“We can hunt. Sure.”
“You bleed you still hunt? Tough man, hey?” Sassik shrugged, rose, and plucked his own gun from where it’d balanced against the block. “If you don’t care about a little blood, I will teach you more about shooting.”
As they headed toward the tiers, Sawyer mulled over why Sassik and Dayne had almost adopted him. They were too congenial. For sure they wanted something from him, but then, he was the same. He needed to learn and they had the expertise. There were probably secrets here but airing secrets too early might get someone hurt.
His muscles were paining him after only five stories. He paused and looked down the tumbled slope. Moving up the tiers, you had to negotiate the collapsed floors. Some of them remained intact. Some walls held rooms as they once were, though the inner doors went nowhere in all those he’d seen – blank rubble only. He’d stepped on what had been beds, storage cabinets, tables. Though weather-beaten, coated in dust, animal droppings, leaves, and mold, the old furniture and household items were often recognizable. Aerthe was another world, but people needed the same things to live comfortably. Only once had his boot rolled on bones – legs sticking out from under the rubble. The people here had escaped or their bodies had been so decayed and scattered by time, the elements, and animals, that little of them could be identified.
A lock of his hair fell in front of his eyes and wet blood shone. “Let’s stop a moment.”
“You want to rest?”
“That and I want to cut my hair.” Sawyer unsheathed his blade. “Tired of having it long. Besides the doc cut a chunk off it already.”
“Give me that. I will do this. You’d only remove an ear.”
Sassik’s hand was out and he gave him the knife. If the man had wanted to do him harm, he could’ve a hundred times already. He sat on a pile of compacted debris.
“Short, maybe like this.” He put finger and thumb about two inches apart.
“It will be uneven but better than dropping in your eyes.”
“Yes.”
“What are you doing with that woman? You seem to fuck her with a lot of anger.”
“So?” He heaved up his shoulders. “She’s mine.”
“I find slaves work best, even fuck better, if given some care.”
“Let me get the revenge out of my system. Maybe I will care then.”
His hair began to fall as Sassik sawed through it.
Sassik was right.
Though it depended on what he wanted to do with Ari in the long run. Wasn’t killing her, obviously. Was he selling her? Keeping her? He needed to figure this out. Keeping her depended on getting her trained to not to want to run or maim him.
She hadn’t lied about JI. Putting mittens on her would be placed on the back burner then, unless she played up again. Keeping her if she could fix the robots on this world would be advantageous for him, her owner. If...
If a lot of things. She was a puzzle, even if a highly satisfying fuck.
The hairstyling proved to be painful when Sassik pulled at the wound, but the chunks of black hair dropping at his feet kept him sitting. The layers of his recent past were down there.
“Done.” Sassik stepped back, handed over the knife. “That shininess in human hair is strange. Like little stars.”
“Little stars?” He shook his head and snorted. That description made him think of movie stars and he probably looked as if he’d been chewed up by a lawnmower.
No mirror, and staring at the flat of the blade didn’t show Sawyer much more than a blur. He felt it instead, hand roving over his scalp – delicately roving on the right behind his ear, where the wound had reopened.
“Feels good.” It did. Losing the hairstyle he’d been forced to bear as a slave underlined that he was free.
“If you don’t want the girl, consider me as a potential buyer, and since you don’t exactly have any money...”
He studied Sassik. The man was serious. “I’ll think on it,” he said more curtly than he’d intended.
Sassik nodded, his expression grave. “Of course. Let us go upward. The more sun, the more plants grow, the more we will find to hunt. I see your weapon already changes. This is good.”
It did? He peered at the metal.
Color was rising between and beneath the fancy bits like the little bronze-toned wheels and the switches he needed to ask about, since he didn’t know what the hell they did. The barrel and the broader flat surfaces showed spots of red and faint lines of curling brown.
“Yeah, I see, and I also see a lot of things I know nothing about. How do you load it? You know, how do you get the bullets in?”
If nothing else it’d distract him from thinking about how he was free yet was imprisoning her.
One button slid out a magazine type affair where black projectiles slimmer than he’d imagined the gun used were stored. They were, apparently, powered by some substance called shoom, which was inside them, as well as the waik crystal. The blue crystal was stored in a flip-out pocket, on the opposite side to the magazine.
“This is why you need to meditate,” Sassik explained. “Without it bullets don’t fly well.”
The waik crystal did that? He peered at the irregular translucent stone. “And these power your trucks too?”
“Yes. A bunch of them. Not just one. Come.”
They trekked upward, high enough for Sawyer to feel the sun beating on his skin. Only a few stories were between them and the land above – evidence the Swathes had turned this country upside down. The top of the city was close to ground level, though climbing down into this chasm of dead buildings was hazardous. The last few stories on all sides were sheer or of such jagged topography that a climber would be lucky to survive.
Where immense, glass-like pieces had shattered hundreds of years ago, shards lay scattered like dirt-smeared diamonds. He found a skull with a shrub growing through the foramen and eye sockets. As far as he could tell, people here had similar anatomy to humans. Could they breed with humans? It was a question he must ask some day. If cross-bred babies were possible, he’d bet a million people would be making them for profit, what with the magic sex appeal.
He could sell a ride on his cock, if he were so inclined to prostitute himself.
On the other hand, own a human female...make a mint. Someone would be doing that already. He’d rather Fern be a rented-out body than a corpse.
He stopped a few times on the way up to catch his breath. They shot some prey – brays and smaller things like rabbits on flamingo legs.
Speaking of corpses, Sawyer halted with his foot crushing some fragile thing that may have been a toy...with every step they were treading on the corpse of a dead civilization. The Scavs were the descendants, and all they’d inherited were the picked-over bones. A sobering thought.
On the way down, bearing the gutted bodies of their kills, they came upon a mechling. It too was dead.
Sassik picked up the thing by one limp, unfolding metal limb. It hung as a dead rabbit might, only it shone where sunlight found the domed, red carapace. He’d seen many mechlings on the swathe, and this one resembled a beetle half the size of a vacuum cleaner.
“Unusual.” Sassik leaned in and sniffed, as if a mechling might have scent. “Only ever seen one of these before. Though I heard they were being found on the plains. Defunct ones.”
“You didn’t notice the ones on JI? He uses them for power and armor. I want to show him this. I know the Mekkers had started disposing of what they called the sun-mad ones. The day they sold me, I heard that.”
“Ahhh. I wonder why. No one can get inside them, open them. If your mech can even do that, it will be worth it.”
“In what way?”
“Who knows. They are a puzzle. Weapons? Tech? Power cells. I know they power up the swathe somehow. We’ve gathered much knowledge of the Mekkers over the years, we just cannot use it.”
That he had heard. The Mekkers had come down from the stars, or so the legend went. If they were starfarers
, it would be reasonable for their tech to be unfathomable to the people here, even if they built skyscrapers and star-shaped windows.
The use they might make of JI. No wonder Zarr was drooling and impatient. JI might be the seed of knowledge they needed to defeat the Mekkers. Except, it’d seemed as if Zarr only wanted JI for his military capabilities.
Sawyer paused with his foot up on a crumbled wall at the edge. His forearm rested on his thigh and the stock of his long gun was planted on the floor to the left. He leaned out enough to see below. The building had cracked open – they’d have to divert. Air and open space before him, then half a mile away was the opposite building.
Another century and this destroyed city would be rotten – full of dirt, animals, and overgrown by plants.
If only the Scavs hadn’t sunk so far below the level of what they had once been, JI might have been their salvation.
Chapter 17
Ari managed to beg water and a small amount of fruit and flat bread from a passing Scav woman. Since JI had fallen into what, in a person, would be called a deep sleep, she couldn’t easily leave the area. If only there’d been fewer Scavs around and more time to try bashing the anchor point with something...actually there was nothing within reach she could’ve used anyway.
A metal bar would’ve been good.
So, she waited. Her vow to look small and fragile and as if she’d given up trying to escape would be best achieved by doing nothing suspicious. Lull Sawyer into complacency then pounce like a jungle predator.
The sun had fallen below the high horizon and the shadows had cooled and darkened before Sawyer returned. The carcasses of various small kills hung from one of his hands. Blood smeared the ground when he dropped them. He propped his long gun against a broken wall, then unslung something else from his back.
When she’d sat to eat and drink, she’d settled with her back against the building’s base, alongside JI, though her butt constantly throbbed from bruises, reminding her what Sawyer had done. Stiffly, she rose to check this odd trophy of Sawyer’s. JI stirred.
“What is this, Sawyer?”
“A mechling, JI. I thought I’d let you look at it. Can you tell me anything? Why it might be here? Why it’s dead?” He laid the defunct thing between JI’s outstretched legs.
Since nobody objected, Ari stepped closer and leaned her hands on her knees to study it. Unlike JI, this little mech was a blank. Even when she prodded it with a finger it sent nothing to her senses. “Dead.”
JI, on the other hand, sent an uncoiling lead into the mechling, plugging it in and then seemingly listening to whatever he found.
“Very dead. Powerless.” A moment later he’d popped off some part of its casing and looked inside, holding the small thing up to his head sensors. “All its power cells are gone except one. They did as I thought. The Mekkers sent the sun mad out of the swathe, but crippled them first.”
“Why?” Sawyer put his hands on his hips. “What are sun-mad mechlings anyway? I recall the term.”
“The ones who change into sentient creatures are what the Mekkers call sun mad. It has zero to do with the sun, Sawyer.” JI angled his head then closed up the mechling. “The ones on my back are mechlings that are not sun mad. This little one was self-aware, intelligent, and it was made to die. They were jettisoning them from the ship before Emery and I escaped.”
“I see.” He scratched his chin, and Ari noticed the scruff growing there. Dark as Sawyer’s hair and his hair was a lot shorter, and sticking out in uneven bits. The man might’ve been through a storm that’d eaten his hair.
“When your sister was stabbed, mechlings were sent out at the same time. I had arranged for some of them to be loaded with a doctor program, and I asked them to find her if they could.”
The stunned expression on Sawyer’s face spoke volumes. He was an abominable man, except where his sister was concerned. Grudgingly, she gave him that one positive.
“My god. I owe you double, JI. I know you said you’d tried...but thank you.”
“Alas, I do not know if it helped her.” He shook his large head. “I do not.”
“You tried. I appreciate that.”
“Of course I tried. I like humans. I like people, mostly. Mekkers...only Mako impressed me, which is why I allowed Emery to go with him.”
A likeable Mekker. That was a first. An idea occurred to her. The mechlings on JI’s back must have brain space. JI needed brain space. A simple solution. Those were often the best. When she’d healed him inside, she’d used her power to stretch what healthy brain he had and to weave new brain into the dead spaces where it’d died from pressure. She could use that...
“To answer your other question, Sawyer. I do not know why this one came here. Perhaps it wandered until it died of power loss?”
“Aren’t these valuable to the Mekkers?”
Ari stepped forward, wanting to tell JI her idea, but she waited for them to stop conversing. If this worked...she could help JI, maybe save him?
“Very, which is why this is a puzzle. I had thought they would scoop them up once dead.”
“Maybe they do... Maybe this one was missed.”
Now was the time. “JI, I may have a solution to your problems. You understand that your mind is too complex for the space in this baby mech?”
“Yes, Ari. I know this.”
She grinned. “We have more space.”
“This one?” He studied the dead mechling. “I do not think –”
“No! No. I mean the ones on your back. If we can place them near your baby mech brain...up there on your neck? We just need to grow a connection and I feel certain I could help you learn to use –”
“No!”
Sawyer looked from JI to her and back. “Why is this, JI? She has some sort of solution to whatever ails you.”
She set her mouth in a straight line. “He’s going insane and eventually dying from trying to cram too big a mind into too small a brain space.”
“I am sorry. I will not permit you to use my mechlings. They are potentially people, just like you or I.” His blue sensors flared brighter. “This discussion is done.”
“You’re dying, JI?”
“We all are, Sawyer. We all are. If you will excuse me. I do feel better.” He stood, scraping bits of wall away as he clutched it and rose. “I will go examine some of this city. It is a hobby of mine, collecting antique knowledge. Unclip your girl, please.”
Your girl. It felt as if JI was ignoring her, maybe insulting her. Had her solution wounded him so deeply?
After Sawyer released the lock and retrieved the end of her chain, JI began to walk away. “I am sorry, Ari. I know you wish me well, but we all have our crosses to bear and I would rather not add another one.”
“What did that mean?” she muttered, watching him depart.
“Crosses to bear? Must’ve got that from Emery. It means a burden.”
“Ahh.”
How did a mech get those?
“He really is dying, and you really think you could’ve fixed him?”
“Yes to the first,” she said absentmindedly. “The other, maybe. I’m not certain.”
“But you healed him a bit, today? He looks healthier.”
“I did, yes.” She was better with this mech, more reliable, than she’d ever been with people, and she didn’t even know what JI’s brain was made of.
Not that she really knew what was inside a person. Ari found her forehead wrinkling as she puzzled through this. It didn’t matter, she decided. Results mattered.
“You can heal mechs. You are quite the prize.”
She found him watching her intently. Her nipples tightened, rising. Being under his scrutiny had never been good. Scary, but not good.
“And JI likes you.”
She simply had to wreck his happy mood. “JI likes you too. You can’t use that as a measure. Obviously, he doesn’t have very good taste.”
He looked evil all of a sudden and as if he was thinking.
>
Oops, forgot about the lulling before pouncing.
“You know how to gut these and cut them up for meat?
She screwed up her nose. No matter what she said he was going to get her to do this. “No.”
Ick. Blood.
“Slaves did this sort of thing for you?”
“Yes.” He knew that. She straightened. She’d weather this. Learn how to do it if he wanted her to. Hells, it might help her when she escaped if she could skin and gut and all that.
“Never shot an animal for dinner then?” He picked up the dropped kills then gestured at the long gun as he walked to her. Then he slung the carcasses at her feet. They slid, tumbling, a mish-mash of floppy limbs and fur, and blood.
“No.” Truth.
“Good to know you can’t shoot, girl.”
Well, she could, just she’d only shot at targets, hundreds of times, with very high accuracy while adjusting the guns Uncle sold to the Scavs.
Couldn’t be that hard to shoot a man.
“One problem. I don’t trust you with a knife.”
Ahh. “There is that.”
He undid the buckle on his belt and unslipped the belt from his pants, doubled it over, smacked it on his hand.
“You really shouldn’t have insulted me, now should you? On all fours, girl.”
Her bruises throbbed anew. She’d walked into this, hadn’t she?
Lull him – remember that this time?
Face hard with a determination not to show cowardice or that he bothered her, she slipped to her knees then to all fours, felt the brush of the belt on her ass as he moved her skirt upward.
Not again.
Not screaming was difficult when the smack of the belt hurt so much, but she kept herself still and suffered through ten strokes. Quivering by the end, she waited in position, nose-breathing, teeth ground together, and hoped he was done.
When he walked around her then stopped before her head, she hissed out a slow exhale through teeth to tell the pain to go away then raised her head.
“Do you think you’ve had enough?”
Ari swallowed to lessen the chance of choking on her words.
Claimed Possession Page 14
