Archon's Queen

by Matthew S. Cox

  The pudgy man in white scowled, his anger focusing almost all on her. “Name.”

  “Annabelle Emily Morgan.”

  “What’s your PID?”

  “Don’t ‘ave one.”

  He sighed, shutting his eyes for a moment to search for calm. The protracted ‘Ohmmmm’ from Mardling made his face redden.

  “You ‘ave a plan at least?”

  “Not rightly.” She fumbled through her purse and showed her public assistance card.

  “Oh, bother that.” He smirked at it. “She’s on the dole. Gotta put ‘er on a list and wait for the approval to come down. UHS, mate. Might ‘ave her in the door in six months if she’s lucky. That is, of course, assuming she’s got a job lined up and a place to stay. If she’s a Cov, they’re going to deny it.”

  She pouted, sliding her badge of disgrace back into the purse. The man seemed pleased he finally had a reason to ignore them.

  “Look here, you fat twat.” James Mardling stared into the attendant’s soul. “You are going to put her in the programme right this instant.”

  Undulations rippled through the clerk’s paunch as his already pasty cheeks whitened to a shade as pure as Anna’s hair. Sweat exuded from his face as if in time lapse, forming into visible droplets at the tip of his rat’s nose.

  Doctor Mardling leaned close over the counter, his words falling to a half whisper. “Right. This. Instant.”

  Anna was unsure of how to feel. No one had ever stood up for her before; she had never felt protected at all. Even her own father barely tolerated her sharing the roof with him. Shaking, the clerk’s hands waffled through the holographic displays and pushed bits of light around. After several taps, he nodded and spoke in a voice so hollow he sounded like an android.

  “It’s done guv’na. Ten minutes, tops.”

  Smiling, James took her elbow and led her back to the waiting bench. “It’s all a matter of knowing how to ask nicely.”

  Anna stared up at him, trying to sort out what had just happened from how she felt about it. Seeing proof he was more like her than he had let on chased the last of her doubts out into the street.

  Within six minutes, a thin but solid older woman in a white coat emerged from the back. Silver hair streaked with black hung to her belt in a single ponytail, and she wore a perturbed face as if she had been distracted from something she would rather be doing.

  “Hello, I’m Doctor Heath. I’m afraid there’s been a bit of a misunderstanding. The schedule was empty for today and there’s no UHS file for your… um―”

  “Student.” Mardling stood, offering a pleasant smile that faded away into a flat line before the ‘t’ finished peeling from his tongue. He whispered, “Sorry for making you wait.”

  Emotion fled from the woman’s face, replaced by placid calm. “Sorry for making you wait.”

  Doctor Mardling gestured at the door, still whispering, “Right this way and we’ll get her set to rights.”

  The woman mirrored his smile, waving her arm in the same manner. “Right this way then, we’ll get her set to rights.”

  The clerk glanced up with disbelief at Dr. Heath’s sudden change in demeanor. He raised his eyebrows at Mardling, as if to apologize for misunderstanding his influence. Anna stared at the floor as they followed the MD into the back. A hallway later, she entered a small procedure room with a tiny desk, chair, and a large transparent cylinder perched between two metal platforms, one on the floor and one built into the ceiling. Both were ringed with various lights, the one on the ground had vents and slats while all manner of tubes and whatnot dangled from the upper one.

  “All right, Miss. You can leave your clothes on the chair there. Step into the tube whenever you’re ready and we’ll begin.”

  “Must I?”

  “Afraid so dear. Medical nanobots will destroy anything that isn’t biological matter or metal.”

  “I’ll be right outside.” Mardling smiled at Anna, and then tugged the medic around to stare at her. “You will do all you can to remove her addiction, and not think one whit about her afterward.”

  Doctor Heath blinked off the zombie-like stare a few seconds after James was away in the hall. Anna disrobed and stepped onto the lower platform, gasping as her toes touched the freezing metal. The silver-haired woman pulled a facemask down from above, and held it to her lips as Anna turned around to face the room.

  “Since we aren’t working on your lungs today, we’ll use the green stuff.” Doctor Heath attempted to sound reassuring. “This gel is not breathable. It’s much less frightening when you don’t need to inhale liquid. Think of it like taking a nice warm bath, only standing up. Try to relax. You’ll need this mask, don’t try to take in the gel. You’ll be in for about forty-five minutes. Do you have any questions?”

  Grasping the apparatus with trembling fingers, Anna found it odd to be eye level with the tall woman before she remembered the raised platform.

  “Will it ‘urt? Will I feel anything?”

  “Nothing but warm liquid, hon. All the work’s going on in your brain, and its small things… you have nothing to worry about. You’ll feel weightless. Just relax; sleep if you care to.”

  “Why don’t the nanobots eat this?” Anna tapped the breather.

  Doctor Heath gave her a patronizing smile. “Well, sweetie… It’s made from a specific type of plastic that the little robots ignore. They’re so small they don’t have a lot of room for program instructions on what not to eat. The medical processes were more important than a laundry list of ‘do not destroy.’ Plus, trauma wounds often have fragments of clothing embedded in them. We need the nanobots to clean that out.”

  “Oh.”

  She flicked her thumbnail over the black plastic breathing tube. She had tried to break the chains of zoom on her own and it did not work. Being stuck in a tank was not a wonderful thought, but getting found dead in an alley wasn’t any better. With a nod, she set the notch in the hose behind her teeth and pulled the straps around her head. Doctor Heath checked them, pulling them a little tighter than Anna cared for before walking across the room to a console.

  Clear plastic rose out of the ground, rotating to seal against the roof. Soon, viscous green fluid burbled up out of the floor. The pleasant warmth of it slid up and over her body as it filled the tube. Her weight left her feet and she hung amid the slime, neither floating nor sinking, and adjusted to the sense of breathing through the hose. Faint tingling filled her ears and nose; she wondered if that was the sensation of millions of tiny robots crawling inside her.

  Out through a lime-hued lens, she gazed upon the shadow of Doctor Mardling’s hair in the window. He stood with his back to the room, right there if she needed him. Her mind roamed about such a foreign thought, wondering what effect this chance meeting would have on the rest of her life.

  A sound like a distant balloon losing air swept through her skull; faint, it cried out at the edge of noticing. Little blighters are loud. Doctor Heath worked a few feet away, sideways to the tank, fingers dancing through holographic images of what was undoubtedly Anna’s head. It was a strange thing to see one’s own brain, even a digital representation thereof.

  She averted her gaze and focused on the shadow in the doorway. The little thing in the back of her mind was ripe for a tantrum; free of its zoom-cage, it would lash out if she got too scared. With machines inside her brain, the last thing she wanted was electrical mayhem tearing the room apart.

  A wave of nausea came over her. She scratched at the glass and clutched at her face. Doctor Heath’s voice sounded grandmotherly as it echoed through the substance.

  “Hon, if you need to vomit, there’s a squeezy on the side of the mask. Pinch it, and you can pull it loose for a moment.”

  She did so without thinking, pressing the button and blowing chunder into the green. When the convulsions ceased, she fumbled the mask back into her mouth and tried not to think about the flavor. The cloud of hours-old food expanded in front of her, disintegrating over the
course of several seconds until nothing remained. Too small to see, millions of little robots attacked the contamination like piranha.

  Threads of numbness ran down her arms and legs, followed by a feeling of bugs crawling on her. Hot chased cold through her body and she got sick again. The room twisted and spun into a sense of vertigo as if she fell. She curled into a ball, waiting for all the strange feelings to go away. A few moments after all went still, she looked up at the sound of metal tapping on plastic.

  Doctor Heath knocked at the tube with a light pen. “Put your feet down, Miss.”

  Once she straightened out, the doctor swiped at the holographic terminal and the fluid drained. A thick sucking sound filled the tube, her weight settled into her legs, and she braced a hand against the tank to steady herself. The older woman walked up, holding a white towel, and hit a button to open the tank. As soon as the sinking tube became low enough to step over, Anna tried to climb out, but her foot shot out from under her. Doctor Heath, evidently used to dealing with clumsy slime-coated patients, caught her in the towel and held on until she found her balance. After a wipe-down, Anna dressed, then sat on the exam table and endured routine poking and prodding. When the bright flash of the light in her eyes faded, James was standing at her side.

  He patted her on the shoulder. “How did it go?”

  “I’ve ‘ad worse. Am I cured?”

  Doctor Heath cleared her throat. “Well, Miss Morgan, the long term use of the synthetic hallucinogenic opiate known as ‘zoom’ causes a strong addiction reaction in most. I can tell by the condition of your brain tissue you’ve been using it for quite some time. If I were a betting sort, I’d wager you had developed somewhat of a tolerance and could suppress the hallucinations during all but the initial onset.”

  She nodded and stared down, no longer able to look the doctor in the eye.

  “Well, with such a deep addiction, there is only so much we can do on a physical level. You’ll need to stay well away from that junk for the psychological cravings to go away. You will suffer some physical symptoms over the next few days, but it’ll be about a tenth of what would have happened without this procedure.”

  Mardling nodded at the doctor. “Nothing to fret about there, I’ve got a spare bed at my flat.”

  She got up, pulling her little jacket on. “Doctor Mardling, I couldn’t impose… Besides I don’t want my friends to be worried.”

  “I can send them a message for you. Anna, you need your rest. One moment then, luv.”

  She walked into the hall, glancing over her shoulder long enough to see him locked upon Doctor Heath’s vacant stare. The MD offered a mute nod and her lips moved, too weak hear from the hall. James turned with a smile, leaving the doctor standing there with an expression as though she did not remember who she even was.

  “Is she all right?”

  “Yes… Yes… Perfectly peachy. In a few minutes, she will be right as rain.” Taking her arm, he fell in step alongside her, muttering. “And will not remember ever having seen you.”

  The doors of his gold Mercedes opened on their own as they approached. Anna fell into a passenger seat that shifted to fit her size, weight, and posture. She glanced at him, sighing in her mind. Concern about her was quite an unusual state of affairs for a man, or anyone other than Penny for that matter. A non-Cov standing up for her brought confusion.

  “Shall we go to my flat then?” He flashed a placid smile.

  Anna stared at her lap, picking at the thigh pocket. “Perhaps in a few days… I don’t want to leave Twee alone there.”

  He looked at her for a long moment, an instant of exasperation flashed over his face before a placid smile overtook it. “You see yourself in that one, don’t you? You want to protect her, spare her the same life.”

  “Well it’s a bit less complicated for her. She’s not got the curse.”

  He pulled out of the lot, dodging a flash of plastisteel and red that shot past the windscreen.

  “Damn bloody advert bots are everywhere.”

  “Yeah.” Anna rubbed her face; sobriety felt alien. “Doctor… I just want to make sure she gets home before she winds up stuck in Coventry. She’s had a rough bit. I, um… Maybe that nonce next door needs to have a fatal accident?”

  Oh blimey! I didn’t just say that…

  “A little indelicate I think.” His fingers picked at the control sticks. “That could attract undue attention to people with your special skill set. I would rather you did not. See after the girl then if it makes you happy.”

  The automatic drive had no programmed destinations for The Ruin; he took manual control and navigated the streets of London toward the police barricade. Soon, the black smear of Coventry Tower loomed high through the endless grey of the sky, a spire of dread amid the rolling gloom.

  As the car came to a halt at the checkpoint, Doctor Mardling fiddled with his NetMini.

  “Right, mate. What’s your business here?”

  A condescending smirk formed. “I’m doing research for the university. Nothing out of the ordinary ‘ere.”

  “Right, mistah. Nothing out of the ordinary. Carry on.” The constable nodded and waved him through.

  Mardling looked ahead, resting his hand upon Anna’s where they folded in her lap. “I am worried about you. There is a lot of temptation in there. I want to help you through this addiction. You need a stable and safe environment.”

  She squeezed his hand. “I know, Doctor. But so does Faye.”

  rembling hands portioned out breakfast among four plates. Anna edged up on her seat, ready to jump up and offer help if Penny seemed to need it. The blue-haired girl sat with folded arms and the imperious pout of a child dragged out of sleep early on a day with no school. Spawny slouched forward in his chair, both hands in his pockets. The shirtless skeleton stared with intensity at the incoming meal as a length of drool worked its way into his dense scrub of chest hair.

  “Buck up, Twee,” said Spawny.

  “Don’t call me that.” Faye leaned back as Penny put food in front of everyone. “My name is Faye.”

  Spawny winked. “You’ll always be cute li’l Twee round ‘ere.”

  The girl narrowed her eyes at him and jabbed a fork in a sausage.

  How’s Penny holding up? Is there anything I can do?

  Anna’s voice startled his half-awake brain; he almost fell out of the chair in a fit of flailing. His sudden reaction drew a startled yelp from Penny and a disinterested sidelong glance from Faye. After a breath, Penny sat. Spawny fell upon the food straight away, as if he had to scarf it down in thirty seconds or lose it all.

  “Damn, Pen, nang brekky.”

  Penny abandoned her half-hearted attempt at nibbling eggs. “Don’t thank me, thank Anna. She paid for it.”

  “Mazing you found a place wot’ll send shoeboxes to us ‘ere.” He inhaled half a sausage in one bite, the ecstasy of food preempting whatever else he wanted to say.

  With a smirk at the faces he made, Anna cut hers into bite-sized bits. “Any place will send delivery bots anywhere, if you pay for the risk fee.”

  “The Boys use bots for target practice sometimes,” muttered Penny.

  “What’d you nick?” blurted Faye, still not having touched a bite.

  “Sod-all. I ‘ad some work.” Anna sensed the look on the girl’s face. “No, not that kind of work, some corporate fuckery, strictly legit.”

  Penny looked up. “Kinnel, Anna. You’re not in with Carroll again, are you?”

  Anna looked down at her potatoes. “Maybe.”

  Faye appeared more interested in pushing bits of Omplus around her plate than eating it.

  Penny leaned toward her. “G’won eat. That’s as close to real eggs as you can get without ownin’ a chicken.”

  “Oi, Luv, there any more?” Spawny smiled, like a great hairy four-year-old begging for seconds. “What’s wrong with ‘er then?”

  “Leave her be,” said Anna. “She’s thirteen, away from home, scared witless…”r />
  Faye blushed. With both Anna and Penny patting her on the shoulders, she forced herself to eat a little.

  Penny got up, tossing two leftover sausages into the pot with the rest of the eggs.

  The girl’s glance shifted to Penny without her head moving. “What’re you so shivery about?”

  Penny almost dropped the pan at the question. “Don’t bother about me, eat your brekky.”

  Anna answered in a flat tone. “We were attacked in an alley.”

  The pan of Omplus crashed into the table, the impact came close to spilling the bowl of gravy mushrooms.

  “You needn’t worry the child with that,” said Penny, shivering into her seat.

  Anna looked at a clean streak following a crack through the grimy window. “Pen… She’s thirteen. It’s not all faeries and unicorns anymore.”

  “I know…” Penny stared at her food. “She’s got somewhere to go home to. No need to traumatize her.”

  Anna shifted in her seat, face going florid crimson. “I’m sorry, Penny. I… shouldn’t have waited so long. I… It’s my fault.” She looked up, watery eyes locked on watery eyes. I should’ve killed those bastards before they laid a hand on you. I’m so, so sorry.

  Penny burst into tears. “Anna… Don’t blame yourself.”

  “She’s right,” said Spawny. “If’n she stays out ‘ere, it’ll be ‘er soon enough bent over a rubbish can wif someone grabbin’ quim.”

  Faye froze, staring at her plate. After a brief silence, she stormed out of the kitchen.

  “You had to say that, didn’t you?” Anna scowled. “You’ll make a brilliant dad someday.”

  Penny propped her face on her hands, hiding behind her untamed hair. “I don’t blame you, Pix. You had to hide your… um… Yeah.”

  “Pen?”

  She parted her hair like a stage curtain, sniffling. “Yeah?”

  “You gonna be okay?”

  “As okay as I can be, what with Spawny almost getting’ killed, ‘aving a Crossmen tear my smalls off, and watching you kill three men.”