“I love that about you,” he said. “I want that. I want you.”
“You have me,” she told him.
But she was getting self-conscious. He was pulling her closer, peering right into her shook-up soul. The look on his face was making her heart hurt. That raw wonder, like he was looking at something miraculous. It made her nervous.
“Stop,” she murmured. “You’re too close.”
“Can’t,” he said. “Sorry. Get used to it.”
“I meant what I said, Luke.” She hid her face against his chest. “You’re so intense. Cool it already.”
“She burns me alive, then she tells me to cool it. That’s my Dani.”
Their arms tightened around each other for a long hug, so tight and desperate they both shook with the effort. Then he released his grip, rolling away from her.
“We have a pack of cyborg assholes trying to pull our plugs and here I am rolling around in bed,” he said. “This is bullshit. I can’t indulge myself like this. I gotta get back to work.” He gave her a swift, hard kiss, and rolled up into a sitting position.
She rolled up onto her elbow. “For real? Right now?”
He looked around, gazing at her body hungrily. “Yeah, right now. We have a long drive ahead. Plus I need to generate believable ID for you before we go any further.”
“ID? Tonight?”
“Hell yeah. If anything happens to me, you need to be able to drop out of sight. For that you need ID and cash strapped to your body twenty-four seven. Sit up for a second.”
She did so, then squawked in alarm as he lifted a camera then and there. “Hey! What the hell are you doing? I’m naked!”
“I’m just photographing you from the neck up,” he assured her.
“But I look like hell, and I don’t—”
“Nah. You look great.” He took a bunch of quick shots, and came to the bed, leaning over to show the results. “See? I think you look pretty.”
And amazingly, she almost did. She definitely needed some cover-up, but her color was high and her eyes were bright. She looked intensely switched on.
“This will work.” Luke set down the camera and pulled his jeans back on, all business. From red-hot lover boy mode into super-geek robot mode, in the blink of an eye.
Disorienting, but hey, the guy had a plan, and he got shit done. She admired that in a person. It was hot. And a trip and a half to watch in action.
She padded off into the bathroom and peeled off the little red number, which had suffered somewhat from its erotic adventure. A shame, but well worth it.
She washed up and rummaged through the bags again, once again gazing at the kitten pajamas. They looked soft and warm. Just right for cuddling up in front of a fire with a plaid blanket and hot cocoa. Not tonight. She’d rather sleep in jeans and a sweater.
And shoes. Oh how she loved having herself some shoes.
She pulled on jeans, a black velour top. Good enough. Possibly even respectable.
Luke glanced over when she came out. “Why are you dressed? I got sleepwear.”
“I’m not sleepy. And I want to be ready to roll. I’ll nap in my clothes. Can I look at the Manticore files on your laptop?”
“Have at.”
The first few files she saw were pretty much what she expected. Fawning congratulations to the proud new owner of a Manticore operative, one who had just joined an exclusive club of the most discerning elite who were the only ones truly capable and indeed, worthy of pulling the strings that moved the world, blah, blah, blah. A truckload of ass-licking promo bullshit.
Then came the endless disclaimers and a long list of horrible scenarios that Manticore would under no circumstances be held responsible for. Then the anonymous testimonials, designed to showcase the vast range to which the products could be put.
Then a reminder that the product recently purchased was designed for maximum super-connectivity, not combat. It was capable of manipulating enormous quantities of data at high speed. Hacking power grids, satellites, nuclear reactors, financial institutions. Mostly incomprehensible techno-gobbledy-gook, but even she could tell it was a product marketed to the high-tech criminal underworld.
Dani chose a file at random. Modalities Of Use. It covered the physical limitations of the slave soldiers’ human bodies, particularly those of this particular product, destined specifically for tech interface. The buyer was invited to consider a number of caveats, and the recommendations made a cold lump settle in her stomach.
… for extended periods of time, when utilizing full immersion deep cyber-connectivity, certain malfunctions may occur. The operative is unlikely to survive extended continuous use for more than a four to six week time period, even when provided with intravenous nourishment and hydration. If a longer range of use is desired, shorter intervals of active work must be scheduled, including enough recovery time to slow the physical degeneration …
That was so fucking cold. It chilled her to the bone.
Her eyes fell on Luke’s powerful naked back, cross-hatched by scars of every size and shape. Luke knew all about being bought and sold and used, but his heart was still alive. Strong and beautiful. Their cruelty had scarred him, but it hadn’t broken him.
She dragged her gaze away and it fell on a folder entitled “Wetware.” The word made her cringe. It stank of hatefulness.
She clicked it. A sub-file, I89VY262. The one Luke had mentioned.
A jpeg opened on the screen, and the world stopped. So did her breathing.
Luke’s head turned. “What is it?”
She tried to speak, but she still couldn’t inhale.
“Your heart rate just spiked,” Luke said. “What happened?”
“Luke,” she said, her voice tight. “Did you look at the slave solder’s file?”
“Not yet. It’s downloaded, but I haven’t worked it all through the processor. I figured I’d get into that data set on the drive up to Serrati Flats. Why do you ask?”
“Come look,” she said. “She’s…there’s a photo. Look.”
In two swift strides he was there, leaning over her shoulder.
I89VY262 was a little girl, shriveled and thin. Sallow skin, short black hair that looked wet in the photo. Dark brown eyes with luminescent points around the iris and pupil. Ocular enhancement.
That first photo was a head shot. There were other pictures as well. Full body shots that showed her, naked and tiny and pitifully thin, patches of her head shaved to show gleaming metal data ports, various wires and plugs inserted into them.
“She can’t be more than five,” Dani whispered.
“Eight,” Luke said. She could almost hear the data humming in his mind. “Stunted, though. Her birthdate’s in the metadata. She turned eight a couple weeks ago. In a coma, hooked up to tubes and wires. In a coffin in a container ship on the Pacific. Sick motherfuckers. They need to die screaming. By fire.”
“Yes.” She swallowed hard. “Yes. Exactly.”
“Hold on a second. Let me dive,” he muttered. “Maybe there’s more on her somewhere.”
Dani waited for him to dive, barely breathing. She couldn’t look away from the little girl’s image. Those huge brown eyes. The short hair around the shaved patches on her scalp were black and spiky. Her mouth was flattened, colorless. Like she was in pain and trying not to cry.
Well. Of course.
Dani caught the moment that the blank, faraway look on Luke’s face shifted back to its normal laser sharpness.
“What did you find?” she asked.
“Nothing good,” he said. “They’ve had her three years. They bought her. From an agency. She’s one of a set of six. From what I could see in a fast dive, the agency’s job is to comb orphanages all over the world for kids younger than nine who score high on certain cognitive tests. It’s an experimental new program designed to ‘take f
ull advantage of the neuroplasticity of developing young brains.’ That’s how they put it in the literature.”
Dani bit her lip, tightening against a clench of nausea. “Was there a name for her anywhere?”
“No.” Luke’s voice was bleak. “They know better than to use a name.”
“I have to call her something,” Dani said, studying the file.
“So pick one out for her,” Luke said. “Something pretty. It’ll be the nicest thing anybody’s done for the poor kid so far. In her whole goddamn life.”
Dani stared into the computer screen. Something was eluding her. A faint memory, flashing across her mind, prodding her to remember something. Something important.
She stared at the file name, fishing for it. Opening herself to it. I89VY262. Like a prisoner’s number.
It hit her all at once. So hard she was lucky she was already sitting down.
“Oh, my God,” she whispered.
“What?” Luke’s gaze whipped around. “What is it?”
“Another thing Naldo said, on my kitchen floor. He mentioned a girl, remember? I told you. A name I didn’t know. Help Ivy, he said. But I never knew anyone named Ivy, so I put it out of my mind.”
“Yeah? So?” He looked back at the screen.
“Yeah! Look at the file number. I89VY262. I…V…Y. This is Naldo’s Ivy. He broke away from Manticore, and fought the brain stim, and died…for her. For Ivy.”
Luke didn’t answer. He just stood there, a raw look blazing in his eyes.
“Oh, shit,” she whispered, wiping tears angrily away with the back of her hand. “That’s so Naldo. All the way. Even back when we were kids, it always burned his ass when the bullies went after the weak ones or the weird ones or the little ones. He got his ass kicked regularly, jumping in. Trying to save them.”
He reached out, grabbing her hand. “He kept on doing it,” he said. “To the very end.”
She took a moment to mop up her face and straightened up. “We’re helping Ivy,” she told him, a ring of challenge in her voice. “For Naldo’s sake.”
“Fuck yeah,” Luke said. “I’m shutting those fuckers down. I’m going to find everyone who participated in this and I am ripping them apart. Piece by fucking piece.”
“Me too,” she blurted out.
She caught his wary glance and shrugged, slightly defensive. “I don’t know exactly how I’ll help yet, but I’ll think of something. I’m totally on board for the ripping.”
“Uh…thanks, I guess.”
Their hands tightened on each other, to a grip that was almost painful. But the hot, relentless look in his eyes fed her soul. Gave her strength. She needed it. All of it.
Because this evil, horrible shit had to stop. Nothing in the world was more important to her right now.
“The info on her location is in the storage container at Serrati Flats,” Luke said.
Dani was the first one to break the charged silence.
“So?” she said. “Put your goddamn shirt on, Luke. Let’s hit the road.”
Chapter 17
Jada? Jada? Where are you? Jada!
The voices faded in and out. Flashing lights sliced through a fog, disorienting her. Jada, here! Over here! She stumbled toward the voice…and ran head-on into a rock solid barrier—
“…goddamn you! R-48! Wake up! That’s an order! How long has she been like this?” Hale’s voice, blaring in her ear, impossibly loud.
“Only a minute, sir.” It was E-677’s voice, a Level Fifteen from another combat team. “She might have accidentally detached in the deep-dive. I’ll try to drag her back—”
“She cannot fucking detach! She’s my last Level Twenty! Give me that pain wand. Goddamn fucking insubordinate bitch.”
“Sir, the wand isn’t recommended during data-dives. It creates conflict in the—”
Buzzzzzz. A grunting gasp, and E-677 hit the floor, engulfed in a seizure.
Then R-48 felt the prods of the pain wand against her chest.
Agony. It filled her whole self. One long, blinding, endless shriek of it.
It ended, at some point. The pipes on the ceiling came into focus…hanging above something ugly. Hale’s face hung over her. He stuck the wand back into his belt. His lips were purplish, wet with anger spit. Jowls quivering with rage.
“There you are,” he snarled. “Finally. Had a nice nap, bitch? Were you thinking of checking out permanently? Was that the fucking plan all along?”
“No, sir.” The whispered croak of words had no air behind them.
She struggled up into a sitting position. So cold. She hadn’t felt pain like this since the gene therapy flu back at the beginning. She was hot and cold all at once. Her lungs were on fire. Her bowels churned.
Hale ripped the adhesive sensors off and yanked the probes out of her cranial ports. She sat naked and dripping, staring straight ahead. He was too angry to notice.
“You understand how badly you fucked up out there?” he demanded.
“I reviewed the drone recording, yes,” she said. “And the data we downloaded from Metzer’s implant.”
“You did, huh? Up to the point where you drove the drone through Metzer’s head?”
“That was not me,” she said mechanically. “That guy hijacked the drone. Just like he hijacked the van from G-97.”
“Who is also dead. Because of you! All of them are dead because of you!”
There was no point trying to defend herself. He was going to pin this on her and her alone, and there was nothing she could do. She’d be slapped and zapped and reconditioned. Up the ass and back down again.
“Can you do what he did?” Hale demanded.
R-48 blinked the haze out of her eyes, taken aback by the question. “Theoretically yes, but it would take time to develop that kind of technique. He hijacked the van, piloted the drone and sniped us, all simultaneously.”
“We need defense strategies against this new threat,” Hale said. “All operatives must learn to match his speed. Evolve or die. Show me what you found on your dive.”
“Downloading now.”
Hale turned away to watch the video. She took advantage of his distraction to dry off, and looked longingly at her clothes, which hung across the room. Her teeth were starting to chatter.
The video she had retrieved was from security footage of a housewares store in a strip mall, about fifty miles from their location at the High Mesa facility. The rogue operative walked into the camera frame and had a brief conversation with a girl at the counter. There was no audio, but they could read his lips. I need a UV blacklight.
The girl’s back was turned as she responded, but she spun toward the security cam and beckoned him to follow her up the aisle. Having a party? The girl simpered at him hopefully. I got lipstick that glows in blacklight. Can I come?
No party. He didn’t crack a smile, or even look at the girl.
The salesgirl pulled a box from the shelf. The rogue operative studied the specs listed on the box and walked away with it, apparently satisfied.
Asshole, the girl mouthed as she flounced off-screen, pouting.
“He didn’t know about the key before. You handed it right to him, R-48. Have you identified the operative yet?”
Pain flared violently in her head. Her vision blotted out. The girl’s voice. Jada!
A head-rocking slap from Hale jolted her back. “Don’t space out! Answer me.”
She opened her mouth to obey—and heard the sound only in her mind. Crack.
And something broke inside her like an iceberg shattering. A wave of pain and loss flowed into the breach, so intense, she sucked in a loud, shocked gasp.
“Goddamn it, R-48, what the fuck is wrong with you?”
“Ah…sorry, sir. I’m fine.” She tossed her hair back, striking a pose that would draw attention to her ches
t. Arched back. Boobs out. Diversion.
Not easy to look sexy while sodden, shivering and wrenched by stomach cramps, but it worked. Hale’s eyes dropped to her chest and stuck there.
She was seeing faces. A girl with shining dark hair, eyes streaming with tears.
Zoe. The girl’s name was Zoe. And then she saw the guy she fought in LaSalle’s house. The teenaged boy he had been when she saw him last, at…at Midlands.
“Did you get a hit on the rogue operative’s face?” Hale demanded.
She blinked back tears. “No,” she said. Luke. That was his name. The girl was Zoe. And her own name was Jada. She had a fucking name. It electrified her.
Hale reached to his belt and pulled out the punishment wand. “You’re lying.”
“No, sir,” she croaked.
“Just don’t piss yourself, OK? I hate it when you freaks short out and do that.”
Hale pressed the thing against her face. She tried to brace herself.
Pain. The world disappeared into a grinding buzz of pure agony.
When she could see again, she was on the ground. Hale looked down on her, nudging her breast with the punishment wand. “Tell me what you know about the rogue.”
She realized now why she’d resisted. Those faces had been behind her memory block. They belonged to Before, and the block had hidden it from her, but it had also kept it safe and pure, her hidden treasure, locked away and safe. Maybe she didn’t have the key to open it, but it was still hers and hers alone.
Now Hale had broken it open. He wanted to stick his slimy, grunting self into it. To paw around in there, soiling it. Fuck it. No. She’d rather die.
She opened her mouth to answer with the part of her brain still obedient to Hale.
But the part that generated sound just stopped. She was mute.
Hale pointed the wand at her head. “You dumb cunt,” he hissed.
More blinding light…and abruptly, she was out of her body. Somewhere else.
A dream landscape of huge, tumbled rocks. A mass of dark gray storm clouds hung low and swollen, dimming the light. She scrambled and leaped, moving closer to what she soon saw was an unimaginably high cliff.
In My Skin Page 18
