by K. Gorman
She’d gotten off light. A blast-wound to her shoulder, blunted by the protection of the combat suit they’d given her. Once they’d guided her through the danger of shock, all she’d needed had been a little reconstructive surgery on the muscle and a good dose of Nanos. After a week, she’d be able to use her arm again. Nova Kolkata’s base medical facilities specialized in trauma.
Which was a good thing, because the bolt that had hit Soo-jin had destroyed part of her rib cage, singed a hole in her right lung, and, had it angled any more downward, would have blown the top off her diaphragm and entered her abdominal cavity.
She was lucky it had stopped where it had. And, just like with her other wound, lucky it had not been a metal bullet.
Thank the ten hells mankind prefers cheaper ammunition.
Soo-jin wasn’t out of the woods yet, but the prognosis was optimistic. They’d also gotten her into a regen tank. While the facility kept her in as close to stasis as they could, considering the damage, Nanos were working around the clock to heal the burns and rebuild what she’d lost. She’d been in it for close to six hours now, and the machines monitoring her hadn’t made so much as a peep.
Karin knew. She’d been standing there for much of it. A fact that had begun to wear on her after the twenty-minute mark and had not improved since. She couldn’t really feel her legs anymore, except for the occasional twinge of a nerve. Once an hour, she got a feeling like prickles in varying parts of her body, or a hard rain beating on her skin, but they always faded. Hot and cold patches flushed through her skin. Doctors had, on multiple times, approached her to coax her into one of the rest beds. She couldn’t remember what she’d said to them, but they always left, and she remained. The lip of the viewing window pressed into the front of her knuckles. She’d been leaning on it long enough to leave a mark.
From here, she couldn’t see Soo-jin, locked away in the metal-sided pod. But she could see the pod and the monitors. That was enough.
She shifted to her other foot. The strap of the sling keeping her shoulder immobile also shifted. As it began to reform the imprint it had made on her neck, the sensation of it faded, along with the twinge of otherness that came from her shoulder. She stared through the window, eyes half focused, feeling the buzz of the world move on around her.
After a while, a familiar set of footsteps walked through the static. The reflection in the window’s plastic-glass half reflected Marc’s tall form as he took the place beside her. Air stirred across her face and neck, bringing with it the smell of cleaning products, sweat, and a kind of dampness she couldn’t immediately identify. When she glanced to the side, she saw that his shirt was wet with rain.
“No change?” he asked.
“No.” Her throat was dry and sticky. It took her a few seconds to get the word out—which had probably been his intention—and she turned her face back to the window. It was clear by the room that Soo-jin’s condition hadn’t changed. Right now, the only one in risk of deteriorating was Karin, since she refused to move.
“I did her laundry for her,” he continued after a moment. “Thought she’d appreciate clean clothes when she gets out.”
“She’ll make a joke of you poking through her underwear.”
“I think you just saved her the trouble.” A pause, then a twitch in the reflection. She felt his eyes on her, watching carefully. “I wouldn’t do that. You know that.”
Her jaw ground shut. Emotion tapped at her throat, making it close up like a sea anemone. It took her another few seconds to speak again, and when she did, the words were so raw, they barely rasped through. “Yeah. I know.”
Another pause. He continued to watch her, and she continued to watch his reflection in the window, finding it somehow safer than looking at him directly.
“You should sleep,” he said.
“I know.”
“You gonna?”
“Not sure.” She cleared her throat again, then lifted her hand to her lips, fingertips bumping over the bandages that covered half her face. They’d treated the burns created by the blaster that had splashed back from the door, but it’d take another day before the skin healed enough to expose. It felt hot and moist on the inside, and a chemical smell rose to her nose when her fingers drew close. Local anesthetics left most of it numb to the pressure.
She suspected that contributed, at least in part, to the heavy, deadweight feel that plagued the front of her brain.
But then, lack of sleep could also cause that. And she’d reached a point where parts of the world seemed to bend and sway around her, as if she were on an immense water vessel. Or an airplane. Or a spaceship with a wonky grav generator.
“It’s not your fault,” he said. “In case you were thinking that it was.”
“No, it’s Sasha’s fault,” she said. “She shot her.”
That earned her a raised eyebrow. “Huh. And here I thought I had to come talk you down from self-blame.”
“What do you think I’ve been doing for the past—” She checked the time on a monitor in the room. “—five hours and forty-seven minutes?” Pain twinged in her shoulder as she turned to him. “I mean, yes, I blamed myself. Still do, a little bit.”
How could she not? Even ignoring the obvious stretch of the ‘if she hadn’t come on the mission, then Soo-jin would still be safe’ arguments that had run through her mind for the better part of her wait, she had been holding Soo-jin when she’d been shot. She’d gone down with her and tried to close her bloodied wounds. And that moment of pure terror—that instant they’d both realized they’d so royally fucked up in which way they were jumping—had played through her head in such detail that she could practically count each of Soo-jin’s eyelashes.
“But the fact is that it was a pure fucking accident on my part—a preventable accident, yes. She could have had armor. We could have not jumped out into the open like that. We could have gone back behind the door. We could have coordinated better—but the only person to blame is the one who pulled the fucking trigger.”
She took a heavy breath, winced at the weird twinge of feeling in her shoulder, and swore. “I don’t know. Maybe that makes me a bad person. I’m supposed to be blaming myself, right? But I just can’t do it anymore. I’ve read too many fucking psychology books on the subject, and my brain just can’t do it. Not anymore.”
In the glass, Marc’s expression didn’t change. A long pause filled the space between them. In the quiet, the other sounds of the medical facility came to her. Voices, the crackle of an intercom, a beep and slide of unlocking doors. At the end of the hall, three people walked past with a fourth on a levi-stretcher, the wheels of a crash kit rolling behind them.
“Psychology books?” he asked.
A smile tugged at the side of her mouth. When she turned to him, she attempted to meet his continuous raised eyebrow with one of her own, but only succeeded in a deadpan stare due to the anesthetics. “How do you think I got over my fucked up childhood?”
Actually, she hadn’t gotten over it. Not completely. The nightmares had still been there, as well as the paranoia, but seven years on this side of the gate had taken the venom out of their fangs.
He regarded her for a few more moments, then a smile twitched his lips. “I think your sister underestimated you.”
“She send you?”
“Sort of. I would have come anyway.”
She nodded. From what she remembered, he’d gone back to the lab site after she’d woken up, offering the Nemina’s med bay for the soldiers they were still pulling out of the pocket dimension—Karin’s healing faculties had prioritized the med staff over pilots, so they had more boats and medics than they could fly, and the Nemina’s facilities, though old, were better than nothing. In the brief time they’d had before he’d gone off, he’d made some joke about how he’d try not to crash the ship without her.
Nomiki had stayed behind to lead the Fallon rescue teams back through the maze to pick up the survivors.
They should be all rig
ht. Unless some had died to the injuries Nomiki had inflicted. Time didn’t run that much more slowly in that place, did it?
Her stomach hardened as she remembered the sight of the door and the slowness in which it had closed. She swallowed. “Did they get everyone out of that place?”
“Everyone they know,” Marc said. “They’re still scouting out the rest of it. Got some mapping drones.” He paused. “They also recovered both Ares and your clone. Last I heard, they were working on the tanks inside. They’re not the same as the stasis tanks we normally use here.”
Of course. It’d be too simple if they were. “I suppose it’s too early for any word on who those people are?”
“Cookie’s helping run a few of the feed pictures through missing persons, but it’ll take a couple of days for the furthest servers to get back to him. Especially with Alliance blocking us.”
“And Sasha?” she asked. “Any word on her?”
She suspected not. Even with the weight of the Fallon military behind them, Sasha had gotten away—again. Too focused on Soo-jin to give a damn about the rest of the fight, she hadn’t even noticed when Sasha’s ship had taken off and vanished into thin air. When someone had told her, she hadn’t believed it until they’d produced the footage from the Arjuna Viper they’d sent to keep her down.
One minute, the ship was there, engines roaring, front tilted into take-off. The next? Gone.
Closer inspection revealed a large distortion around its edges, similar to what she’d seen when Sasha had been deflecting blaster shots. Which led her to believe that the good doctor had slid herself into a different dimension for her getaway.
“No,” Marc said, confirming her suspicions. “No word.”
She closed her eyes. Had her bandages allowed it, she would have leaned her head back. “Fantastic.”
“Hey, hey, it’s going to be all right.” Clothing rustled as Marc turned to her. After a slight hesitation, his hand reached across the back of her neck to her undamaged shoulder and pressed down in comfort. “Things will get better.”
“Right now, I’m the only one capable of healing the Lost. She has over half the system in her control. Even if all the attacks stop tonight, I will be dead before I can heal even a quarter of that. Pardon me if I’m a little pessimistic.” She twisted her lip. “Sol, why couldn’t she have just kept the whole revenge thing in her pants? I just wanted to have a quiet, drama-free life.”
“Life is never drama-free,” Marc said.
“Yeah, but it’s generally not so world-ending.”
“I don’t know. Some of those auction runners cook up regular shitstorms. Soo-jin’s got some good stories.”
A smile tugged at her face, and she turned her attention back to the glass and the metal pod beyond it. A light along its edge gave a slow, soft pulse, counter to any pattern visible on the screens behind it. Marc’s hand stayed on her shoulder. She found herself relaxing as its warmth seeped further into her skin.
One of these days, when all the shit cleared from their plates and nobody had come close to death for a little while, she was going to have to pin him down to a solo dinner or something and get to the bottom of whatever had been developing between them.
But not now. They had work to do.
As if on cue, Marc’s netlink buzzed. The hand left her shoulder to pull it out.
“Hello?”
Nomiki’s voice flowed out, compressed and tinny over the connection. “Is Karin with you?”
“Yep.”
“Good. Got some news.”
Karin straightened. “You found Sasha?”
Nomiki paused. “No. Something else. Remember that ball Soo was working on? The one that tried to electrocute you?”
“Yeah?”
“Cookie managed to backtrack its transponder signal. They’re a local pharmaceutical, and Brindon’s already got three squads mobilizing to raid the shit out of their facility.” Nomiki paused, and Karin could practically hear the grin in her next words. “Wanna come watch?”
Karin’s jaw slackened. She lifted her gaze to Marc, whose eyebrows had raised into his forehead again.
“Are you serious?” she asked. “Like—this is really happening?”
“I am, and it is,” Nomiki replied. “Are you in or not?”
Behind her bandage, the rest of her mouth pulled into a lopsided smile.
“Oh, abso-fucking-lutely.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Their dropship, a simple transport they’d shared with several others from the military’s research and development and information technology departments—scientists and technicians, by the looks of their civilian dress, atypical equipment packs, and the lanyards that hung from their pockets or necks—had left them just inside the gate of an office estate on the outskirts of Shin Okayama, about a half-hour’s flight from the base in Nova Kolkata.
The building had a new, expensive look to it. Straight, dove-gray corners rose on each of its square design—the building was so small, she could see its back corner—to meet a flared, luminous overhang of tinted glass six floors up. A matching tinted glass sculpture rounded the edge of its approach path, its undulating curve reminiscent of either sound waves or a mountain range. She wasn’t sure which. Light danced up from the spotlights of the water feature at its feet, giving a beautiful contrast to the blue-tinged night around them.
Glass, actually, was the main feature of the building. As she looked up at it, she felt her eyebrows rising as she realized that she could see right into every single floor.
They weren’t expecting an invasion, were they?
Not that a glass building couldn’t repel a force. That was her Earth logic talking. Here, with the abundance of drones and shield generators, some of which were even fitted on mundane clothing stores, a glass façade did not mean indefensible. Seirlin had dropped some serious drones on them. No reason this place couldn’t.
Well, no reason before Brindon’s teams had broken in and taken over the place. Now, the sheer number of soldiers she saw crawling through the building ensured their safety. And, by the incoming roar from her right, more were on their way.
She smiled, then turned to her sister, who had fallen into step by her side. “So, just who the fuck are these people, and why are they sending magic electric drones after my ass?”
“Ajin Pharmaceuticals. A new company, relatively speaking, but formed of people with connections to others. They do body mods, like the place we found Takahashi at. As to the latter…” Her sister trailed off, a wicked smile creeping onto her face. “I intend to ask them.”
Karin watched her for a moment. Marc had stayed behind to keep an eye on Soo-jin. As they passed the sculpture, the water feature bounced light up from their sides, making Nomiki’s dark eyes glitter and dance. “You’re having fun.”
“Aren’t you?” Nomiki’s smile widened as she made a gesture to the building. “Brindon just thrashed the place and left us with the icing to eat.”
A twinge in her shoulder—the good one, this time—signaled she’d veered off course. She hadn’t realized she had stumbled—probably more of the anesthetics at work—but she corrected herself back to stay in the middle of the path.
“That’s a… remarkable analogy,” she commented.
“But not wrong.” Nomiki flashed her smile again, looking less a normal happy than something venturing into Cheshire territory. Then she stepped forward, taking the lead, and nodded toward the door. “Come on. Let’s intimidate some assholes.”
Inside, Ajin Pharmaceuticals differed from Seirlin Genomics only in style and budget. Gleaming, asymmetrical swathes of tile separated areas in the mostly open concept building, accenting the rich, wooden features in the walls with a mix of streaked black, flecked white, and something similar to the outside’s dove gray. A lobby and reception opened up on her right, separated by only a meter of slat-paneled wood that matched the walls and front desk, with black fabric arm chairs and couches positioned around glass coffee and acc
ent tables with matching black frames. Like Seirlin, the outdoor water feature extended to just outside the windows, providing the room a pleasant view of a dark-bottomed pond and the several large, richly-patterned koi inside it.
Five soldiers stood in the room, keeping guard over eight people in white lab coats and a woman in a skirt and blouse who Karin assumed usually sat behind the reception desk.
The captives glanced up as they walked in. Karin felt their stares linger on her as they passed, probably more due to her bandages than the recognizability of her face at this point.
“Do they know who we are?” she asked Nomiki as they went farther in, passing a small appointment room with thin-slatted blinds and more windows than she’d be comfortable taking an exam in. She jostled against Nomiki as she mistook her step, nearly bumping into one of the guard soldiers, as well, but righted herself enough to get into the elevator.
“They say ‘no,’ and I’m inclined to believe them,” Nomiki said. “I saw the looks on their faces when the first squad found them. I mean—some of them had a kind of resigned look, but it felt more a ‘Gods damnit, I knew management was running a drug scheme’ feel than a ‘Sol’s motherfucker, our secret attack drone and dodgy experimentation has been discovered by the thrice-fucked military’ feel, you know? And the rest just looked surprised. As if we’d pulled the lid on their innocent scientist shell and dragged them out to be poked. Which we, you know, kind of did.”
“You have a way with discerning faces,” Karin commented after a moment.
“It’s a talent.” Nomiki pushed a button on the elevator panel and nodded to the floor. “We’re going up to chat with the bosses.” Once again, a wide smile appeared on her lips. “We lucked out. They’re both here.”
Karin steadied herself against the wall as they began to move. The brushed aluminum siding reflected her face in two blobs of white, displaying the mix of bandages that covered half her face and a part of her hair. A wooden accent ran through the middle, matching the wood from the first floor. She ran her good hand over its smooth surface.
