Junkyard Cats

by Faith Hunter

  I’d survived the two transitions but they had left me what I was now—not superhuman, but no longer just human. With abilities that humans didn’t have.

  Eventually the half-bio/half-mech-nanos began to secrete through my skin, driven to seek out and modify others. All but one of the people I’d accidently or purposely touched after that had died in their own transition process. Including my father, who I had tried to save from the disease that had been sucking the life out of him.

  And now I’d gotten sloppy and let a human into my space. Jagger was already showing signs of the transition, bending to my will, becoming what I called a thrall. And he didn’t even have the fever yet.

  Sloppy. I’d gotten bloody sloppy.

  I got out playing cards and checked the Chrono because it felt as if my visitor had been in there a long time, but ten minutes wasn’t long unless I was nervous. Then it felt like forever. The music switched to Frank Sinatra singing “Fly Me to The Moon.” The music was changing again when I heard the PTC hatch open.

  I didn’t turn around. I stirred the soup, my toes tapping to Aretha Franklin belting out “Rolling In The Deep.” When I did look over, Jagger was sitting at the dinette, dressed in Pops’ clothes, his eyes on me, a fresh beer in one hand.

  “Gomez. Music volume down. Matt,” I said over the office speakers, pushing with my blood slightly, accepting Jagger’s transition, preparing for enough mind-altering to allow him to leave us alive. “Update, please.”

  “Twenty-four Puffers accounted for. Jagger’s bike is fine, to this point, Heather. What are you and Jagger having for supper?”

  Small talk. Baby steps, using our fake names to overwrite Jagger’s short-term memories with new ones. We chatted about the cats. We mentioned the imaginary boss a few times and his imaginary trip into Charleston, West Virginia, on business. Jagger didn’t take part. I brought the stewpot to the table and ladled chowder into the bowls. Jagger didn’t ask about the name changes. Didn’t seem to notice. He’d touched everything I had touched in the toilette. The beers. The ladle . . . everything.

  We’d had a guest once before, the first year I was here, Grant Zuckerman, a nice man who showed an interest in me and who I liked. A lot. He and I got close. Very close. It seemed like an okay thing, since Grant lived in the nearest town, Naoma, and had Internet access and wanted to do business with the scrapyard. Mateo and I had done great with the mind-altering, giving Grant his freedom, keeping him coming back, or so we thought. Unfortunately, Grant wanted more. It had gotten ugly. Mateo had been forced to end him. The bones were out back, buried beneath a pile of rusted-out John Deere tractors, his flesh long since eaten by rats.

  Transitioning the cats had been a mistake. I hadn’t known the bastardized nanos could pass from human to another species, but it had gone better once we figured out that Tuffs had become mine, and a queen. The cats didn’t seem to get sick. They just got better, smarter, faster, and had the ability to communicate mind-to-mind.

  I brought spoons to the table and sat. We ate, and the fish stew was delicious.

  “So. While we wait on Matt to clean out the Puffers,” I said, “tell me why you’re here.”

  Jagger frowned.

  “You said there was a tracking sensor?”

  “On a kutte,” Jagger said, sounding uncertain.

  “That’s a biker riding leather. A vest.”

  He nodded, the motion jerky. His color was higher than before we ate, his temperature beginning to rise.

  “My boss got in a pile of miscellaneous stuff not long ago.” I got up and brought the box of junk to the table. Placed it beside Jagger. “We can dicker—info, updates, and a little cash in return for your sensor—if it’s in here.”

  Jagger frowned again, but he went on eating. Several bites later he said, “Good fish stew, considering we’re in the wilds of nowhere desert. What info do you want?” He hadn’t even looked into the box.

  I said, “You can tell me what happened to Darson and his friend Buck Harlan.” Darson, the man who had been beating his girlfriend and her daughter—who was now me. Buck Harlan, the man whose body I left burning in the Tesla. Building upon things we had talked about and things I still needed to know. Replacing memories. Binding him to me through a shared chemical, hybrid nanobot signature.

  Building my nest, just like the cats did.

  Just like the bicolors did.

  As we ate, Jagger told me about the Battle of Seattle, and the deaths of Darson, his girlfriend, and her daughter. I corrected his memory and said I, Heather, had gotten away. I made up a few details, enough for his own mind to build upon, unless he looked at it all too closely. We had seconds of the fish stew, finishing all but a half cup. I wouldn’t be making fish stew again in many months, unless I sold some valuable scrap, especially since this problem with Harlan meant I hadn’t gotten my black-market goods. My eyes felt raw at the thought of Harlan. Dead, protecting me. What did Asshole know about Harlan’s death?

  My voice rough, I asked, “And Buck Harlan?”

  “He went missing two weeks past.”

  Jagger lounged back and stretched out his long legs on the bench, crossing his bootless feet, wearing Pops’ socks. It was strange to see a man in my father’s clothes. Jeans, double layers of t-shirts bulging with weapons in a harness. Those socks. Striped bright green, dark blue, and silver—Seattle Seahawks colors. Pops and Little Mama and I used to go to the games. I hadn’t seen a live football game in years. Pops used to keep a can of Skoal in his back pocket, apple blend or vanilla. I could almost smell the flavored tobacco. He used to sing to Aretha’s music. He had a terrible voice. Grief welled in me so fast that tears pooled in my eyes. I turned aside and blinked them away.

  All sorts of things were simmering to the surface and making me feel weird.

  Without cleaning my hands, I gave Jagger another beer, more of my sweat on the damp bottle. The man could really hold his alcohol—all that body mass meant it took a lot to get him drunk. He removed the top and took a long pull before setting it on the table, his hands smoothing the bottle around and around, his fingers brushing where I had touched it. Foolish, foolish man, that little voice whispered.

  “Harlan was tracking down info about an influx of MS Angels back into Louisville.”

  I went still. Mara Salvatrucha Angels. They had been the scourge of . . . well, of everything and everyone. MS13 had merged with the Hell’s Angels in a hostile takeover in 2030, creating a biker arm of the international criminal gang. The newly merged gang had swept through large swaths of territory, leaving a path of property destruction and dead bodies in its wake, an onslaught so violent that only the Outlaws had been equipped to counter it. The biker clubs went to war in 2032, in what had ended up a nasty, decade-long internecine conflict, led by a very young Pops and his predecessor. Pops had won and the scattered remnants of the MS Angels had not ended up as his best buddies.

  And now Harlan was here, dead, at the hands of a traitor, probably working with the PRC—the enemies of the Gov. and of me. Had the MS Angels found Pops’ famous Little Girl? A sense of foreboding grew, one I tried to keep off my face as I asked, “OMW cleaned the Angels out in 2040, didn’t they?”

  “Little known fact. The remnants of the MS Angels allied with the PRC late in the war. And after the war, when the Chinese departed, the Angels started to rebuild. They had Chinese tech and weapons caches. The post-war famine opened up territory. We heard rumors they were expanding again, this time without, or in front of, the People’s Republic of China, but with their own brand of ferocity and violence. Harlan went to check them out.”

  Bugger. I didn’t know what to do now. If the MS Angels had taken down Harlan and sent his body to me, that meant they knew who I was and at least some of what I had on site—the post-war military weapons caches for starters. And if the Angels had PRC tech, then . . . might they also have sent the Crawler?

  Bugger damn . . .

  Panic pattered up and down my spine. On the screen, I wa
tched as the junkyard cats tore into another Puffer. My thoughts still turned inward, I asked slowly, “Do you have a pic of Harlan? A recent one?”

  “Why?” Jagger asked, as he peeled a Morphon off his wrist. The chameleon capabilities of the narrow wrist band had matched his skin so perfectly I hadn’t even noticed it until he twisted it off, snapped it flat, and unfolded it. I hadn’t seen a Morphon in ages; I still used an old model Hand-Held. No one had Morphons except the military, the Gov., and a few filthy rich citizens with the proper sat-dishes. The Morphon, like the bike Jagger rode and all the tech on it, was an indication of the deep relationship between the military and the OMW.

  Holy freaking bugger. The MS Angels, the OMW, the military, and the Gov. all probably knew where I was. I was so screwed.

  Jagger swiped through pics and handed me the Morphon. It felt silky in my palm and instantly matched my much darker tanned skin. On the face of the Morphon was a pic of Harlan and Jagger, their bikes in the background.

  I pushed the Morphon back and pulled my Hand-Held. I found the stills of the Tesla and the body of the OMW in the back, then handed it to Jagger.

  “This came today, packaged and shipped inside a piece of scrap the owner bought. It’s Harlan, isn’t it?” Harlan, who had been my go-between for the OMW, the black-market network, and the real world. Harlan, who had been hunting for traitors.

  Jagger flipped though the stills several times, his face giving nothing away.

  But he had already entered the transition. I could feel the way his heartrate sped and his adrenaline spiked.

  “I recognized the tats as OMW,” I said. “When you showed up, I thought you might have sent him. Some kind of message to my boss. Then the Crawler situation happened and you were in as much danger as I was, so, I’m now assuming the reason you came had to be for something else, maybe even the kutte sensor you talked about.”

  Jagger transferred accusing, angry eyes to me. Any confusion or acceptance or transition uncertainty was gone in the adrenaline rush. He was back to himself for a moment.

  “You let me into your inner sanctum? Your shelter?” It was an accusation and also the dawn of the protective instincts created by the transition. “A stranger who showed up on your doorstep the same day a dead man came calling?”

  A dart hit the back wall a half centimeter from his head. Jagger went for his weapon.

  “Don’t,” Mateo said through the speakers. Jagger went still, eyes burning with rage.

  I took back the Hand-Held and tilted my head to the dart.

  “I was never in danger.”

  “So, you lured me in here. You were never in danger from me,” Jagger stated, “but I’m in danger from Matt and the internal defensive systems.”

  “I let you in to keep you safe from the crawlers. But if you sent Harlan to me, dead and covered with bicolors, then yeah.”

  “And if I didn’t?”

  “Then . . . I have a really bad feeling that the Angels are heading this way. Probably tonight.”

  Jagger might wonder why the MS Angels wanted to kill Heather-whatever-her-name-was. My lies were in danger of falling apart. Scrambling, I said something that made sense. “They must want some of the tech here, or the weapons.”

  “You have weapons?”

  “A few,” I said. “Some of the boss’s scrap is military scrap.”

  My mind zinged from one thought to another. If the Angels had gotten their hands on a Chinese Crawler, and on Harlan, maybe they planted the bicolors on Harlan’s body. Figured they’d swarm me, kill me, so they could take the junkyard and its goodies. Two birds with one Tesla. The Angels were crazy enough.

  “Matt,” I said, “update.”

  “Remote Viewing Aircraft have been aloft for hours. Sending one to the access road and one to reconnoiter the property. Vids to your main screen. Also searching outlying cameras.”

  “Nothing,” I said, as the ARVACs’ cameras took up the entire left half of the big screen. The road in both directions was empty. “What about a remote attack? An ARVAC of their own.”

  Jagger said, “If your weapons are important enough to warrant all the things you say they’ve done, then they’d want to see the whites of your eyes.”

  “Up close and personal,” I said. “Yeah. Okay. Still. Matt?”

  “Status quo,” he said. “Wait. At the extreme edge of sensor range, I’m picking up . . . something.”

  I nodded, my eyes on the screens. “You can relax, Jagger,” I said, pushing a little through my nanobots that were entering his bloodstream and nervous system. When nothing happened, I pushed harder.

  Jagger shook his head, blinking. He lifted the brown glass bottle as if trying to see inside. “I’m . . . feeling weird. I shouldn’ be feeling ’is way.” He tried to stand and didn’t make it. “Wha’ you do to me?” He thought I’d poisoned him. Instead, his temperature was going up and the transition nanos were reaching a critical mass.

  Mateo said. “I confirm activity at fifteen klicks. And the Puffers are suddenly all converging on the office.”

  Jagger cursed and nearly dropped the bottle.

  “Whada fu—?”

  His hands clenched hard. His eyes fluttered closed and he slumped over the table.

  I leaped to my feet, kicked off my house shoes, and punched open the armor bay that Mateo had moved out of the SunStar and installed in the office. The narrow niche unlocked with a soft sucking whoosh and I stepped onto the mounting pedestal, my feet perfectly centered in the outline. Turning my back to the armor suit, I sucked in a deep breath as Gomez took over the armor AI and began counting down. I closed my mouth and eyes and held utterly motionless, hands down and out to my sides, fingers spread.

  “Initiating female auto-donning,” Gomez said.

  The armor positioning arm went around my waist, pulling me against the torso segment. My head rocked forward and back. The armor sections began snapping over my body, interlocking, repositioning against muscles and joints, expanding and contracting to fit me perfectly. Across my middle, down my legs, down my arms.

  I suppressed the desire to fight it as the helmet and the face piece locked over me. Claustrophobia, memories from my own piece of hell, stabbed into me like knives. I forced myself to hold. Hold. Hold utterly still. The breathing tube slid between my lips and against my cheek and blew stale air into my mouth. I blew out that first puff with a relieved breath. Inhaled slowly on the second. Again. Again. I opened my eyes, looking out into the office through the suit’s visual screen and sensors, seeing what the office really was, what it could really do. Pops’ last gift to me, when he was dying and had figured out that I needed to leave the OMW. The glove sectionals encased my fingers. The armored boots snapped shut.

  “Prepare for peripheral nerve engagement, left hand,” Gomez said.

  I swore, as miniscule needles, finer than acupuncture needles, pierced into my palms.

  “Prepare for peripheral nerve engagement, right hand.”

  It too engaged.

  “Son of a bitch,” I said, adding a few comments about the engagement process. Gomez didn’t seem to care what I thought about his parentage or his sex life. Probably a good thing that the AI wasn’t sentient.

  “Do you wish catheter and bowel removal collection to be initiated at this time?”

  “No. God no.” I’d made the mistake of saying yes the first time I’d tried this. Never again. I’d hold it ‘til I busted first.

  I was breathing. I was alive. I was protected in the lightweight, space-worthy armor worn by US military in space-going vessels. My heartrate began to slow.

  “Liquid oxygen breathing supply required?” Gomez asked.

  “No. Current Earth atmosphere, desert conditions, West Virginia.”

  “Limited oxygen available according to current specified atmospheric parameters,” Gomez stated. “As measured by outside sensors, CO2 percentages are abnormally high in current atmosphere. Atmospheric dust filters active.”

  “Acceptable
,” I said.

  “Armor donning complete.” The waist arm clicked back.

  I stepped down to the floor. To see Jagger staring at me. Wide awake. With a gun pointing at my middle.

  “Well, aren’t you just full of surprises,” he said calmly.

  “Put down the weapon,” I said. “Do not pick it up again.”

  Jagger put the fancy gun down. Cursed. Wide-eyed, he stared at the weapon, right there, but not available to him. He did not pick it up again.

  “Go to sleep,” I commanded. Jagger slumped again.

  “Mateo?”

  “We’re dead without power. I’m moving out front, taking control of manual defenses. You’ll have to get into the ship and reroute power.”

  Mateo meant for me to go into the crashed and damaged spaceship that had leaked hazardous particles for years, and transfer power from it to our batteries before our next unexpected visitors arrived. It was dangerous, as I remembered from my one tour through the ship. My armor was flimsy compared to the warbot, which had built-in weapons and shielding, so, yeah. He was better equipped to defend us if it came to that. And with the office out of power to run the weapons we had retrofitted, my defenses were useless to me anyway.

  “CAIT will walk you through the procedures,” he said.

  Right.

  “CAIT” was the spaceship’s AI: Central Artificial Intelligence Technology. I wouldn’t be doing this alone.

  I raced out the back and stumbled over the ladder. Notch, sitting on the top step, his face turned to the window, looked over his shoulder at me. I let the inner airlock close, sealing us in together. Standing frozen.

  “Mrow. Siss.” It sounded like a statement. A two-part statement. I didn’t know his meaning, but it felt like, Invaders. Dangerous.

  “Yeah. And more on the way,” I said to him. “Mateo. We got a screen in here? If so, show Notch the attackers approaching.”