She Wolf and Cub

by lillith saintcrow

  “Aren’t you even going to say thank you?”

  “Start talking.” My hand tensed, ready to squeeze the trigger fully and sting him. That would give me enough time to wrench his head off as well, and this time I wouldn’t just drop all his parts into sludge to keep him down for a little while.

  This time, I was considering a permanent solution, and take his plasma cannon. I could use something like that. It was the entire reason we were still where he’d left us with a muttered stay here, for fucksake.

  “I was going to get the kid out of town.” Sam lifted his hands, slowly, and rubbed at his face. After years of seeing him betray no emotion at all, it was a little shocking. His hair was beginning to take on the roughness of out-City fur. “Someone wants him set free.”

  “Free?” A laugh boiled right under my breastbone, but my control was better than his. It didn’t even get close to the surface. “That’s a joke. You gave me a kill order.”

  Geoff didn’t twitch behind me. He pressed close, his face against the curve of my lumbar spine, as if he could blot all this out just by making everything dark.

  Sam dropped his hands. They looked different, too — a little harder, growing calluses the way a Facilitator never did. “Your psych profile said you wouldn’t kill a kid, Jess. More importantly, I didn’t think you would, either.”

  “Oh, I will if I have to.” My autonomics started to realign, settling under the subroutines instead of fighting them. “Just not this one.”

  That earned me a long, appraising look. He folded his arms, blond-tipped eyebrows drawing together a little, and it occurred to me that his signaling emotion could be a trap. Or it could be genuine. Either way, he was a liability, even if he had just saved both of us.

  Why would a facilitator after a rogue liquidator do what he’d done? Plasma cannon can blow all the nanos out of you, and if you don’t have even one left in your meat you’re on the fast-track to oblivion. It’s possible to save an agent that’s been hit by a plas-blast, but it requires quick action and a stasis tank, and I didn’t think they had filtration and stat-neutral narcofluid, let alone gallons and gallons of restraint gel, out here in the Waste.

  I might have expected another liquidator to use plas against me, but not a facilitator.

  Maybe whatever lie he would tell would still give me something useful. So I gave him some bait. “Niful stole him from someone else. The Agency was contracted to steal him back, but decided he represents a kick right where it hurts — in their bottom line. And you. Who the fuck are you playing for?”

  “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.” He tilted his head a little before settling into fully implemented immobility. “Is he okay?”

  “Like you care.” I didn’t ease off the trigger. “Answers, Sam. Now.” I’d never held him at gunpoint before.

  There was a certain charm to it.

  “Niful stole him from someone else, yeah. The Agency wanted him for study and dissection. We wanted him out of the city.” Slight emphasis on the we, as if he didn’t think I’d catch the implication and wanted to give me a clue. “I thought that after eight years of working with me, you’d come back and tell me there was a problem. That you’d ask me for help, and I’d get you both out—”

  How very noble of you. Had he just thought I wasn’t bright enough to figure out something in the damn job stank? “Why?”

  “Like I said, you’re my favorite. And your psych file was pretty clear you’re just not the child-killing type, Jess. I suppose we should all be grateful for that.”

  “That’s insulting. You’re a crappy negotiator.”

  Geoff shivered, his breath hot through my shirt, a circle of damp on my back. The calculations were instant, instinctive, and hateful.

  I could say it. Take the kid. Or just leave Geoff here with Sam suitably disabled for a short while. I could vanish into the Waste, and forget all of this. There would be no reason to pursue me after I made the cut.

  In other words, true, absolute freedom. If I was just going at this from a personal survival standpoint, that was my best bet. Any other avenue, even with a possible fourth player — original corporation, NifulCorp, Agency, and whoever Sam was hinting at — muddying and jostling around, just ended up with a short suicidal run before someone dropped me and did whatever they wanted with the kid anyway.

  Just put your head down and get out of here. Walk away.

  I wondered what it felt like when the plas hit and blew all your nanos out. Did it hurt?

  Another faint twitch of expression crossed Sam’s bland, open face. It looked for all the world like disgruntlement. “I was hoping you’d have developed some trust in me. A rapport. Your file said you would.”

  Maybe the file doesn’t know everything. And maybe I would have developed a “rapport” if he hadn’t sent me to murder a child, even if he didn’t think I’d do it. “You’re another cog in the machine, Sam. Just like me.”

  “More like a spanner in the works; always has been part of your considerable charm.” A ghost of a smile. “The offer stands. We’ll pay you triple, whatever they’ve promised you, and we’ll make sure you’re safe.”

  That we again. A bluff, most likely. “Disap—” I squeezed the trigger midsyllable, and the flash was enough to blind even buffered optics. “—pointing, Sam.” I’d deliberately kept my eyes open, not giving him even a blink’s worth of warning. I shook my head, waiting for my optics to clear, rifle still held ready even though Geoff’s trembling took on an intensity I didn’t like at all.

  Sam lay splayed on the floor, twitching. The modded rifle hadn’t blown me up yet, and that was fantastic. Luckier than I had any right to be. He would be out for only a few minutes, unless I moved fast.

  I shook free of Geoff and braced myself. Another high-harmonic squeal, and I found my breath was coming much harsher than I liked as I wrenched my handler’s head from his body, tossing it across the room as the rest of him twitched and jerked. Probably really uncomfortable. I’d say I’m sorry, but I’m not.

  With that taken care of, I turned on my heel. Two strides got me back to Geoff, and I went down on one knee with a jolt, grabbing his shoulders and examining him.

  He stared at me, glaze-eyed and shaking. It made me wish I could just transfuse some of my nanos into him. If they wouldn’t corrode him from the inside out, being tuned to my helix down to the last strand of RNA, I would have. I couldn’t implement him, but shit if I didn’t want to.

  He was so breakable.

  “Geoff.” Quiet and firm. “It’s okay. It’s over. We’re leaving now.”

  His chin trembled a little, the thick, seamed scar quivering. “Abbymom?”

  “Right here, kid. I’m not going to let anyone hurt you.” I winced even as I said it. Strict honesty would add if I can help it, but he didn’t need to hear that. He had enough to deal with already.

  I was no kind of mother, but even I could tell as much.

  “You could have let him take me.” Hearing his lost, forlorn little voice say it out loud was squirm-worthy.

  I swallowed, hard, for no particular reason at all. There was nothing wrong with my esophagus. My autonomics were all running along smoothly. “I wouldn’t do that, Geoff.”

  “Why?”

  Did he really need to hear it again? “Because you’re my kid.”

  “But you…” He blinked, sense returning to that dark gaze. “But why, Abby?”

  I don’t know. Only I did, I just couldn’t explain it, and we needed to get the hell out of here. I needed to think about things, especially those agents with their weird silver eye-sheen, and I thought best while moving. “It’s Mom, Geoff. Mother if you’re feeling formal. You can top off with one of his fourpads while I go through his gear. I want to be far away from here by dawn.”

  Chapter Five

  Night Moves

  Stars, those faraway nuclear fires you never see through a city’s statveiling, glittered on velvet blackness. Our tiny noises, fourpad paws shushing a
long sandy rock and the creak of saddles, were lost in the breathing of the wind. The Waste was a vast creature, and us just tiny motes caught in its passages.

  Geoff didn’t ask where we were going. It was just as well. I might have answered somewhere nobody can find us, and he was probably smart enough to know that wasn’t a real answer.

  At least we had a plasma cannon now, and some other useful bits of kit. Either facilitators traveled light, or Sam hadn’t brought a lot of Agency hardware with him. Which was thought-provoking, if I’d had the urge to think about even more than was already crowding my brain inside its lovely almost-invulnerable case. Those silver-eyed agents —where had I heard something about them? It had to have been during my runner days, anything afterward I would have retained. One of the dubious benefits of implementation is a steel trap of memory. Very little escapes, once we have time to track it down.

  We stopped late; dawn was almost up before I found a suitable cave. Geoff picketed the fourpads, talking to them in a low whistle with tongue-clicks, maybe his own version of subaudible. The beasts liked him, tolerated me, and outright balked at going near worms.

  Which was fine, I didn’t want to get too close to the massive gray blind-snouted things either. The long segmented beasts didn’t even follow the veins of water under the sand — in fact, they seemed to actively avoid anything that could be interpreted as moisture. It was a puzzle.

  “Mom?” Geoff, holding the canteens. “They’re almost empty.”

  “I’ll set up the maker.” I crouched next to the fire, feeding it small wisps of drought-stricken grasslike stems. The fourpads produced pellets that could be burned, though using them to cook seemed incredibly unsanitary even if I could thermascan the edibles for doneness.

  At least Sam’s gear included a sturdy little watermaker. I wouldn’t have to worry about Geoff dying of dehydration.

  Just hunger, maybe. Or that deeper thirst.

  Geoff straightened. “I can do it.” A little anxiously.

  I nodded. It would be good for him to be familiar with that basic tech. “Go ahead, then.” Just don’t break it. I decided that would be an unhelpful thing to say. Stared at the tiny flames, willing them to live.

  He dug in the packs, his dark hair wildly mussed and standing in stiff, soft spikes. It wasn’t just my imagination — the Waste definitely agreed with him. Was he taller? It certainly looked like it.

  How had that happened? I frowned, feeding another small handful of dried grass into the flames. I didn’t know the growth rates for kids his age, I’d never had the desire to look them up. When would he reach maturity? When he did, would he be a little more durable?

  It wasn’t likely to happen soon enough to do me any good, really.

  Come on. Do something productive, agent. ”Geoff? What do you remember, about the institute?”

  He settled down, his back to the pile of packs and gear set against the side of the rough stone hollow, opening up the watermaker’s curved plascine case. Frowned a little at the components inside. “What do I do first?”

  “Take out the base and tap the red button. That’ll start the statfield to clear any dust away.”

  “Oh yeah. Okay.” His frown deepened a little. “The institute. My room had toys. It was a big round room — a globe, sort of. Plasilca, so they could observe. Lots of doctors. None of them were like me, or like you.”

  “Like me? Implemented?”

  “Yeah. They were all regular.” He fitted the shine-black cylinder into the base, remembering to hold them a little ways apart for a few seconds so the statfield could repel any foreign bits. “They fed me cloned, ah, blood. Sometimes it had other stuff in it. Caffa, synthsucrose, alliums. Skin tests too, for infrared, UV, caustics, all sorts of stuff. Kept asking me about my dreams, what I remembered.”

  “What you remembered?”

  “From Before.” He peered at the top of the watermaker, setting the tubes correctly without any help.

  “Before the institute?”

  “Yeah. I never remembered much, though. Bright light. Being hungry. Lots of noise.”

  Did he remember being born? Or decanted, or whatever? Or… “You said they tested you for UV.”

  He shook his hair away, an irritable, very young motion. “Yeah. It didn’t do anything. Nothing did.”

  “The UV didn’t hurt you?” Well, there went that theory. So it was something else in unfiltered sunlight that raised the vesicles and the weals on his skin.

  “Nope.” A small smile, when he fitted the plunge and the gasket right on the maker.

  I focused on the fire. All those different chemical reactions, spewing out heat and light and ash. He was a good witness, all I had to do was ask the right questions. “So… at the institute, they must have had badges. A logo. Do you remember that?”

  “Oh yeah. It was an eye, with stuff shooting out of it. White and black.”

  That narrowed the field, but not as much as I liked. Most likely CoreTech. But they’re strictly weapons and information, they don’t do genengineering. Or at least, I didn’t think they did. “Huh.” I made the sound open-ended, neutral.

  “I didn’t have parents, like kids on the holos did. I wondered about that, until I figured out it meant they’d made me, like they made other things. I would watch and try to figure out…” He bit his lip, concentrating on aligning the top correctly. “When I woke up and the badges were different and I had to go to school, I thought maybe they’d found my parents.”

  It was enough to make me wish I had a cushy inRing job, enough to pay for a highly trained therapist. He’d need one. It might even be best for the kid to go back to his original owners — at least they’d given him toys.

  They didn’t protect him well enough. I might not be able to, either.

  The fire solidified, just enough fuel to keep the reaction going.

  I could tell you the composition of the rocks we crouched in, where water was hidden underneath, I could test the atmosphere, live off solar, kill the deadliest things in the Cities — other agents — without qualm.

  What I couldn’t do, though, was pretty much anything that might give Geoff a chance of, well, turning out a reasonably well-adjusted adult. If there was such a thing in the world we’d been given.

  I really didn’t think this through. Wondering if I was worse than the corporations fighting over him — if Sam really had been banking on me not being able to kill a kid and looking to get Geoff out of the City — was uncomfortable, to say the least.

  He should’ve told me as much, dammit. “I’m sorry,” I said, quietly, to the fire.

  “Why? Now I have a mom.” He grinned, shaking his hair back. It was such an open, unguarded expression something inside me cracked a little. “You even kiss me goodnight. It’s good.”

  Except I’m probably going to die, and maybe you with me. Or they’ll snap you up and keep experimenting on you. “I just, you know. Worry. About…” Pulled myself up short. There was no reason to add to the things he’d worry about, too.

  “Yeah, I know. I think I put this together right.” He examined the watermaker critically. “Wanna check?”

  “I’m sure it’s fine. I can set it out in an hour or so to charge.” Not to mention sit beside it, my skin darkening, and gulp at all the solar I could get. I added more chips to the fire. Maybe it was a waste, I didn’t need the heat. Did he? “Are you hungry?”

  A shake of that shaggy head. “Not thirsty either. I just wanna sleep.”

  It was enough to make me long for warmbody unconsciousness as well. “Go ahead. We should be okay here.”

  Flickering shadows turned his face into an older boy’s, for a bare second. You could almost see what he’d look like in adulthood — long nose, thin mouth, heavy eyebrows. “Why do they still want me?”

  Not sure. “Could be a lot of reasons. So far we have three other players in the game.”

  “Game?”

  “There’s the original corporation — sounds like CoreTech — and
then there’s NifulCorp. Then there’s the Agency. They survive by having a lock on implementation. You’re a direct challenge to that monopoly.”

  “What about him?”

  It took me a second to follow the mental leap. “Oh, Sam? Not sure which one of them he’s playing for.”

  “And what about you?”

  Yeah, kid. What about me? So I used the oldest trick in the book — when you need a moment to think, feign puzzlement or temporary non-auditory intake. “What?”

  “You were Agency, right?”

  “Was, yeah.” Not anymore. I doubt they’d have me back. I’m a losing investment. Unreliable.

  “And then?”

  “Then I wasn’t anymore.”

  “Why?”

  I’m a bit hazy on that myself. I stared at the fire some more, as if there was an answer hidden in the space between fuel and reaction. I never told another soul, from my corpclone parents to my fellow runners or other Agency trainees, about the clinic or the bundle of cells scraped out of me, probably sold to bring a little more profit in for the medical staff.

  It didn’t belong to the Agency. It was mine, it was private, and I kept it that way, even when they asked, over and over again, why I wanted to be implemented. Why I was volunteering.

  The Agency was, quite simply, a way out. And now that the kid was asking a similar question, it made me squirm a little inside, thinking that maybe I’d looked at him and seen a way out, too. I was a good flex liquidator, fast on my feet and efficient, but sooner or later even Agency jobs got…

  Boring. When you’re practically indestructible, you end up just going through the motions. Nothing matters. It’s all the same.

  Geoff needed an answer, and he was waiting on one. I took a deep breath. No reason to tell him I didn’t fucking know why I’d done it, but once I’d lowered the rifle in the bare, security-locked NifulCorp house he’d been stashed in, it was too late. I was in, and when you’re in, the only way through is to put your head down, your betrisq chips on the table, and finish the game.