by K. Gorman
“You killed that man because you had to,” Marc said firmly. “He threatened your sister. Nomiki told me. He was going to kill her.”
“I tortured him first,” she said. “I carved off pieces. Played with him. I enjoyed his death. And I would have killed my way through the rest of them, too, had they but given me the excuse.”
Marc was quiet. Watching her. Studying her with those brown eyes of his. His hand still enveloped hers, the padded splint of her finger stuck in the crook of his thumb. Then, he leaned forward.
She relaxed when he put his hands around her. The smell of him, and the closeness, the warmth, made her close her eyes. After a moment, she took a deep breath of his neck, wrapping her mind around the familiar smell of sweat and soap, then rested her chin on his shoulder.
“You’ll come back,” he said. “It’ll be all right.”
She opened her eyes, staring up at the dark sky above her. Marc’s head blocked the glare of the lights, finally allowing her to catch a sight of the brightest stars. She let out a long, slow breath.
“I’m not sure I can.”
He patted her. “You will. I have faith.”
“I didn’t know you were religious.”
“I’m not. But I have faith in you.”
She laughed, a deep chuckle that surprised her throat, and a smile spread on. “Well, I am a goddess. I suppose it fits.”
“See? There you are.” A smile rode into his voice. He nuzzled his face into her neck, kissing her shoulder. “You’re not completely gone.”
Hmm. Maybe this could work. Maybe she didn’t have to cut him off, as she’d been half-worrying.
Her lips returned his smile with a small twitch.
“No, just fucked with genetic modifications—but hey, what’s new?”
“That’s the spirit.” He pulled back, giving her a pat as he slid his arms from around her. He didn’t quite let go when he stood up, bringing her right hand up with him. “Now, shall we go get you proper medical treatment, or are you going to keep torturing yourself with ancient and medieval medical practices?”
She snorted. “They’re not that old. I mean, sure, they were invented a shitload of time ago, but hells, this is still used in modern times.”
“We had better medical provisions in my army training days,” he informed her, guiding her up onto her feet gently.
Yeah, okay, he had her there. She slipped down the steps, bare feet brushing the cement. She’d packed shoes and socks in the bag, too, but it had felt weird to put them on for some reason—her feet too flecked with blood and moist.
She shivered. It’d be good to get into sani. Really get the stuff off. And good to step foot on the Nemina again, even if it was the Shadow variant she’d plucked across the border of reality.
Hey, wait…
“If the Centauri have surrendered, does that mean we’re getting the real Nemina back?”
“That’d be nice.” A smile quirked his mouth. “We can have a his and her model.”
“Or I can just stay on your ship, and we can give Soo-jin the other one. Expand our scrounge company to an entire fleet.” She chuckled. “I wonder if we’ll have to clean the blood out of it again.”
He grunted. “Considering it’s likely still on the opposite side of the planet, I think we can let that rest until tomorrow. Let’s just focus on you tonight. You’ve done enough for today. Relax. Rest. Heal. You can worry about everything else in the morning.”
As she fell into step beside him, she realized he was right. Or, at least, that she agreed with him.
She’d done her duty—more than done her duty. Logically, it was best to rest. Recover. Allow her brain a bunch more flush-build cycles to incorporate the shitstorm that was her transfer with Tia. Get used to her changing body.
She snorted.
Gods, there’s a puberty joke somewhere in here, if I could just reach for it.
But she didn’t. She was too tired. And her wounds were finally catching up to her, even with her amazing new body.
She leaned her head against Marc’s shoulder, breathed in his scent, and followed him to the Nemina.
Epilogue 1
Extras
“My sister is an idiot. Did you see that wound? She’s lucky she’s not bled out on the ground.”
Nomiki snapped around in the small space, her steps quick, sharper than normal, the balls of her feet grinding in the grit of the pavement, her broken arm limp from nano and in a sling across her chest. Jon watched her make her small circuit from a few meters away, keeping his silence. They’d picked a spot to the compound’s side in which to regroup, near enough to the parking lot to keep a casual tab on the activity there, but far enough to allow their innate guards to slide down a level and relax.
Not that Nomiki was doing much of that. If anything, she’d worked herself even further up. She was bristling, agitated—worried, which wasn’t typical of her.
She also, he knew, wasn’t expecting a response from him.
He glanced down, almost immediately noticing the bulk of his body. The past month had been enough to come to term with the changes, but it still felt surreal—as if he were playing a character in a virtual reality game instead of living in his own skin. The modifications made him more connected to it—more physically and mentally aware of himself—but that awareness paradoxically only heightened the feeling of disconnect.
Nomiki had admitted similar with herself, when she was growing up, but nothing as severe as the dissociation that hit him. Likely because she had grown up with the modifications.
He, literally, had woken up with them. And a blank space where his memories used to be.
Slowly, though, he was coming to terms with it.
This was his reality now.
The benefits were nice, at least. A part of him—the part that, he suspected, had wanted the modifications in the first place—was happy with them. Massively increased speed and strength, a set of combat instincts that made him virtually unkillable in hand-to-hand, the ability to shut down his emotions and assess a situation with crystal-clear acuity. Fighting, for him, was like a cacophony of sound all coming together. He was a tunnel of focus, able to read situations lightning-quick.
He could fight better than he could speak his mother tongue.
Which was Spanish, it turned out. They’d discovered that on the trip from Chamak.
Ahead of him, Nomiki’s boots ground into the gravel as she swung around.
“Fuck! She could have died. Did you see the wounds on her?”
“I did,” he replied, his voice a rumble lower than he recognized—another change. It was funny, in a way. He didn’t remember much of his life from before the modifications, but his brain could still tag things as wrong. “She’s changing.”
“I think changed is the correct tense, in this case, though perhaps you’re right—it may take a few days for all the modifications to settle. Maybe up to a week if her current injuries slow it down. Fuck.” Nomiki stopped and made a vague, violent gesture. “You saw her, right?”
It was the third time in roughly a minute that she had asked him variations of that. This time, though, she meant it on a deeper scale.
She was asking if he had seen what Karin had become. If his abilities had locked onto the being beneath the surface of her sister’s skin and run an assessment.
If he’d been a normal human, he would have shivered.
Of course they had. The moment he’d walked into her view, Karin had snapped her head his way and gripped him with such a keen focus it had been impossible to not do the same with her. She was like a hawk, or a ghost, or a monster—or some fucked up, otherworldly mix of all three, but in a subtle, insidious sense.
The wrongness ate at him the same way a worm might bore at a tree. Invisible on the outside, but the second one looked under the skin…
It wasn’t that she had been changed. The Karin he had come to know was still in there—he sensed that much.
But there was somethin
g else, too, and his instincts screamed at him to keep his distance.
“Yes,” he said simply. “I saw.”
Nomiki nodded. Then, seemingly satisfied, she switched topics. “And there’s something fucky with the Centauri. They’re being too complacent.”
He had noticed that, too. Nearly every Centauri he’d encountered had either given him a wide berth or, in the case of their cyborgs, had given him a prolonged up-and-down look and watched him carefully whenever he was in the vicinity.
“Karin did kill a lot of their people,” he reminded her.
“True, but I think it’s something more. I mean, hells, if someone did that to my people, I’d be splitting for revenge, not offering to help. Those metal guys pack enough of a punch to make independent moves. And that one woman—Tillerman—she was second-in-command. Shouldn’t she want revenge?”
“She’s likely protecting her people. She’s still second-in-command, isn’t she?”
“So she says.” Nomiki rubbed the bridge of her nose, squinting her eyes shut. “I don’t know. It feels like more than that, though.”
He shrugged. “I’d let the brass deal with that.”
She snorted. “Yes. Definitely. Fallon and Alliance can sort that maybe-political shit out. I’ll just stick to cutting off heads and making sure my sister doesn’t bleed out.”
“She’s most important, anyway,” he pointed out. “Both to you, and in general.”
“Yes. Also true. Fuck.” She blew out a noisy breath, teeth gritting together.
He didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to.
Eventually, Nomiki drew herself back up.
“Right,” she said. “I’m done here. What say we go mingle and intimidate some more? That always makes me feel better.”
He gave her a flat look. So far, their ‘break’ had lasted less than five minutes.
Then again, people like them didn’t really need breaks. Not really.
He gave a curt nod and made to stand. “I’ll put my thug face back on.”
“You never take it off.” She ticked the armor on his shoulder with the back of a finger. “You know, I think being with the crew’s rubbing off on you. You’re much more open now than you were a month ago.”
“A month ago, you were staring at me through a one-way mirror and deciding whether or not to kill me.”
Her smile flashed in the dark.
“I’m glad I didn’t. You’re way more fun alive.”
This was a stupid idea.
Soo-jin chewed the inside of her cheek, admiring her handiwork. The display frame had a thick black border that caught the light with an elegant, understated gleam, with professional quality UV-treated plasticglass and a rough, off-white matting that held the display anchors in place with the subtle glue particles that had been soaked into its fabric and reactivated by the touch of her laser pen. Against it, the knife she’d mounted looked sharp. Brutal. Deadly. Elegant, with the red seal of her official name stamped into the bottom right corner, as if it were some museum piece.
She followed the edge of its blade, a muscle working in her jaw as she inspected her work.
As far as knives went, it wasn’t the best. Hells, it wasn’t even the best of her collection. Above average, perhaps, but too clunky and inelegant to ever be considered beautiful.
And yet, here it was, mounted and framed.
She gritted her teeth, gripping the frame hard.
This was a stupid idea. Who in their right mind would want the knife that had almost killed them? Just what kind of psychopathic weirdo was she?
Baik was going to think she was a completely overtocked nutter.
But here she was, and she’d just spent the last two and a half hours framing the damn thing.
She let out a sigh and pushed herself up.
It took surprisingly little effort to find the commander. She thought she’d have to wade through several throngs of Alliance staff before she got to him, then awkwardly wait around while he finished speaking with some general or other—but instead, she spotted him near the edge of the lot, a solitary figure sitting among a stack of half-packed crates behind the thrusters of an Alliance Sparrow.
Well, that would work out for her. No one else to witness her impending embarrassment.
Gods, what am I doing?
She almost turned around right then, to disappear into her room and vanish the night—and this whole potential experience—away in a mix of techno-rock, netfiction, and video games, but halted the thought almost before her muscles contracted.
Almost.
Clio’s fucking bounty, the man got his throat slashed and I’m standing here, worried about a bit of embarrassment?
Gods. She was a fucked up, selfish little cunt.
She steeled herself, gripped the frame hard with one hand, and stalked down the ramp and into the night, grateful when the shadows swallowed her up just past the Nemina’s aft engine panel.
As she approached, she tried not to look at him, but she felt the moment he noticed her. He was a perceptive person—highly so. The very epitome of his rank and office, except even more. High Command didn’t have to be as fit and ready as he was. Hells, given his birth status and civilian titles, he could have coasted straight into a command post with little more than grade advancement alone—she’d looked it up, done her research. Alliance, especially Novan Alliance, kept a number of positions for its peerage. Safe positions. Useless positions.
But not High Command positions. And especially not the High Command position he seemed to occupy.
And, except for on the Manila where he’d been pestering the fuck out of Generals Ramesh and Crane, and Kozawa from afar, he hadn’t been pushing his rank around. Hells, the past few days of sharing a cabin with the man had been some of the most awkward in her entire life, but he’d kept to himself. The perfect roommate, if ever she wanted one. Maybe that was due to Nomiki and her threat to skewer him, but she didn’t think so. He’d simply fallen in line as support and stayed there.
And nearly died for it.
Her jaw clenched. She was glad for the darkness, just then, and the distance. Though that distance was swiftly closing.
When she got close enough, she took a breath, forced her normal mask of cheerful sarcasm into place, and lifted the frame.
“Yo, Soldier Boy, got a present for you!”
He cringed. Subtly, while still maintaining the careful neutrality she’d come to expect from his expression, but she’d spent enough time with him to notice the little cues.
She had a feeling that, had she been someone else—such as a lesser-ranking Alliance soldier—she would have been on the receiving end of a very short, cutting reprimand, and a severe dose of his quiet anger.
Yeah, well, welcome to the crew, buddy.
He watched her approach warily, easing himself further upright. And, as his face came into the light, she regretted her choice in words.
He looked absolutely exhausted. No, beyond exhausted—as if he’d been kicked around, then dragged through an all-night marathon with very little sleep, and, despite all that, was still on duty and crossing all his T’s in preparation to go another round. The bags under his eyes weren’t dark, nor very deep, but the discoloration was noticeable even in the dim light, and the rest of his face had a paler complexion than she was used to.
Healthy Baik had a strong, tanned color. This looked more like Ghost Baik.
She hid a grimace, thinking about the knife in the frame. Her gaze dropped down to his neck. The slash of scarring looked equally discolored, the thick, pale tissue marring the otherwise unblemished skin of his neck.
Maybe this really wasn’t a good idea.
But she was here now.
She forced some false bravado into her spine and pushed the framed knife toward him.
He stared at it, his expression blank.
“I, uh, felt you should have it,” she said, voice awkward, tone slipping—Gods, she could feel the nerves dump into her system, as if the
y were all going straight for her mouth and throat. She held the frame steady, willing him to take it.
He kept staring at it.
“If you don’t want it, I could just keep it. Add it to my collection of things of mine that have stabbed men.”
Silence. He hadn’t moved. She swallowed.
Gods, just stop talking.
“It’d be in a high place, of course,” she added, recklessly bulldozing through her brain’s attempt to slam the brakes on her mouth. “You’re by and far the highest ranking dude any of my things have stabbed.”
“Is that why you have a pen on your wall?”
“What?—Oh.” She’d grown so used to his silence that it was a shock to hear his voice. “Yes,” she lied. “That one went for some creep in a lunar rave. I may have helped it get there.”
“Ah. Would I be above or below that?”
“Above,” she said. “But below the knife at the top. I’m reserving that for my brother.”
His eyebrows twitched, but he didn’t ask. Perhaps he’d gotten the story from one of the others.
After a few moments, he reached forward and took the frame from her. A little zing shot through her chest at the close contact.
He stared at the piece, face a little less blank, angling it toward the closest light.
“You made this?”
“Yep.”
“It’s beautiful.”
It was, and she knew it. There was a reason Marc left the framing and photography displays to her.
“Slaved all cycle for it,” she said casually. “Really reached into the back storage crate and unwrapped it. Lots of effort.”
For the first time since she’d handed him the knife, his gaze slipped up to hold her eyes, pinning them with a look.
He didn’t say anything, but she knew he saw through her attitude. And that he also knew it had taken her a lot longer than the five or so minutes she’d just implied.
Anyone looking at the mounting could immediately tell that.
She rounded her shoulders, crossed her arms in front of her, and found something other than him to look at. “If we’d been anywhere near civilization, I would have added a Gladiolus bloom. Strength symbolism.”
