by J Bennett
“That’s, that’s good. Adan just wanted me to be sure,” I say and then glance down at the fancy side table I bumped. Blight! On the table, a crystalline peacock figurine lays on its side. That thing is probs worth more than a real kidney on the open market.
I pick up the figurine and set it back on its feet. A piece of its colorful tail has chipped off. Well, clearly that’s Adan’s fault for foolishly filling his living room with expensive and breakable things. As I pull my hand back, I brush a holo-frame on the table.
It brightens to life and plays a recorded holo-vid. Within the sterling silver frame, two girls run toward me. One is a gawky teen still growing into her long limbs, the other a girl no older than ten with a black waterfall of hair streaming over her shoulders as she runs. A man rushes behind them, grabbing both around the waist with strong arms. He spins them around in a circle, and the girls erupt into squeals and giggles.
The man lets the teen go, but swings the younger girl around and behind him so that she sits on his back. The cam zooms in. I can see the clear resemblance in all three faces. The teen is smiling, and she looks at the man, who must be her older brother, with clear adoration. The man is Adan. In the vid, his hair is longer than it is now, and the star pattern on his jeans was a fad two years ago. He skips out of the frame, his youngest sister on his back. There’s no volume but I’m pretty sure he neighs.
Even after the vid ends, I stare at the darkened holo-frame. Adan has sisters. I try to shrug this new info away. He’s still arrogant as the sun and as ferocious a striver as anyone in this town. A new thought hits me. What if his sisters are worried about him? Maybe he usually talks to them every day and now they don’t know where he is or what’s happened to him. They almost certainly don’t know that he’s Shine. A cape isn’t legally allowed to tell even his closest family members such valuable information.
In the early days of Biggie LC, when the non-disclosure agreements weren’t as tightly written as they are today, several capes and vils lost their shows when conniving siblings or even spouses sold them out for a hefty payday. Stone Crusher, the original leader of the Dark League, went this way after he forgot his three-year anniversary. His wife took that oversight a mite personally.
“Would you like to see Sweetheart?” Martha asks behind me.
“Uh, yeah. Yes,” I mutter and turn away from the side table and all the uncomfortable realizations the holo-frame contains.
Martha beckons me down a short hallway and toward a door at the end. As soon as the door swishes open, a cry rings through the air that is both supremely musical and supremely pissed. I move past the service robo and step into the room.
A huge, ornate cage hangs from the ceiling, taking up a good quarter of the room. The creature inside is absolutely stunning and clearly knows it. Rich shades of indigo paint her wing feathers. Silver feathers pattern her chest and rise proudly from her thick crown. The symmetry of her coloring is a clear sign of genetic breeding.
The cockatoo must be worth a fortune.
Right now, that fortune hops angrily around a scattering of fake branches in her cage. She stretches her wings and jumps to the front of her cage, wrapping curved talons around the bars. I almost step back.
“Sweetheart has not been happy,” Martha says behind me. “She’s missed Adan’s attention. They play many games together each day. Perhaps you would play a game with her?”
“Today!” Sweetheart cries in a fluty voice. “Love You. Love You.” Her voice is glorious, something that must have taken generations to genetically perfect.
“I’m not here to play games,” I tell Martha. “Have you been feeding her properly and changing her water?”
“Yes, of course,” Martha says. I have no doubt about it. A service robo doesn’t forget her programmed commands. Adan just wanted me to ask. “How are the food supplies?”
“We have enough for exactly six more days, but the apples have all gone bad. Adan gives apple pieces to Sweetheart when she sings.”
This additional evidence that Adan may secretly be a decent person only increases my discomfort. “You have permission to order additional food,” I tell the robo, “as well as any toys she needs and an ongoing supply of fresh apples. Password African Gray.” Adan’s Band vibrates in my hand.
“Command acknowledged,” Martha responds. “I will duplicate the previous order for food and toys.”
“You have permission to continue this order each time the food runs low until Adan returns,” I tell her.
“Command acknowledged.”
I idly wonder what else I can command Martha to do. Probably not much. If Adan was smart, he would have locked me out of all non-bird related commands. I turn back to the cage. The special absorbent paper at the bottom of it looks at capacity. A shame that Martha can’t clean the cage. Technically she can, of course, but apparently Adan doesn’t trust his service robo to interact directly with Sweetheart.
Today’s top-of-the-line service robos, like Martha, have gotten incredibly good at modulating the pressure they use when handling different objects, but there are always stories of lesser models accidentally strangling dogs on walks or painfully twisting their master’s limbs during “extracurricular activities.” It’s been a fad for some time for rich people to insist on handling their young children and pets on their own. Some of the Captains of Industry have even been known to hire human workers to care for their kids, just like in the old days.
Sweetheart lets out another beautiful and angry call. I glance at Adan’s Band again. Has Beacon traced its GPS signal? Is she already on her way? I unlatch the cage and swing open the big door. Sweetheart launches out, and I watch in awe as she glides down to a nearby decorative tree in the corner of the room. She’s practically got the wingspan of a personal flier.
“Seize the day,” she says. “Seize the day. Ta.”
I grab up the soggy paper in the cage and nearly gag at the smell. I guess there are some things the geneticists haven’t perfected yet.
“Here, throw this away,” I tell Martha, shoving the damp papers into her arms. “And you know what? Go ahead and make me that cookies n’ cream protein shake.” Might as well reward myself for this lobotomy risk I’m taking.
I find the closet Adan described in the back of the room. Of course, it’s a cave-like wonder, roughly the size of my bedroom. Inside, the shelves are stacked with bird supplies.
“Damn, Sweetheart, you’re as spoiled as a child actor,” I mutter. I can’t even remember the last time I’ve eaten a real apple. Just as I lean over to grab new absorbent floor pads for the cage, I feel a soft puff of air overhead followed by the feeling of very non-soft talons landing on my head.
“Really?” I grumble. The bird shifts to settle her weight. “I thought you were supposed to seize the day, not my head.” Sweetheart responds by twisting around, pulling my hair and pricking my scalp. She sings a soft song, the trilling notes haunting and beautiful.
“Yeah, yeah, nice genetic upgrade,” I mutter. “Stop showing off.” It doesn’t take long to lay down the fresh papers but I feel every second ticking away. The bird isn’t dim. As soon as I’m smoothing the clean papers at the bottom of her cage, she scrambles off my hair and flaps up to a bar jutting from a wall near the ceiling.
“I understand,” I tell her. “I wouldn’t want to go back in this thing either.” To his credit, Adan has turned the cage into a bird paradise filled with fake branches, rope swings, colorful toys, puzzles, and some weird mechanical thing that probably gives her bird massages.
But, at the end of the day, it’s still a cage.
Kind of like Biggie LC, I think morosely. Sure, I could leave town, but with no Loons to my name, where could I go except back to the desolate stretch of parched land where my mom and brother live?
The weight of Adan’s Band brings me back to the present. Beacon must be on her way already. How much longer do I have? Ten mins? Five? Is she striding across the porch right now? I push down my panic and hustle
to the closet. As Adan carefully instructed, I find the red bag filled with square treats. They look like blocks of various seeds glued together by honey. I put one treat on a branch in the cage.
I hope against hope that the bird goes straight in for the treat. Instead, Sweetheart stares daggers at me from her perch.
She won’t go into the cage without the song, Adan told me.
Buddha’s nose hairs!
“Sweetheart, Sweetheart,” I sing,
Voice so pure and feathers so bright
I must leave you now to continue the fight.
But don't sing a sad song, pretty girl
I'll be home soon, my darling pearl
Like magic or just professional training, the bird opens her wings and floats down, landing on my outstretched arm. Then she sings back the melody of the song with an incredible range of notes. The sound is truly enchanting. Too bad Sweetheart ends the song with an angry caw when I move her into the cage. I wiggle my arm, probably harder than Adan would like to get her to jump off. Then I slam the cage door just in case she tries to bolt.
“Here you go, dear,” Martha says behind me, holding out a cup filled with a black-and-white speckled drink. The cup is real glass, not the cheap, over-recycled plastic I usually print.
“Thank you!” I take the drink from her. “Now, delete all memory files from the past half hour including all audio and visual files, but maintain accepted commands. Afterward, shut down for one hour and then reboot. Password African Gray.” I hold my breath. Here is yet another trap Adan could have laid for me. If Martha doesn’t accept this command, Beacon will be able to extract all her memory files. It would be as easy as getting dirty in a dust storm to run a facial match protocol, which will lead her right to my personal Stream. From there, a hop over to the city’s database will give her my address in less than a nanosecond.
“Command accepted,” Martha says. “Erasing files. Shutting down.” She tilts forward as her face goes slack.
“Good girl and thanks for the drink,” I say, giving her a friendly pat as I power walk into the living room. Time to tail it, except… a tantalizing thought stops me. I bet Adan has his extra suits hidden somewhere in this house. That’s precious tech. He’s got the best gear in town: lightweight, strong, flexible, and full of smart upgrades like impact cushioning mini-thrusters in his boots, limb accelerators, and gloves coated in a special polymer that let him climb the sides of buildings.
If I could find his costumes, maybe even some extra weaps, it would be a game-changer. I take one step back toward the hallway and then stop myself. He’s probably hidden his things somewhere that would take me hours to find. If he was smart, he’d also put them in a safe with biometric locks.
No, I can’t take the risk and let Beacon find me here.
I drag my eyes off the closed doors in the hallway and jog through the living room. I glance at the holo-frame, now empty and quiet on the end table. Then it comes to me. I know why this room, this entire house feels so wrong.
It doesn’t have a personality. It’s like Adan pulled this decor right out of some interior designer’s Stream collage. Everything feels for show. There’s nothing real about him at all in this place except for the back room where Sweetheart sits in her cage.
I don’t have time to dwell on this. Grabbing a sip from the glass, mmmm, cookies n’ cream, I dash out of the house. The back door slides shut and locks. I fumble to power off Adan’s Band. As soon as the glow fades from the visual interface, I shove it into my bag while relief loosens the knots in my stomach. I scramble back over the fence, setting off the neighbor’s stupid dog again.
Back on the side street, I force myself not to run.
Look normal. Just a girl walking down the street. Maybe I’ll seem like another striver, hoping to get robbed by a stickup guy so a cape will valiantly rescue me. Just as I reach the corner of the street, I hear the soft whine of an electric motorcycle. And then, whoosh, it flies by, glittering gold. A slim figure bends over the handlebars. I recognize that golden helmet, the scarlet chest plate stamped with the iconic lighthouse pattern, all that blonde hair streaming in the wind from beneath the helmet. Three cam drones follow in tight formation around the rider.
It’s her.
Beacon.
I stop on the sidewalk and stare after her in utter awe. In the three years I’ve lived in Biggie LC, this is the first time I’ve ever set eyes on her. I’m not even breathing, though she’s gone, racing toward Adan’s home where she won’t find anything except a powered down service robo and a loud, pissed cockatoo.
I take another appreciative sip of my cookies n’ cream protein shake and continue my stroll back to The Professor’s lair.
Chapter 8
The semi-reality life is a rollercoaster. If it isn't, something's wrong and you're probs about to get swiped. ~ Tickles the Elf, The Henchman’s Survival Guide
~
Mermaid is so damn fast. I duck one swing and suddenly my legs are flying out from under me. I hit the mat, roll away from a nasty foot stomp, but then feel the pressure of her bo staff grind into the vertebrae at the top of my neck.
“You’re thinking too much,” she says. “You’ve got to feel the moves. Let your body react.”
I’m pretty sure she came out of the womb with a triple black belt. I gingerly turn as she lifts the staff. My shoulder throbs, but it seems to be working fine. Across the main room of the lair, Sequoia gives me a sympathetic look. He’s taken more than a few turns against Mermaid during these nightly training sessions but I don’t see his ass on the mat nearly so much.
“Well done, Arsenic,” Kitty says. The newest member of our gang wears a pink, buttoned-up lab coat and pink science goggles dotted with rhinestones. A broom leans against her ample bosom.
“You too, Iron,” Kitty says to me.
“Yeah, it took her a full eight secs to beat me this time,” I groan as I sit up on the mat.
“Well, it’s truly the effort that counts,” Kitty responds and giggles flirtatiously. Oh, right, I almost forgot she’s a sexbot.
“You are improving,” Mermaid says.
“I just need to improve faster,” I grumble.
Mermaid nods and offers her hand. She wears a white tank top with teasing wedges cut out. One wedge along her side reveals the shimmering blue scale tattoos that inspired my secret nickname for her. The truth is, I’m not sure what to think of my fellow henchman. She’s intimidating as hell–equal parts gorg and lethal. Her long legs stretch for kilometers, but they’re lean and muscular enough to crush the air out of a grown man. Her tank top shows off a slim waist and generous boobs. I can’t see her eyes beneath her tinted goggles, but at our henchmen tryouts she wore masks with eye-hole cutouts. I know her eyes are green as emeralds and fringed with long lashes. She’s got a face that practically begs to be splashed across holo-ads for toothpaste or acne cream or vacations to New Hawaii.
She also possesses the skill set of a trained assassin. If the rumors are true, she’s put them to good use on several other semi-reality shows. I take her hand and she pulls me to my feet. It’s a nice gesture, but I can’t make the mistake of considering her a friend.
She’s too cunning. Too crafty.
“Thanks,” I mutter.
“Your ep comes out tonight, right?” She knows it does.
“Yep.”
“You ready for it? You’ll get new fans, but a lot of people won’t heart the woman who brought down Shine.”
“I’ll deal.” Truth is, I haven’t thought much about the ep today. I don’t plan on watching how Leo cut and edited my betrayal of Adan’s friendship. Plus, all the Stream followers in the world won’t matter if our show goes belly up. Nothing I can do about that right now, so I focus on what I can control.
I scrounge around for my bo staff and find it near the edge of the mat.
“I want to go again,” I say.
I may not trust Mermaid as far as I can throw her but she’s a damn good training partn
er. She doesn’t hold back, and she doesn’t show a drop of mercy. Over the last two weeks, my combat skills have markedly improved under her unrelenting tutelage.
“You sure?” She raises an eyebrow.
In response, I pull my staff in close to my body and shift my weight to the balls of my feet.
“I can spar with you, Iron,” Sequoia calls. He’s in the laboratory part of the main room where he’s been scratching notes on the ancient chalkboard for the past hour, working on some component for The Professor’s secret singularity pod. Even Sequoia won’t tell me how it’s supposed to work. All I know is that when it’s ready, our “special guest” is going to get the first ride.
“Keep doing what you’re doing,” I say quickly to Sequoia. “It’s important.”
My friend gives me a searching look and then quickly turns his gaze back to the board. Buddha’s back hair. I should have been more diplomatic, but the truth is Sequoia’s no good at sparring with me. He holds back and lets me get in too many hits.
I think it has something to do with the lingering guilt he feels for knocking a few of my circuits loose when Leo matched us against each other during the henchmen tryouts. I’ve forgiven him for that brutal match about a thousand and one times, but I’m not sure he’s forgiven himself. That’s all well and good–Sequoia’s one of the most decent human beings I know–but that doesn’t help me one whit to get better.
“I’ll spar with you, cowboy,” Kitty says to Sequoia. She makes a very suggestive gesture with her broomstick.
“Any chance you can turn off her sex drive?” I ask my friend.
I watch the back of his freckled neck turn an amusing shade of red. “Um, no, it’s part of her… um, core personality profile. Well, I mean, we could, but then we’d have to wipe out her entire programming and upload a new personality, and Leo said we didn’t have the budget, so…”
“I get it,” I say, waving away the rambling explanation. “Kitty, keep the sexy going, I guess.”
