by Alex Wells
“But?” The answer was already plain on her face, but he wanted to hear her say it.
“I can’t reverse it.”
“You’re supposed to be the top of your field,” he said, accusingly.
“If he’d been human–” Kiyoder waved away a protesting hiss from one of her colleagues with an impatient gesture “–he wouldn’t even have made it to my operating room. Maybe I could have done more, but with the generation of equipment I have? Not likely. If my upgrade request had been–”
“So what have you done with him?” he asked, cutting her off.
She glanced at one of the other white coats, plainly passing the responsibility bomb before it could explode. “Metabolic coma,” another scientist said, a younger man with narrow eyes and a prominent nose. “Dr Nikhat.”
“Didn’t bother asking me first?” Leeroy growled. “And I don’t care.” This was his ass on the line, the disposition of perhaps the most expensive single asset he controlled.
“There wasn’t time,” the man said firmly. “I judged it best that no further damage was risked by a delay.”
Leeroy weighed the desire to kick someone, anyone for this tangled mess, and the knowledge that yes, it was policy to reward good, quick thinking. The two thoughts ended their brief skirmish in a draw. “Show me.”
Most of the scientists took their chance to make good their escape. Dr Kiyoder led Leeroy and those who remained down the hall. Overhead, the lights dimmed briefly.
“Isn’t it a bit too early for that to be happening?” Leeroy growled.
“From my understanding of it, the Weatherman is in a continuous… ah… communication and feedback with the systems he’s controlling. As soon as he’s removed, things will start cycling back to native equilibrium.”
He didn’t like the sound of that at all. “How long’s that going to take?”
“I don’t know, sir. It depends on how far from the planetary equilibrium we are right now.” She glanced at him. “But it could get a lot worse before it gets better.”
“It might not go completely out of control,” Dr Nikhat offered. “Metabolic stasis isn’t the same as death, or even cryonic freezing.”
“It’s a static state,” Dr Kiyoder disagreed.
“But the mechanism for what the Weathermen do is still poorly understood,” Dr Nikhat said, his shoulders jerking in a shrug. “That’s all I’m saying. It might not be as bad as it could be.”
Leeroy pulled a memo pad from his breast pocket to note: Get all nonessential systems offline, triage for the stable grid. The stable power grid was extremely limited – half the benefit of the Weatherman had been not needing to expand it, the other half that he was far more reliable than the technology.
“Here we are.” Dr Kiyoder stopped them in front of a clean room, this one full of equipment that surrounded an exam table. Something far too like a body bag for Leeroy’s comfort, though translucent rather than matte black, sat on the table, shrouding the tall, thin, unhealthily pale form of the Weatherman. The monitors attached displayed steady enough lines; he had to assume those were as things should be.
“As you can see from the ongoing neural electrical activity, he’s still mentally engaged with something,” Dr Nikhat said. “Though not anywhere close to his normal operating capacity.”
Leeroy didn’t know why he’d needed to see this to believe it. Stupid on his part. But it highlighted to him that he didn’t have many good choices. There was no way to avoid mentioning this goddamn fiasco to Corporate, because they needed a new custom-built Weatherman before things really spun off the rails. And they’d need to be put back in rotation for the pilot assignments until the new one was online.
What the hell had possessed the Weatherman to demand to leave the building? And what had possessed his handlers to allow him to do that? Weathermen weren’t supposed to go out unattended. They weren’t even supposed to be seen in public – it was as much PR as a safety issue, helping maintain the illusion of mysticism and infallibility. But Mr Green had seemed so relatively normal – or maybe he’d just grown too familiar to everyone – that he’d been given far too much leeway perhaps. It had kept him happy, but it had also resulted in this.
He’d need to sack the current handlers, Leeroy decided. Send them out to the mining towns, since they all liked being outside so much. And, in the future, keep the staff on a strict rotation so no one got too familiar with the Weatherman and started thinking he was some kind of– of person.
“I want your full report ready for transmission in two hours,” he said. “Both of you. And Kiyoder, I want a precise plan of recommendations laid out. One that ends with Corporate needing to send us a new Weatherman rather than trying to repair this one on site.”
“But sir–”
“No buts.” The handlers were half the problem, and Mr Green’s aberrant behavior the other. That could be officially blamed on the handlers and the scientific staff, he decided. Let them take the fall. It wasn’t as if Leeroy had much direct contact with Mr Green. He avoided the Weatherman like the plague.
“Did they catch him, sir?” Dr Nikhat asked.
“Who?”
“The criminal who shot Mr Green.”
Of course they knew. Another problem, Leeroy thought, information leaking out and causing who knew what explosion of rumors. He bit back the urge to deny there’d been a crime at all. It was painfully obvious. The Weatherman hadn’t shot himself in the neck or the chest, let alone his two bodyguards. And how the hell would he spin that? Dangerous criminal who was about to singlehandedly shut down the bulk of TransRift’s operations for the foreseeable future, on the loose after vanishing like a ghost into the desert?
He could feel his career flushing down the drain.
“Shot by the police,” he said. “While trying to escape arrest.” Another memo for himself – he’d better have the press office plant a story that would fall along those lines.
On the table, Mr Green’s chest rose and fell slowly. Overhead, the lights flickered.
Chapter Thirteen
“The fuck do you want?” Old Nick growled over the top of a tumbler half-filled with amber-colored whiskey. He had taken up residence in Ludlow’s little hotel while the rest of them were supposed to sleep out in one of the warehouses with the motorcycles. He’d got himself the nicest room besides, a wing chair with slightly stained upholstery and an end table to go with the double-wide bed. She wasn’t sure if the bottle of whiskey had come with the room or in Nick’s duster pocket, and it didn’t really matter.
Hob shut the door quietly behind her. The old man looked like hell, she thought dispassionately, saggy in the face like an old, sun-cracked duster. “Got a thing or two to say.”
He snorted into his glass and took a slug off the drink. “Give you one brief moment of competence and suddenly you’re gettin’ full of yourself like you ain’t the bottom-of-the-pile fuckup no more.”
“I know what I fucked up,” she said through gritted teeth. “But now we’re gonna have a talk about what you fucked up.”
He stared at her. “I ain’t fucked up a thing.”
“You told me. You fuckin’ told me that Mag ratted me out that day.”
“She–”
“Don’t you fuckin’ lie to me again, Nick Ravani,” she snarled. “’Cause me and Mag, we finally had us a talk ’bout a lot of things.”
He took another pull of his whiskey and, of all things, settled back into his chair. “Glad you girls are gettin’ along so nice again.”
“That all you got to say for yourself?”
“I don’t have to justify shit to the idiot girl that almost got all us killed ’cause she couldn’t stand goin’ a night without a cock to ride,” Nick said.
Hob rocked back on her heels like she’d been slapped, but how long did he get to hold that over her? Forever maybe. She’d cost herself a lot with that mistake, and she’d never forget it. But she couldn’t and wouldn’t believe it justified this lie. “You’re al
ways sayin’ family’s the most important thing, you old bastard. Mag’s my family as much as she’s yours, and you took her away from me with your fuckin’ lie.”
“Nah. Just you bein’ proud even when you got no reason to be ever again.”
No one else in the damn world could hurt her like Nick Ravani. “I trusted you!”
“And I fuckin’ trusted you.” He bared his yellow teeth at her. “Don’t know what you’re whinin’ about. Got your shit together in the end, didn’t you?”
“And brought the last blood you got on this planet out of hell.” She kept her voice even through an act of will.
“Expect me to be grateful?” he asked, mocking.
“I know better’n that.” If she stayed here, she’d probably try to take his head off, she thought. She still didn’t think she could win in a fair fight against Nick, and with him it was never a fair fight. She turned to go. “Fuck you.”
“Mag ain’t the only blood I got, anyway. Don’t make her less special, but you want honest things, that’s a fuckin’ honest thing.”
He always knew how to cut her off at the knees when she tried to talk away. Cursing herself, Hob turned back toward him. “You countin’ all them little bastards you fucked out of whores?”
Nick laughed. “You got no fuckin’ idea what I do.” He curled the fingers of his unoccupied hand idly, yellow-orange flame licking over them. The fire crawled into the glass and lit up the whiskey, going from orange to cold blue.
Despite her frustration, she took a step back toward him. Her boot heels scuffed on the worn carpet. Other than the cigarette-lighting trick that she’d learned from him early on, he never showed his witchiness where other people could see, never talked about it. Hob had figured out nearly everything she knew for herself.
“You’n me are the same,” Nick said. “Witchy ones gotta stick together. We ain’t got no one but each other.”
The only reason she even had this power that could get her killed or worse was because Old Nick had tricked her into almost dying in the desert. She still wondered at times why he’d done that – and what exactly it had done to her. He’d never had an answer for her, not that he ever answered anything unless he felt like it. “That like bein’ blood, then?”
“Same and different, I reckon.”
“What about them the company takes?” Hob asked quietly. “Like they took Mag.”
Nick shrugged, and the flame went out like it had never been there. He downed the rest of the whiskey in a single gulp. His single eye had gone dark with an emotion she wasn’t used to seeing there – regret? “Can’t save everyone. I got the Wolves, and the blood of that covenant’s thickest of all. Got to look out for your own first, and always.”
Sounded like a coward’s answer to her. “So who were you lookin’ after, when you broke me’n Mag apart? Me, or her?” It hadn’t done either of them any good.
Nick bared his teeth at her. “Get the fuck out of my room.” Maybe she’d made her point. He stared at her until she turned to leave, but spoke again as she reached the door. “Bone Collector found me while I was scoutin’ in the desert and told me.”
Hob paused, gripping the door frame with one hand. Why did that thought hurt almost as much as her betrayer being Mag? “That another lie?”
Nick laughed. “You know it ain’t.”
Hob left a blackened handprint on the doorframe. She was still angry at Old Nick for his lie, but this truth was the closest she’d ever get to an apology from him. The Bone Collector didn’t control her life, couldn’t hurt her the way Nick could. It was safer to be mad at him.
She grabbed her motorcycle and headed right out of town, front wheel turned in the general direction of Pictou. An hour out from Rouse, she stopped between two low, scrubby dunes hardly worth the name. She didn’t stop to think; she didn’t want to. She drew one of her knives and cut across the fleshy part of her palm, then let the blood run onto the sand.
The stinging of that cut finally brought her to her senses. She wasn’t anywhere near Pictou, and it was the middle of the night. She’d be needing to be up early in the morning to do whatever tasks Nick came up with just because he felt like being an asshole, to remind her that she owed him still and always for being a damn fool. Hob wiped her knife off on her sleeve and sheathed it, then pulled out her handkerchief to wrap around her hand.
Damn fool again. Her whole life was being a damn fool, and she’d get the Wolves all killed for it some day. Maybe she should just ride off into the desert and save them the trouble. The moment the thought formed, she already dismissed it. She’d survived as an abandoned child in the hold of a rift ship, survived the desert, survived having her eye torn out. She didn’t know how to give up.
“I didn’t expect to hear from you again so soon,” a familiar voice, the Bone Collector, said behind her. “Though I could like this as a habit.”
It didn’t startle her, and maybe it should have. But, subconsciously, she’d felt some shift to the air, some weight that his presence brought. Hob turned to look at him, pale and smiling at her in the moonlight. He was beautiful. And she found she didn’t much like him right now, or the way he looked at her. She took all that damn tired, of being mocked, of not being taken seriously, and packed it into her fist. It made a satisfying, meaty crack hitting his face, and she felt the shock all the way up to her shoulder.
The Bone Collector stumbled back, one hand coming up to clutch his nose. Bright red showed between his fingers. He caught himself with his staff and simply stared at her, eyes wide and shocked.
“Old Nick told me,” Hob said, measuring the words around breath that wanted to come too fast. “Three years ago. You’re the one who sent him to– to stop me.”
The Bone Collector straightened. “Didn’t you know?” His voice sounded odd, muffled by his hand.
Hob laughed sharply. “No one fuckin’ tells me a goddamn thing. I’m tired of it.” Maybe she ought to be grateful to him, because if he hadn’t set things in motion all the Wolves including her probably would be long dead. She didn’t much care at that moment. “You been following me or something?”
The Bone Collector speared his staff in the sand, and then came up with a handkerchief from his pocket to staunch the flow from his nose. “Or something.”
“Because I’m witchy, ain’t it.”
“Blood calls to blood, and I hear it clearly.” Even with his mouth hidden, she got the impression he smiled. “I watch all of the witchy ones.”
“Not the way you watch me. Or Old Nick. What the fuck are we? What the fuck are you? No one’ll give me a goddamn clear answer.”
The Bone Collector shrugged. “You are tangles of possibility, seeds beginning to flourish where all others are dormant. You are the voice of the world in flesh. I–”
Hob threw up her hands in frustration. If one more nonsense puzzle came out of his damn mouth, she’d hit him again. “Never fucking mind.”
The Bone Collector pulled the handkerchief away from his nose and inspected it curiously, then folded it and tucked it away. “I think I might end up with a black eye.”
“You lookin’ for a sorry?”
“Not particularly.”
Hob blew out a breath. She wasn’t Old Nick. “Well, I am anyway. Sorry. Even if I’m still madder’n hell.”
He seemed to consider this. “I am not sorry that I gave the message to Old Nick, three years ago. I need the both of you to live. Though I am sorry that he lied to you about it. I would have told you the truth, had you asked.”
“Didn’t exactly see you, to ask. Or know I should.” Or expect an answer she could understand. Everyone who spoke plain seemed too spooked to ever come up with an answer, and the one person who was willing to talk was crazier than Old Nick, if a hell of a lot more eloquent. She’d scream in frustration if she didn’t think someone would just laugh at her for it.
“That will change,” he said, turning to leave. He gingerly touched his nose. “Though with less of this, I trust.�
��
Hob smiled crookedly. “Depends on how fuckin’ mysterious you gotta act.”
Chapter Fourteen
Hob and Uncle Nick stayed another full day, and Mag was grateful for it, since it almost made them into a kind of family again. More like Hob and Uncle Nick were adopting her than the other way around. Then Dambala came to Ludlow to tell her that Irina didn’t think it was safe to leave Rouse yet, because company men had already been looking for Mag, and Father Lee had come around three times already to see how Irina was bearing up. A visit in itself wasn’t strange; Mama went to church plenty regular, which had always been a bone of contention between her and Uncle Nick, even if Mag wasn’t quite sure why. But Father Lee had never quite warmed to her, maybe because she didn’t drag her husband and daughter in on Sundays and she had admitted to getting salty at him when he pushed her on it. Church, in Mama’s opinion, was a Personal Thing, about Personal Relationships, and she always said it like that too, like there were capital letters on the words.
Yet when Uncle Nick and Hob left with Dambala, lithe little Coyote bringing up the rear, Mag felt strangely relieved. She couldn’t look at Uncle Nick without seeing the ghost of her father’s face, and the guilt in his one eye threatened to eat her alive; she could almost hear him screaming in his head, should have… should have… She had enough should have and what if to last her a lifetime, without borrowing from anyone else.
That night, right after shift change, Clarence took her to one of the warehouses, filled with miners from the day shift. Several men hung around on the street, trying to look casual but keeping their heads moving back and forth, watching for something. She knew them for sentries, had seen similar things in Rouse when the company men were in their beds or off having dinner. Her papa had gone to a lot of meetings that hadn’t existed. And she had followed him on more than one occasion, spying because she was curious and knew how to not be noticed.
Clarence tucked her away in the back of the room. “Gonna tell them what happened. Thought you should be here. But we’re gonna keep your name quiet for now. If people guess, they guess, but there’s too much company interest in you right now.” He waited for her nod, and then went to the front of the room.
