Binding Foxgirls III

by Simon Archer

  “Sure, I’ll take a look,” Malthe said, walking over and picking them up, beginning to rifle through them. “Hmmm… Yeah, this doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me exactly.”

  “What do they say?” I asked, and he just shook his head.

  “It’s a long list of names and dates, I think,” he said, “and some of them don’t even seem all that much like names.”

  “Let me see,” I said, holding out my hand. He gave them to me.

  “Huh,” I said as I rifled through them myself. “Yeah, some of them don’t seem much like names, do they? I don’t know…”

  “Why don’t they seem like names?” Lin asked, looking from Malthe to me and back again. “What does it say?”

  “Well, it’s a list, like Malthe said,” I said thoughtfully, not taking my eyes off the pages.

  “But it’s more than that, too… like a log or something. Each line has what looks like a date using their weird dating system, a name, or at least they look like names, and then another thing that looks like a name, but not exactly. There’s only one of them.”

  “Only one what?” Lin asked, shaking her head in confusion.

  “Only one name,” I said. “On the second name on each line, I mean. Like this one, it says ‘Banesteppe.’ That’s it. No last name, or if this is a last name, there’s no first name. That’s all it is. And right before that, it says a date and a regular name. Almost like it’s listing a place, but not a place I’ve ever heard of before.”

  “Sounds like a place,” Lin said with a shrug. “But I’ve never heard of it either.”

  “Weird,” Clem murmured, shaking his head. “But what does it all mean?”

  “I don’t know,” I said grimly. “We found nothing in the tunnels…”

  “And after I had them break you out, I sent the drones to go look elsewhere in the tunnels, see if they could find anything where you weren’t able to look,” Malthe said. “It’s not as good as sending real people down there, but they found nothing, anyway.”

  “So, where else could he be?” Lin asked. “Nowhere in the city. None of the cameras or anything have picked up on anything out of the ordinary.”

  “And if they did, you’d think they would’ve picked up on it earlier than this,” I finished for her. “The whole city’s on lockdown.”

  “Unless someone here is working for him, or someone just as good as Malthe—or better—at hacking and erasing digital histories is on their side,” Cindra said, voicing what the rest of us were too afraid to say.

  “That’s the worst possibility,” I agreed. “Or at least the worst possibility I can think of…. unless….”

  “Unless what?” Cindra asked, her eyes widening as she swiveled to me with her hands on her hips.

  “Unless… well, we can talk about that later,” I said, my eyes drifting up to where the security cameras were overlooking the room.

  We’d outed a lot of people at Serenity General and thrown them in the Void for working for Elias Berg and Achilles Tibor. Elias had killed the hospital president himself out of anger when Malthe slipped past the building’s defenses. But the institution was still the same one it had always been, and there were some people who were holdovers from the last administration. I wasn’t so sure how much we could trust them.

  Cindra and then the others took my meaning as I looked to the cameras. We should really shut up about all this while we were there. You never knew who was paying attention, did you? Especially not in Termina, where new kinds of tech were popping up all the time, and where deceit and self-interest were so pervasive. If we could lose a man as principled as Lucianus Halit, even for just a few days like we had two weeks before, we could lose anyone.

  Just then, Kira rolled over and groaned, her eyes flickering open and shut a few times.

  “What’s goin’ on?” she mumbled, catching sight of me and smiling. “We got out?” She reached out for me, though her arm wasn’t long enough to reach my bed.

  “Yeah, we got out,” I said, grinning at her and reaching out and squeezing her hand, meeting her halfway between our beds. “We’re going to be just fine, don’t you worry. Everyone else made it out, too.” I gestured in the direction of the others still clustered around the doorway.

  “Ooh, you’re here!” she cried, smiling widely at them. “I’m so glad you made it. We were very worried about you, especially after all those drones started blowing all the tunnels up.”

  “You remember that?” I asked, giving her a bemused look.

  “Why wouldn’t I?” she asked, furrowing her brow together quizzically.

  “Well, you were pretty out of it,” I chuckled. “I wasn’t sure if you were going to make it period, let alone remember anything that was going on.”

  “Let’s see,” she said, pursing her lips as she thought this through. “I remember pretty much everything up to that last explosion when Malthe sent the drones after us. It all felt kind of like a dream, but I remember it…”

  “That’s… kind of impressive,” I said, grinning at her. Just then, there was a knock on the door, and a doctor in a white coat came inside. The rest of our group made a path for him to our beds, and he gave the new arrivals a quizzical look.

  “You all should really get yourselves checked out,” he said in a short, matter-of-fact tone.

  “You were in the explosion, too, no?”

  “We weren’t in the explosion, exactly,” Clem said. “Not the last one, anyway.” The doctor arched a skeptical eyebrow at him.

  “If you were down in the tunnels with them, you need to get checked out,” he said, gesturing at Kira and me. Then, when no one budged, “Go! Now!”

  “Okay, okay,” Semra said, turning and giving the man a dirty look. “Fine, we’re going.”

  “No, he’s right, you guys should make sure you’re all okay,” I said. “Then we can get out of here and not come back.”

  “You two should be ready for discharge within the hour if my examination of you goes as planned,” the doctor said absent mindedly, crossing over to me.

  “Good, because I’m not staying here any longer than that,” I grumbled. I had work to do. A lot of work.

  He listened to my breathing and my heart rate, and then he pulled back my shirt to look at my back.

  “The new skin is regrowing well,” he said, with a satisfied nod. “You should be back to normal within the week.”

  “You gave me new skin?” I asked, a little grossed out.

  “Not brand new,” the doctor said. “We gave you boosters to speed up your body’s process of regrowing your own. It shouldn’t take long. You just need to keep the area bandaged until the process is complete. You should come back and see me then.”

  “Okay,” I said to placate him. Something told me I’d be a little busy for that if things continued to go as badly as they had been lately.

  “Now for you,” the doctor said, crossing over to Kira’s bedside. “How is your eyesight?”

  “Fine,” she said, sounding a little surprised at the question. “Should something be wrong with it?”

  “Well, we gave you a scan to make your concussion go away,” the doctor explained. “Your vision may be blurry if it failed to work.”

  “Is there a chance it didn’t work?” I asked, concerned for her.

  “A small one,” the doctor said with a shrug. “But highly unlikely. The concussion wasn’t all that bad. Just from the original blow, I imagine. You did a good job of keeping her out of the line of fire after the initial pileup. Otherwise, things could’ve been much worse for both of you. You’re both very lucky.”

  “See, Nic? Everything’s turned out all right,” Kira said with a smile. “You worry too much.” I balked at this.

  “You’re saying it was perfectly fine to send you in there alone?” I asked, laughing under my breath. “‘Cause things turned out so well for you. And us.”

  “Eh, we’re fine,” Kira shrugged. “And we got something out of it, at least.” Her eyes flickered o
ver to where the papers rested, still clutched between my fingers. But she didn’t speak of them, since the doctor was in the room.

  “I guess so,” I said, though I was unconvinced. Whatever was listed on those papers had better be damn well important.

  “So yes, you should both be all right, though I do recommend not repeating these reckless endeavors,” the doctor sighed, giving us each a pointed look that told me he didn’t actually expect us to listen to him. He wasn’t wrong, either.

  “Alright, so we can get out of here then?” I asked, swinging my legs over the side of the bed to the floor.

  “I would like to get one more scan of her head,” the doctor said, nodding in Kira’s direction. “But you’re good to go, Mr. Joch. I’ll have a nurse come by with instructions for caring for your back, and with both of your discharge papers. Hopefully, your friends’ exams won’t take long.”

  He exited the room, rolling Kira’s bed out with him for the scan. She waved to me as she left.

  “See you soon,” I said, waving back to her. Once they left, Malthe and Lin both filed back into the room since they weren’t in the tunnels with us and didn’t need exams.

  “The others went down to the ER with a doctor,” Malthe said. “They looked fine to me. Shouldn’t be long, since they already have a doctor with them.”

  “We seem like VIP patients,” Lin said with a grin. “They won’t make us wait long. What did the doctor say?”

  “I’m regrowing my own skin at a rapid pace,” I said with a grimace. “Kind of gross, but better than being stuck here any longer. They got rid of Kira’s concussion. He just took her for one last check-up to make sure it’s gone.”

  “Ah, the wonders of modern technology,” Malthe said with a wistful look on his face. “Makes you wonder why anyone would reject it, doesn’t it?”

  “Yeah…” I said, my voice trailing off as I thought about this some more. “Yeah.” Nothing about these people was adding up, was it? Not a damn thing.

  A few minutes later, the rest of my team came back from the ER.

  “We’re all clear,” Semra said as they filed back inside the room Kira and I shared. “Well, most of us, anyway.” She gave Clem a side-eyed look.

  “What’s wrong with you?” I asked him.

  “Eh, they’re just worried about my leg,” he shrugged. “They gave me some ointment or some other shit to put on it. I’ll be fine.”

  “The rest of you are good, though?” I asked, and they nodded. “Good.” I breathed a long-awaited sigh of relief at this news.

  “Where’s Kira?” Kinley asked, looking around the room with concern etched across her face. “Nothing happened to her, did it?”

  “No, nothing,” I said, shaking my head. “She’s fine. The doctor just took her down for one last scan. Then we can go check out the Void.” Cindra raised her eyebrows at me.

  “At this hour?” she asked. “After what we’ve been through? I don’t think so.”

  “What do you mean at this hour?” I asked, looking around at the group. “What time is it?”

  “Well past dinner time, my dude,” Clem said. “I agree, we should just call it a day. Another time, maybe we could head down to the island to take a look, but I’m fucking exhausted. Let’s just head home.”

  “Okay, point taken,” I said. “I didn’t realize how much time had past.”

  “We were down there for a long while,” Cindra said, smiling at me kindly. “Clem’s right, it’s time to head home and get some rest. We’ll head back down to the Void bright and early tomorrow morning. None of us are any good to anyone right now.”

  “That’s fair enough,” I relented, reluctantly. “Okay, let’s go then.”

  “I should head back to my place, then,” Semra said, stifling a yawn. “I’ll see you all in the morning, say, six?”

  “Six,” Clem whined, primed to complain. “That’s insane.”

  “Welcome to an administrator’s life,” she laughed, clapping him on the shoulder. “You’re not a binder anymore, man, it’s time to start acting like it.”

  “She’s not wrong,” I told him when he seemingly looked to me for help. “Six it is, then. I’ll see you all then.”

  “See you then,” Semra said, waving as she left. “Tell goodbye to Kira for me.”

  It wasn’t long after that that the doctor wheeled her back into the room.

  “You guys are back,” she commented, seeing the rest of the group standing there. “How’d it go?”

  “Okay,” Cindra shrugged. “Clem got some medicine, but the rest of us are good.”

  “Where’s Semra?” Kira asked, looking concerned at her absence.

  “She went home to get some rest,” I explained. “She said to say goodbye to you.”

  “Oh, okay, that sounds like a good plan,” Kira said, stifling a yawn of her own.

  “How are you?” Kinley asked, approaching her bed with concern as the doctor returned it to its original place next to mine. “Did your scan go okay?”

  “She’s just fine,” the doctor said with barely a glance at Kinley as he signed off on some paperwork. “Not a hint of a concussion left. Has the nurse been by yet?”

  “No, not yet,” I said, shaking my head.

  “I’ll go see what’s keeping her,” the doctor said, leaving the room in a huff. A disgruntled nurse appeared not long after carrying some gauze and some kind of ointment, along with an E-pad, presumably holding our discharge forms.

  “Here,” she said, handing the bandages to me. “You’ll need to do this in the morning and at night for the next five days. After that, you should be fine. If you have any remaining tenderness, give us a call.”

  “Will do,” I said, taking the bandages from her, though I had no intention of wasting any more time at the hospital.

  Then, the nurse showed me how to apply the ointment and bandages, with the foxgirls watching attentively so they could help. Kira and I then signed the discharge forms on the E-pad, and we were free to go.

  “Thank god,” I said as we walked out of the building to where Gunnar was waiting for us, called by Malthe. “I fucking hate places like that.”

  “Me too.” Clem shivered, though it wasn’t particularly cold out, then approached another nearby waiting air car. “I’ll be heading back to my place now. See you all in the morning. Bright and early, apparently.” He gave another shiver at this thought and entered the air car with one last wave.

  “I’ll just… go with him,” Lin said, waving and rushing off after Clem to hop in the air car after him. I gave Cindra a bemused look.

  “Are they a thing?” I asked her, gesturing in the direction they’d left us.

  “You didn’t know?” she asked, raising her eyebrows at me.

  “I guess I’m the last to know anything around here lately,” I laughed, shaking my head. I guessed that was one good thing about Achilles escaping. I’d have more time to stay on top of everything else that was going on at TelCorp.

  “Can I stay with you guys tonight?” Malthe asked me and the foxgirls. “I don’t want to spend that long in an air car to get back to the south side, and I’m tired.”

  “No problem,” I said, waving a hand in the air dismissively. “Makes sense to me. And this way, we can all debrief about what happened, try to decipher those forms some more.” I looked down at the papers still clutched in my hands.

  “It’s so weird that they used paper,” Malthe said, shaking his head at the forms.

  “What isn’t weird about these people, really?” I asked him.

  “Fair enough,” he said, and we ducked into the air car.

  9

  Gunnar dropped us off behind my apartment building since there were still reporters clustered around the front.

  “Don’t these guys ever get any rest?” he asked, shaking his head at the throng of people as we passed overhead.

  “Definitely not,” I said flatly. The last thing I wanted to do right now was deal with reporters.

  “W
ell, let me know if you need anything else tonight, Mr. Joch,” Gunnar said as we departed. “Otherwise, I’ll see you bright and early tomorrow morning.”

  “Sure thing,” I told him. “Go home and get some rest, Gunnar. You deserve it.” He seemed more than glad to oblige.

  I don’t think I’d ever been so happy to see my apartment. It’s pleasantly black floors, walls, and furniture was more than inviting after the afternoon I’d had.

  Kinley sat down at my computer and ordered some food as soon as we got inside. Kira, Cindra, and I collapsed on the sofa across from the holovision while Malthe took a seat in a chair nearby. Cindra leaned forward and turned on the holovision. Kinley gave her a dirty look from across the room.

  “Do we really need to listen to all those talking heads right now?” she asked darkly. “I know that’s the last thing I want to do.”

  “I think it would be good to get a sense of what people are saying,” Cindra said defensively. Kinley merely grunted her assent to this. I sighed as the thing blurred on, and visuals of the nearly completely destroyed street in front of the Parliament building blared across the screen.

  “Ugh,” I groaned, shaking my head. “That’s even worse than I remember it.”

  “God, I don’t even remember it,” Kira said, her mouth hanging open. “I don’t remember it at all. This is terrible. The whole street’s destroyed.”

  “That’s what I had to do,” Malthe said defensively. “There wasn’t any choice. It was just that bad in there. We couldn’t find you any other way.”

  “I know, Malthe, we know that,” I assured him. “It’s just not a good look.”

  As if proving my point, the talking heads all started having a go at TelCorp at that, the camera splitting the screen in half between the people gathered around a sleek silver table in a newsroom and the destroyed street.

  “I don’t know why they have to keep showing it like that,” Cindra said, pursing her lips. “They’ve been doing that for hours, I’ll bet. Everyone knows what it looks like by now.”

  “They’re not going to send the cameras away,” Malthe said. “It gets them too many views. Everybody’s watching it, I can see on my computer.”