“His primary systems are hibernating,” Kellen told her. “He’s dipping into sleep now, just like with a general anesthetic, only with some subroutines going. He’s still with us, Miss Mari. You don’t need to worry.”
But she’d seen the labels on the cart. She knew that Kellen had pumped him full of enough tranquilizers to down a longhorn. Had his consciousness made it over to the station computer? She figured that’s what some of Kellen’s numbers and graphs were showing, but she didn’t know how to interpret that stuff. And also, she wanted her focus right where it was at the moment, on Heron.
Mari watched as her partner slipped off to sleep.
“Hey, Kellen,” she whispered after a few minutes. “You won’t let him k…ki… Won’t let him do anything permanent before telling me, right?”
The doc reached out a hand, like he would comfort her, and then shoved it back into his jeans pocket. “Ain’t looking to let him hurt himself, no.”
Heron’s fingertip finally stopped circling her knuckles. All tension ebbed from his body. He looked so vulnerable in sleep. Mari unlaced their clasp carefully, reached out, and brushed his hair back away from his forehead. He didn’t look like himself with his hair all tidy like that, but she hadn’t been able to stop herself.
“Miss Mari, I got to ask you a question now.” Kellen shifted his weight from one boot to the other.
“Shoot,” she whispered.
“The name Nathan Grace mean anything to you?”
Her hand paused, frozen. “What?”
“Those nano bits I managed to recover were designs patented by a man named Nathan Grace. Got his numbers all over ’em.”
The words were a horse kick to the gut. “Fucking hell.”
“So you know of him?”
“We used to work together.”
Kellen let it go without any more questions, but Mari’s brain whirred. Once upon a time, she and Nathan had been partners. And lovers. Right up until their job went down the shitter on some pier in Corpus. He’d been her backup, her cover fire. Except one night, he hadn’t been there. And the federales had. She’d blown her diversion charges, but the feds got her anyway.
At first, she’d figured he’d gotten caught like she had, or worse, but she’d heard other folks mention him since then. She’d done the odd interweb search a few times, getting feeds about his life, even though she no longer tried to find him.
He was fine, living in Dallas, managing to sidestep the worst of the war, and working on contract, still in thick with the TPA. Probably cashing in, if she knew him. And she did. She had no reason to think he wasn’t happy as a pig in slop. He’d just ditched her, for whatever reason, at the worst possible moment. And he’d never tried to contact her to explain. As if that kind of betrayal was typical of the world they lived in.
Sometime during the last year or so she’d been working with Heron, she had forgotten what stark loneliness felt like.
“Aw fuck.” Kellen’s whisper slithered across the med lab, cold and horrible and stabbing through her bad memories. He was standing by the monitor, the one showing all Heron’s vitals and whatnot.
“What?”
“Maybe nothing,” Kellen said, but he was lying.
He typed something on a keypad, waited for the computer to respond, and then shoved a hand through his hair.
She peered beyond him at the monitor. Her shooter’s eyes were good enough to read even from this distance.
Error sending data. Session closed. What did that mean?
But Kellen wasn’t in any shape to tell her, was typing even more furiously and mouthing stuff into his com at the same time. If Mari moved, tried to help out, she would just get in the way. She didn’t belong here in this room of wires and antiseptic and blood.
The queen swept in, moving fast, but she didn’t explain either. Hell, she didn’t even acknowledge Mari’s presence, just attached herself to the snake pit of wires, closed her machine eyes, and started doing whatever freaky-ass software kung fu she could to make the scary messages stop.
Mari remained in her knee-burning crouch by Heron’s chair. She could do nothing.
Nothing.
Messages continued to scroll over the monitor. Fail callback. Fail hook handler. Session disabled. What, what, and hell what? It was worse than trying to read a language she didn’t understand. This was necessary, vital information, and she was missing all of it. She bit her lip so hard, she tasted salt.
Don’t get in the way. Don’t disturb the smart folks.
Fuck.
She might not be able to get in there and perform software magic, but she just as clearly couldn’t sit here forever, frozen in impotent fear and ignorance. If she didn’t do something soon, she was going to explode.
Kellen’s hands slowed, then stopped. He sat still in a bolted-down chair and stared at the monitor updates of biometrics. Mari rose, bit back her knees’ complaints, went over to Kellen, and set a hand on his shoulder. He flinched but was probably too tired to startle. Or too horrified.
“Can you pause long enough to read me in on this, Kellen?” she asked in as calm a voice as she could muster. “What just happened?”
“Aw, shit. I’m sorry, Miss Mari,” he said, not even looking up. “Should’ve given you an update, like, ten minutes ago. I just forgot…”
His voice trailed off, but she knew what he would have said. He’d forgotten she was here. Wasn’t the first time that had happened. It wouldn’t be the last. She shrugged off the familiar shame before it could sink in and hurt.
“Right now works, too,” she said.
He scraped one hand over his face. “Short answer is I don’t know. Heron was going to run the scan remotely, but something glitched. He wasn’t able to get back into his own system. I know a little about software management but not nearly enough. Queen’s trying to get him access or at least start up the scan herself.”
Mari swallowed. Where was he now? Was his brain stuck in the station computer? But she chose to ask a more immediate question. “Can she fix this?”
“Maybe?” Kellen made a strangled sound, and his big hands turned to fists. “Fuck if I know. Right now, she’s securing the station from outgoing transmissions, running all the systems here, and trying to save my friend. It’s a lot for one computer to handle, even one as fancy-pants as her. Tell you one thing, she ain’t moving fast. I don’t know what she’s gonna do when the tether energy transfer is done.”
“Why? What happens then?”
“The space elevator will disconnect itself automatically and retract, and she’ll have to move this station. And stop helping Heron. Chiba can’t go back into orbit without its halo of nanites. Space junk would wreck it right quick.”
“But it’s possible she’ll be able to get him access before then?”
“Possible.” But his voice said not likely.
All that talk about rebooting and killing swam in her mind. Possibly the queen could fix him, but it wasn’t likely. Mari couldn’t live on possibilities, not when so much was at stake. She needed certainty. She needed to do something. “What if I can get the transmission to stop? Would that help the queen, help her go faster?”
“It would help loads, gal, but I don’t know how you could…”
“How long until she has to move the station?”
He pointed to a number on the monitor. 23:42:11. And counting down. She had less than a day. God.
“You said Nathan Grace made those nanos, right?”
“Well, yeah, but…”
“Kellen, you get me into Texas, and I will find that motherfucker. He will cut the transmission.”
Twenty-three hours. It would have to be enough.
Chapter 12
Rubbing alcohol stung her nostrils, and the fresh wounds throbbed. Mari felt ’em deeper than just skin. Behind her eyes, in her skull, at the
base of her throat. In the core of who she was. She squinted down at her reflection in the smartsurface table.
“Well, at least I still look like me.” Except she didn’t. On those rare occasions when she looked at her reflection, she never felt like she was seeing herself. The disconnect was only worse now that she’d gone and put implants into her body.
Oh, please. Ain’t like you’re the first person ever to put tech inside your body. This doodad’s gonna help you save him, so it’s worth the weird feeling. Suck it up, buttercup.
Kellen frowned and smoothed the butterfly bandage on her wrist. “Oh, you’re still the same girl. This isn’t alteration like those women who rewrap and rebuild and all look like clones of each other. It ain’t meant to be prettifying. Think of it as a com, just like that one you’ve been wearing in your neck on jobs.”
“But it’s not.”
He met her gaze. “Similar, but no.”
This device had a long-distance communication capability, but more important, it pushed out images, specially enhanced holos with boosted contrast, tailored to fuck up facial recognition probes. She only had to get close to a faceprinter to start up the flood of pics, confusing it. The implanted tech wouldn’t keep her anonymous forever, but in the short term, Kellen swore it was near foolproof. It would get her past the checkpoints and into Texas.
She wasn’t sure why Kellen had schematics on hand for such a thing. Of course, considering all the illegal activities their little group of troublemakers got up to on a regular basis, it couldn’t hurt to be able to have faceprint spoofers at the ready.
“Now remember, I can’t call you. You gotta call me. This channel is locked up tight against outside transmissions.”
“Roger that, doc.”
“And you feel comfortable with the other fail-safes?”
“As comfy as I’m gonna be.”
“Well, then.” His solemn face tried to smile, but it came off as a grimace. He looked tired. “I still think you’re crazier than a sack of weasels.”
Mari folded her fingers to a fist. “You got somethin’ against weasels?”
“You know what I meant.”
She did. “Thank you.”
“Welcome, Miss Mari. Now, let’s get you packed up before I have second thoughts. Clock’s tickin’.”
• • •
The Chiba Station had hooked its space-elevator tether to an energy storage depot somewhere between Laramie and Cheyenne. Kind of ballsy of the queen, putting down her tether here. Bit dangerous, too. Denver, the seat of the new continental government, was probably the most secure place on the planet. Even this far out from the Colina Capitolina, drones fitted with face-printing scanners hovered thick as Gulf Coast mosquitoes on a summer night.
When Mari got down to the surface, she went in the opposite direction from the capital, toward Laramie, and boarded a maglev there.
In the security corral, waiting on her train, she saw folk with printed canvas pants and mud on their boots. Made her think of back home, and then her soul knotted up into a ball, ’cause that’s where she was headed. Texas. Home. And not for fun.
She had a cloudcoin account under an alias, and her login still worked. Mari knew that accessing it would lead her enemies to her eventually, but long-term trouble wasn’t her worry. She was more concerned with right now.
She’d borrowed a cuff com off Kellen and set up the timer on it. It covered up her new scar, and it also provided her with a constant reminder of how much time she had left before the queen needed to move. In the train station, Mari glanced at her wrist. 19:38:11.
She made a pit stop in a hostelry near the departure gate and bought some preprinted clothes and toiletries. Kellen had given her a bundle of tradables, and she was able to barter for a disposable external com. Girl never knew what would be available for purchase in war-strapped Texas. She’d bring in what she needed.
The orange silk dress she packed up carefully in a climate-controlled box and sent to a storage unit she’d hired in London a few years back. Even if she managed to stop the transmission and save Heron, there was still that bitty problem of being wanted by the continental government. So yeah, she was headed back to Texas, but no, she couldn’t stay.
She wished Heron was here for the job planning and beyond. He’d know the best places to hide out. He had always been better at that stuff. And he would be again. She swore it to herself.
Would he come with her, permanently on the lam? Could he bear to leave all that he’d built, the smuggling operation, the relationships, his precious things? And could she even ask him to give up all that, just for her?
She didn’t want to think about her own life stretching on without him.
Her fresh scar itched when she passed through the security arch. No way she could be feeling the faceprint spoofer, but knowing it was there, knowing that she wore mech inside her body, made her skin crawl. She passed through the arch without incident, though. Just like any other UNAN citizen.
Nobody clapped cuffs on her or tased her ass during boarding, and she couldn’t help feeling a thrill at pulling one over on all these stern-looking federales. She almost turned to wink at Heron or say something saucy and salacious, but then reality intruded again.
He wasn’t with her on this job. She was on her own. No turning back now.
She paid for the seating upgrade and crept into the forward compartment, which accorded a smidge of privacy. She waited until the maglev released and rose, because even with all these things on her mind, that shit felt freaky cool, every time. It also put her in a slightly better frame of mind for dialing up Aunt Boo.
Most folks’d be happy with a message now and then, but Auntie B swore there wasn’t anything as good as the sound of a loved one’s voice. Although it was possible she’d heeded Mari’s warning yesterday, more likely, she hadn’t even checked her message log yet.
She picked up on the second chime. “’Yello.”
Just hearing her on the disposable phone made Mari’s eyes tear up. “Heya, Auntie Boo. What’s doin’?”
“Mariposa? That you, kiddo?”
Without even confirming, Aunt Boo launched into a detailed description of her camouflaged, fenced-back garden and the hot young thing she’d hired to tend it through the late-autumn harvest and put it to bed for winter.
Fences had scarred the landscape, and the TPA had appropriated much of the land Boo had owned before, but she still kept at gardening. And ogling the local boys. Apparently, this one had bronzed skin, labored long, hot afternoons without a shirt, and didn’t mind gals old enough to be his grandmother checking him out while he worked, which was a plus in Aunt Boo’s book.
Mari soaked in the descriptions so deep, she could almost taste home-done biscuits and butternut squash soup from the ladle.
“So that’s enough about me. You knocked up yet or what?”
Despite the fact that Aunt Boo had asked it a hundred times, the question still jolted Mari. She felt a bulb of satisfaction in her womb, a physical confirmation of recent sex, though she knew that unless Heron had banked before his alterations, the chances of him ever having kids skirted near zero. And if he’d started down the mech path only after those riots in Austin, Mari’s guess was that he hadn’t been planning his post-human life. So no electronic walking trainers for toddlers or day camps for them in the future.
And why was she even thinking along these lines? Mari kicked herself mentally. One goddamn wonderful night did not a lifelong relationship forge, and she sure wasn’t looking to make babies right now. Not with all she’d planned for the next few years of forever.
“Um, I don’t think so,” she mumbled, which set off some cackling on the other end of the line.
“That’s about the most positive lack of certainty I’ve heard from you in years, even if you ain’t got actual nibblets yet. You got a fella, sounds like, and I’m
happy about that.”
Me too. Or she would be if he weren’t laid out on a gurney at the moment. “Sort of, but he don’t know he’s got yet, Auntie B. So I’ll tell you more about him next time, okay? Meanwhile, did you get the message I sent earlier?”
“I got it.”
Three words delivered in the gentlest voice…but smothered in disappointment. Her voice implied that Mari had gone and done her usual, making trouble. And here was Auntie B, tsking her disapproval. They didn’t really need to rehash that old quarrel. Mari pulled the com closer to her mouth and dropped her voice. “Please tell me you aren’t still in Texas. Tell me you’re off visiting one of your princesses.”
A crackle over the line, and then a sigh. “Princess Bubbles says hi.”
Aunt Boo’d grown close to a group of women online years ago, back when the cloud was called “internet” and offered a modicum of anonymity. Auntie still kept up with her princesses, and once in a while, when she could save up enough in tradables to coyote through the border, she went to visit one. They lived all over the world, and Mari didn’t have a clue who was who; they all went by made-up names of fairy-tale princesses. Boo was Princess Rose, and Mari could vaguely recall a Princess Seraphina. Apparently, there was also a Princess Bubbles.
If the people who’d jacked Heron were looking to cause hurt to the folks who Mari loved, probably the safest place for Aunt Boo to hide out would be with one of these women. They’d take her in, no questions asked. And Mari wouldn’t know where to find her.
Which meant that Mari’s enemies wouldn’t be able to find Auntie B either, not even if they transmitted every bit in Heron’s head.
“Thanks for skedaddling,” Mari said. “Also, I wanted you to know I have a storage unit for my stuff. If anything happens to me—”
“Don’t you even start a sentence that way, missy.”
“If anything happens to me,” Mari repeated firmly, “the contact code for that storage unit is ‘lacewing,’ and the number is Mama’s birthday. It’s in the stacks near Heathrow.”
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