Zero Rogue

by Matthew S. Cox

  Aaron chuckled at the realization ‘common sense’ was a mixed drink. He gestured at it with an open hand before pointing at Anna. “If he drinks that an’ loses the itch to steal that thing…”

  Darwin drained a third of it in one swig. “Naah, this is a foo-foo drink. It ain’t strong enough to change my mind.”

  Anna stared at her plate, still with half her food remaining by the time Aaron finished. She took a hesitant forkful, looking up at the sound of Darwin’s slurping.

  He tilted the empty glass at Aaron. “So, I find Shimmer, you help me out with the thing.”

  “I’ll consider it,” muttered Aaron.

  Darwin sucked at the ice once more, put the cup down, and jumped up with a smile. “Consider the bitch found.”

  A minute after he vanished into the crowd, Anna poked at her food and took a bite.

  “A bit ripe, that one.”

  She muttered despite a full mouth, hurrying to swallow. “Aye. Before this gets any more awkward, are you willing to meet with Archon?”

  “You’ve made it grievously clear you’re spoken for.” He put on a rogue’s grin. “If I’d been trying, we’d ’ave shagged by now.” As soon as he said it, he regretted it.

  “Are you so sure of that?”

  The hint of amusement in her face eased the tension in his back. “Either that or you’d ’ave killed me. Maybe this Archon’s getting jealous.”

  She laughed, launching a particle of egg onto the table. “I sincerely doubt that. Does that mean you’d like to meet him?”

  “Not just yet.” Aaron set his fork on the plate.

  As if sensing a disturbance in the balance of the universe, the orb waiter rocketed over to collect the empty dish, its spindly arm up to hold the hat in place.

  “So what’re you planning to do?” Anna waved at the orb. “Another tea, please. Earl this time?”

  The orb pivoted, a disembodied head nodding. Anna held up a finger, glanced at Aaron, and made it two.

  “I’m planning to wait for Darwin.”

  She blinked. “Right ’ere?”

  “Aye. Unless you’d fancy going off somewhere to snog.”

  Anna’s face went unreadable. A strange hope she’d take him up on the offer had left his tone ambiguous. He hadn’t intended to sound serious, but it didn’t come out quite like a joke.

  “Are you really a sodding wanker, or are you just doing the typical Arsenal-fan thing and denying the obvious truth?”

  Aaron looked around.

  “What’re you doing?”

  He smiled. “Judging by the lack of random fires, and the still-working lights, I’ll take it you were teasing.”

  She shifted and leaned back. Their tea arrived, and Aaron swiped his NetMini at the robo-waiter to clear the tab. The attempt at Earl Grey was on the low end of passable; he gazed into it like an ascetic using a divining bowl. Whatever communication occurred between the dark liquid and his subconscious didn’t lead to any moments of epiphany by the time he drank it near to the bottom.

  Aaron felt as though a teasing chance had slipped his grasp, like trying to catch an oiled-up catfish barehanded by the tail. Of course, it might’ve just been what women do. His question had not been serious―he blamed fear of her gift for his lack of interest―but that too seemed as much of a diversion as his bringing it up. At least she’d stopped mentioning Archon. He squinted at her innocent tea-sipping face. Was she as unavailable as she claimed to be? Why do I care? She’s too short. Bad attitude, wears her hair like a little boy, and she’s a fecking Man U fan.

  He closed his eyes and tried to picture her. Allison had kept her hair short as well, though not a pixie cut, and brown instead of white. This woman was nothing like his wife. Anna had a mean streak Allison could never possess. Quiet, introverted Allison got along with machines better than people―until she’d met him.

  Okay, maybe she doesn’t look like a small boy. It’s somewhat cute.

  The curious glint in Anna’s deep blues came too close to Allison the day they met, wondering what was going on in his mind. The more he thought about it, the less he wanted to subject Anna to the bastard he’d become.

  He stood, staring off at the crowd so she couldn’t see his face. “I’ve got some shite to deal with before I talk to your Archon chap.”

  Aaron didn’t turn around; he didn’t want to look at her again. Would any woman with short hair and large eyes have reminded him of Allison, or only Anna? He certainly couldn’t call it a match of personality.

  “Don’t do anything rash.” Anna slid her chair back. “Shall I call you?”

  Aaron rushed into the crowd. No specific destination came to mind; he wanted to remove himself from regret. His mind lent more meaning than she’d likely intended to her parting words. An attempt to distract himself by focusing on the annoyance of the hacker’s disappearing act cascaded through a multitude of emotions: irritation at Shimmer, anger at Talis, and feelings of failure at himself. At last, and most crippling, crushing guilt came with the memory of Allison’s final, terrified expression.

  He stumbled to a PubTran station at the end of the next block and fell into a waiting car. The world felt too heavy; he needed to get away from it for a few hours.

  he clamor of bells pounded Aaron’s head as though he’d slept in the clock tower of Westminster. His eyes snapped open. He tried to sit up, but failed; the weight of a sleeping woman pinned him to a luxurious, functional, queen-sized Comforgel pad. Two others lay on either side of him with nary a scrap of clothing between the four of them. He grunted, working his arm out from under the Asian girl to grasp the NetMini responsible for the racket. After pushing the cancel button on the incoming call, he levitated it back to the nightstand and let his head sink into the pillow.

  None of the women stirred.

  Ten seconds later, two metaphorical giants got to work on his skull with hammers. Aaron tried to form the requisite presence of mind to be angry at Darwin for setting his new NetMini’s ring to the bell peals of Big Ben, but his mind refused to concentrate on anything but pain. The girl sleeping on top of him was as short as Anna, but larger in the bust and hip and had rather dark skin. Unlike her friends, the pale redhead on his left didn’t touch him; she lay curled on her side with her back turned.

  Aaron swallowed, staring at the ceiling. The sculpted tiles each had a rounded faux-wood egg jutting from a projection at the center carved to resemble leaves. They blurred in a nauseating dance, making him close his eyes again. The Asian woman on his right emitted a soft whine in her sleep and snuggled against his side. Almost at the same time, the pale one went flat on her back, slapping the dark skinned girl in the ass with a limp arm.

  Fiona? Aaron squinted at the freckles across her cheeks. I wonder how much that cost… I hear it’s cheaper to go ginger as a baby. Siobhan? Fuck. He spent a moment adoring the perfect holo-vid star face of the woman on top of him. Horror gripped him; aside from being unable to recall any of their names, his only memory of last night consisted of getting into a PubTran taxi and telling it to take him to The Imperial Hotel. Evidently, he’d met some women in the bar, and… well… Given the arrangement in which he’d come to, he could guess what they’d done, but it might as well have never been as far as his memory cared.

  “Ugh,” he moaned, rubbing his forehead.

  A clunk from the bathroom snapped his head up again. Is there a fourth? When it happened again, he realized the autoshower probably ran a cleaning routine on its filtration unit. He imagined Anna standing in the doorway with her arms folded and a disapproving smirk on her face.

  Feck what you think, lass. You’re not in the running.

  Morning urgency made the woman on top of him heavier. Aaron gathered a mental assay of her weight and distributed his telekinetic efforts across her entire body as he lifted her straight up. He untangled himself from the Asian girl and levitated himself over the redhead before easing the dark-skinned goddess back down. He landed on his feet near the nightstand and
sighed at the three nudes.

  Bugger. Aaron squeezed his temples. I must’ve hit the gin a bit too much, can’t remember a damn thing.

  The NetMini vibrated, adding a mechanical buzz to the peal of electronic bells drubbing his brain. He snatched it, ready to dash it to pieces on the carpet, until he saw the word Darwin in phantasmal letters.

  “Oi, what?” Aaron mumbled.

  Darwin’s face appeared in hologram, six inches of shit-eating grin. “Where the hell did you run off to, man? I’ve been tryin’ ta find yo’ ass for six hours.”

  “What fecking time is it?”

  “An hour ’til noon. They won’t let my ass in the door of this place.”

  “Try wearing clothes that’ve been washed more recently than a year ago.” Aaron rolled his head around in an effort to loosen his neck. “It works wonders on social acceptance.”

  “Yeah, whatever, man. Look, I found Shimmer. I’m outside.”

  Aaron gazed through the intangible head of his roommate, smiling at three perfect asses. “I’ll be right there.”

  The tiny car had probably shed the bulk of its paint a decade ago. Puny in-wheel motors lay exposed to the elements, their covers long gone. Clusters of coiled blue wiring sparked every so often, with the occasional lingering arc between the drive core and the ground. Aaron elected not to touch the handle and opened the door with a mental flex of telekinesis before hopping in.

  Darwin jerked upright in the seat as the passenger door slammed. “I wasn’t even there, man.”

  “Where?” Aaron raised an eyebrow.

  His friend held his hands up as if expecting a fist in the teeth, squinted, and blinked. After a moment, he rubbed his eyes and laughed. “Oh, nothin’. It’s been over an hour. What the hell took so long?”

  Aaron settled into the seat with a Cheshire smile. “I needed to remember something.”

  Darwin stuck his finger in a hole on the dashboard, through a ring of black plastic bordering a button that had once been there. He shivered with a spasmodic shock and yanked his hand back. A second later, the dashboard lit up. A trace of burning silicon blew into the cabin from the vents.

  “Think it’s time for a new car.” Aaron felt uneasy even touching it.

  “Sure. You buyin’?” Darwin winked. His mirth faded. “Look. You’re startin’ to worry me. Cheap women and expensive booze ain’t gonna bring Allison back.”

  Aaron glared. “The ladies weren’t cheap, or shallow, or on the job.”

  “Ladies?” asked Darwin, leaning on the s.

  “Aye.” Aaron held up three fingers.

  Darwin pushed the left control stick and nudged out of the parking lot. “Good grief, man. You’re a slut. What would Allison say if she could see that?”

  Aaron turned his sour face to the passenger window. “Don’t ’ave much worry of that happening, now do I?”

  “Are you angry with women in general, or is it Aaron you’re pissed off at? Do you think she’d want you doing that to yourself?”

  “Probably not.” Aaron’s throat tightened. He closed his eyes as her dying scream reverberated in his head.

  Darwin kept quiet for a few minutes of driving, letting the grinding and scraping of e-motors fill the air. Eventually, he sighed. “Sorry, man. That’s gotta be some rough shit.”

  “I have to do this. If Zero finds Talis, I can’t take the chance of them looking the other way because she’s strong and they want to recruit her.”

  “You know killin’ her won’t bring Allison back.”

  Aaron gripped his side, feeling her nametag under the fabric. “I know. But I’ll feel better for a few seconds before the crippling depression comes back and I leap headfirst into a downward spiral that leads to my ultimate demise, probably on the floor of a PubTran terminal bathroom.”

  Darwin let out a bassy chuckle. “At least you’re an optimist at heart.”

  “So what’s all this urgency about Shimmer?”

  “You’re lucky those dudes want her to do shit for ’em. Syndicate found her in real time, dragged her ass to a place no one would hear her scream. I get the feelin’ they forcin’ her to hack for ’em. Probably gonna off her anyway when she’s done.”

  The thought of a couple of Syndicate thugs working over an eight-inch faerie in some dark warehouse hit him funny. When he stopped laughing, he couldn’t help but feel a wave of guilt. While some woman―Aaron felt mostly certain Shimmer was a genuine she―he depended on got the business, he went back for round two with three girls he still couldn’t recall the names of. Three friends who’d just attended a baby shower and happened to be in the bar. The Princess wanted a baby but not a man; she’d been the easiest to convince. All Aaron had to do was agree with her new-agey distaste for fertility clinics and ‘unnatural’ custom genetic material. The Asian girl acted self-conscious about her unremarkable looks; she took a bit longer, but he found all the right things to say in her head. To be fair, her opinion of herself was overly harsh. Red held out the longest. She’d only gone along with it because she didn’t want to be separated from her friends. He’d respected her hesitation and barely touched her all night or this morning.

  Meanwhile, Shimmer endured who-knows-what. Yeah, Allison would be proud of him.

  He pressed a hand to his face, focused on holding back the grief he’d been avoiding for so long. A gasp or two escaped as his emotion nosedived. Once again, anger saved him and kept his face stoic.

  “You always been like that?” asked Darwin. “Did Allison tame you or something?”

  Aaron’s palm became a fist, pressed to his mouth. “No… You’ll not believe me, but she was my first.”

  “Bullshit.” Darwin jinked the stick about, skidding around a hard right turn right as the signal changed. “You’re right, I don’t buy it. All that Gee-ball money?”

  “Frictionless.” Aaron lacked the energy to get upset. “All those slags wanted was my bank or to get seen on the holo with the famous me.” He let his arm drop away from his face. “Now, I bet few people’d even remember me.”

  “Met her on the force then? Lemme guess, your partner?”

  Aaron flashed a wistful smile. “Not at first. Same squad though. Took us almost a year for me to find the stones talk to her. After we married, I kept harassing command to let us be partners. Captain Torres thought it was an awful idea.” Warmth spread over his cheeks a second before a tear forced its way free. He slammed his fist on the dashboard. “I should’ve listened to him.”

  Darwin kept quiet as Aaron battled his emotions. Outside, the buildings went from shiny to normal to dilapidated. Ocean salt added to the scent of singed electronics. The car nosed into a parking space in front of a tall, abandoned building. Darwin squeezed it between a dead cargo transport covered in pornographic graffiti and an exploded upside-down bed that looked as if it had fallen from at least the fortieth floor.

  A long breath pushed regret and misery aside, leaving room for controlled anger. Aaron shoved the door open and got out. Though he couldn’t see any faces in the windows looming over him, the building had eyes. Every so often, one of the dark, glassless hollows held a wisp of sentience, a telepathic trace of a mind lurking in the shadows. Most of what he overheard criticized Darwin’s ride as not worth stealing.

  “This it?”

  Darwin’s door closed with a soft thud. “Naw, man. What do you think I am, stupid? Place we want is a block down and two over.” He locked the doors.

  “Relax, mate. No one here’s gonna steal your Halcyon-Ormyr.”

  “Oh, you’re a regular shittin’ comedian. Not everyone can afford one of those things, Mr. Frictionless.”

  He grinned and followed Darwin along the street, hanging left at the first block. Squatters peered down at them from windows of various elevations. A small boy, perhaps six, leaned out far enough to snort and spit. Aaron stalled the glob in midair four floors below its maker, reversed it like a bullet, and slapped the boy in the forehead with it. The child vanished backward into th
e building, squealing and shrieking.

  “That was cruel.”

  Aaron shook his head. “No, cruel would’ve been putting it back in his mouth.”

  Darwin gagged. He waved Aaron past him. “There… go past the alley. You want the place that looks like an old salon.”

  “You’re not coming?”

  Darwin leaned on the wall, arms crossed. “Not unless you give me some serious artillery. I can’t mind-fu shit to death like you. Besides, not being seen in a place where Syndicate ass gets kicked improves my odds of living.” He narrowed his eyes. “Unlike some people, I still give a shit if I see tomorrow.”

  Aaron scrunched his lips, about ready to punch Darwin.

  “Hey, man.” He unfolded an arm enough to raise a hand. “Just sayin’ what I’m seein’, get me? Can’t say I wouldn’t be there too if I had my woman go down like that. Course, mine took off with some military dude.” He tucked his hand away. “What about that teeny one? Seems like she’s more your speed.”

  “She roots for the wrong team,” muttered Aaron.

  “Ohhh.” Darwin rolled his eyes.

  “No, you twat. Not that wrong team. Manchester. Besides, she’s got someone already.”

  “Shit, you’re gonna let something petty like that get in the way?”

  “Petty like her being in a relationship?”

  “No”―Darwin’s lamentable attempt at a British accent returned―“you bloody twat. The team crap.”

  “I don’t have time for this.” Aaron waved his finger in a ‘wait right here’ gesture before storming off.

  A block later, a moan drew his gaze to the alley on his left. Four street punks lay scattered about on the ground, another draped out of a battered trash crusher. The sixth hung over the bottom rung of a fire-escape ladder, bent in half at the waist. Aaron raised his left arm to his face.

  “Ops, I need a med…” He sighed at his suit sleeve. “Bloody hell.” None of them appeared shot, looking either drunk or beat to shit. They could wait until he’d finished with the Syndicate. Probably just gang warfare.