“You’re joking, right?” After looking me over he decided I was not. “Not the joking type?”
“No, I suppose not,” I admitted.
“There’s a furniture store in Burrow 5 - Idyllic Creations. Might deliver. I can call them,” he suggested.
“No, I’ll find it.”
It was more than keeping professional distance. I wanted to be able to do the little things for myself. I had grand plans. I was going to cook my own meals. Wash my own clothes. Go out and buy a coffee. I’d always wanted to do that. I’d had coffee of course but not gone out to sit, enjoy the beverage in the open air. Maybe I’d have time today to at least experience that, I hadn’t found a way I enjoyed it thus far, but I was looking forward to enacting and maintaining a ‘life’ despite the pull away from it right now.
My primary goal was finding and assessing the man who killed our murder vic - a Mr. Colin Ardman - so artlessly. Considering the vacant but viciousness of the murder I considered termination as my only resort, at least until I found any evidence supporting self-defence. Our law was simple: don’t draw attention to yourself or the rest of us. Murder wasn’t actually the problem. Leaving a mess was. He’d left the body to be found and examined, which was a direct dereliction of duty.
His second crime, though it was not a recognised crime, was the abuse of a fellow member of our species. It was not an enforced law because it was outrageous. It certainly reflected on the man’s character.
While most of us cared little about the life and death of humans we did hold loyalty to our own kind. Not to say were incapable of emotion, the opposite was true in most circumstances, but generally Variants were simply more practical. Probably a historical result. Nurture instead of nature.
Obviously there were conjunctures that birthed aberrations. And it occurred to me again that he exhibited traits more of a Gen1 Variant. Ultimately that fact would help the profile but not define it.
So, primary target: One murdering son of a bitch who didn’t know how to keep his hands to himself.
Secondary target: my twin. Or near enough. I hadn’t considered it earlier but I suppose she could be a clone of me. Or me of her. Confusing. Twin, definitely twin, I told myself. If she were a clone we’d have exactly the same genetic signatures. Hers was slightly, but significantly different. But even if she were a clone, current research inside our parameters of genetic manipulation proved even clones had their own consciousness, a self-awareness that behoved genetic makeup to adapt to life experiences.
I exited my apartment as I would any time – inaudibly. I padded softly past my neighbour’s doors, doing my best not to listen in. This had been a daily achievement. Despite my efforts, and although blocking out others thoughts had slowly become second nature to remember, I’d always hidden constant slips.
My mental walls were never tested so periodically while living at Onyxeal Home Base. I was able to shelter there, away from outside stimuli and for the most part, with a strong anchor steadying me.
Now I struggled to keep that anchor from latching onto me. I fretted how easily I could gauge even vague mood changes from him. It meant I had to widen the gap. Now, on top of the metaphysical strain I also had the physical and I could do nothing about the outside noise. Pollution, in the highest order.
I would get used to it – come headaches or ear infections, I would. It had been my choice to leave and I knew living away from base would have repercussions. Noise would be only one hurdle but I forced optimism.
I kept my gaze straight as I walked briskly past sounds of arguments and intimate murmurs. Not my business. Towards the ninety-degree turn in the hall where my path would lead past the stairwell to Lolly and Marsh’s door.
I caught the indiscreet spat of two men and tilted to look up a floor to where I’d heard them.
I hesitated then, lain against the grubby wall, I listened.
“We’ll have to wait for her,” one man suggested.
“Where we gonna bloody wait? At the doorstop like dogs? I didn’t sign up for this shit,” number two whinged.
“You want to tell the boss that?” Number one suggested smugly.
Number two cursed.
I had to ask myself: did I owe Lolly my loyalty? These men could be here to cause her harm. I couldn’t imagine why but I had to take it into consideration. Why else would two men be lounging at her door bickering about what to do about her? Fortunately, my decision-making became moot. The men decided that they would leave for now. I backed up around a corner but trailed them out and took exacting attention of their height, weight and features as well as the vehicle they sped away in. Well-dressed thugs in a swish car.
I didn’t particularly like the fact that high-end thugs visited my apartment building and made a mental note to look a little deeper into the life of Lolly. I suspected Marsh knew little. He’d already left for work that morning, as I knew he always did from our discussions at my ‘house warming’ party. I couldn’t imagine Lolly faking such a bubbly personality but I admitted to myself that my understanding of normal behaviour was limited. I’ve always lived in the extremes not the banal. Stars, I wanted banal.
I’d keep an eye on the situation, and told myself that my own safety was the motivation.
My body regulated its own temperature but I had donned a reproduction leather jacket, namely to conceal weapons but also because the day was grey and drizzling. It’d look unusual if I were not dressed accordingly. Little things, I had to assimilate to every day now.
My weapons lay snug against me - three daggers, sleeved in sheaths, sewn into my jacket for each arm. Every jacket and shirt accommodated for. Those extra tutorials from Claudia allowed me to be so creative with a needle. I also carried a knife in each boot. Metal detectors wouldn’t pick up the alloy they were made out of.
I hiked my jacket up and headed out.
Chapter Twelve
A few blocks away were a combination of stores and stalls, cramped together, not for customer convenience I assumed but because the power was reliably available there, though I suspected they still fell prey to the undecided earth’s core that had been working up the courage to flip the past five hundred years or so. It caused havoc but wasn’t apocalyptic.
I passed wafting clouds of scents, hanging meats, sweet fruit close to expiring, and the wet dog smell of scavengers and the rich burnt scent of coffee that could almost be tasted on the air. Time to tick one thing of my list. Coffee, while checking the news and making sure I hadn’t been followed, which I was fairly convinced I was. Whether it was Spartan or more unlikely, Carne, it made me hyper vigilant and even more paranoid.
A tiny bell pinged as I passed through the entrance of a store called ‘Nelly’s’. One customer lifted his head as he heard the bell but quickly pulled his personal screen up again with a scowl. As if I was at fault for the effort it wasted for him to look up.
Nelly’s was a coffee house/ Asian convenience store/ takeaway food store. Definitely a nauseating combination of textures, scents and sounds. I smiled. It was exactly the type of experience I was after. I waited patiently for the customer in front of me to finish placing her order and take a seat before moving up to the counter.
A young Indian girl was manning the till. Her face held a few spots, either showing the first signs of puberty or the symptoms of working near a fryer filled with fat.
Her ethnicity contradicted the store, being an Asian grocer, but that meant little. All countries were so multi-cultural that you could no longer say an Indian came from India no more than you could assume a Caucasian did not originate from Nigeria. Religion and nationality had been abolished after the last war.
Except at Heart’s Hope I realised as an adult.
I often wondered how the world would have continued if the side that won, hadn’t. But it had, so human beings were now simply human beings, apart of one race. And since Australia was the least affected in the world many people had flocked here, seeking asylum.
I ordered a hot breakfast and a cof
fee as well as juice. I slid into a booth in the corner to the right of the entrance, which allowed me to overlook the entire store as I’d been trained.
I watched recent events on the store’s holo-screen. Nelly’s was not the sort of establishment equipped with tables containing interactive holo-screens, which I found refreshing. Our world might as well be an augmented reality like the ones you could jack into and escape the common drudge of your real life.
Flying across the bottom of the screen: Hundreds killed in militant coup – Mother drowns children – World will take another 250 yrs to switch poles – PH levels in oceans have reached toxic levels for wildlife - President promises strict new policies for cloning meat. All the while a woman in a high collared blouse, ebony hair slicked back severely, droned on in a monotone. The epitome of stereotypical.
I tuned out all but the military coup and wondered where Carne was. Hoped he was still far away. It would be easy enough to find out but I wouldn’t risk him latching onto a thread of my thoughts.
If he were involved in that or any other coup, chances were he’d been hired to initiate it. Carne wouldn’t condone civilian losses but mercenaries had little to do with politics. Even less to do with media reporting the slaughter of hundreds of civilians while conveniently missing the illegal religious rebels holding their countrymen at ransom, committing genocide.
Ah, the memories.
“Milk?” asked my young attendant.
“No,” I decided. “Thank you.”
I was glad I ordered the juice. The thick sludge called coffee glugged down my throat and I decidedly curled my lip at it. An acquired taste for that particular roast maybe. I tried to stay optimistic that my other to do’s would have better outcomes.
After breakfast I wandered another block and had my second breakfast to satisfy my high metabolism, after which, put me right on time for my approximation of rush hour at the emergency department. To be sure I was not followed I meandered through many more markets and streets than necessary and only when I was certain I felt no stirrings of paranoia I continued on to the hospital.
I accessed my planner across my face in a virtual experience easily achieved with the VR in my sunglasses instead of my arm, for privacy’s sake. The access granted me the hospital’s current records for intake and waiting times.
Eight hours for non-urgent definitely was a shitstorm of government incompetency.
Public transport was a relic. Remains still lingered underground, but private “taxis” were available. Run by entrepreneurs who paid off the Sector Guard like any other business and the local Sector Governor, who was not related to the government in any way, shape, or form. More like a crime boss. He actually ran the Sector which included eleven Burrows.
So, I hailed a cab (a gurgling rust bucket with moist seats and questionably licensed driver) and got dropped off a few blocks from the hospital.
The emergency department was under construction – like most of the city. Serpentine hallways made from particleboards piloted patients to their destinations. A claustrophobic maze of sickly white ceilings and walls would crush any adventurous spirit if they became lost.
Directed by tiny, camouflaged signs to administration, I located the glass cage aptly named the ‘waiting area’ where a milling mob passed the time before being treated.
Oddly, it was silent of conversation. But the shuffles of bodies and beeps of holo-magazines, children crying or running amok, scuffing of shoes marking the resin flooring or the muttering of wait times made the chaos loud. I’m sure their minds would barrage me with rage and impatience if I allowed it so I strengthened my shields and waded through carefully.
Winding past the coughs and flying spittle, of bleeding appendages related to workplace injuries and hyperactive children proved difficult to achieve without small bumps here and there. Something I tried to bear with dignity.
To say I had mental powers was a little extreme. My abilities seemed to always be the opposite of power. However, I could offer a thought to a distracted, overworked and underpaid nurse fifteen hours in on a shift that had no end in sight, and have her pass my suggestion off as her own. And that is exactly why EN A. Sorrenson decided at that exact moment to backtrack – leaving the door ajar in her wake – suddenly recalling a chart she’d somehow forgotten.
While a tad dotty and confused, Ms. Sorrenson was no worse for wear. I conversely, had to shake the mental note to buy Sarine, my seven year old daughter a new gymnastics training sim. She’d be so excited. We only ever bought the children one gift for their birthday and because she’d found something, anything to bring her from her shell we were willing to splurge. Keep her from the little anxieties that kept her from speaking out at school.
I was able to slip unnoticed into the closed office of the Resident Nurses in the Emergency Department, who I hoped all would be engaged for the subsequent ten minute but it took long moments to slip back into my own life.
Longer than it should have.
And it was so fractured and complex compared to the Nurse though I did not envy her the bone weariness and sense of helplessness encumbering her when she walked through the door to work.
I swivelled into a chair and initiated a computer.
Simple. Of course their programs would be so simplified a tech savvy child would have no trouble accessing it. A hand-print and password protection acted as the only security. Evading the password altogether was easy enough with the correct training – which I’d had - but the real handy part was that I didn’t possess personal fingerprints in the way humans did. Variants exhibited very smooth pads on their fingertips smooth enough to fool any current technology, so as my hand fell into place, the lingering prints left behind by the RN were recognized instead.
With a beep and a tiny glowing green light, I was permitted entry.
Fingers flying over the holographic touch-screen, I accessed the reports entered for two weeks ago. The scroll tracked my eye movement down as I searched for the right file and I found… nothing. Nimic! No report. Not even a single data entry to suggest my double had been brought in. I double-checked. Triple checked, and then checked the ambulance entries.
All deleted as if never there.
Had Spartan sent someone to delete them? No, it had always been the first task appointed to me.
Had my target done exactly what I would have: deleted all traces as soon as he was able? If so, he was ahead of me. It confirmed my suspicion that my twin had been abducted. So badly injured, some one picked her up.
I just had to find the footage.
I checked localised drone footage over the Emergency entry instead.
Fast tracking the scenes. The footage had no gaps but I never found her exit. I switched views, an idea unfurling. How would I escape notice? Stumbling and panicked?
Brow furrowed, scanning the hospital parking lot drones I suddenly piqued at the gummy footsteps of rubber soles and a one-sided conversation of orders and procedures nearing the office.
The door would open any moment.
“Patient Styles can be transferred now to Ward Four,” the RN directed to the corresponding footsteps. Her holo-doc set to click audibly as Patient Styles was ticked off her list.
“I’ve recommended young Miss-” I tuned out and scanned the office for a suitable escape route, nix that, hiding spot. The office was without an adjoining door and even I would hesitate at jumping through a sealed window. Bashing doctors and nurses ‘round the head before running blindly into the daylight did not appeal to my practical side either. Besides, the staff wound be bound to notice a repeat of me escaping the hospital – battered or not.
Tick, click, beep. The door slid open with a pshh.
Chapter Thirteen
I barely breathed as the attendants entered. My heartbeat washed through my ears like I was diving at depth. I clung to the memory of floating face down in the ocean at night on a training exercise with Carne and his parents. The salted midnight darkness was only a semi dark for me an
d though I’d closed my eyes for a while to meditate, allowing me to hold my breath even longer, I splashed them open when I felt a cool brush of roughness to my exposed thigh.
Carne floated beneath me staring up at me like an underwater apparition. His chiselled upper-body sparked with the small amount of light attracting my retinas. He smiled. So carefree that smile was, that the memory I’d utilised for the skill to Shadow almost pulled me in.
That throb of my heart was suddenly back in the hospital office, my head realised it was being skull fucked and I swayed, disoriented. As the door closed behind Sondra (the RN) who was rushed out of the office by an entourage of personnel (morbidly excited med students) calling her name and squabbling to tell her about a crash in one of the patients I fell bodily to the floor and twitched involuntarily.
Shadowing was not a natural skill for me. It was one Spartan forced me to learn. I could now hold it for forty-five seconds but it ate at me.
I was worse coming out of it today. Something in me felt so much more explosive and yet breakable. I was struggling to hold everything out now. I took a few minutes to convince myself I wasn’t dying.
What was the point of being in peak physical condition, at the height of evolution, and be so debilitated by the traits foisted onto my genomes? I hated that I held so little control over my own body. It reminded me what else I had so little control of.
Woman, get up! I raged at myself in a way I never raged to those that knew me. Control it. Rein it in.
I eased back the way I came, forced my efforts into the same evasion and stealth I’d used when I entered only to become bailed up at the exit by an old lady in a knitted turquoise beanie struggling to get her wheelchair out the door before it jammed on her again.
“Let me,” I insisted, hand out at the ready.
“I’ve got it this time, leave me be,” she practically growled at me, her jowls wobbling. Cranky bitch.
“Got to get used to it some time. Never will if people keep insisting I’m helpless,” she garbled while rolling back to get a run up. Or should I say roll up. Would have been laughable if I didn’t want out. Which I did.
Variant: A Sci-Fi Romance (Variant Trilogy Book 1) Page 8
