Wanted and Wired

by Vivien Jackson

  Oh yeah, this was totally Dad. He’d never once eased the Band-Aid off. He’d always been a ripper. “Fuck you. I’m right here.”

  He just stared down at her, cold as cryo. “You are. She is not.”

  It hit Mari like a low-orbit nuke, what Dad was telling her. He wasn’t shushing her or dismissing her to her aunt’s care or trying to get her out of his business. He was telling her that she literally was not his daughter. Not Marisa Vallejo. That she was something else.

  It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him he was full of shit, but his words had the stink of truth on ’em. How many times had she wondered at her unnaturally steady aim, her ability to pick up on coms real quick, how she couldn’t remember senior prom but could effortlessly calculate the vectors on a squeeze even though she’d never studied those kinds of maths?

  If she was altered, a post-human of some kind, that would explain why Dad hadn’t contacted her after the revolution got rolling, why he was using her so callously right now, just another cog in one of his grand schemes. No need to worry over the feelings of a… So, if she wasn’t his daughter, what exactly was she?

  A thing, the darkthing whispered, full of glee. Just a thing.

  And then, in a different voice in memory: a precious thing.

  Like Heron?

  Oh.

  Her fury eased. Her confusion settled. Her leg throbbed.

  “So you’re saying somebody altered me after that job down in Corpus? Well, tell me all about it. Come on, turkey, you can’t lay that kind of rotten egg and pretend it don’t stink.” Eight years ago, she’d been captured. Tortured. Killed? Had they messed with her brain, too? Had they geared and wired her? Holy buttonsucker, what exactly was underneath her skin right now?

  “You’ll have to ask Peetey,” Dad said calmly. “She got to your body before I could.”

  Peetey. The queen. Dad’s prototype mech-clone, the one Heron had filched during the Austin riots. She’d done a rebuild on Mari? Why the hell would she do that? Unless… “Jesus, Dad, did you just shoot me to get Heron back for stealing your robot girlfriend? Or to get her back for modding me? Either way, that’s pretty messed up right there.”

  Not-Nathan cocked his head, and now Mari knew for sure it was her dad in there. Daddy always did have that how-could-I-have-sired-an-idiot look. Gave it to her plenty, back when. Man, she hated that look.

  “You believe this is all revenge, chulita? I’ve gone to rather a lot of trouble for revenge. Besides, I would visit revenge on Peetey differently. And if all I wanted to do was hurt Farad, I could have slagged you in the Pentarc.”

  “What do you want, then? ’Cause you’re making no sense to me.”

  He leaned down, locked eyes with her. As if he were trying to speak to Heron through her. As if he thought they might be linked or something. “That boy has been smitten with you for as long as I’ve known him. It’s pathetic, really. But again, useful. By injuring you, I’ve guaranteed that he’ll expose himself, either by coming here directly or by plugging into the cloud. He does the former, I get him. He does the latter, the transmission recommences.”

  What was it Heron had said about that transmission? That it was everything about him—and about her? She’d thought at the time he meant data like safe-haven addresses and known affiliates. But what if he’d meant structural schematics, designs for the alterations he’d undergone? And whatever the queen had done to her.

  If Dad was telling the truth and wasn’t lying out his eyeballs—a theory she still wasn’t ready to abandon entirely—Mari’s body contained plenty of illegal tech the black market might covet as well.

  Assuming Heron knew about her alterations. Which begged a question she suddenly ached to ask him. That desire, more than anything else, compelled her to find a way off this damn rock.

  If only her brain could come up with a plan. Any plan.

  Dad was still talking. Intense and leaning over her in a sad parody of villainy. She figured she might as well listen. “…so I get his neural-alt schematics, her discomfort, and you, whatever you are now, as a bonus. I. Win.”

  That was true. He always won. It was his personal motto. Yes, her father was that cheesy. Apparently also that cracked.

  The wetness on her hand meant the wound was bleeding again, faster now. Did those blood chemicals have a time limit or something? The pain was different, too, deeper.

  Also, those damn nanites in Heron’s head were still transmitting, he was running out of time and, lord, it was hot up here on the rock, even at stupid o’clock in the morning, and Mari was just so damn sick of this whole thing.

  Still holding on to her throbbing and now bleeding leg, she nodded up at the gun. “Fine. You win. Whatever. You gonna shoot me again or what?”

  Looking a little sheepish, Dad tucked the gun into his waistband. “I suppose not. I wasn’t sure how quickly you would heal, but perhaps your alterations were sloppily done. Which would make sense, of course, since Peetey wouldn’t have had complete schematics and would have improvised. She wasn’t built with brain-matrix autoduplication in mind…” And on.

  Except, now he was getting all chatty, Mari realized she had zero interest in talking to him anymore. Far as she was concerned, his only use to her at this point was getting that transmission cut. She didn’t want to hug him. She didn’t want his approval. She didn’t want to be just like him when she grew up. She was beyond all that little-girl bullshit.

  The realization made her both powerful and sad. So much for finding her long-lost dad. Made her want to vomit, thinking of all she’d gone through, all she’d risked to find the son of a bitch.

  Of course, it was always possible the waves of nausea slurping up against the back of her throat were the shock setting in. Clearly, whoever had rebuilt her hadn’t compensated for shock. Her teeth were starting to chatter, but she ground them tight against each other.

  Mech-clones didn’t shiver. They didn’t cry. And they didn’t bleed. These were truth nuggets she’d learned a long time ago. A little bloom of red at the entry wound, but then their subdermal vasoconstrictors pinched off the release of fluid, compensated, steadied heart rate and limbic chemicals. Tough little shits.

  She shoved a fist into her still-seeping thigh wound and mashed her teeth together. So am I. Tough as a mech-clone.

  She blinked through a pain haze, slinking her gaze along the pink granite. The sun was coming up strong now.

  And somebody was coming over the eastern edge of the rock. Striking figure. Gigantic, blond, bristling with weapons. Her goddamn-motherfucking Viking stalker from Dallas. Was he working for Dad, too, here to retrieve them? But that didn’t make sense. Heron wasn’t here yet. How long would Dad wait for him?

  The Viking raised his weapon.

  Oh shit. Her leg burned at the movement, but she stood up anyway, compensating for the vertigo. It all happened so quickly, but Mari never felt out of the moment. She homed in on that weapon, a tasty smaller-bore autocannon that, in better circumstances, Mari might have coveted, and traced its aim to Nathan.

  Nathan, who wasn’t even there, whose body had been coopted so her asshole father could have his chitchattery, mustache-twirling villain moment. And Nathan was gonna get drilled into a mountainside for being a pawn? Nope. Her instinct wasn’t to sit by and watch somebody else get mowed down like a patch of brown grass.

  She lurched for Nathan, wrapped her arms around him, heard his huff of breath and the crunch of bones as she hauled him to the ground.

  The bullets pinged like sheet rain coming in sideways, cold on her naked shoulder blades, and Mari pressed her face to Nathan’s back, closing her eyes against the seam of his shirt. A big part of her wanted to take the hit, to go down and stay down, but instinct won again.

  The Viking stopped firing. She heard the clack of him tossing one weapon aside, probably reaching for another. This dude was a professional
, definitely better trained than those thugs at the Pentarc. And he’d been shooting at Nathan, so probably wasn’t working for Dad. Could be UNAN, come to take her out for what she did to Senator Neko’s husband. But of course, there were other entities and governments who wanted a piece of her, and probably just as many who wanted to off Nathan. How stupid it’d been to place both fat targets out here on a bare rock.

  Mari reached around, underneath Nathan, and grabbed at his pants. Lord, she was glad he wasn’t aware for this part. She found the butt of the gun and yanked, skinning her knuckles over the rock.

  Her leg wasn’t obeying orders anymore, so she used the other one to push herself back over, onto her back, and she brought both hands up, cradling Nathan’s hand cannon like the sweet unmodded thang it was. Her fingers felt far away, disconnected, a little numb. But she could still stroke the trigger. Oh yes, she could.

  She squinted against the sunlight, forcing her eyes to sight in that Viking brute.

  Didn’t take much searching. He stood right over her. Unarmed. Looking white as grits.

  “No, please, God. Miss Vallejo, are you okay?” He crouched and reached out a hand, and Mari settled her grip.

  She thought about pulling the trigger, honest to God she did, but the odd thing was, she couldn’t feel that finger at all anymore. Couldn’t feel her hands. Couldn’t even feel that burn in her thigh, and damn it, she actually was hunting for it.

  She blinked, tried to swallow, but her mouth was so, so dry.

  Blood loss must’ve been worse than it looked, she thought, as a shadow appeared behind the Viking: big-ass gray shadow, accompanied by a roaring in her ears. She blinked again.

  Whoa.

  Not a shadow. A Pave Low V, sliding up above the edge of the rock, rotors humming like a goddamned gospel chorus. On either side, dual missile clamps unrolled, armed to the teeth, looking like nothing so much as a smile unfurling.

  Heron. Jacked into death-on-rotors, coming for her. Like he always had.

  Mari’s tired, dust-stained face smiled back, and all she could think as she felt the black of unconsciousness sweep over her was, Don’t them things have self-lubricating rotors? Kinda sexy, partner.

  Chapter 16

  Noise, noise, noise. The entire universe was noise, but he had to focus. Forced himself to focus. Helicopter. He was a helicopter. He tested the systems. Mixture: full rich. Directional gyro: aligned with magnetic compass. Altimeter: clearing the rock. Weapons: engage. All weapons lock on.

  Noise cut in again, bits of unrelated data swirling into his consciousness. A secret army, a drone army, hiding. Don’t care, don’t need to know. If it had nothing to do with Mari or the helicopter, it wasn’t important. But the information persisted, burrowing into his attention.

  The wild whip of data against his mind overwhelmed. Too much. His focus broke. Little break, but violent.

  He caromed away from his tether, screaming for it.

  No arms, no legs, no eyes. Just space. Infinite space, and noise. And—cowl flaps? Like spider legs. Was he coming down? Going up? Which? Steady.

  The cloud smelled like limoncello.

  Lost.

  • • •

  Mari thought she’d opened her eyes, but it might have been more of that mind-over-matter bullshit. She still couldn’t feel much, but she did hear, from far away, that humming of rotors winding down. Did they have choppers in hell? Must.

  “Am I dead this time?” That disbelief merged with pain merged with uncertainty merged with love merged with hope. She was overwhelmed, outgunned, and just a frog’s hair past giving up completely. But more than anything, she was flat-out tired.

  “Uh, no. But you sure gave it a go,” said a disembodied voice. So apparently, she was imagining voices in her head now, too. Awesome.

  This one echoed that same certainty, that same feeling she’d had back in the Pentarc when Heron had spoken in her com. But it didn’t feel like him. Which was actually what convinced her, ultimately, the voice was real. If she were to imagine Heron’s voice as some sort of mental soother, she’d never make it so…what was the word? Chipper. And all kinds of wrong.

  No, whoever was peeking up her thoughts was definitely not Heron.

  “Kinky,” the voice in her head said. “I wondered that about you, but Dr. Farad would never kiss and tell. Alas.”

  Sweet voice. Unbearably so.

  “Chloe?”

  “Yep, yep, that’s my name. Malphonetic. Ephemeral on the end. Perky!”

  Mari blinked again, tried to sit up, and choked down a wave of nausea. Above her curved the dull gray spines of a cargo helicopter, but the rotors were still. The smell of weapon lubricants lay heavy on her tongue and in the back of her throat, but after the bright chaos on top of that rock, the darkness and oil smells struck Mari as oddly homey. Safe.

  Chloe was sitting by Mari’s hip, a bright point in all the shadow, though she was looking down and frowning. Her mouth stayed still when she spoke. “Forgive me if I don’t waste effort on facial movement and excessive speech. Am busy.”

  Mari looked down her body. Someone had pushed up her crinoline, and although Chloe was seated on the helo deck, her right forearm was inside Mari’s leg.

  Literally shoved inside. Mari swallowed bile.

  Was the wound big enough for that? When she’d peeked at it up on the rock, it had seemed average to smallish and closing even as she’d watched, easily fixed. Unless the shot had nicked something important in there, she’d be fine. She should be fine.

  A twinge in her thigh caused her to holler and arch up off the deck plates. “The fuck! What are you doing?”

  “Be still,” Chloe told her. “I’m trying to get this bleeding to stop. Where’s it all coming from? Yow.”

  “Yow?” Mari echoed. “That a technical term?” And bleeding? Wasn’t it supposed to be not bleeding? Or had she imagined that whole Mari-not-a-real-girl discussion with Dad?

  “Uh, can I do anything?” Another voice, and once Mari looked over and caught sight of him, she wondered how she’d missed him in the first place.

  That gigantic blond Viking was crouched not three feet away, wearing rubber gloves and holding a syringe and looking nervous. Mari wasn’t keeping a list or anything, but that had to be one of the oh-hell-no-est sights she’d ever encountered.

  Chloe shifted, and the face that had been still and focused now animated in a rush, as if she had just thrown a switch and come to life.

  “Yes! Viktor, I need you to—put that needle down first, good—now reach behind her knee, press your first two fingers against that ridge—see the one there in that hollow?—and tell me what you feel.”

  Mari wasn’t sure what she thought about being felt up by a guy she hadn’t even really met. True, she admired his taste in weapons, and if Heron was letting him live after all those bullets, he had to be a safe bet. But still.

  When he touched her, she felt the pressure but not the surface brush. Local anesthetics, maybe? Well, that would explain why the pain had receded to a dull ache as opposed to a flash fire.

  “She has heartbeat. Is that right?”

  “Yeah. Now grab the other knee, in the back. Same thing?” Since when had Chloe become a medic? Mari thought she must have missed something important.

  “More flutter on the right one, in comparison.”

  Something shifted inside, a pinprick but deep. Chloe’s voice was cool as mimosa. “Okay. What about now?”

  The Viking—Viktor, was it?—paused like he was thinking hard. Finally, he nodded. “It is more alike now.”

  “Yay!” Chloe’s squeal caused a wholly different pain in Mari’s spine. “The big artery is intact, and the little ones will be easy to fix. We have time. Dr. Farad loaded all those schematics in, so me, I get to play doctor.” She waggled her perfect eyebrows. Not comforting. “Okay, now, Mari, I need you t
o flex your foot.”

  She did.

  Chloe didn’t move. “Go ahead.”

  She did it again.

  “Mari?”

  “What? I did it.”

  “No, you didn’t.”

  Mari was about to ask what that meant, but Chloe was moving again. Moving not like a human being would, more like a doll on strings. Sometimes, her sections didn’t meet up all the way, like the arm would be moving but the shoulder wouldn’t shift the way it ought to, and an empty space would peek between. In vids, this would indicate subpar animation. In a person, it was just unsettling.

  Earlier, when they’d first met, Chloe had probably been concentrating on holding her physical appearance together. Now, the fae had other priorities, and some of her person simulation suffered for that. It looked deeply wrong, but Mari mentally slapped herself.

  What, wrong like Heron was wrong? Wrong like she was, if what Dad had said was true? Did somebody have to be a hundred percent human to be right? Fuck that. Just fuck it.

  Chloe sat back on her haunches, withdrawing her arm from Mari’s flesh. No, Mari could see now, there wasn’t a giant hole in her leg. Chloe had just been able to rearrange her nanobit structure and slip in through that wee hole, the one the bullet had made.

  “Here’s where we stand,” Chloe said. “The bullet’s still in there, which isn’t a big deal, except that it’s close to your sciatic nerve. If it migrates even a little bit, the pain will be pretty intense. Either that, or you won’t feel anything, which is worse. I can’t get to it when I’m like this.” She looked straight at the wall. “Dr. Farad, I’m going to have to embed.”

  Mari had no idea what Chloe was talking about, but hearing Heron’s name caused her limbs to flood with warmth.

  “Is he here?” Mari asked. “Can I talk to him? Heron! What about that transmission? Is it down?” She touched her throat before she remembered Nathan had nicked her com.