Static Ruin

by Corey J. White

  Noisy silence fills the comm link. “We have reason to believe the terrorist Mariam Xi is in the immediate area. Hand her over and we will be on our way.”

  I glance back at Mallory, expecting her to agree with the Guard, but her eyes have the glassy look of stackhead trance.

  “You have no jurisdiction here; this entire planet is corporate property. Leave immediately or you will be fired upon.”

  For a second I wonder what Hurtt’s playing at when his ship doesn’t have any weapons, but heavy drones swarm across the monitors, forming a barrier between us and the Emperor’s Guard, guided into place by Mallory’s skull hardware.

  Hurtt releases the captive corvette, which falters and drops nearly to the ground before regaining altitude. I count the thud of heartbeats, waiting to see how the Guard reacts. I exhale hard when they boot up into the sky one by one, escorted into orbit by Mallory’s drones.

  “Thank you, Mallory.”

  “Sir,” is all she says in response.

  Hurtt turns the ship west and we lift higher, steering through buildings and passing above the city square. Hurtt pushes the throttle and we jolt forward, racing for the outskirts of the city.

  “Mallory,” Hurtt says, “I need you to get the codes for those ships and forward a brief to my lawyers. I want compensation for this intrusion.”

  “You’d probably get more by handing me over,” I say.

  Hurtt laughs. “I have other plans for you, Mars. I’m not doing this out of the kindness of my heart.”

  “That’s strangely reassuring,” I say.

  “Never trust a business person who claims otherwise.”

  “I’ve heard a similar saying: never trust a business person.”

  Hurtt laughs again. It’s an easy laugh, warm and authentic, or authentic-sounding.

  “What are these plans of yours?”

  “Nothing sinister; just some help with your father’s work.”

  “I don’t know anything about his research.”

  “You don’t have to know anything. What I need is right there in your veins.”

  He says it all casual-like, but my skin crawls. Veins. Needles. Blood. Pain.

  “Don’t make the mistake of thinking I owe you anything. I could have dealt with the Guard on my own. I could have torn through your labs ’til I found my father, and there’s not a fucking thing you could have done to stop me.” I spit the words out and glance back at Mallory, daring her to try something.

  Hurtt lifts a hand from the controls and holds it up, placating. “No need for anger, Mars, I apologize. After you’ve met with your father we’ll talk. I hope we can come to some sort of arrangement, under whatever terms you set. I’m not fool enough to make an enemy of you.”

  I grunt and look up through the scratched viewport in the ship’s roof. High above the gloaming of city lights, the Emperor’s Guard is waiting for me.

  Already they’ll be calling in reinforcements, setting up a blockade just beyond Azken’s sovereign space. They’ll wait for me there, searching every ship that leaves the planet if they have to. It’s a waiting game, and I’ve never been one for patience.

  Hurtt didn’t hand me over, but that won’t mean shit until I figure another way out of this fucking mess.

  My freedom for a little blood? Void knows I’ve spilled enough.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Waren follows us in the Rua as we pass over stretching spans of suburbs, then exurbs, then darkness as city lights give way to the wild. Leaving the metropolis, something inside me unclenches, some guilty fist clutching my memories of Seward and all the thousands dead.

  Ocho sits in Pale’s lap twitching irregularly, the boy’s head nodding forward in sleep. Mallory is seated opposite, eyes distant as she sees to her stackhead duties.

  “Your ship handles better than I would’ve thought,” I say to Hurtt, still leaning over his seat for some hint of where we’re heading.

  He turns back to grin. This close I can see the fine patterns etched into his teeth, filled in with platinum. “I know the Antler doesn’t look like much, but it was the first ship I ever owned. I’ve spent a lot of money upgrading him over the years.”

  “But no AI, no direct pilot interface.”

  “Never,” he says. “Hurtt Corp is such a gargantuan entity it takes an army of staff and AI to keep things running smoothly. It’s too huge to grasp, but sometimes I need to feel in control. The only way I can do that is to get behind the stick, you know?”

  “Yeah; I get what you mean.” Not the organizational part, but controlling something so large, so powerful? That I understand.

  “Here we are: Hurtt Corp’s primary Research and Development compound.”

  Six towers sit in the center of the viewport, five tall buildings around an immense central stack. This late at night the structures are mostly dark, but sections of each still glimmer with industry.

  “Building Two is basic weapons research,” Hurtt says, unprompted. “Building Six is dedicated to the development of new instant travel food flavors and textures. Buildings Four and Five are where we develop new terraforming technologies and genetically alter microbes, insects, and animals to make them suitable for colonization efforts. Your father was a huge help on that project when he first arrived. He’s been with us for—”

  “Five years,” I say, remembering Dehner’s story.

  “Yes,” Hurtt says brightly, “give or take.”

  “What else has my father been working on?”

  The ship stalls, inertial drift pushing us forward as the bow lifts and Hurtt drops us toward the central building’s rooftop. He stops our fall at the last second with a hard burst from the thrusters, loud hiss rattling the floor beneath my feet.

  Hurtt jumps up from his seat and claps loudly. “Let’s take you to Marius and you can ask him yourself.”

  * * *

  Mallory stays on the rooftop while the rest of us ride the elevator down two floors to emerge on a lavishly decorated foyer.

  Stands of bamboo grow from plots of soil laid into the marble flooring, and Ocho jumps from my shoulder to rub her chin on the rods. The door to Teo’s quarters is embedded in a wall tiled in rough-hewn stone; water trickles down the granite, filling the space with quiet babbling. Pale walks to the rock wall, giggling as he splashes his hands in the minor waterfall.

  “This whole floor is Marius’s apartment,” Hurtt says. “I offered him my penthouse when he first arrived, but of course he refused.”

  “On his homeworld, they talk like you kidnapped him.”

  “You’ve talked to Neer Dehner, right?” Hurtt sighs. “That man is a real piece of work.”

  Hurtt’s right, of course, but that doesn’t mean I trust him any more than I trust Dehner.

  “I doubt he even wants your father back. Despite his protests he’s never refused Marius’s salary, paid every quarter. Dehner should realize what your father gave up for that planet. He could have been a partner in our Experimental Genetics Operation, but he passed in favor of a lump sum payment sent directly to Sanderak.”

  The facts fit with what Dehner told me, but of course that weasel made himself out to be the victim. Just a loyal assistant to my father, defenseless against the big corporation . . . that continues to pay him handsomely.

  “How safe are we here, from the Guard?”

  “The orbital defense system is primed to attack if they re-enter the atmosphere. And I’m the only one that can disable the system,” he says, tapping the ridge of bone just beside his eye and the data port that must be located there. “You’re perfectly safe.”

  Yeah, and completely at your mercy.

  Hurtt steps closer and rests a hand on my arm. “I’ll warn you; he won’t be what you expect. Whatever you were hoping to get out of this meeting, I doubt you’ll find it.”

  I shrug his hand away. My heart beats so hard it aches, and nausea nestles in the pit of my stomach. I don’t know what I expected from Teo. For a time I thought I’d track him
down just to kill him, but now? Now I need answers. Answers for Pale, for Sera, for Cilla. For me too, if I’m honest.

  “What’s wrong with him?” I ask, voice a broken whisper.

  “He suffers from a degenerative brain condition. By the time we picked up on it, the damage was already done. We’ve repaired the tissue, but already he’s lost so many memories, so much knowledge.”

  What a shame; losing the evil-fuck genius behind MEPHISTO’s program.

  “Some days he’s practically his old self,” Hurtt continues, “but those days are rare. I’m hoping your presence might spark something in him, help us solve the final issues with his research.”

  I glance over at Pale. “You want to come in with me?”

  He turns to me with a reticent look on his face. I don’t know if it’s because he wants to keep playing in the water or because he can sense my fear. Eventually he nods.

  “Let’s go then, little man,” I say.

  “I’ll wait for you downstairs. Come find me when you’re done.”

  Hurtt walks to the elevator with his exaggerated rolling gait and the doors open automatically at his approach. Something like concern fills his eyes, then he’s swallowed by the steel box.

  I take Pale by the hand, and make a kiss sound so Ocho trots into the apartment behind us. Large black-and-white photos of Sanderak’s forests adorn the walls inside the entrance. The apartment is open-plan, with a pale-yellow lounge set, clean, modern kitchen, obscured bathroom, and a large bed in one corner. Two men sit by the floor-to-ceiling windows that look out over other buildings in the compound.

  “Ow.” Pale pulls his hand from my grip. I didn’t realize how tight I was squeezing.

  “Sorry,” I say, but no sound comes out.

  I walk around the lounge, breath rushing through my nose in a sobbing rhythm.

  When I get close, the other man looks up from his faintly glowing shard to smile at me. He stands and offers his hand. “Mr. Hurtt told me to expect you. I’m Kerry, your father’s nurse.”

  I clear my throat. “We didn’t wake him, did we?”

  “Not at all. Marius rarely sleeps more than a couple of hours at a time.”

  Marius doesn’t seem to hear our conversation, doesn’t notice me as I stand beside him, watching him stare out the window. His hair is pulled back in a neat ponytail, mostly gray, with thin streaks of black peppered throughout. White-and-gray stubble shadows his face. Medical equipment blips and whirs beside him, studying the man’s vitals through implanted diagnostics.

  Kerry motions to him. “You two should talk. I’ll go read somewhere else.” He stays for a moment longer and smiles warmly, then takes his shard over to the lounge.

  “Marius?” I say. I sit down in Kerry’s chair, and still Teo hasn’t noticed me. “Marius,” I say again louder, clearer, choking back the years.

  He turns slowly in his wheelchair and stares at me, brows furrowed in thought, mouth twitching. He’s grayer than in the holo-image I have, with a few more wrinkles. He’s not even that old—sixty-something, seventy maybe, too young to be this skinny husk sitting before me.

  His bottom lip quavers and he stammers, “Cilla?”

  Tears sting my eyes and I don’t even know why. “No,” I say.

  His brows furrow again, caterpillars of thick white hairs, unkempt. “Mariam?”

  I sob properly this time, then shake my head and wipe the building tears from my eyes. You don’t deserve these fucking tears.

  Pale stands next to me, peering intently at the old man, my father, our creator. Teo sees him and smiles.

  “And who is this?” He squints at Pale, trying to decide if he should know the boy or not.

  “Pale,” I say.

  Teo harrumphs. He turns aside and lifts a small plate of biscuits from the table beside his chair, offering them to Pale. “You must be hungry; boys your age are always hungry.”

  Pale takes the plate, and shoves an entire cookie into his smiling mouth, crunching loudly. Teo watches Pale and nods.

  “Let me—let me show you something.” He stands up with a quiet groan and pushes past Pale and me.

  The boy looks up at me and I shrug. He grabs the rest of the cookies off the plate and keeps eating as we follow Teo to a secure chamber at the far end of the apartment. The door opens with a plastic clack of broken seals and Teo moves inside, motioning excitedly for Pale to join him.

  I give the boy a gentle push and follow him into the room. Gene resequencers rest on desks along one wall opposite a large, sealed terrarium. It’s filled with plants and dozens of moths of all shapes and sizes; some rest flat, others flit by the glowing lamps.

  “Come have a look at this, my boy,” Teo says.

  He opens a door built into the glass and moths fly erratically through the gap, drawn to the brighter light in the ceiling. Ocho stays on my shoulder, but her eyes turn huge and she lifts a paw, ready to swipe any moth that gets close enough.

  Teo reaches up and a colossus silkmoth lands on his palm, wings spread over his skin, an image like a skull in the patterns of its furry scales. I shudder watching him—the hologram wasn’t so far from the truth. He crouches beside Pale and encourages the boy to touch the insect. Pale shoves the last cookie into his already-full mouth and strokes the moth’s wing gently. He rubs the powdery residue between his fingertips, mixing it with the crumbs, then wipes it on his shirt.

  “I created this,” Teo says eagerly. “I knitted together the genes of three other moths, twisted nature’s evolutionary accidents into something deliberate.” His eyes glint as he talks science, his buried charisma seeping to the surface. “It makes silk, finer and stronger than any other creature . . . and I like the way it looks.”

  The moth’s wings flutter loudly and it spirals up from Teo’s hand toward the ceiling. Pale watches it fly, something like awe resting in the space between his parted lips.

  “Let me show you something else,” Teo says, resting a hand on Pale’s back and leading the boy out of the small room, leaving the door open behind him.

  I hesitate before following, watching moths flit away from their holding cell and into the rest of the apartment.

  “Kerry,” I say loudly to get the man’s attention, motioning to the escaping insects.

  He shakes his head. “Don’t worry about it; happens all the time.” He keeps reading, and I go to the kitchen where a long table sits stacked with potted plants.

  Teo is explaining each of the experimental flora to Pale. He sounds like an excitable teacher, or a loving grandfather. I smile, but it’s pained. All the times I dreamed of this moment, of revenge or catharsis, all the things I’ve done to get here, and he barely notices me.

  At least Pale looks happy. At Teo’s instruction, the boy pokes a patch of moss that stretches out to coat his finger, and gently holds a large red pepper that swells and shrinks as though it’s breathing. It’s easy to see the link between Ocho and these trials—weird experiments with no real purpose. Life twisted and altered simply to see what’s possible.

  Is that what happened with me? With Sera? All us voidwitches, created just to see if it could be done?

  I don’t know which is better: being an accident, an experiment gone wrong; or being a weapon deliberately made, deliberately shaped. If I was made to be a weapon, did I ever have a choice? If I was an accident, am I the only one to blame for every person that I’ve killed?

  Maybe I don’t want answers. Fuck knows I don’t deserve them.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Kerry brews a pot of ginger tea and pours us each a cup as we sit at the lounge. I hold the tea in my lap, letting the steam waft the sharp scent of the spice into my nose. Teo takes the open packet of cookies from the pantry and sets it in front of Pale with a cheeky look on his face. Pale grabs three biscuits in one handful and eats them hurriedly, like someone might take them away. Ocho sleeps in Pale’s lap, unperturbed by the crumbs raining on her and getting lost in her fur.

  Teo seems to have forgotte
n about me and Kerry, wholly focused on Pale. Maybe Teo wouldn’t have abandoned his children if they’d been sons. Maybe Pale would cope better if he had a father. Still, watching them spikes my chest with jealous pangs.

  “Is it safe to have all those plants out on the bench?” I ask Kerry, to take my mind off Teo and Pale.

  “I honestly don’t know,” Kerry says. “I think they’re harmless; just a few basic experiments to keep him occupied.”

  “How is it looking after him?”

  “It’s fine,” Kerry says with an easy smile. “Hardest part is convincing him to use the chair so he doesn’t have another fall.”

  Teo blows on his drink, still staring at Pale. He takes a sip, closing his eyes against the steam.

  “You always wanted a son, I bet,” I say, loud enough to get Teo’s attention.

  He turns his head, keeping his eyes on Pale as long as he can. The grin falls from his face when he looks at me. Thanks, dad.

  “Yes, I wanted a son. Never knew what to do with girls.”

  I laugh, and Teo smiles like we’re sharing a joke, but I’m laughing because it’s the only way to stop the tears. I want to hate this fucker, but how can you hate someone who’s barely there? He doesn’t know how deeply he’s wronged me. My hatred means less than nothing to him.

  “Why have two of us then?”

  The cup shakes gently in Teo’s hand as he lifts it to his mouth. He holds it there and asks, “Who are you?”

  “Mariam.”

  “Of course, of course.” He takes a sip. “You look just like her.”

  “Cilla.”

  He smiles, but slowly his mouth splits open and his lower lip starts to quaver. “I loved you. Why couldn’t you love me?”