by Lauren Esker
Claudia put her hand protectively over her wrist.
"I think she's claimed them as spoils," Skara said.
"Those are high-grade military cuffs, not just any cheap consumer pair."
"All the better, then," Skara said with a bright grin. "Next time don't let us get the drop on you."
"Oh, we won't," Kriff said, showing some teeth in a tight smile.
Claudia poked Skara's arm. "Focus. Okay, so we've got a pair of extremely untrustworthy sidekicks—"
"—Excuse me?" Ilyx said.
"—but how does that help us?"
"I prefer to think of it as a gang," Skara said. "I always wanted a gang. Okay, gang, here's the sanctuary."
He leaned forward and projected a recorded image from his cuffs into the air. Claudia looked fascinated, and stroked her fingertips over the gold band on her right wrist. Maybe she hadn't known they could do that. He really needed to sit down with her and go over the cuffs' capabilities in detail.
Later.
If there was a later.
Focus. He rotated the image, letting them see the resurrection trees and the guards.
"The symbionts are through those doors?" Kriff asked.
"Right. And I can't just walk in because somewhere among these people, there's at least one Iustran."
He had to pause briefly to soak in the amazement of it. One of his people. And maybe, in fact probably, a lot more. If only circumstances were different—but no, he couldn't get distracted by that right now.
"How about I break in and you're the bait," Ilyx suggested through a fierce, tight grin.
Skara shook his head. "Not part of the deal."
"How do I know you won't double-cross me?"
"You don't. And I don't know you won't, either. I need to be the one to go in. That's not negotiable."
"And we should trust you."
"I'm trusting you not to sell us out to the Rhuadhi as soon as we split up," he pointed out. "If either of us double-crosses the other, we both lose. If you keep your end of the bargain, you get rich."
"If I turn you in for the bounty, we'll still get rich."
"Unless we get away. Which ..." He waggled his fingers at Claudia. "If things go south, all we have to do is portal back to the ship and skip right on out of here. And then you have nothing."
"And if it comes to a fight between you and us ..." Claudia tapped her cuffs pointedly.
"Fine," Ilyx snapped. "It's a truce until we get our payment. So we distract the guards for you—any ideas on how we do that without getting caught ourselves?"
Kriff grinned suddenly. "I have an idea. We can tell them we're there to make a deal. We didn't manage to pick you up on Birthworld, but ..." He shrugged. "We came back with something just as valuable."
"What's that?" Claudia asked.
His grin widened slightly. "Birthworld DNA."
"I thought you'd have more high-tech ways of doing this," Claudia remarked, watching her blood trickle into a collection vial as she leaned back on the slightly inclined medbed. She was reminded of giving blood at the Red Cross.
"This is the quick and dirty method," Skara said. Kriff and Ilyx were, by necessity, left unattended while he obtained the samples from Claudia, but Claudia hadn't felt comfortable having them in the room. They were out in the lounge; their voices could be heard, rising and falling as they talked quietly.
"Given a little more time than we have," he went on, "I could do what I did with my other harvests of Earth DNA and take a small sample, culture and reproduce it, then sell that. But this way we get a bunch in a hurry, from a resource you can replenish quickly."
"Easy for you to say," she muttered.
"I could hold your hand if it helps," Skara suggested, and suiting action to words, he took her other hand, the one not occupied with the blood-collecting process.
It did actually help. She squeezed his fingers, and he rubbed his thumb across the back of her hand.
"I really appreciate you doing this," he said quietly.
"It's okay. It's something I can afford to give. And I want to help." She glanced at the door of the medbay. "Do you trust them? Are you sure they aren't plotting to turn us over to the Rhuadhi right now?"
"Of course I don't trust them, and I suggest you don't either, but they're actually coming out ahead on this deal. If they betray us, they get nothing, as long as we escape; the Rhuadhi aren't going to pay them for nothing. I don't expect them to have the slightest investment in our welfare, but what I do have faith in is their willingness to do what's in their best interests. This way, they get paid twice, once for your DNA and the second time for whatever we can steal for them from the sanctuary."
"I really don't like that part, Skara."
"It doesn't have to be very many," he said. "It doesn't have to be any, if we have to get out of there in a hurry. They'll still come out ahead. Your DNA is more valuable than the bounty on me." He flashed a grin. "Good thing I'm not competitive."
"Right. Sure you're not." Claudia blew out a breath and leaned back on the pillows, wondering if she could actually feel the blood trickling out of her body or if it was just her imagination. "What are they going to do with it? My DNA?"
"Insert it into their own genome, of course. Their scientists will pore over it finding cures for recessive genetic diseases, clean copies of damaged chromosomes, new variations in skin and hair and eyes, in cheekbones and bone structure. They'll be delighted. I don't know if news of the rediscovery of Birthworld has made it back to Rhuad yet, but even if it hasn't, they're still going to pay top dollar if someone shows up with good, fresh genetic material that isn't everywhere yet."
Claudia looked down at the plastic cuff around her arm as Skara popped out a full vial and slipped an empty one into its place. "I don't know how I feel about little copies of ... of me running around."
"It won't work like that. It won't even be as straightforward as people on Rhuad turning up in a generation with your nose, or your chin. Though that wouldn't be a bad thing," he added, smiling at her. "No, it's more that they'll use it for a genetic repair job. Remember, we are the descendants of people who had a tremendous genetic bottleneck in their past."
"Yes, yes, you told me already, you're inbred." She felt a little lightheaded, told herself it was from the blood collection process, but she thought it was mostly from him holding her hand. "Like cheetahs?"
"Like what, now?"
"Cheetahs. I saw it on a nature documentary. They're a big cat on my world. The entire population is so closely related that even completely unrelated cheetahs are as genetically alike as if they were brothers and sisters. I don't remember why that's bad, though."
"It's bad because you don't have the genetic resilience to deal with change, and your population tends to accumulate recessive genes," Skara said. "Even in our case, where the Founders cleaned out as many damaged recessives as possible, some are always going to slip through or be produced all over again through normal DNA mutation. My people, for example, may be the descendants of as few as just four or five individuals, originally. We are all incredibly genetically similar to each other. It works for us because of our shapeshifting and because our genome was cleaned, but—"
"Okay, I got it, I got it." What a weird thought. In this mixed-up, turned-around galaxy, her entire body was made out of money. "What if they decide to not settle for a few vials of blood and just take the whole, you know, the whole me?"
"Well, the idea is that they won't know you're anything other than an ordinary Rhuadhi. If they catch on—" He made her portaling gesture.
She shook her head with a huffed laugh. "You're just so ... so ..."
"Clever? Ingenious? Full of good ideas? Why, thank you."
"Sneaky. In the Slytherin sense, though I know you won't get that reference." Claudia squirmed on the medbed. The cuff, with its needles, was starting to pinch. "Do you have enough yet? I'd really like to take this off."
"Yeah, that's probably good." Skara released her hand
and leaned forward to peel off the cuff. "Hang on, I'll get you an analgesic for that. And some rehydration and glucose wouldn't be a bad idea, since you'll be portaling again soon."
She flexed her arm, opened and closed her hand. There were a ring of pinpricks all around her arm, rather than the localized ache of a blood-drive needle, but none of them seemed to be actively oozing blood.
Skara squeezed a clear gel from a dispenser into his palm and began smoothing it over her skin with strong but gentle fingers. There was only the slightest tremor in his hands. As his ministrations spread tingling relief in their wake, Claudia studied him up close: the dark blue-purple circles under his eyes and the way he was biting his lip a little bit as he worked, as if rubbing topical ointment on her arm was a task of such overwhelming importance that it consumed his full concentration.
However, the green eyes he raised from her arm to her face danced with laughter. "Do you like what you see?"
Claudia jerked her gaze away, cheeks heating. "I think I'm looking at an idiot."
"A handsome idiot, I hope."
"An idiotic idiot," she flared back. "How can you—just—"
"Be this good looking? It's a curse, but I've learned to cope." He reached for a loaded injector. "This is saline and glucose. Hold still for a minute."
"You know what I mean! How can you joke when ..."
"When I might be dying? When I'm about to risk my life, and let you risk yours, for a cure that might not even work?" His voice was gentle, his face suddenly serious. She barely felt the sting as the injector went in; she was too focused on him. "Because if I waited until life was all sunshine and roses to laugh, I'd never laugh again."
"Skara," Claudia whispered. She dropped her gaze to her arm, where he'd taken away the injector, but still moved his thumb across the place where the needle had gone in, rubbing in slow, sensual circles.
And she wanted to say so many things: that life wasn't that bad, that there was a silver lining, that things would work out—all those things her grandma and Mom and Dad used to say to comfort her, whether her heart was being broken by her parents' divorce or the loss of a high school friendship or the jobs she really wanted and didn't get.
She didn't say it, because they were right but they were also wrong. She remembered how empty those words had felt, even for the pettiest of problems.
Skara had trouble dealing in honesty. She could model it for him, but not if she clung to platitudes rather than giving him truths of her own in return.
So instead she said, "You don't have to put on a brave face for me. Not if you don't want to."
"It's not for you, sweet Claudia." The gentleness of his tone drew her gaze back to his face. "If I let myself stop believing I can win, I'll lie down and never get up. I learned that a long time ago."
So that was what sincerity looked like on his face. It took her breath away.
"You only look forward," she said quietly, and raised a hand to brush the backs of her fingers along his jaw. "Live for now."
"Now you're getting it," he said, with the faint ghost of a smile.
Look forward. Well, why not? She'd done too much looking back already, living a cautious life rather than embracing the adventures she'd always wanted to have.
She sat up carefully. Skara gave her a hand.
"Feel okay?"
"Yeah. I've had much worse at the Red Cross. This was just like getting a blood draw at the doctor or something." She slipped off the medbed. "I think I'm ready to go."
"Wait," Skara said quietly. He pressed a small tube into her hand.
"What's this?"
"Insurance, of a sort. It's a DNA extractor, the same as the one I used on Earth. Just press it against any part of your body and twist the top. You'll feel a sting and it'll take a sample."
She examined it, touched the top, turned it over. "Why would I need it?"
"You might need to bribe or buy your way out, prove you really are who you claim to be in a hurry—there are a lot of reasons, and a lot of things that could go wrong." He opened a rugged plastic case with a foam-lined interior and took back the tube, pressing it into the foam, which parted and then molded around it. He added one of the vials of her blood, snapped it shut, and handed it to her. "So ... insurance. A back door out, if you need it."
The case had a belt clip. She snapped it on, and sat with her legs dangling off the bed while Skara filled another case with the remaining vials of blood, closed it, and set it aside. He then loaded an injector and tucked into his belt pouch. "One emergency dose of the last drugs on the ship that still might do something to boost me for a little while." His smile was wan and halfhearted. "If I have to use that, it'll be a good thing if there's medical facilities around when it wears off."
"Skara ..." But she couldn't think of anything to say. Instead she reached out and pulled him to her, and just held him for a little while. His arms were warm and solid around her, and he rested his face in her hair.
Eventually, he was the one to push away. "Come on," he said with a trace of his old smile. "Let's go steal a symbiont."
Twenty-One
It was just three of them portaling down: Claudia, Skara, and Ilyx. Kriff would have to stay behind on the ship. Claudia didn't feel good about that, but there was no way to disguise him as a Rhuadhi; he would have stuck out like a cat-shaped sore thumb. So he was their backup. Skara was back in his "Selu" disguise, and Ilyx had shapeshifted as well. Claudia took a careful look at her to make sure she could remember that this brown-skinned, green-haired woman was really Ilyx, and then realized that it didn't matter. Ilyx could change her face easily. Claudia decided that she would just have to rely on Skara as a shapeshifter detector.
"Ready?" Skara asked, and Claudia nodded. "Okay. See if you can get us back to the courtyard."
Claudia took a breath, braced for the possibility of pain, and concentrated on the vendors, the snow on sidewalks and rooftops, the smell of alien spices and hot drinks ...
It worked; the portal blossomed at her fingertips, revealing swirling snow beyond.
"What, I don't get a coat?" Ilyx said irritably.
"No," Skara said. "You can get one down there. Go!"
They went. The portal snapped shut behind them, and Claudia stumbled as the aftereffects caught up with her. Skara supported her elbow.
They had come out on the edge of the square, behind a row of booths. From that vantage, they peered past the street stalls and visitors toward the sanctuary. It didn't look like a mass alarm had gone up, but there were more guards on the door now.
"You're up," Skara murmured to Ilyx, who rolled her eyes.
Ilyx was shivering, hands tucked under her arms. "If I get caught, I'm blaming everything on you."
"That's funny," Claudia said with a scowl. "Coming from the person who chased us all over the solar system."
"We're on the same side now, sister."
"I'll believe that when you prove it."
"Watch me, then."
She marched across the square. Skara and Claudia watched her go, and Claudia suddenly felt Skara leaning more heavily on her. She looked up in surprise and found that his shoulders were now hunched and his face had developed a latticework of age lines. Silver laced his hair.
"Seemed like a good idea," he murmured. "Look convincing?"
"Yes, but you should probably do something about these extra thumbs," she murmured back, glancing down at the hand on her arm.
"Dammit." The number of fingers altered wildly, new ones growing and disappearing, before he got it back to the usual five.
This is going to be a disaster.
She had a sudden wild urge to cry out to Ilyx to stop. They could portal back to the ship and come up with a better plan.
Like what? Just walk in the front door, tell them we already stole one symbiont and want to steal another?
Anyway, the wheels were already in motion; Ilyx was climbing the steps. One of the guards reacted suddenly in shock, turning to look at Ilyx.
Ilyx was talking to the guards now. Behind her, Skara and Claudia mounted the steps. Claudia's hand felt sweaty on the Rhuadhi fake ID tucked into her sleeve.
If Skara was wrong ... if the Iustran guard could sense the difference between one Iustran and two, and spotted them ...
But they went right by her. She was distracted talking to Ilyx. They flashed their fake IDs for the other guards, and then they were inside the warm humidity of the sanctuary.
Claudia's knees wobbled. She hadn't realized that being on a heist was so stressful.
"Come on." Skara hustled her toward the second guard post. "Go, go, go. Anything could go wrong with Ilyx out there."
Claudia found herself once again bracing for an outcry. But none came. The only Iustran guard was apparently on the outer doors, and they showed their IDs, gave their fake names, and slipped inside.
"At least they don't have very many of my people working for them," Skara murmured. He looked wistfully over his shoulder. Claudia recalled what he'd said, about having met only a few of his people in his life. Under other circumstances, he probably would have loved to talk to the stranger. It was too bad that fate had put them on opposite sides.
Maybe after they were done here, they could try to look for one of those villages he'd talked about.
But that was for after. Right now they had to get through this part. Firmly, she focused on the matter at hand.
The inner core of the sanctuary looked like a hospital, all sterile white corridors and blank doors. It was also a maze. They kept hitting locked doors they couldn't open. Occasionally they ducked down hallways to avoid attendants in purple or yellow, and now and then they passed wandering visitors who looked as lost as Claudia felt.
"Do you actually know where you're going?" she asked Skara.
"Sort of. From what I remember of the other place, the symbiont chamber is underneath the—"
He gave a sudden gasp and started to double over.