by R. Z. Held
Then footsteps too loud to miss and the next moment, no time for Genevieve to turn, a knife at the front of her neck, a grip heavy with promised violence urging her standing and then settling across her back and digging into her upper arm from behind. “Looks like you’ve been sleeping soundly for a murdering fronti.” Abidjan Lemna’s voice.
And Lemna’s system trying to lock Genevieve out of Pax Romana communications she wasn’t even using anymore.
“You’re going to tell me what you did, so I can ensure no one does it ever again.” Lemna kissed the blade in with each emphasis, enough to sting like a bastard, but quick to heal up with the nanites’ help. “I will bleed you out a cupful at a time, if that’s what it takes.”
Genevieve reviewed her environment once, again, mapping out her abandoned chair, the table, but Lemna had the knife close and tight and even swallowing too hard had a sting now. “And then you kill me?”
Lemna’s breath came hot against Genevieve’s ear and Genevieve had to close her eyes against the intensity of it. “Spy or not, I will break you just as surely. Whatever others you’ve collected here won’t be able to do a thing about it.”
The truck’s engine roared into her range of hearing, making Genevieve’s eyes pop open, but nothing in Lemna’s stance indicated that she’d even noticed. A city woman, why would she? Genevieve realized after a moment. “Are you sure about that?”
The front door slammed. Lemna jerked her around, knife scoring a line to her collarbone deep enough to bleed before it closed. Pyrus was first in the hall, gun leveled, Carex slightly behind and out of any line of fire in his empty-handed state. They really should buy him a manual gun, without the need for an Install system to activate it—but with what money? And Genevieve needed to focus.
“Let her go,” Pyrus said. Genevieve heard the soldier calm in his voice once more.
“No,” Lemna said, and Genevieve could feel the stalemate souring around all of them, that much closer to a twitch the wrong direction opening up her neck despite all of their intentions.
No, she decided for herself. No. She slammed the taste of chili sauce, enough to choke on, into Lemna’s system. Whatever armoring she might have cobbled together against burnout, the smell used a separate pathway and always had, and Genevieve knew from Lemna’s sob she tasted it.
“Don’t!” She reeled back from Genevieve, so desperate to sever the touch between them she jerked the knife directly away, drawing it only along the skin rather than biting into it at any depth. At least, that’s what Genevieve’s system showed her as it healed this latest cut with no trouble. Genevieve bolted for the safety behind Pyrus, only then turned to face Lemna.
She was as Genevieve had seen her last, but for the arrogant power that had turned to haggard desperation. Her hand with the knife was down, tip pointed to the floor, viscous blood drop gathering itself there without the wherewithal to fall yet. Seeing it like that—ridiculous, when she’d been feeling it not so long ago—but seeing the blood drop splatter down—
“Genevieve,” Pyrus was saying. “Love, you have to breathe. You’re hyperventilating. Let me help.” His hand on the back of her neck and her breaths smoothed themselves out despite all her body was trying to do. She’d blanked out, how much time had she lost?
“It’s the knife,” Carex said, and strode forward with Pyrus still covering him with the gun to wrench the weapon from Lemna’s hand. Perhaps Lemna hadn’t seen him properly before, because she stared at him now with as much shock as her iron self-control would allow. He had always been the loyal one, of course. “From when you looked away as unalts took her damn wings in service of a fever dream about her being some kind of stone-cold sleeper agent. So you tell me, Lemna. Do you really think she’s just that fucking good of a spy that she can fake a panic attack, or do you think maybe that she really is a civilian scientist who fights for her life when cornered? Because if it’s the latter, you brought this on yourself.”
Just a civilian all but pissing herself again.
Genevieve lost a moment again, but this time it was the sheer humiliation that moved her to Carex’s side even as it forced tears to her eyes. She wrenched the knife from him in turn, his hand unresisting with surprise very similar to Lemna’s a moment before.
“I am done with people shitting on me for being a civilian,” she spat at the older woman. “I’ll carve out your wings right here, and we’ll see how you do. Maybe I’ll blunt up the knife first for the real, authentic experience.”
Carex caught her when she lunged for Lemna. She almost broke free when he didn’t put his full strength into the hold, but once he realized she was in earnest, there was no contest between them. Especially as she wasn’t going to cut him and they both knew it. She thrashed against his grip across her body, and Pyrus made some noise in his throat. Not precisely a whimper, but it brought her back to herself. She dropped the knife instantly, fought down nausea and lost the battle with sobs as a side effect.
“Anyone who isn’t fucking terrified of what you will do when you decide it’s necessary, should be.” Carex held Genevieve a moment longer to make sure she wasn’t going anywhere, then passed her off for Pyrus to enfold her with his free arm.
She was spoiling his aim somehow, she was sure, but Lemna was quiescent for the moment even so. “You shouldn’t have to prop me up all the time,” she murmured into Pyrus’s shoulder.
Pyrus murmured a wordless negative, while Carex barked a laugh. “He lives to support people as much as humanly possible,” he said, mimicking Pyrus’s earlier delivery. “The rest of us never gave him much scope for it.”
He turned from them, back to Lemna, and clapped his hands for her attention. “Now. Ping my system.” He held out one hand, almost an insult in how he stood without concern that she would attack him given the opening. “Touch me, whatever you like. Fair warning, though, if you try to draw blood, I will punch you in the fucking face.”
Lemna apparently did ping him, as her face creased with the depth of her frown. She reached careful fingers, touched tips to the cup of his palm. “You—universal mercy, you’ve been uninstalled.” She reached out, found the back of Genevieve’s former chair, and dragged it close enough to collapse. She ended up perched at an odd angle across the seat. “How? Amsterdam, you have to tell me how you did it.”
“Why should I?” Genevieve stepped away from Pyrus, finding her own balance finally, for the first time since Lemna had entered the kitchen. Not threatening, but not frightened. Firm. “That was never your priority, in Science Division, or anywhere in the military hierarchy that I could tell. You gave us a certain level of funding, sure, but no other support. Kept a bunch of inconvenient people out of the way and busy doing something that might be useful someday, I suppose. I’ll give it to the Installs themselves, not to you.”
Lemna pressed hands to her face, a gesture not of Genevieve’s previous knowledge of her, but of this new woman with defeat in her shoulders. “My people—all those we managed to save, when we reinstalled quickly enough—they were ordering them right back to duty. As soon as they could walk, hold a gun. But the mental toll—so many of them still took their own lives, and it was so preventable, if we’d had time for proper support, ease them back into it…”
She looked up, face haggard with the rage of loyalty betrayed. Genevieve could recognize that instantly, now. “My people. I was instrumental in making them, in saving them
, and then those fools were forcing me to kill them all over again.”
Genevieve caught her bottom lip in her teeth, released it again when she might have bitten through. “How many Installs are left alive?” How many had been lost?
Pyrus’s grounding touch again, this time on her shoulder. “No numbers. You think if you have a count, you’ll know when you’ve fully balanced the debt, but it doesn’t work that way. You can’t do enough even for one.”
“More than there would have been without the warning.” Lemna locked eyes with Pyrus for a moment. “That’s the reason I was in any state to oversee reinstallation efforts.” A pause, rage coming back to the forefront. “Fewer than there would have been without the orders taking them back into action too soon. But if we can uninstall anyone who wants it, they won’t have to follow any more such orders. Not safe, precisely, but with a path to safety. And there’s no burying what’s happened, they’re going to have precious few signing up for new installation.”
Genevieve wondered if Lemna had decided to be conciliating only because she wanted something. The weight of her guilt could use the lightening, but she couldn’t in good conscience allow herself to have it. To have Lemna help spread word of uninstallation, though, that would be a boon, to make her attempts to balance her debt that much more effective.
“So you’ve decided to join us at ‘burn it down’?” Carex murmured, crossing his arms. “Or biding your time, until you can get your chance at avenging the dead by taking out Genevieve?”
“There’s an easy solution for that.” Lemna stood, holding her hands open at her sides, and unfurled her wings, keeping them low at her shoulders since space was limited with her hemmed in by chair and table. “Do me first.”
“Yes,” Genevieve said, before Carex could respond. It was her safety she was risking, and she judged that risk worth it. “Before you agree, though, you should know the process literally starts with cutting off your wings.” She smiled thinly. “It should separate the sheep from the goats as far as who really wants to be uninstalled.”
Lemna glanced to Carex, who, after pulling a face at the inconvenience, shrugged out of his jacket and then pulled his shirt over his head. He’d taken to wearing a normal, Idyllian style of each, for obvious reasons. He turned so she could inspect his scars—neat, but present—but pointedly stayed out of touching distance. “Sheep—what does that even mean?” Lemna asked.
“You get used to the folksiness,” Carex said, chuckling as he redressed. “In this case, I think we’re the ones going to hell.”
Lemna tipped up her chin. “All right.” She looked around her, seeming to finally see the farmhouse properly. “This planet might not be a bad place for it, pulling people in a few at a time.”
“That was the plan.” Genevieve grimaced. Lemna would be helpful, but that didn’t mean she had to like the woman, or being patronized by her. “Until you proved the Pax Romana can find us even way the hell out here.” Where else could they go? She felt exhausted just framing the question.
Lemna gestured dismissively. “They know you’re on Idyll—obviously, if you’re going to grandstand in front of a bunch of unalts you then send skittering home—but I had to be on-planet before I found the records I needed of land owned by Amsterdams. Keep an eye on off-planet arrivals and you’ll be able to anticipate them. If they bother. When the last of their Installs erode out from under them, they’ll have bigger problems.”
Genevieve closed her eyes briefly to lay that out, poke holes in it. Another risk, but another managed one. “Once we figure out funds, we can have Eriope start laying the breadcrumbs, then.”
“Oh, well.” Lemna withdrew a local payment card from her hip pocket. “Will that help?” She flicked it to Genevieve, who let her system do the work to snap it out of the air.
She checked the balance with a flick of her fingernail on the back and choked on her next inhalation. “That will help considerably.” Like immediately constructing the separate clinic building they’d been discussing as a decade down the road, as well as setting them up for as many people who wanted to come for two years or more. And by then, they should have started harvesting and selling the timber and Installs would be bringing some of their own money.
“I’ll go collect my things, then,” Lemna said, and swept out, trailing an assumption behind her, that they’d obviously follow and then show her to a room. The three of them exchanged looks, and Pyrus duly followed.
After neatly pushing in all the chairs at the table and dumping out her now-cold coffee, Genevieve found herself with enough of a lull in momentum the guilt seeped back in. she said, looping Pyrus in to the conversation.
Carex snorted.
Carex shrugged, a flicker of embarrassment finding its way across his expression. His tone maintained his standard of assholery, however.
Genevieve clapped him on the shoulder.
Epilogue
When the evening sunlight stretched long, Genevieve found herself back at her parents’ house, even though the chatter and chaos contained within the new clinic and dorm building wasn’t at its highest level. They’d found things went easier if they loosely organized incoming Installs into cohorts to begin the process, and right now they were between two of them. Eriope had asked to join the next cohort, though her nerve might fail her again.
It was all right if it did, of course. They’d had several Installs decide that the drawbacks didn’t outweigh the benefits of their systems yet. Genevieve and her new team—founded on the core of the old one—had found they could preserve coms, running on bio power, without too much trouble, but most other aspects had to go, if the Install was to begin aging normally. For the retired soldiers, the ones who’d lived with their systems for too long, that was what they longed for: an entry point into a new life wherein they were not out of step of all those around them. A new life that could end.
It was easy for Genevieve to extend an understanding of why they might not be ready to others, hard to extend it to herself, to fight the persistent tendrils of guilt curling through her belly over still having her wings. She was facing wrong way to charge now as she stood at the scratched and sagging porch rail, but she lofted her wings open anyway, feeling the stretch of them. Fully grown by now. It helped to have her conception of her body form such a mismatch to when she’d stood here as a child when her family was all alive, when no one on her planet had fallen in the war.
It cut her ghosts down to something manageable.
Pyr
us approached, his system brushing across hers for no data in particular in a gesture that had become deeply intimate between them, as sexual as a caress across the small of her back. She half-folded her wings in invitation, and he pressed there against her back, where she could stretch back and “feel” his shoulders and arm with the wing’s ribs and tips. In a moment, yes, she’d follow that up, but she also needed to lighten the load of her thoughts a little first.
“Am I a hypocrite for not uninstalling yet?” she asked the orderly rows of shadows and trunks in the trees beyond the lawn. She’d made her decision for the foreseeable future, but it would take a little more work to be easy in it.
“You’ll uninstall when you’re ready. We both will.” Pyrus bent a little to press kisses to the back of her neck. “Having a fully operational system sure as hell helps monitor people’s nanite counts. So you could say you’re keeping the nanites in service of the others we’re uninstalling. Or you could keep them halfway to forever because you want to, because universal mercy, love, you’re allowed. Everyone’s allowed to keep their nanites until they feel ready to let them go and move on to what comes next.”
“Thanks,” Genevieve murmured, and imagined lifting that worry up on a spread palm for the wind to catch up and dance away with. That was the beauty of this land, far from the city. “Come to cause me trouble, have you, Praetor?”
Pyrus settled his hands on her hips. She felt him watching through her system’s data as the flush started low and spread through her body, which only made it more delicious. “Praetor’s the one they protect. I think you’ll find the term you’re looking for is Praetorian guard.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.” Genevieve made her voice sweet. “Did I say praetor? I meant pedant.”
