by Kieran Shea
“We’re leaving?”
“Damn right, we’re leaving. There’s this airspace restriction, but Sébastien got that lifted, and it looks like we should be out of here in seventy-two hours, tops. Anyway, Sébastien and Dr. Corella, I don’t trust them. Those two might have a whole bead on our situation by now, I mean—who knows how the Custom Pleasure Bureau might’ve reacted to us stealing a sub? They might’ve contacted the CPB already and could be setting us up, but I think Sébastien knows better than to mess with me now.”
“I think you’re overreacting.”
Koko leaps up and looks at him. “Overreacting?”
“Yeah.”
“No, I definitely am not. At first I almost bought into the idea that this was some tribalistic, drop-out shtick financed by the megalomaniacal crackpot, but something else is off here. I swear, I can feel it.”
“Financed?”
“Sébastien, yeah!”
“Gee, I think he mentioned that he used to be a scientist, but he didn’t say anything about being loaded.”
“Oh, he’s a regular brainy Midas all right. Or was. Slimeball used to work for a huge pharmaceutical outfit and made a killing. Allegedly he blew his wad setting this place up. I mean, who in their right mind puts together a settlement in the prohibs?”
“Well, the well-heeled do have a tendency to be eccentric.”
“What? Are you still stoned?”
“Maybe a little.”
“Oh, terrific. No wonder you’re talking all weird. Did either of those two mention the dead girl?”
“What dead girl?”
“God—you don’t remember that either? They brought a dead girl back with us from the wreck site. She’d all this climbing gear on her and fell from the cliffs right when we hit the rocks. I bet she was trying to get away from this place. I mean, you’ve haven’t seen the rest of it, but I sure as hell wouldn’t blame her if she was. Yeah, Sébastien and the doc might have been nice to you, but I’m not buying it. Damn, Flynn, they locked me up and sedated me.”
“Well, knowing your temper you probably did something.”
“Huh?”
“Look, all I’m saying is maybe you’re blowing things out of proportion.”
“I’m not exaggerating, Flynn. Really, I’m not.”
“Fine. Okay, you know I trust you.”
“Well, gee, thanks for that.”
Flynn then looks off vaguely. “But ever since we first met I’ve never really had a choice but to trust you, Koko. You say there’s something wrong here, that Sébastien and Dr. Corella aren’t on the level, or that we might be in a bad spot, all right. I’ll take that at face value. But I can’t help but think that maybe you’re all tweaked because you’re not the one who’s calling the shots. Maybe you should just chill out.”
“Oh, now I know you’re totally fucking high.”
Flynn rolls his eyes. “Oh, c’mon… just look at the facts. First, no one really knows we’re here, right? Yeah, you just said the GPS transponder got reactivated, but if the Custom Pleasure Bureau actually got wind of that or if Dr. Corella and Sébastien contacted them they’d be all over us by now, wouldn’t they?”
“But we’re in the Nor’Am prohibs.”
“Uh-huh, so?”
“So they don’t even have any weapons here.”
“Oh, and do people always need to have weapons to be content?”
Koko’s mouth opens in a perfect O of disbelief. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean? Cripes, Flynn, there’s a frickin’ group of de-civs in the woods outside the walls right now. There’s no way we’re staying here, not with disease-ridden de-civs on our fucking doorstep.”
Flynn looks down and then picks at his leg bandage. “Well, can I at least get well first before you start barking orders at me?”
Going rigid, Koko pushes Flynn over on the bed with a harsh thrust. Flynn attempts to raise himself, but she then leans over him and presses a finger into his sternum.
“How dare you.”
“What?”
“I said, how dare you. I saved your life, you gloomy jerk. God, what the hell is the matter with you? You know what? I don’t even know why I bother. After all this time I should know better. You going all namby-pamby on me like this and making excuses, honestly sometimes I swear I should’ve just—”
Flynn bats her finger away. “Just what? Left me to bleed to death back on The Sixty? Drown in the sub? Or maybe you’re now wishing you left me up on Alaungpaya and allowed me to off myself in the first place.”
Koko pulls back.
“Yeah, I’ve been mulling that over some,” Flynn continues. “Your first instinct was to shoot me in my quarters, remember? Maybe that would’ve been for the best for you. More convenient—at least that’s what you said anyway.”
“I never said it would be more convenient.”
“Oh, you did, but you just don’t remember.”
“Even if I did, that’s not what I’m thinking now at all. What is all this? Where’s this coming from?”
Flynn taps the space above his heart. “From here. This place. Where do you think?”
Koko’s whole body trembles and she runs a hand through her hair.
“Look, I don’t care what Dr. Corella or his people here say, you’re definitely not yourself. No way. You’ve been shot and you nearly died, so I’m just going to put all this on your injury, whatever they’ve juiced you up with, because right now you’re not thinking straight. Hell, this is probably just post-traumatic stress.”
“I don’t have post-traumatic stress.”
“How would you even know? You’ve never been shot before. Are you even listening to yourself right now? You’re not right in the head.”
“See? That’s exactly what I’m talking about.”
“What?”
“You say I ought to listen to myself, but do you have any idea how self-absorbed you sound?”
“Me?”
“Yeah, you. All twisted up in yourself, always biting people in the neck and never giving anything or anyone even half a chance. Everything’s great? Oh, no, not for Koko Martstellar. Koko Martstellar knows how things work. Things start going great, and everything and everybody becomes suspect. The real tragedy is you’re the last one to admit it.”
“Oh, and you being all post-suicidal, you’re one to talk.”
“Nice, real nice. Thanks for illustrating my point.”
Koko looks at the ceiling and takes a long series of breaths. Temper past flared, her arguing with Flynn is definitely not helping.
“All right,” Koko says tightly. “I’m sorry for bringing up all your sloughy Depressus horseshit, okay? Hell, maybe we should both stop talking right now before one of us says something we’re really going to regret.”
“Man, I really hate being micromanaged by you,” Flynn grumbles.
Koko stares at him. Her mouth clicks open incredulously to respond, but what she’s about to say, all her ire and frustration with Flynn, gets strangled in her throat like a damp rag. When she closes her lips, Flynn suddenly sits up and hops away on the bed.
“Someone’s coming,” he says.
Koko looks up just as the curtains around them are pulled back. It’s Dr. Corella in his green smock, all smiles.
“And how’s our favorite patient doing this evening?”
Flynn shifts his eyes sideways to Koko. In a flash, she leaps over the bed and pushes Dr. Corella across the hall.
“You bone-bagging hack! You leave him alone, hear me? Touch Flynn again and I swear I will lay you out flat!”
Shambling, Flynn circles the bed. “Koko!”
“WHAT?”
“Calm down!”
Koko spins. She grabs a chair nearby and hurls it. Running for cover, several medical assistants, including Ganga, screech and cover their ears when the chair hits the wall and breaks apart. Looking left, Koko then notices Bonn and Eirik approaching from down the hall.
“Oh, goody… here comes the c
avalry. You two meatheads want to tango with me? Excellent, I’m up for a little asshole tearing.”
Flynn eases closer. “Koko, please. Just stop it.”
Dr. Corella steadies himself and stretches out a hand. “Bonn, Eirik—do not move. Leave Koko be.”
The twins freeze as commanded, and Koko then shoves past them. Crossing to a nearby cabinet, she cracks out a leg and sidekicks the lock repeatedly until it splits. Keeping a flinty, distrustful eye on the twins and simmering like a brimstone-toothed demon, she tears open the doors and rummages through the contents. Koko tosses all manner of medical packages, vials, and containers over her shoulder; when she finds what she’s looking for she turns and glares at everyone. The assistants, the twins and Dr. Corella, everyone in the infirmary including Flynn watch helplessly.
“Goddamn, bloodsucking piss-artists,” Koko hisses. “Seeing that I’m fenced in for at least another seventy-two hours, listen up, buttercups. I’m making a withdrawal. Don’t like it? Boo-hoo, you can bill me.”
Flynn implores, “Koko…”
“Can it, Flynn,” Koko says. “Do me a righteous favor and get your head out of your six and screw it on straight or I promise you—these prohib-living freaks won’t be the only behinds I’ll be kicking around here, comprendo?”
Giving them all a final poisonous look, Koko shoves the drugs into her pant pockets and then tramps off down the hall.
SPLASHDOWN
Wire drags a fluorescent orange rescue raft by its lifelines out of the breakwater and up the flotsam-strewn shoreline. Letting go, she totters backward in a complete drunken circle before she falls over.
Fried.
Kaput.
Smoked.
In other words, Wire’s entire essence defines the X in exhausted.
With Geiger-counter intensity, her teeth clack nonstop beneath her purplish lips. Trying to get up again, she immediately collapses back down in a revolting pile of uselessness. As she hits the ground, a jagged rock tears the macerated flesh of her hands, but she’s past the point of caring—so soaked, dazed, and cold.
Turns out, Wire’s misgivings about the Surabayan black marketers cannibalizing the safety features on the Goliath were unfounded. Once she ejected, ancillary charges from the back of her seat deployed—PU-CHA-BOOM! PU-CHA-BOOM!—and the violent jerks of two parachutes were a portentous relief. As her plummet slowed, Wire was so pleased she nearly did a fist pump. However, her euphoria didn’t last. Battered by strong winds, the parachutes insufficiently filled, seconds later the collision with the ocean’s surface tension knocked her silly.
Seeing stars was nothing new to a woman in her elegant trade, but seeing stars as she rapidly sank underwater undeniably was another story. Fortunately, Wire had the presence of mind to control her panic, but then one meter became eight and she felt sure she was going to drown.
As she fumbled with her seat harness, her death’s imminent reprieve came in the form of a muted belch beneath her legs and a flurry of rushing bubbles. Sensors in her seat registered her depth penetration, and releasing super-compressed air into inflatable bunting, the floatation measures shot her to the surface. Wire hit the air just in time to see the Goliath soundlessly slice into the ocean several hundred meters off. No fiery soufflé or thundering shockwave from exploding debris, just a single momentary pssshhh, and like a long-extinct leviathan the Goliath was gone.
Not knowing how long the inflated bunting would keep her seat afloat, Wire quickly unclipped her harness and kicked free. The bunting kept everything buoyant for about ten additional seconds before it too slowly vanished, dragging the parachutes down like a giant, matronly brassiere.
Looking around, Wire spotted a circular rescue raft fifty meters off to her left that had also deployed when she jettisoned. Equipped with a battery-enabled signal light lashed to a cleat, the raft was drifting away from her at a frightening rate. Wire clawed after it, and five aching minutes and half a gallon of swallowed seawater later, she swung herself inside.
After falling from that height she was fortunate she didn’t have a full-on concussion. She quickly unfolded a collapsible paddle secured to the raft’s ribbed air chambers and took her bearings. She couldn’t afford to lose sight of the coastline in the dark, and having her ocular’s night vision engaged she locked onto it.
People misjudge distances at sea. What appeared to be a reasonably attainable paddling span to the shore stretched into a nauseating three-and-half-hour ordeal. Huge foaming swells, heavy winds, and spinning currents on top of a counterproductive tidal retreat whittled away her gains. Blindsided by a rogue wave, she capsized, and it took her nearly twenty minutes to right the raft, locate the floating paddle, and stroke on.
Now Wire is finally on marginally dry land. Physically drained, however, she knows the worst danger is still close: stage-two hypothermia. If she reaches stage three, her core temperature could drop below sustainable level, and if that happens she’ll only have hallucinations to keep her company on a very quick slide into cardiac arrest.
You’re okay, she tells herself. You’ve been in worse situations.
Suck it up and remember your training.
Keep first things first.
Without warning Wire’s whole body spasms uncontrollably, and she upchucks a hot wash of vomit and seawater. As she cups some of her splattered purge to her face to feel some of her own fading heat, she fears she may already be seeing things. The vomit dripping from her fingers looks like tiny yellow flower petals.
Wire slaps at her tactical suit and finds the temperature controls on her left side. A depressed button and soon warming and wicking measures start to dry-cure her flesh.
She flops over onto her back and stares up. Not a single star in the sky.
After a few more minutes of rest, Wire wills herself to get up again. She lugs the raft farther up the shoreline and sets it over a trio of boulders: an impromptu shelter. After a brief pick through the trashy flotsam, she finds some flammable plastics and wet scattered wood. She uses a laser flare from one of her vacuum-packed worst-case-scenario kits to build a small fire. The laser flare is capable of indefinite burn time, so she stuffs it in at the fire’s base for maximum effect.
Wire squats down beneath the raft and draws off her wet boots and socks. She shivers in the smoldering red glow.
F-f-f-first things f-ffffirst…
Get warm, get dry. But then what?
Get moving. Locate Martstellar’s sub.
She taps the side of her skull and pulls up the coordinates of the last transmission downloaded to her ocular. Given her bail out and the lengthy paddle to shore, she’s actually amazed: Martstellar’s submarine is barely ten klicks south of her position.
Wire draws out her Sig Sauer sub-compact from one of the vacuum packs along with her other supplies. She inventories everything to keep her mind occupied, fieldstrips the Sig, and then waits for her socks and boots to dry.
DR. SIMPATICO
“I must say, she certainly is a handful,” Dr. Corella says.
Post-Koko freak-out, Sébastien came down to the infirmary with a parcel of Commonage clothes for Flynn. After a brief and stern discussion out of Flynn’s earshot, Sébastien suggested that the doctor help Flynn dress, and now Flynn and Corella have moved to a conference table in one of the infirmary’s auxiliary rooms for privacy. The two men sit across from each other and sip water from plastic cups. Still visibly shaken from Koko’s looting outburst, Dr. Corella continues.
“Tell me, has Koko always been this way?”
Flynn takes a sip of water from his cup and sets it down. “I’ve only known her for a few months, but let’s just say she can be a little unpredictable.”
Dr. Corella drums his fingers on the table. “Well, it seemed best to let her do as she wanted.”
“This whole experience has been very troubling for her. Can you tell me what she took? I’m sure I can get it back for you.”
“Let’s see… she took a bunch of opioid gel capsul
es and an aerosol tube of synthesized Xaniaphic-17, I believe.”
Flynn whistles and shakes his head. “Man…”
“Is there something I missed?” Dr. Corella asks.
“Missed? With Koko?”
“Yes. Is she in some sort of pain?”
Flynn shrugs. “In a manner of speaking, yeah. But then again I suspect we’re all in some sort of pain in our own ways.”
“Ah. You’re a philosopher.”
“Hardly. It’s just the way things are.”
“Well, I suppose we’re all born into a losing struggle. But still—back to Koko—does she really know what she’s doing with those things? Medicines like that, they can be quite dangerous if not handled correctly.”
“Oh, she’ll be fine.”
“But she isn’t—what I mean to say is, I realize you’ve had your issues because of the traces in your blood samples, your Depressus and the Second Free Zone and all that, but she’s not—”
“Looking to eighty-six herself? No, trust me. Suicide is about the last thing on her mind.”
“I see. But I imagine she has other issues.”
“Whatever she took it’s recreational. Purely recreational.”
Dr. Corella nods and turns his cup between his hands thoughtfully. “Soldiers… all that death and destruction, the constant exposure to violence. I know her kind are ameliorated from birth to handle the burdens of such employments, but substance abuse isn’t exactly uncommon.”
“She’s not a junkie, if that’s what you’re implying. Or even depressed. Besides, she’s not even a soldier anymore. She hasn’t been one for quite some time.” Flynn takes another sip of water. “If the Commonage had a bar I’m sure Koko would have left your supplies intact and found herself a private cubby to drink herself into a funk. To be perfectly candid, I know she has a penchant to smoke a little crinkle flake now and then, but no, she’ll be all right. She’s just blowing off steam. Again, I apologize for her behavior. It’s my fault. I pushed some buttons I probably shouldn’t have.”
