lumps beneath their clothes that could indicate weapons. They headed left, toward his unit.

  Heron ran counterweight logs from the elevator car. These weren’t unaltered humans, and weight indicated metal alterations, not on-trend cosmetic biohacks. These intruders weren’t meant to be pretty; they were meant to break things. Mercenaries, then. Trouble.

  The kind of trouble that wouldn’t waste time arresting Mari if they found her.

  “Oh, fuck that. Not here you don’t.” Heron straightened, detached his palms from the info stream, and held out a hand. “We need to go. Right now.”

  In an instant, she slipped into her professional mode. Gone was the lazy, languorous glint, the come-hither half grin and deliberate peek up her thigh. Her feet hit the floor, and she blew past him, retrieving her duffel by the door, putting her body between him and the danger outside.

  She didn’t need to. But she did.

  And he loved her for that. For a long time had.

  Heron stopped her with one hand on the door. He knew what she had in that bag, and it wouldn’t be enough.

  He leaned into the galley-style kitchenette and slid a drawer out. Raised it up from its rails and felt for the clip on the back wall. Yes. Right there. He withdrew the petite hunk of metal and death and slid the drawer back.

  He handed the gun to Mari. She looked down at it, then back up at him. Her grin was savage. Hot. God, even in danger, even on the run—hot. He regulated blood flow, blocked vasodilation and tumescence. She wouldn’t see her effect on him. Ever.

  Her eyebrows perked. “You keep a Taurus .38 snubby in your oven mitt drawer? Isn’t that kind of…pussy?”

  He didn’t want to think about what hearing that word in her voice was doing to his autonomic suppression. “You’re the muscle, querida.”

  “Right on.” The grin slipped to serious. “What kind of load you…”

  But she didn’t get to finish that sentence. The passkey box fired, fried, and intruders pushed the door aside, wrenching the dead bolt as if it were made of butter.

  Heron knew what was coming but didn’t quite have time to pull Mari back before the door crashed in. It hit her behind the left temple with enough force to knock her off her feet.

  She didn’t fall down, though. Heron caught her below her arms, holding her up. The sensors in his palms flared, searching for data transfer points. But there weren’t any, of course.

  Without looking down, he saw the gun disappear into the sleeve of the bathrobe, and he swallowed a grin.

  That’s my girl.

  Chapter 3

  They were good and cornered, but it certainly wasn’t the worst situation Mari had ever faced. What worried her more was Heron. He didn’t get in scrapes like this for a living. He wouldn’t have much experience fending off attackers. She needed to keep him calm, assess the threat, and get them both outta this.

  Inside the wide robe sleeve, she rubbed the grip on his pistol. No slot in the bottom, no ceramic appliqué on the side. Probably no biometric identity controls. Off the registers, then. Nice. Cute little thing, Heron’s gun. Bitty, yeah, but she could make do.

  With her left hand, the empty one, she detached wet hair from her face and touched the throbbing spot behind her ear. It didn’t sting the way an open cut would, so probably just a bruise. And no dizzies or any other symptom of concussion. So, not a big deal. She was good to go.

  The two thugs who loomed between her and the door didn’t come right at her. They didn’t draw weapons or look like they were about to bust anybody up. One dude, pale skinned, with a belly grown big from too much homebrew and a bar code tattooed on his forehead, walked back to the yawning door and tried to close it. Didn’t work too well—he’d probably ruined the passkey on the way in. But that didn’t keep him from fiddling with it a few seconds while Mari checked out his partner.

  Taller, leaner, with one shitty, cheap eye-alt that kept swerving off-center as it ran data on her, this dude was probably the brains of the operation. Such as he was. Neither thug wore insignia, just plain denim and leather. Not law enforcement, then. Freelancers, like her? Or run-of-the-mill home invaders? She didn’t see any weapons, but that didn’t mean they weren’t armed.

  “Y’all lookin’ for gold, check the bag right there by the door. Bracelet in the inside pocket ought to trade high.” She slung a tremble in her voice, and Heron tensed behind her. She waited for both dudes to glance at the bag, and she mouthed into the subvocal com, “Easy, partner. I got this.”

  “Not gold,” said the wobble-eyed thug. “Lookin’ for the legal resident of this unit and also, uh, some gal named”—he checked his wristplant—“Marisa Vallejo. That you, sweetheart?”

  Her name—her whole name—whumped her in the chest. Home invader thieves wouldn’t know her name. She hadn’t used her full name in years. Heron didn’t even know it. “I don’t know who you…”

  He angled his wrist, pointed it at her face, and a red flash made her blink. Faceprint targeter. He had her in his system now. Fuck.

  Bigbelly gave up on the door, shoved her heavy duffel up against it, and straightened. He moved twitchy, too fast but not controlled. Most likely had wire augments, but they clearly hadn’t gone through UNAN-licensed clinics.

  Which would make sense if they’d gotten altered in Texas.

  A thrill wiggled up her spine. Even though the TPA had most likely just betrayed her, she couldn’t help hoping that they’d still tell her what she wanted to know. Needed to know. Whatever his sins, Dad was hers. Her family, her home, her past. She needed to know where he was and if he was okay. She opened her mouth but felt her partner, warm and tense and probably scared shitless, behind her.

  Heron.

  She’d put him at risk, taking this contract. Keeping her side payment secret. She wouldn’t do that again.

  She scooted back, pressing closer, covering him. Nobody was shoving them together right now, yet his hands were still at her waist, twin vises. He held her tight against his body. Weird thing was, knowing he was there, at her back, holding her like she was something precious, well, that made Mari invincible.

  She swallowed her curiosity and cocked the gun as quietly as she could.

  Heron didn’t relax, but he didn’t do anything stupid either, which impressed Mari. Tech guys like him parsed information for a living and usually logged zero training for these sorts of up close and personal things. Her first two tech partners had haired out completely on the job. Of course, she hadn’t been much better. Those early contracts had been more oops than win, everybody just learning the ropes. And of course Nathan…now that had been a spectacularly shitty experiment in partnering.

  Not Heron, though. He had never done anything but save her ass. She leaned against him a smidge more, to let him know that she was relaxed despite whatever she said.

  That shit-eating grin on Wobble’s face just got wider when he looked up from the wristplant readout.

  “Evenin’, Miss Vallejo. Sorry ’bout the rough entry, but we needed surprise on our side. Says here that you’re armed and dangerous.” He waggled his eyebrows as if dangerous wasn’t the word he was thinking. He glanced pointedly to her chest.

  Scumbag. During the scuffle, the robe had fallen open enough that half a boob hung out, bare for anybody to see. Mari’s first instinct was to right her clothing, put herself together, but honestly, naked tits were likely to be more distracting to her attackers than they were to her. So a net advantage. She nudged her shoulders back and tried not to think about how Heron saw all this.

  Wobble’s good eye glazed over a bit, and his mouth opened. He seemed incapable of looking away from the show. Mari reached back with her free hand, letting the robe fall open even more and thinking of how m
uch force she’d need to push Heron behind the foot of the bed, shielded. He was pretty big and had the balance of a cat, and he was still holding on to her hips. It would take a lot of shove to move him.

  But she waited too long in planning.

  Before she even realized he was moving, Bigbelly had pushed past his slack-jawed partner, grabbed Mari by the upper arm, and wrenched her away from Heron. His augments packed more of a punch than she expected, moved her fast. Her thigh hit the nightstand with a crack. The nightstand took the worst of it.

  She yelped, but not in pain. He’d grabbed the wrong arm, and in the brief scuffle, she’d dropped the snubby. Dadgummit. She thought it might have fallen near the foot of the bed, but she couldn’t get a good line of sight on that floor space, and besides, she wasn’t doing all that well holding up against Bigbelly’s kung fu.

  It’d been some years since she’d certified in hand-to-hand, and her muscle memory was toast. Not to mention her reflexes were still a jumble from the emotional wringer she’d endured today. And it wasn’t easy fighting in a flippin’ bathrobe either. She blocked, but her position was wrong. She found herself on the defensive and knew she was physically outmatched.

  She tried to get beneath her attacker’s hold, but even as she went to her knees, the thug secured her arms behind her back, hyperextending her elbows and shoving a beefy biceps between her body and upper arms. Pain arced between her shoulders, the pulling, grinding pain of something horribly not right. Even breathing yanked her joints.

  Mari went still.

  Uncomfortable as her position was, she could endure what they were doing to her body. But what she was seeing sucked the breath clean out of her chest.

  While she’d been scuffling with Bigbelly, Wobble had done something to Heron. Hit him? Drugged him? Whatever, he now sat in a metal folding chair, his head slumped to one side, resting temple to shoulder. He wasn’t bound, wasn’t struggling, and blood soaked the dark collar of his shirt.

  Oh no. No, no.

  “Heron? Can you hear me?”

  When he didn’t respond, Mari’s extremities went numb, then hot.

  “What you waiting for? Plug him in already.” Bigbelly kept Mari’s arms pinned tight, but he quivered, impatient as a pinched spring. Wobble ignored him, just shoved Heron’s head to the other side, seeking the input.

  Mari knew where it was. She’d watched her partner insert jacks and data spikes into that port, but he didn’t use it all that often. He ran mobile most of the time and only needed to physically plug in to older machines, like the car.

  But the mercs didn’t know that. The guy at the back of Heron’s head grunted, apparently finding the input. “He ain’t got a SIP. Just some fucking obsolete fly-jack.”

  “Well, wire around it, man. Come on.”

  Mari suspected that these guys knew as much about tech as she did, but it didn’t look like ignorance was holding them back any. What they couldn’t connect cleanly, they were determined to force.

  God, what if they broke him?

  “Leave him alone,” Mari said. Heron, please answer me.

  Not unexpectedly, the thugs ignored her. Wobble shoved Heron’s head forward so hard, he was facing down toward her, but his eyes didn’t move.

  They were open, unblinking, sightless.

  As if he were dead.

  Mari maneuvered herself just a little closer to the foot of the bed. She didn’t feel the bite of the painted cement floor against her bare knees as she skidded forward. She didn’t wince at the strain on her joints as the thug behind her resettled his hold.

  She couldn’t look away from Heron. Hang in there, partner.

  Wobble stuck a wire into the back of Heron’s skull, threading it with something near the port. An arc must have caught, because all at once, Heron’s limbs jerked, and his head lurched up.

  He stared at Mari with those dead-seeming eyes, forced a ghastly smile, and spoke. “There you are. I know your face.”

  Heron’s mouth, Heron’s voice. But that wasn’t him. Ice clamped her spine. His creepy eyes scanned her. She wanted to shiver. Or scream. Or shoot something.

  “Excellent work, boys. Yes, that’s…her. Marisa Vallejo.”

  She’d heard rumors of com units that could do this kind of shit, get one person totally inside somebody else’s head, essentially taking them over, making them into puppets. Underground carvers called it marionetting, and it creeped Mari out.

  But not so much that she was without resources. She stilled against Bigbelly’s hold and aimed a laser death glare at the other thug. “That is it. You fucking monsters are gonna tell me, real slow, what you’ve done to my boyfriend and how to fix it. Else I swear, I’ll beat the shit out of you.”

  To his credit, Wobble didn’t reply. He opened his mouth but left it that way. Come to think of it, he left his mouth open a lot.

  “Don’t this bitch know I got her pinned?” Bigbelly asked exactly nobody.

  Not-Heron raised a finger and cricked it in the general direction of Wobble, the wire-poking mouth breather. “I did warn you two she was dangerous. Check her for weapons, please.”

  It wasn’t true what the kiddie vids said. Saying please didn’t make a damn thing better. The lie of politeness was in Wobble’s rough hands as he obeyed and searched her. He didn’t so much as pause at her growl when he brushed her hair back, scanning her skull with his wristplant.

  Looking for ports or other alterations. He wouldn’t find any, of course.

  Fuck you. I ain’t some helpless whole-organic girl, here. I’m the girl who’s going to put a bullet between your teeth. You can take that to the bank.

  The puppeteer must have misinterpreted her growl and tension as signs of fear, because he went on in a soothing voice, as if to distract her from the grubby paws all over her body. “Nice shooting today, by the way. Of course, you realize I saw it. Everyone saw it. Security drones got up-close footage of the whole thing and backtracked the trajectory. Full color, chulita: you’re a star.”

  Mari remembered the guy with the wristplant, back on the sidewalk. That security drone had been awful quick to intercept. If the phone guy hadn’t been so close to the scene, would the drone have come for her instead?

  “But that isn’t the only reason the feds are after you,” the puppeteer went on. “You’ve done bad things before, but this was notable. Whole-organic murder in broad daylight, and the contracted spouse of a very important person to boot. Oh, you’ve drawn a lot of attention.”

  Including his? Who the hell was he anyway? No matter how it hurt, Mari pulled again at Bigbelly’s hold. It didn’t budge. Wobble reached behind and squeezed her forearms beneath the robe, probably hunting for wristplants or retractable claws, and for maybe the first time in her life, Mari regretted not having any alts. Sure would be slick to spring them suckers on him right now.

  The move brought his body in close to hers. He smelled like cumin and sweat. Ugh. She would never eat a street taco again. Didn’t want to think where else he might search on her person, and she closed her eyes tight as his hands slipped down, outlining her hips and then patting down her calves.

  This was probably where they expected her to go all wilty and victim. Fuck that. “Whole-organic, my ass,” she spat over the thug’s bent head. “I slagged a mech-clone.”

  Wobble finished his pat down and stepped back, transmitting whatever info he’d gotten from the scan.

  The puppeteer—not Heron—leaned forward in his chair, piercing Mari with those cold, beautiful eyes. “Would that make it better, in your estimation? Does your ethical calculus allow you to murder clones but not whole-organics? What about altered humans, like Heron, your, uh, boyfriend? He is no longer completely human, is he? Would you be able to kill him with no conscience?” He tsked but didn’t look away. “Who is really the monster in this room?”

  The darkthing made of guil
t rose so unexpectedly from her gullet that Mari couldn’t breathe for a split second. She hung there, held up purely by the puppeteer’s gaze and Bigbelly’s massive arms, and her chest ballooned with horror. Because what he said was true. She had made deals with her conscience. She’d done plenty of bad things.

  But never, never in ever would she hurt Heron. She was physically incapable of hurting him. He wasn’t just a thing, like the N series target. He was…a precious thing. Precious to her. And right now, she was gonna do one better than not killing him. She was gonna fucking save him.

  In front of her, the marionette—her partner—smiled, sleek and horrible. “Not to worry, though, little monster. These gentlemen will bring you both to a safe place, a place where none of those pesky police officers can find you. We can talk more then.”

  “You’re arresting me? Fine. But you can back the hell out of Heron’s skull first. You do that, and I’ll come quiet.”

  The puppeteer laughed, and all Mari could think was that wasn’t Heron’s laugh. She’d heard him laugh a few times, and it never sounded like that: tinny and crazed. The difference comforted her some. She only hoped that he was still in there, and that she could get him back.

  After she killed these assholes.

  Her fingers flexed as if they attempted telekinesis. As if the snubby would just magically zip across the floor and leap into her grasp.

  “I’m afraid I can’t do that. His alterations are as extensive as I had suspected, so I’ll need both of you. Oh, don’t worry, though. My associates will be gentle.”

  But Mari was only half listening. She’d found what she’d been looking for: a metallic glint beneath the hem of the duvet. Sweet, sweet little snubby.

  She’d no more spotted the gun than Wobble put his hands beneath Heron’s arms, as if to pull him to his feet. Heron half rose but then fell into his chair. His expression twisted, and he reared back, knocking his mangled head against the thug’s reinforced forearm. The crack of skull on flesh-covered metal was loud, like an egg cracking into a skillet. Heron didn’t move after that, though Wobble still tried to haul him up.