by Beth Reason
**
“Stop,” he said in as loud a voice as he could muster.
“Five more minutes.”
Tenet dragged his feet through the ash, no longer even trying to step lightly. “I can't go another five seconds, let alone minutes!”
“Stop being such a baby.”
“I'm not being a baby,” he pouted. “We've been walking almost all night! I need a rest.”
“Not yet. And pick your feet up more.”
“You're an evil little woman,” he mumbled. Scarab laughed and thanked him. The moon was bright over the ash, and seeing wasn't as much of an issue as he thought it would be. It was almost like the first snow over the fields, the sign to migrate. Several times in his life he'd been able to witness it at night, and it shocked him that the only real difference between then and now was temperature. The nightfall over the Summer scene added yet another twist to the surreal existence that had become his temporary life. “Can I at least take my gloves off?”
“No.”
“But it's cooled down so much!”
“Not the sand.”
“Just for a little bit...”
Scarab threw her hands in the air. “Fine. If it'll keep you going, fine. But I warn you...don't trip.”
He didn't bother to tell her he had no plans of falling again. It was better not to remind her of the mess earlier. He worked the combination on the gloves clumsily, trying to complete a delicate task through the bulky material. Finally the first lock clicked into place and he tugged a finger with his teeth. A rush of warm air flooded around his hand, up into the arm of his suit. He wouldn't have cared if it burned him on contact...his hand was free. He held it in front of his face and flexed it, reveling in the feel of actual air circulating between his fingers. “Ew. It's wrinkled like a prune.”
“What did you expect?”
He shrugged. “It doesn't matter. It feels wonderful.” Just at that moment, when she was finally looking at him without any sign of contempt, he tripped. He stuck his hands out in front for balance and struggled to counteract the pull of gravity on the bulky suit. It was only a momentary bobble, he recovered easily. However, the smirk on Scarab's face gave him her “I told you so.”
“Pick your feet up. Up. Why is that such a hard concept?”
“I am picking my feet up!”
“Pick them up higher!”
“What does it matter, anyway? The bots won't be tracking us...”
“Never listen. You never, ever listen,” she almost shouted. “I found you, right?”
“Well, that wasn't very hard since I was lying unconscious after the horrible...”
“I could have found you anyway!” Scarab tried desperately to get herself under control. She was getting dangerously loud, and that wasn't good. She ran a glove through her hair, grudgingly agreeing with Tenet that the gloves would be better off. “Look. Let me spell it out for you one more time. Bots, hunters...and wraiths.”
Tenet scoffed. “Wraiths are stupid animals.”
“Animals, yes, but definitely not stupid. Walk.”
So it was the walk and talk thing again. He sighed and plodded after her. “I fail to believe that they track.”
“Of course they do, you ninny. All animals have their ways of tracking.”
“No, really?” he said sarcastically. “I know that. But they track with scent. There's absolutely nothing I can do to hide my scent.”
“Have you ever seen a wraith hunt?”
“Well, no.”
“Then how do you know what they can and can't do? Wraiths were intentionally genetically designed to be as close to us as was possible. Why would you think they can't do pretty much what we can?”
“If they could do what we do, then they'd have their own civilizations. There would be towns of wraiths. There'd be a society and culture and...”
“And you assume there is not.”
That silenced him. What he knew of wraiths wasn't very extensive. The only hard documentation was from hundreds of years ago, chronicling their creation and stopping, obviously, at the time of impact like everything else. They were a nasty race of apes that, as far as science could tell, consisted of a handful of descendants of ancient laboratory experiments some bleeding heart let loose before the big asteroid impact. Though no one in modern times could feel anything but disgust behind the experimentation on primates, the goal appeared to have been to insert human characteristics into other primates as a means of strengthening the human body's own genetics. Perhaps if the world stayed turning on it's comfortable axis as they must have assumed it would, the science could have been honed. Instead, the cosmos interceded and what was released into the wild was a population of mutated monkeys that were too human in all the wrong ways, and no one around who could document the further changes. The only purpose of a wraith was to kill, eat, and survive at all costs. On the few occasions where he actually witnessed one in the wild, it had already been dead and covered in another animal's blood. The bodies were always given to the sciences for study, but aside from the blood and bits of all sorts of animals, there weren't many clues to the life of a wraith.
“They have a civilization?” he asked.
Scarab gave a curt nod. “Rough, but it's there. There's an organization to them that I've only seen in humans. They look at tracks, they seem to discuss their options...”
“Wraiths have no vocal chords. That I know for sure. We dissected one in biology.”
“True, but there are other ways of communicating,” she continued, half expecting his schooling to make him interrupt. “Watch them sometime. They're far more cunning and organized than any regular old animal.”
He shook his head slowly. “No. Sorry, but it just doesn't make sense. If they have a civilization, as you claim, we would have found colonies. Dwellings, at least. There would be some kind of proof.”
Scarab was unfazed by his argument. “Maybe there are. How good would you sleep at night knowing that just past Border South there was a colony of wraiths, just waiting for someone to be forgotten?”
The thought made him shake to the core. Even the dead ones he had seen sent shivers down his spine. Bald apes, with tiny hairs all over their bodies. Structurally, they were very similar to humans. In fact, it had been said that there were “advanced wraiths” who tried to pass themselves off as people, donning clothes, going from home to home and devouring all inside. Of course it was a fairy tale designed to keep children from trusting strangers. But Scarab seemed so sure. It was almost as if...
“Have you seen them?” He tripped, but caught himself again before she noticed. "These colonies. Have you actually seen them?"
She thought about ignoring the question and letting the subject drop, but he was going to have to face them sooner or later. Better to be armed beforehand. “Yes,” she said slowly. “I've seen towns of wraiths.”
It was too much. “No," he said firmly. "The government would kill them.”
“You and your damned government,” she said half under her breath. As their time together grew, so grew her mixed feelings of contempt and annoyance at having agreed to the bounty. Not that there was ever much choice. Her resources were dangerously low. Being an off season bounty hunter took way more money than the average person could ever imagine. Every season, Summer or Winter, supplies had to be purchased new. The suits for Summer were designed to last maybe one whole season, usually not even that. She had to have a backup at all times of every piece of Summer gear. And in Winter...Winter was even worse. The suits “specially designed” to handle the frigid climate were intended to be used in emergency situations only. Seven Winters so far, and though the scientists assured the bounty hunters they were “close”, they were still waiting for the breakthrough in technology that would increase hunter survival. And while they waited, the seasons were getting worse.
So when the Exalted Leader himself offered her this bounty on his spoiled, rotten, self centered son, she did the math. This one bounty would give
her a bit of financial freedom. With it, she could purchase enough supplies for easily three seasons. “It won't be easy,” the message on her com had said after she signed the contract. “But I'm told you're the best.” At the time, it was his tone that annoyed her more than having to once again risk her own life for an idiot.
Most bounties were governmental consignments. The majority of people who risked the off season lifestyle did so to escape prosecution. However, there were a handful of private bounties every year; terrified parents who desperately needed her help finding their foolish child before the government taggers realized they were missing. It was the modern teenage rebellion: survive the off season. The kids believed it gave them a status with their peers. She always spent the first couple of weeks in the off season searching for little brats. And her instructions from the parents were almost always the same. “Find him, find her...bring them back safe.” This was her very first private bounty where the instructions matched her governmental consignments, to the letter. It gave her a grudging soft spot for this misguided boy. His father's instructions were clear enough to make her determined to bring the boy in alive, despite what she said to keep him in line.
And yet, Tenet had no clue. He put his entire trust and faith into a government that didn't care one bit about his well-being. It was clear he had a top notch education. He had perhaps the most inside view of government any regular citizen ever would. He was privy to the closed door meetings and the secret societies with their padded pocket plans and aspirations. He was in the thick of it, and still had no idea how things truly worked. Perhaps it was time for a little real education.
“You ever been to the Borderlands, Tenet?”
The comment threw him off guard. “I thought we were discussing wraiths?”
She nodded. “We are. The Borderlands, though. North or South.”
He shook his head. “Of course not. That's illegal.” Scarab gave him a bland expression, and he realized what he said. “Oh. Yeah. No, never been.”
“You've heard of them, of course.”
“Well of course,” he said with annoyance. “We learned all about them...”
“...at the Academy,” she finished with a roll of her eyes. “Right. What have the almighty learned ones taught you about the Borderlands?”
Tenet cleared his throat and stood straighter, a habit from giving dissertations at the Academy. “Borderlands North and South is somewhat of a misnomer, as both the northern hemisphere and southern hemispheres have their own. However, since we inhabit the northern, we'll use that for this discussion.” He ignored the roll of Scarab's eyes. “The Borderlands North is an eight hundred mile band that encircles the earth. It's the border between seasonal habitation, the dividing line between Winter and Summer settlements. The climate is considered too volatile to support lasting colonies, and as such, is dead space. Caught constantly between the seasons, any human habitation there would be impossible. Borderland South is the twelve hundred mile band around the equator where the temperature never cools enough to support life. The global desert. As uninhabitable as the Great Arctic.”
Scarab sighed. Why she had asked in the first place when she knew exactly what she would get... “Fine, Mr. Textbook. That's great to teach to little kiddies so they'll never wonder.”
“That's straight up fact.” Of that, he was sure.
“Borderland South...now that one I'll give you. You think this is hot? Imagine this doubled, all year long. On that, you're absolutely correct. I've been there once, and I'll never take another assignment in that region. Ever.”
Tenet quirked and eyebrow. “What assignment could you have possibly had down there?”
Scarab ignored it. She never disclosed the intimate details of her bounties to anyone, not even the Association. In her mind, people screwed up. Why make it everyone else's business? “A hot one,” was her only answer before she moved on. “But you're completely wrong about Borderlands North.”
Tenet sighed. “Do you have to argue with everything I say?”
“When everything you say is wrong? Yep.”
Tenet suddenly felt very tired. “Fine. Disagree with everything I say. I give up.”
Scarab looked at him and saw the sag. Well, they got further than she expected. Their discussion had driven him about two miles more than he claimed possible. There was no mistaking his posture or the look in his eyes. This time, he truly was spent. “We didn't make it to my usual stopping point, but I know this area fairly well. If you can go a few hundred more yards, over that crest there, we'll use the barn for the night.”
Tenet looked shocked. “Use some else's barn?”
Scarab laughed. “Oh, come now. Don't look so shocked and embarrassed. I'm not going through their belongings, we're not stealing anything. They'll never even know we were there.”
Use someone else's house? His mother would have a fit! Good, honest, decent people just didn't do that. Of course, Scarab was a bounty hunter. Not exactly the good, honest type. An even ghastlier thought popped into his head. “Dear god. Have you ever used my house?”
Scarab chuckled to herself and pointed ahead. “There. See it?”
She had! Her tone said it all. “You...you...” he sputtered, trying desperately to think of an insult.
“Let's go,” she said with a grin, obviously enjoying his intense discomfort. They plodded ahead, Scarab radiating self satisfaction and Tenet trying desperately to shake the willies. How many hunters were there? And how many of them had felt free to make use of his home while he was completely unaware? Did they snoop? Did they check his cabinets for medicine and look under the mattress for private things? He could picture grubby fingers rifling through his belongings. His mother's underwear drawer. Or even worse, his sister's. What did they do? More importantly, what did they know?
They reached the barn, and Scarab took a unitool out of her sack and waved it at the lock. To Tenet's great dismay, the latch unbolted and the seal disarmed in seconds. “Oh, god,” he said in a sick voice. “It's that easy?”
Scarab sighed. Enough torture. “Look, kid. We do what we have to do. Our suits need to come off. We need to repair. Our boots must be coated and our masks purged and recharged. And we can't do any of that without air conditioning. There honestly is no other way.”
Tenet swallowed hard. She made sense. He knew for a fact his air supply needed purging. It was one of the reasons he was so eager to get it off earlier in the day. And he didn't even want to think about what the inside of his suit looked like. He'd worn it four days straight. He knew what she said was logical. He still couldn't shake the feeling, though, that it just wasn't right.
Scarab didn't want to wait for him to make peace with it. For the last five miles, the heat in the sole of her left boot had been building, and now she was sure she had blisters. She'd pushed through two whole days without stopping to find him as quickly as she did, and was sorely hurting for her efforts. There was nothing more in the world she wanted at that very moment than to dip her feet n some cold water, and a criminal suddenly standing on his morals wasn't going to stop her. Without a word, she stepped behind him and gave a great shove. He tumbled ahead into the dark barn and Scarab sighed with relief as she sealed the door behind them.
“Heaven,” Scarab said awhile later with a contented sigh, swishing her feet back and forth in a basin of cold water. “Absolute heaven.” She closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the chair, enjoying the sweet simplicity of cool feet.
She had shed her suit almost as soon as the door had been resealed. In a burst of energy Tenet couldn't help but admire, the next few minutes had been spent setting the suit to recharge and repair, clipping the mask to a purge unit, and gathering supplies for her foot bath. All Tenet had managed to so was plop down on the floor and watch.
What an odd person she was. Tenet had heard of bounty hunters, of course. He knew they caught criminals. In the rare moments he ever gave them any thought, he'd always imagined that they were rough and t
ough and very near to being outlaws themselves. It never crossed his mind that they could be women, and certainly not ones like Scarab. Her suit was rough and aged, the white marred with dirt, dust and small tears. Her mask was an older model, one that didn't have the auto shield his own contained. The visor was slightly mirrored to reduce glare, and with it on, her features were nearly impossible clearly to distinguish. When she had removed it to eat earlier, even then she still looked rough and tough. Dirt and grime had gotten inside, and her habit of constantly squinting outside, even in the dark, made her look weathered and trail weary.
Without her suit, the cares of the heat forgotten at least for the moment, she looked like someone he could have known in his own life. His father always insisted one could tell good breeding from a distance. There was something about those from a higher social status that could not be masked. The idea that this Scarab person might be more than she seemed both shocked and humbled him.
Scarab rolled her head to the side and opened an eye. “What?”
He turned red at having been caught staring and said the first thing that came to mind. “How do we have power? I thought the grids were off.”
“They are, the main ones anyway, transport grid and main power. These barns have to be able to withstand the temps. Houses, too. Every house and barn had their own source to keep the basics on.” Scarab leaned her head back on the chair and rolled her eyes. “I figured a man of your education would know that.”
Tenet's blush deepened. Of course he knew that. He just had no idea how to access it. One wave of her unitool, and it was lights on. He didn't want to admit how long he tried to access the emergency power on his own land to get inside.
Scarab chuckled to herself then told him to get his suit off and get some sleep. “I have to repair and charge...” he started to protest.
“Not tonight. Get to sleep. I'll get it started for you.” The look of relief on his face annoyed her for some reason. “I said just for tonight. Don't get used to it. By the looks of your gear, it needs a professional touch.”
Tenet tried to hide his smile as he got up and plodded to a corner of the barn which contained emergency supplies. Every farm had to, by law, be equipped to handle any weather anomaly. Hurricanes, tornadoes, and even early heat waves had caused devastation in the early days of the New System. As a result, a list of emergency supplies that everyone had to have was passed into law. He opened the emergency storage bin and removed a blanket, thought about it, then removed one more. With blankets in hand, he looked around the barn for a private place to strip out of his suit. Unfortunately, this was the Mcaf Ranch. He knew it well. The Mcaf's were feed farmers, scrap corn and wheat, and their crop needed little work. Unlike his own barn, there were no stalls for processing, no little rooms for storage. Two huge cube bins took up an entire wall of the barn. As his father said, “An enviable crop, actually. Hack, slash, and store. That's it.” Aside from the silos, the barn was an enormous open space for people to work and for the tractors to be repaired in season. Off season, of course, he didn't even have the tractors to offer a bit of privacy.
Scarab sighed heavily. “I suggest you stop standing there and get moving. Come on. We can afford four hours of sleep, then it's back to it.”
Tenet swallowed hard and looked around for somewhere, anywhere, to change. “Uh, can you turn around?” He hated sounding like a child. But he hated the idea of no privacy right at the moment even more.
Scarab shook her head. “Oh, for heaven's sake...”
“Come on. Please?”
The please was new. Scarab bit her tongue and scooted her chair away from him. “There, Mr. Self Conscious. Better?”
He ignored her comment but was truly grateful. Scarab had removed her suit in front of him like it was no big deal. And it wasn't...for her. She had been smart. A pro in every aspect of the use and care of the suits, Scarab had been smart enough to wear full clothing underneath. Unlike Scarab, when he donned his suit, he assumed that the less clothing he had on under the suit, the cooler he would be, and had opted to wear only underwear. As he learned less than four hours into wearing the suit, it had been an unwise decision. He worked the system of locks and snaps as quickly as he could, dreading what he knew he'd see.
As soon as the cool air hit his bare skin, he felt a flood of relief. The relief was short-lived, though. Within seconds, his skin felt like it was on fire. Every inch of him felt chaffed raw by the system of wires, coolers, and padding that had seemed misleadingly soft when he tried the suit on before his adventure. He tried to move gingerly and wrap the blanket around him, but the wool of it felt like little shards of glass and he couldn't control the hiss of pain that escaped.
Scarab turned at the sound, and swore like a sailor as she jumped up and ran over. She kept on swearing when she ripped the blankets from his hands and looked him over, head to toe. “Shit, Tenet. What the hell were you thinking?” She poked and probed and hissed herself at a few particularly bad spots. Tenet could do nothing but close his eyes, feel the heat scorch his face with embarrassment, and wait for it to be over.
“Underwear," she said incredulously. "That's all you wore? The big bad rebel chaffed raw in his friggin' underwear!” She raged and screamed as she stomped her way to the first aid center and rummaged around for supplies. “Did you think this through at all? I'm serious. I want to know. Did one single plan actually factor into this little test of manhood or was it completely a last minute whim?” She said she wanted an answer, but Tenet knew otherwise and did the only thing he could. He kept his mouth shut and waited for her to wind down. “Dammit,” she scoffed, dabbing at a raw spot on his knee. It took all he had not to wince, but he somehow maintained control. “For the love of...” she went off again when she got to his upper thigh, where one of the three main cooling units had actually drawn blood. “Why the hell didn't you say anything sooner, you...you....ass!?”
Tenet took a deep breath and held it. Her hands were on his midriff then, gently messaging salve around his hip and across his stomach where the center crease of the suit left an angry red welt. He could no longer feel the sting of the salve. Instead, he felt something else and tried desperately to keep himself under control. He looked at the ceiling and pretended not to notice how soft her hands were or how close they were getting to... Wraiths. Had to think about wraiths. Other hunters. Big, mean ones, bearing down on him. Bots. Those were good to think about. Better yet, a bot blasting a wraith who was eating a hunter. Ghastly scene. He had to keep that in his head.
Scarab was oblivious to anything he was thinking or feeling. She was disgusted with him in that very moment, and decided she'd probably stay that way for a long time. Never in all her hunts had she come across a suspect with such little common sense. Underwear. What the hell was this kid thinking? “A fat load of good that fancy degree did for you, Mr. Smartypants!” She moved into safer territory, wiping with gusto at the scratches up and down his arms. After the salve came bandages. “And now I'll have to spend the entire night on your suit.”
Tenet cleared his throat. “I'll do it,” he said weakly.
She stopped and gave him a look that told him not to argue. “That suit is a festering pile of disease. You're lucky you haven't gotten infected as it is. Do you know how to clean it?” She didn't wait for an answer. “No, you don't. If I let you back into that suit and there's even one bacteria still alive, you're dead. Nothing I can do. And I'll be goddamned if I'm bringing you in dead!”
Tenet quirked an eyebrow. “Really? I thought you said it didn't matter if I lived or died?”
The glare she gave him scorched to the core, but he didn't care. He was glad he said it anyway. At least he regained a bit of pride. Just a bit.
When she was finished, she gathered up the supplies and put them back in the emergency bin. Without a word she stalked past him to her sack and rummaged through until she found what she was looking for. Into her com, she said, “Scribe. Supplies. Mcaf.” She snapped it shut, then closed
her sack with a loud thud. She saw that he was still just standing there and sighed a heavy sigh. “Get to bed.” He didn't argue, just numbly nodded and spread the blanket out on the floor. Within seconds, he was asleep, leaving Scarab to spend a long night picking over every inch of his suit.