Halcyon's Hero (Atramento Book 1)

by Nix Whittaker

  “I missed you too.”

  Halcyon huffed and fiddled with her things, but he could see she blushed. “That isn’t what I meant.”

  “Sure, sweetheart.”

  He grinned. Maybe even she wasn’t sure what she felt.

  “I have a very big needle here.”

  She waved the tattoo gun and mock-glared at him.

  “And you are going to stick me with it anyway.”

  He chuckled as she muttered under her breath. He thought he might just love her. She certainly was fun to be with even when there was danger around.

  ___

  Numbers and equations latched onto ideas in her head. If this was this, then she could do this. Ah, but it really was this. Hal wasn’t even aware she was no longer alone in her workshop until she felt him stand behind her. Very close. Usually she didn’t like it when people came close to her personal space.

  Misha brushed the tips of his fingers over the back of her neck to get her attention. He enjoyed touching her there. She blinked up from her work and asked, “Misha?” Even though it could only be him.

  He placed some food on the table next to her. It was just a sandwich, but as she stared at it, it made her realise she was starving. She grabbed it and thanked him past a mouthful. She watched him for a while as he watched her.

  Hal swallowed and asked, “Why do you always touch me?”

  Misha grinned and there was a dimple in one of his cheeks. She could see what the kids in his class saw.

  He countered with, “Do you like it when I touch you?”

  She would be dead and buried if she didn’t.

  This sudden thought made her think about it deeper for a while. When he had first started touching her it was after her attack. At first, she was astonished, but now she rather expected it. People didn’t usually touch her.

  Even people she saw quite regularly like Kim Si and his wife. Mind you, they were not the kind to be touchy feely. Was it only because she surrounded herself with other standoffish people like her that she had avoided being touched in the past? She discarded this thought almost immediately.

  “Yeah, I kinda do. Wait, are we flirting?”

  He chuckled. “Da, little one. We have been flirting for a while. I wondered when you would figure it out.”

  Hal chewed another bite and thought over everything. Her mother had always told her she needed to be more sociable and practice her flirting. The last man she had flirted with had thought she was threatening him and had a restraining order against her. Well, she thought it had expired by now as that was a while ago. Eventually, she admitted, “I’m terrible at this kind of thing.”

  “Not so much. You respond as you should, I just don’t think you realise.”

  His eyes seemed darker than usual and his voice sounded rough. Surely, he was lying, so she checked his aura. No, there was no sign of stress or deception. Wow, he really thought she was flirting with him. It tempted her to look over the security footage to see what he meant. Maybe with study and observation, she could document her flirting.

  “I wish there could be a formula or something I could go by in interacting with people.”

  He said, “I wouldn’t worry about it too much. You are abrupt, but you are fair. Those who know you, forgive the abruptness and the others are impatient and not worthy of your concern.”

  She wasn’t really asking about other people. She wanted to know what he thought of her.

  She licked some mayonnaise off a finger. “That sounded all nice and pretty, except I really didn’t understand half of it. So, do you like me or not?”

  He laughed and stood up. He brushed her cheek with the back of his fingers.

  “People I know, Halcyon and you know machines. No one expects you to know everything.”

  That still didn’t answer her question. Before he left, though he said in a soft voice. His lips just by her ear. “I do like you.”

  His voice sent a shiver of feeling over her skin. He left then and she stared at the goosebumps on her arm. Now, what was that problem she was working on before?

  Chapter Five

  Whatinga: May 2086

  Hal woke in the middle of the night as the alarms went off. She quickly dressed in something a little more practical than overalls as she expected to fight. When she got to the top of the stairs Misha stumbled out of the spare room. She dashed down the stairs. She patted his shoulder when she passed him, not sure how she could tell him to be careful without sounding like an idiot. She went over to her worktop and flicked off the audible alarm.

  “Marcus is attacking. The monitors show dozens of men.”

  Misha stood next to her and he rubbed his face. He wasn’t the kind who could wake up on a dime like her. “Where do you need me?”

  She gestured to the back of the buildings, at the small alleyway between the buildings. “They will come through the back and I’ll take the ones in the front. I left you some goodies.”

  She pointed to a registered gun she had gotten last year. She had spent a week trying to find it. She wondered why she had kept it.

  Misha waved off her suggestion. “I won’t need it.”

  “Just don’t get hurt.”

  He grinned at her and shocked her by pulling her close and kissed her. His hands closed around her shoulders and she automatically tilted her head up for a kiss. His lips were softer than she had expected. He also tasted interesting. Also, something she hadn’t expected, though now she thought about it, he tasted and felt just as she wanted him to. He groaned as he pulled back. His eyes danced with emotion and when he spoke his voice was ragged.

  “Same for you, sweetheart.”

  ___

  Misha headed to the back entrance. He got more from that kiss than he had expected. She was more responsive than he expected from an innocent like her. He had to shake his head to bring himself to the moment and the situation they were in.

  Lights blazed throughout the courtyard. That must be part of the alarms Halcyon had set up.

  He could hear them bang against the door with something. Halcyon had kindly set up a monitor that showed they had a police ram. He wondered where they procured one of those.

  Halcyon had left some surprises for Marcus’ men. The second they bent the door, he heard screams. Thankfully, the camera was at the wrong angle for him to see exactly what welcome party she had prepared for Marcus’ goons.

  Hal crouched down behind a piece of wreck she was going to cannibalise later. There was a loud boom and they ran her gates down by a large SUV. People jumped out. She ducked and closed her eyes as she waited for the first booby-trap to explode. She didn’t have to wait long and there was another loud sound. There were screams after that.

  She stood, carrying a crowbar loosely in her fist. Unlike Misha, she wasn’t a martial artist. The men from the SUV lay on the ground unconscious, but there were others waiting outside the gate.

  She ran towards them before they could bring their guns up. She held the crowbar like a baseball bat to the nearest man. She heard the crack and hoped he wasn’t dead though she didn’t hesitate. They would kill her if they could.

  She danced around the courtyard to avoid her traps while she led them into them.

  By the time the State Enforcers arrived, she bled sluggishly from a bullet graze on her shoulder and her arms actually ached. There was a pile of men around her. One dangled upside down from one of her booby-traps. Only one bullet had managed to get through her atramentos. It was already healing. She tugged on her shirt and hoped they didn’t notice the hole in the t-shirt. She could always excuse the blood and say it wasn’t hers.

  Men in black armour filled the space of her courtyard with alarming speed. Lights made her blink and suddenly she was on the ground and someone pulled her arms behind her. She didn’t struggle that would only make things worse.

  ___

  Misha paced up and down the room. He didn’t like to be confined. He had never liked the authorities either. They had heard his fathe
r’s accent and had assumed things about him. When gangs had killed him, they had written him off completely.

  Enforcer Harold came into the room and motioned for Misha to sit, he felt rebellious so he didn’t. Instead, he went to a corner and leaned against the wall. The Enforcer shrugged and placed a folder on the table.

  It wasn’t very large and Misha almost preened. The bastards had put that together at the last minute. They had no idea who he was. He was at the University long enough to learn enough to know Enforcer Harold used an interrogation technique on him.

  The Enforcer opened the folder and pulled out a picture of his father. It was a crime scene photo and there were close-ups as well. Misha grimaced. He had seen his father’s body when he and his mother had gone to identify the body, but the cops then had not been crass enough to make him look at the scene photos. He had only been sixteen so maybe they had some sensibilities.

  “You were pretty young when he died. Maybe you decided to lash out.”

  Misha grunted. No clue, whatsoever. Enforcer Harold was trying to make him angry. Fortunately, he recognised it was merely a fishing expedition. “Did he teach you how not to get caught?”

  “I’m not in any of the gangs.” Misha kept his tone light.

  Misha bristled. Why the cops and Enforcers always assumed because he was a big man and that he could fight meant he automatically had to be a gang member.

  “Not according to our sources. They say you have affiliations with several of the gangs.”

  Misha said, “I make friends.”

  “I’m sure you are really friendly.”

  The man brought out a picture of Sandra. This one was an arrest photo. She appeared thirty even though she couldn’t be over twenty in the photo. The drugs had taken more from her than her youth.

  She had fallen completely when her brother had gone into the gangs. When she had wanted the money for drugs, she had gone down dark paths. Misha knew this and he had tried to help her as much as he could. Except there was only so much you could do for an ex-girlfriend.

  “Were you her first pimp?”

  Misha snorted, now they were just being offensive.

  He approached the table and sat down; he was curious. He picked through the other photos. There were some of his friends, including Waha. Waha seemed different. Curse it, Halcyon was right. He pulled him out.

  “You really shouldn’t have this photo for interrogation. You might show it to the wrong person and get him killed. I know you are State, but I don’t think the locals will appreciate you breaking his cover.”

  The Enforcer went tense with that. “Are you saying this particular fellow is an undercover policeman?”

  Misha gloated as he understood something the Enforcer didn’t. “Yeah. He used me to get introduced to people. He didn’t tell me he was undercover then, but I figured it out.”

  He wouldn’t say Halcyon had figured it out by reading his aura or EMF’s that would just freak the Enforcer out. And Misha wanted to avoid prison.

  He pushed Waha’s picture to the side and went through the others. There was the death certificate for his mother. She had died of heart disease at a very young age. He stroked the page for a second and then went on to the others.

  Eventually, Misha pushed them all aside and asked, “What is this supposed to prove? That you guys have nothing on me. I hang out with people in my neighbourhood and that isn’t a crime. Yeah, some of them are dirty, but I have done nothing myself and you can’t prove otherwise.”

  The Enforcer ignored him. “What can you tell us about Halcyon Smith?”

  Misha leaned back. He had wondered why the Enforcers themselves had taken an interest in all of this. Usually a gang retaliation like this would be dealt with by the police.

  “She has a rep in the neighbourhood for doing mean tattoos. I met her when Waha took me to see her. She wouldn’t do any tats for Waha though she would for me.” He pulled up his t-shirt and showed his atramento on his chest. “She does some mean work. We started hanging out after that and that is pretty much all of it.”

  Misha left out the gunshot wound or that they were flirting. The Enforcer would think that was too quaint for someone of his ilk.

  “What about her machines?”

  It was curious that they asked about the machines. Misha thought they were interesting and certainly innovative, but they weren’t Halcyon’s greatest invention.

  “Ah, well, I’ve seen her working on them, but they haven’t really been an interest to me. I’m more of a hands-on kind of person.”

  Misha downplayed his intelligence as he had always done to survive.

  The Enforcer slipped a photo from under the folder. It was of one of Halcyon’s machines. He could see it was her prototype as it had the distinct atramentos plainly visible on the metal. She had told him she had gone micro three years ago, so this was one of the early ones. There was an evidence sticker on the machine in the picture so the cops must have taken it in at some stage.

  “What do you know about this?”

  The Enforcer’s voice betrayed that this was the real reason he was being questioned.

  “It’s one of Halcyon’s.”

  Misha wouldn’t give more information than he had to. The fight against enforcement was too strong in his blood. In the neighbourhood, police were the intruders sent to create conformity.

  The Enforcer didn’t show his exasperation and pushed on. “Anything else you can tell me?”

  Misha crossed his arms over his chest. “No.”

  The Enforcer tapped the picture. “What does it do?”

  “No idea. Your guess is as good as mine.”

  Harold said gruffly, “Did you know that the metal it’s encased in is double its normal strength?”

  Halcyon had said the tensile could be increased exponentially, so this must be a really early model.

  Harold waved to the picture. “What are these symbols?”

  “Decoration?” Misha said perversely.

  “Very funny,” the Enforcer’s voice oozed sarcasm.

  Misha smiled at the Enforcer. “Seriously, I don’t know. It is way out of my league. I don’t know if you have figured this out, but Halcyon is clever. I mean like super smart. When she talks about this stuff, it goes straight over the top of my head,” Misha lied easily.

  He understood her; he just wasn’t interested in the details. He appreciated her work like a normal person would admire an artist. They knew it was an application of paint and brushstrokes though beyond that they had no idea how it was done.

  “Why don’t you guess what it is?”

  Misha pulled the picture closer and studied it carefully. None of the moving parts were visible and the case was probably to hide the workings. It would be near impossible to open up without breaking the small workings inside. There was a handle and a nozzle. It could be anything from something that sniffed things to a fire extinguisher.

  Misha said, “It sniffs out the molecular structure of things. I don’t know.”

  The man stared at the gadget then frowned. “We might get you to look at it.”

  Misha shrugged. “It would be a complete waste of time. I have no idea how it works. Just ask Halcyon. If it isn’t dangerous, she would be more than happy to show you. She’s smart, she knows how to stay out of trouble.”

  She was like him in that regard. They had grown up rough, but they had skirted the dangers in their own ways.

  ___

  Hal glared at the State Enforcers. One at the door and the other, Harold, sat in front of her. They handcuffed her hands to the metal table which sat inside a pretty plain and depressing room. The proper lighting could set it off lovely especially if they bothered to put actual furniture in. The handcuffs dug into her skin a little.

  She asked while she tugged on them, “Can we get a bit more comfortable before you start interrogating me?”

  Harold, who sat opposite her at the metal table, raised an eyebrow, then waved to the guards. She sighed and rubbed
her wrists once they released her.

  “So, I take it you want to know about something else besides the dead guys at my place?”

  He placed a picture on the table of a handheld spectrometer.

  “Mm, yeah, this is one of mine. What do you want to know?”

  He growled; his frustration clear. She had already been there for over an hour, so she wondered if he had already spoken to Misha. “Where are the patents for it?”

  Hal snorted with laughter, on a good day, less than half of her work was patented.

  “Parts of it are patented, but I don’t think that is what you’re asking about.”

  People only patented stuff if they were worried someone was close and they wanted to protect themselves. She was more worried about people copying her or figuring out what she did.

  Pulling the notebook and pen closer she started to write down reference numbers and pushed it towards Harold. “Here are the parts that are patented.”

  He seemed amazed she had given over the information so easily. Hal asked, “What? You thought I would keep it a secret?”

  Harold took the notebook and passed it to one of his colleagues. “Tell us what it does?”

  She said, “You don’t even know what it does? Wow.”

  She realised the Enforcers had access to some of the brightest and best scientists the City State had to provide.

  She gestured for another notebook and an Enforcer provided it. She drew diagrams of a user manual. She had made it years ago, so she had to pause every now and then try to remember what she had done and how it worked. She asked after a while.

  “Is it still working? I mean, if it is broken, then this isn’t going to help you.”

  She pushed the diagrams towards Harold.

  He betrayed in his aura his desire for the instructions though he didn’t reveal anything in his gesture or expression.

  “We’ve managed to turn it on. We just don’t know what it does.”

  Hal sighed, seriously? She understood the scientists, they would have consulted, surely, they would have figured out how to do more than turning it on.