Second Chance Angel

by Griffin Barber

  Sudden, savage pain lanced through my skull, squeezing a pained cry from my lungs and driving me to my knees. I had a moment of raw fear, swaying like a punch-drunk idiot on the rim of the crater.

  “That was unpleasant,” Angel said as I steadied.

  “What did you do?” I struggled to my feet.

  “I poked a memory cluster and it . . . well, it bit me.”

  “Please don’t do that again.” I glanced around. A couple of the Brethren were looking my way, but that wasn’t unusual, and they didn’t have a lot of data to judge my behavior on.

  “Oh, I won’t . . . but you should know, your recollection of what caused your discharge is not reliable. Or rather, the memories are reliable, they’re just not your memories of your actions.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?” I wiped some grit off my knees.

  “The memories are artificial. Faked.”

  “Nonsense.” I could still smell their flesh burning, hear the cries of my prisoners as they died. I spent every night praying the memories would not surface, but every night, there they were. Not always in every dream, but they sat, like a goblin in the corner, ready to rend my rest with claws of memory.

  Angel didn’t bother to acknowledge my protest.

  “I can’t get at the real memories, if they’re still even in there, but I read the coding myself before your protocols zapped me. And that’s another thing: ever heard of a physical component to the privacy protocols?”

  “Only in the worst holo-dramas, on spies and the like.”

  “Right, and we know you weren’t one of those back then . . .”

  “Because I’m not handsome and debonair enough?” I joked, seizing on any distraction to stabilize my whirling thoughts.

  “No, you’ll do on that score, if you go in for hulking brutes. No, what I meant was that the shock we both received wasn’t normal. And I can’t find any memory editing except for this one part of your life.”

  “Then I should be thankful my brain hasn’t been tampered with even more?” I tried for lighthearted, joking, despite the sobering implications.

  “I suppose so. I won’t be able to get in there, though. Not with the protocols you have in place. Not on my own.” She seemed injured at the thought.

  I heard the Speaker’s warning. We would be on the move in moments.

  Sighing, I said, “Last time I checked, we were searching for Siren, not delving into my personal history.”

  A smiling Angel strobed across my mind. “And we need to make the Dugra shuttle to get off this rock, don’t forget.”

  “That too.”

  The Brethren started to move again. I rejoined the column, feeling stretched thin. I knew from questioning criminals how a subject’s mind could twist the facts to suit the narrative they wanted, needed to defend their actions, making them believe their own lies, even when confronted with the truth. Questioning my own recollection of events I knew, simply knew, had come to pass in a certain way was terrifying. Just what the hell had been done to my brain—my memories? Too little of me—the me that had once been Brother Muck—remained to cover the broken, threadbare, disjointed history of my existence.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Angel

  I didn’t like the Brethren.

  They were nice enough people, friendly and polite. Generous. They seemed happy to share their food and water with Muck during the overland trek to the capital city, but . . .

  They were a religion of people who thought that AIs like me were an abomination. I figured it wasn’t out of line for me to hate them a little bit in return. So when we shuffled into the capital, dusty and footsore, I couldn’t wait to slip away from the lot of them.

  “We can just turn aside,” I said silently as we filed over the rim of the crater and down the roadway toward the central vegetation and Dugra landing plinth. “Just slip into one of these spaces between these habs squatting here and wait for a bit. Let them think we were a desert mirage.”

  “Cute, Angel,” Muck said. “But you know I can’t do that. It would be rude, and they’d probably send someone to look for us.”

  “Why?” I asked, instantly suspicious.

  “Nothing like that. They care, that’s all. They would want to make sure we made it here, and would worry that we hadn’t.”

  “Oh.”

  “Look,” he said. “I’ll go talk to the Speaker as soon as we reach the central oasis. Then we can slip away. Remember, too, someone sabotaged that transport. Coming in with the Brethren is excellent cover.”

  “If you say so.”

  He was right, but that didn’t mean I had to like it. So I made careful note of every dusty, shadowy alley and side street we passed and made sure he saw them too. He started gritting our teeth, but I didn’t care. I just kept pulling our attention to the sides, while he did his best to ignore it.

  I didn’t like being ignored.

  From a distance, the “capital city” of Sagran VI looked like a poorly cobbled together afterthought of a place. Up close, it wasn’t any better. It resembled a high-tech shantytown, as listless, dirty faces peered out from the doorways of the dust-caked hab units that clustered around the central oasis. Eventually, finally, we reached the bottom of the crater and started marching through the dense greenery of the native trees. It wasn’t pretty, as the dust on the ground just turned to mud fed by a trickle of brownish groundwater pumped to the surface in order to keep the dust manageable.

  The locals seemed to congregate here, pushing and jostling for position as they fought to fill various containers with water. It was marginally cooler in the shade, causing the crowds to cluster beneath the low-twisting trunks and their thick, broad leaves. It would have been a perfect place to slip away, if Muck was on board. Just fade back and blend in with the masses. A fact I was about to point out again when something caught my eye.

  Not something. Someone.

  Shock punched me in the gut, and Muck stutter-stepped in response to the erratic spike of adrenaline my lack of control flooded into his system.

  “What?” he asked me silently. “A threat?”

  “N-no,” I replied. “A . . . memory, I guess. Right there, under the tree. See the guy crouched on the ground, with the weeping sore high on his cheek?”

  Muck turned to look at the figure I’d caught out of the corner of our eye, and I was certain. It was Colim. Rail-thin, his once powerful body wasted and, if the sore on his face was an indication, decaying still. But it was unmistakably the man who had saved Siren’s and my life several times during the war. We’d last seen him a year or so ago. He’d stopped in to hear Siren sing one night, but disappeared again soon after.

  “I know him,” I said, and a strange feeling crept through me. I didn’t recognize it as my own at first.

  Muck did, though.

  “You’re sad,” he said. “Did you care about him? Did Siren?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “A long time ago. During the war.”

  I would have said more, but suddenly didn’t want to. Despite our earlier mutual irritation, Muck seemed to understand. Or, at least, he understood I didn’t want to talk about it, and resolutely turned his gaze back to the road in front of us. We followed the Brethren the rest of the way through the oasis without speaking again.

  Once through the prickly-looking green underbrush of the oasis, the road wound between several larger, older habs until it opened onto the souk next to the massive Dugra shuttle plinth. Dust-covered composite materials faded into dust-covered fabrics and flaps of plastic as actual habs became temporary booths and structures that could be erected or torn down at a moment’s notice. At this particular moment, they were mostly in the process of being torn down. Over the eastern horizon, night loomed as the primary began to slide behind the edge of the crater to the west.

  The column shuffled to a stop. Up ahead someon
e barked a command, and the Brethren broke ranks with something like a collective sigh. Suddenly each of these oddly disciplined civilians seemed to be laughing and smiling as they dispersed to look through what delights had not yet been packed away by the souk vendors.

  Muck smiled at a few who called out to him but kept moving forward until he spotted the red-scarfed figure of the Speaker. She stood motionless, like a rock in a swirling sea of bodies, looking at us with a mysterious, slightly motherly smile.

  I wanted to punch her.

  “And will you be leaving us now, Traveler?” she asked when we got close enough.

  “For the night, at least, Speaker,” Muck said. “But I may be looking to travel off-world tomorrow. If I am here when the shuttle comes to collect you, may I join your group for that journey?”

  The Speaker tilted her head to the side and looked narrowly at us for a long moment.

  “You are respectful, I will give you that,” she said. “I have appreciated your discretion in not using any of the unnatural abilities you may have acquired since you left us. Your family are good people. If you are here at the appointed time tomorrow, you may join us. I begin to suspect you are using us as camouflage.”

  “Perhaps a little bit, Speaker,” he said. “But I would not knowingly bring trouble onto the Brethren.”

  “Oh, I’m not worried about a little trouble,” she said, and her smile deepened, just a touch. “We have our own ways of dealing with such things. Good luck finding what you seek in the night here. If you miss the noon shuttle, we will not wait for you.”

  “Understood, Speaker. Thank you for your hospitality.”

  The Speaker responded by inclining her head slightly, and then folded her arms into her sleeves before turning to walk away. The desire to punch her struck me again. She even looked like some teenage human’s conception of a “wise priestess.”

  “Be nice,” Muck muttered to me. “We probably would have died out there if the Brethren hadn’t taken us in.”

  “Which they would not have done if they knew about me,” I shot back. “Why should I be nice to the likes of them?”

  “All right,” Muck said with a sigh. “Well, you got your wish. We’re away from them. What now?”

  “That man back at the oasis,” I said, steeling myself. I didn’t want to think about it, but connections were connections, and if I wanted Siren back, I couldn’t afford to ignore this one. “His name is Colim Zakarash. He is important, I think. He was Siren’s top NCO during the war.”

  “Think he knows what happened to her?” Muck asked.

  “I think it’s too much of a coincidence that he shows up here. Please, let’s talk to him. Then we can look into the pharma angle.”

  “Sure thing, Angel,” Muck said, and the way he said it gave me pause. He sounded like someone trying to give reassurance.

  Was I that rattled by seeing Colim?

  Yes. Yes I was.

  We made our way back to the oasis and found Colim still sitting under the same twisted tree. He swiveled his head to look up at us as we approached.

  “Need something?” he asked. His voice was almost the same, though it had picked up a fine tremor somewhere along the line. “Saw you staring at me before. You got bliss?”

  “Are you Colim Zakarash?” Muck asked.

  “Never heard of him,” the wreck of a man said without missing a beat. “But if you looking for someone, I can prob’ly help you. If you got bliss.”

  “Tell him that the double moons of Vasoro cast shadows that aren’t to be trusted,” I said.

  “What?”

  “An old sign / countersign.”

  “You gotta be kidding me. That’s the stupidest shit I’ve ever heard.”

  “Just say it!”

  “The double moons of Vasoro—” Muck began, slowly. Colim’s head popped up, eyes narrow.

  “Stop!” he said. “Turn around and walk away, slowly.”

  “What, I’m a friend of—”

  “Shut. Up,” he said. “Walk away.”

  Muck stared at him, then gave him a nod and stepped back.

  “Wait! What are you doing? He responded! He knew the phrase! You know it’s him!”

  “Hush, Angel, look at him. He’s spooked. Don’t worry, we’ll follow him. He’s going to go to ground and hole up somewhere. We can approach him later, where he feels safe, but something’s up, and if we want him cooperative, we have to do as he says.”

  I didn’t like it. Colim was the first concrete link to Siren I’d found since I’d been stripped out of her. It went against my every impulse not to make Muck grab Colim and beat him like a drum till he told me everything I wanted to know . . . but Muck was right. That wouldn’t work, even if Colim knew something about Siren.

  The tremor had spread from Colim’s voice into his hands, even to his body. He glared up at us, jaw muscles bunching in that too-thin face, and started picking at the facial sore.

  Muck nodded in his direction and took another step back. Then another.

  “Well,” I asked, “what now?”

  “Now we find someplace out of his line of sight and wait.”

  Colim stayed in his spot for another hour. He seemed unmoved, but if I magnified Muck’s vision, we could see the junkie’s hands tremble, and he tended to glance around more than he’d been doing earlier. Paranoia wasn’t usually a side effect of bliss addiction. This was something else.

  After a while, the traffic through the oasis began to pick up. Colim waited until a large group passed his position before standing up and blending seamlessly with the crowd. It was well done. If we hadn’t been watching him closely, we would have missed it. Apparently the bliss hadn’t robbed him of all of his wits.

  He followed the crowd down to the souk. We did the same, trying to stay back far enough so as not to catch his eye. Muck was quite skilled at it. Without my prompting, he slouched just enough to change his height, and matched pace with the rest of the pedestrians streaming along the dusty road. I kept our vision magnified enough that we didn’t lose Colim, but Muck’s skill made us appear to just flow with the crowd.

  Once he reached the edge of the marketplace, our target drifted between two tented awnings and into an alleyway.

  “Keep going past,” I told Muck.

  “I was.”

  “Glance that way with the corner of your eye as we pass. I’ll take a picture and we’ll figure out a way to double back on him.”

  “I’ve done surveillance before, Angel.”

  “And how would I know that?”

  “Maybe because you can see all of my memories?”

  “Your memories can’t be trusted. Just do what I say.”

  “Yes, Mom.”

  Just for that, I manifested the feel of my lips caressing our ear.

  “I’m not your mother, Muck,” I whispered, and felt him shiver, despite the desert heat.

  Game, set, match.

  Despite our banter, he did as I asked and glanced toward the alleyway. I stored the image into memory, and something immediately caught my attention.

  “Is that . . .?” he asked.

  “A partially covered sewer drain? Looks like it,” I said.

  “Take the next right and it should curve back around this way.”

  I was right. The next gap between the merchant booths led to a narrow path that came back around and dead-ended into the alleyway right next to the sewer drain. Disused sewer drain, if the lack of stench was any indication. Muck walked over to the edge and peered inside.

  The scuff of a shoe on the sand-covered street behind us gave me a split-second warning. I slammed into override protocols just as the shovel came down toward the back of our head.

  I ducked, feeling the air whiff over us, and turned, already striking out with my right fist. But it was a clumsy blow, and I reme
mbered once again that this was not the lithe body I was used to. I let go of the override as fast as I’d grabbed it and settled for pouring adrenaline into Muck’s system.

  The attacker swung the shovel again, but Muck danced back out of the way. Our assailant followed, stepping out of the shadow of the hab. It was Colim.

  “Easy, man!” Muck said. “I’m not trying to hurt you! I just want to know where Siren is!”

  “Who the fuck is Siren?” Colim asked. “And why are you following me? How do you know those words? I’m not going back! You can’t take me back!”

  And to my great astonishment, he burst into tears. I’d once seen Colim Zakarash coldly execute an orbital call for fire that destroyed an entire settlement just to neutralize the scout element of an enemy formation. But here he was, crying not just tears, but great wrenching sobs that shook his whole wasted body.

  The shovel clattered to the ground, and Colim folded in on himself, falling to his knees, lost in grief and terror.

  Muck froze, uncertain. I wasn’t much better off. I hadn’t anticipated being attacked, so having the attacker collapse into tears was something I was completely unprepared to handle.

  “Uh . . .” Muck said.

  “I don’t know. Go to him?”

  “And do what?”

  “At least kick the shovel out of reach?”

  “Good idea,” Muck said, stepping forward and flipping the shovel up with our booted toe. We caught it, and then set it against the wall of the hab, well out of the way.

  “Hey,” Muck said softly. “Hey man, stay cool. I’m not going to take you anywhere. I’m just looking for a friend of mine.”

  Colim sniffled, then looked up with water-filled eyes.

  “Really?” he asked. “Because I can’t go back to the lab. I’ll die first.”

  “I swear,” Muck said. “I don’t even know what lab you’re talking about. Like I said, I’m just looking for a friend.”

  “Yeah? Okay.” Colim got to his feet and sniffled again, wiping his nose with a dirt-encrusted sleeve. “I got a place, not very far. We can talk there. I don’t—I don’t know you, but you know some shit you shouldn’t, and—well, maybe I can warn you, even if I can’t help you find your friend.”