by M. G. Herron
Or maybe that was the drugs talking.
Slowly, I realized I was feeling heady, as if I was floating. They must have given me painkillers.
“Miss,” someone said from the hallway. “Think he’s awake.” As they moved by the door, I recognized one of the Torlik medics who worked at the Jel’ka track.
“Andy,” Anna sighed as she came into the room, lowering herself into a chair that had been shoved close to my bedside. “Hey.”
I couldn’t help but smile at the sight of her.
It was funny. I never had liked being called “Andy.” It had always seemed like a childish nickname to me. Gonzalez sometimes called me “Andy” to gouge me, drawing out the Y and saying it in a high nasally pitch, but I never let anyone else get away with it.
Yet, the way Anna said it was night and day compared to Gonzalez’s mockery. Anna’s voice was soft and full of warmth.
When Anna called me Andy, somehow I didn’t mind it.
“Anna.” My voice came out hoarse, but some of the tension I hadn’t realized my body was holding released as she gripped my upper arm with both her small hands. “You’re okay.”
“Of course I am. I was so worried about you.”
“I was afraid—”
The words caught in my throat. I couldn’t finish the thought. Words alone were too small to encompass the way I felt about her, the cooling relief filling my body at the sight of her alive and well. My stomach somersaulted and I had a sudden, urgent desire to take her into my arms, to push the blond strands of hair out of her face, to get us above ground, to whisk her away to the countryside, to…
I remembered to breathe and looked up into her eyes. They were blue and soft and glittering. And, yes, a little red around the edges. She looked tired, but her smile was genuine.
“I know,” she said. “The father of that Torlik boy asked me to thank you. It was a very brave—and a very stupid—thing you did. ”
I nodded, gave a half-hearted attempt at a grin and stopped because it hurt to smile. Brave and stupid was right—stupid being the operative word.
I tried to laugh, but that was worse. Even breathing hurt.
Thank God for painkillers.
“I’m just glad no one else was hurt,” I said. “Especially you.”
Anna shook her head at me ruefully. “After the Jel’ka got loose, Hix and his security guards protected me long enough to get you out of that nasty pit.” She shivered all over and tightened her grip on my arm.
That made a certain kind of sense. I thought about it some more, remembered the whip cracking in the distance and how the grate over the Fetraxian pit had been unlocked and lifted when we hadn’t been looking.
I recalled the figure who stood in the doorway to the practice track in a haze of dust, ordering the Jel’ka to attack.
“Yarnow let them out, didn’t he?” I asked.
Anna nodded. The skin between her finely shaped eyebrows wrinkled slightly.
“Did they catch him?” I asked, my voice barely recognizable as my own. I took a deep breath to calm myself. “And the Pangozil? Did you figure out which one of them attacked Vinny?”
A figure moved into the doorframe, and when Anna turned, I saw a Pangozil—but not one of the bad ones.
It was Vinny, conscious and standing on his own two feet. His eyes were sunken and deep-set, the lightly furred skin around his eyes sallow, presumably from the aftereffects of the Ora. But he was smiling.
“Vinny,” I said.
“Ey, buddy! Look who’s awake. Heard your voice from down the hall. I was catching up with Rashiki.”
I guess that meant they'd settled things between them. Or at least that Rashiki no longer suspected Vinny had been in on the con.
“Someone tell me what happened,” I said. “When did you wake up?”
Vinny moved into the room until he stood at the foot of the bed. He exchanged a long glance with Anna.
“What is it?” I asked.
“I woke up yesterday morning,” Vinny said.
My mind reeled. Yesterday morning? That meant I’d been out longer than Vinny had…
“You’ve been unconscious for about thirty six hours.”
“Shit,” I said.
No other response seemed appropriate.
“Shit…” I said again, this time with less surprise and more bitterness. My dry throat finally got the best of me and I bent double with a fit of coughing.
Anna got up and brought a glass of water back for me. I sipped from it and then gestured for both of them to sit back down. They were looking at me like I might be contagious. Probably, they were just worried. I was intimately familiar with the helpless feeling of looking down on Vinny’s unconscious body, so I had some sympathy for what they must have been through.
But I still had so many questions.
“Tell me everything,” I said.
Anna nodded. “Hix and his security team had to take Yarnow down before we could get you out of the Fetraxian pit. It was dicey for a while there, but without Yarnow controlling them, the Jel’ka finally calmed down. It’s a good thing Hix is the only one allowed to have a gun in this place. Anyway, while the medics were looking at your hand, Yarnow confessed to smuggling Ora to Earth in the Jel’ka.”
The water helped—I was able to make an O with my mouth and let loose a low whistle. “No kidding.”
Anna nodded. “Yeah, if you can believe it. Someone made the creatures swallow the Ora crystals before the trip, like drug mules.”
“So what happened to Slim’dar was a mistake.”
“An accident, at least,” Anna said. “He didn’t pass the drugs through his bowels like they expected, and the bag holding the Ora in his stomach burst open during the races. That much of the drug in his system was enough to stop his heart and kill him almost immediately.”
She glanced at Vinny, who picked up the story.
“And when I woke up,” Vinny said, “I told them about Ezembaster, my old Federation Defense Forces buddy.”
My jaw literally fell open as I stared at Vinny. “You knew him?” I asked. Then, “Wait, you were in the army, too?”
“Space Navy, technically,” he said, grimacing. “Ezembaster and I served together on a few campaigns. We were friends, once…” His voice trailed off as his dark eyes grew distant.
“In the war against the Tetrad?” It was a guess, but it was the only war that offworlders seemed to care about.
“Yes, essentially. They weren’t yet calling themselves that when I served. After my stint in the Force, I got out and left that life behind. Came to Earth. Took on a new identity, a new appearance. I made a new life for myself here.”
“And Ezembaster took a different path.”
Vinny frowned. “Honestly? I don’t know. Ezembaster always sympathized with the rebels. The things we saw in that war…” He shook his head. “It was enough to change your mind, let’s leave it at that.”
“Do you think he’s working for the Tetrad now?”
“I don’t know. We lost touch after I came to Earth. It’s easy to lose touch here—that’s kind of the point. All I know is that I was stunned to see Ezembaster wearing that cloak before I lost consciousness. He looked… sorry.”
“You mean guilty,” Anna said. “What I don’t understand is, why did he drug you? You did nothing to provoke him.”
“Vinny was in the wrong place at the wrong time,” I said. “Ezembaster knew that Vinny had seen him and recognized him. He must have been trying to keep his presence here quiet, for whatever he was planning for the Tetrad.”
Vinny nodded. “That tracks.”
“I wish we got a chance to find out what that plan was,” I said. “Did Ezembaster tell you to bet against Slim’dar?” It was another guess, but the curious fact of Vinny’s bets had been gnawing at the back of my mind since Rashiki revealed it to me.
Vinny wrinkled his snout as if an awful scent had wafted under his nose. “No. No, please. I would never take a tip like that, e
specially not from Ezembaster. He’s a card shark, but he doesn't know the first thing about Jel’ka. I didn’t even know Ezembaster had come to Earth until I saw him at the track.”
“Then, how did you know to bet against Slim’dar? Rashiki thought you were in on the con.”
“Before I quit gambling due to some, ahem, losses… I’d been coming to the track and betting on these races for almost a decade. I know how to read Rashiki, and he always thinks his new Jel’ka can do no wrong. In his mind, they’re all winners. And why not? It’s his job to be enthusiastic, and fresh feathers always draw a big crowd. But when Rashiki flew over to say hello and told me that Slim’dar Killperch was a real winner, I knew something was off. I could see it in his face—whatever he’d seen had caused him to worry. I’ve talked to Rashiki about it. He told me that a few hours before the race, Yarnow was training Slim’dar, and the Jel’ka was being less aggressive than usual, tiring easily and having a hard time focusing—which is unusual. Jel’ka love to race.”
“So that was enough to make you bet against Slim’dar?”
Vinny’s smile widened. “I had decent odds of making my money back on the other two bets even if I lost that one.” He shrugged. “Rashiki knew Slim’dar wasn’t in tip top shape that night, even if he didn’t understand why. But he didn’t want his new Jel’ka’s first showing to be a flop, either, so he was pushing it hard. Based on how much he was talking it up—he was telling everyone about Slim’dar—” Vinny shrugged. “It was a lucky guess, really.”
I snorted. “Some luck you’ve got.”
“Gunn,” Vinny said, his voice sounding slightly offended. “There’s a reason I like betting on the races. It’s not just because I like winning money. It’s because I’m good at it.”
“So what happened to Ezembaster? And to Perekles, for that matter? I’d like to ask them both a few questions.”
Both of their faces went dark, like a cloud had passed over their expression.
“That won’t be possible,” Anna said.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
Vinny said, “Perekles is a retired political flunky of the Federation, so he gave Rashiki an earful about wrongful imprisonment and eventually Rashiki was forced to let him leave. As for Ezembaster… the Gatekeeper came and took him.”
I muttered a few choice curses under my breath.
The two of them exchanged another glance.
“Don’t act too mad,” Vinny pointed out. ”You have the Gatekeeper to thank for fixing your hand.”
“What!” It came out as a shout. Then my blood went cold and my voice got very low. “What do you mean, he fixed my hand?”
I held up my formerly-injured hand, found the end of the bandage, and began to unravel it.
“Wait, Andy, don’t!” Anna said. She reached out to try to stop me but I pulled away and managed to slip the rest of the bandage, now loose, onto the bed.
My awareness seemed to zoom out from my body. When I saw what was inside the bandage, my gorge rose like a hammer falling in reverse. I leaned over the side of the bed and retched onto the floor—a small splash of bile mixed with the water Anna had gotten me was all that came up. I hadn’t eaten anything for thirty six hours, hydrated by an IV while I had—apparently—been in surgery.
When I’d puked up the contents of my near-empty stomach, I looked back at the hand and blinked. It was half flesh and half sleek machinery. Where the metal grafted to my skin in the middle of my palm, it was nearly seamless. The surface of the metal was covered with finely patterned cybernetic circuitry. I felt my wrist with my other hand. Where bones and tendons had been, there were now tiny metallic cords and ball-bearing joints. Where there was still flesh, I had some faint feeling. The flesh is where the throbbing pain came from. The skin there was raw, covered in some kind of ointment, and still healing. Where there was metal, I had no feeling at all.
I flexed my fingers carefully. It was still tender as the metal pulled at the raw skin, but there was also a strength beneath the pain that shouldn’t have been there—not when I had heard those tiny bones cracking and breaking with my own ears.
My gorge rose again, and with it this time, a lawless, uncontainable fury.
A fountain of curses began to bubble up from my throat. I took the pillow out from behind my head as I sat up, and used my cybernetic fist to punch the shit out of it. When that became less than satisfying, I swung my bare feet onto the tile floor and laid a fist into the nearest wall.
I hardly felt any pain at all as my fist broke easily through the drywall—and, I realized, a stud behind it. What should have been excruciating was… kind of fulfilling. I beat holes in the wall, splintering two-by-fours until I was panting hard, my chest heaving, tears streaming down my face.
When a cold, light touch brushed my shoulder, I spun, still taken by the anger, and cocked a fist back.
It was Anna. She flinched away from me and held herself stiffly, but didn’t back down. She met my eyes, and gently used one hand to pull my cocked arm down to my side.
I let her guide me, my chest still heaving with anger. My shoulders slumped and then I sagged into her and buried my face in her neck.
There was a tightness in my chest that I couldn’t release except by screaming. I bit onto the anger and shoved it down. Slowly, ever so slowly, my ragged breathing returned to normal. Anna held me in her arms. I looked down at my hands, locked behind her back, one made of flesh and bone, another made of metal and alien tech.
Several Torliks had gathered in the hallway and were staring at me. Vinny stood at attention by the hospital bed and watched us both warily, patiently. I slowly became self-conscious that I was wearing nothing but boxer briefs, released Anna, and walked back to the bed. I covered myself with the sheet while Anna found my clothes. They had been cleaned and folded. With robotic movements, I put them on, then sat on the edge of the bed and let Anna wind the bandage back around my new metal hand.
While she did, I glared at the Torlik medics in the hallway until the group broke and they scattered.
When she was done, I let my body fall into her again, and rested my head on her chest. She sighed.
“Fucking Gatekeeper,” I said. “I’m gonna kill him.”
“Wouldn’t recommend that,” Vinny said, speaking softly. “Even if you knew how to kill a body hopper like the Gatekeeper, I don’t think you want to piss him off right now.”
“Why not?”
“The Gatekeeper’s been walking around in Ezembaster’s body.”
“Ah,” I said, suddenly understanding. “He’s trying to draw them out.”
“But if not Ezembaster,” Anna said, “who exactly is he trying to draw out?”
Anna had nailed the essential question that had been plaguing me since Vinny was attacked in Rashiki’s. Who was really behind the events of the past few days? I felt like we’d been playing a game of hide and seek with Russian dolls. Every time I thought I had the perpetrator cornered, it turned out to be another shell, with yet another mystery waiting inside.
“I don’t know,” I said, shaking my head. “The Gatekeeper knows something we don’t, the conniving bastard. He orchestrated this whole thing to eliminate the competition from his Ora dealing racket. He used me. I don’t like being played for a fool. Or used as someone else’s tool.”
“And now you know why I wanted you to stay away from the Gatekeeper in the first place,” Vinny grumbled.
I blinked. That was right. Vinny had been the one to introduce me to the Gatekeeper—reluctantly, I might add. I’d basically forced him into it while the Peacekeepers were at his doorstep.
That hurt more than my hand did, but in a different way. I clenched my bandaged fist. Still a little painful, but it was a healing kind of pain, not pure suffering. Whatever tech the Gatekeeper had put in my hand, it would be better and stronger than it ever had been before. Yet, it filled me with a smoldering fury, a feeling of having been wronged. I hated being indebted to anyone, let alone to the Gatekeep
er. This would only put me further into the hole, and I had no doubt he was keeping close track of the tally. Every move he made was calculated and manipulative.
With Anna on one side and Vinny on another, I sought out Rashiki, apologized for messing up his wall, and thanked him for all of his help. He expressed some guilt about letting the Gatekeeper take Ezembaster, but said that the Pangozil had been close-lipped and refused to talk the entire time he was in their custody, anyway. They’d worked out that Yarnow had been selling the Ora he imported to Ezembaster, but couldn’t corroborate the theory.
In the end, Rashiki was only too happy to have the Gatekeeper take Ezembaster off his hands.
“I can’t believe you just let him take the Ora.”
“Didn’t let him take it, Gunn. You think I’m some kind of rube? I sold the junk back to him. For a song! Come on, don’t give me that look, how else was I supposed to cover my damages? I’ve got a thriving business to run here.”
The look he gave me made it clear he thought I was at least partially responsible for those damages.
I swallowed a sigh. “How did the Gatekeeper survive the attack on Harbor anyway? Did he say who’s responsible?”
“All I know,” Rashiki said, “is the Gatekeeper is dangerous. Whoever did that should be worried that explosion failed to finish the job.”
After the conversation with Rashiki, Anna and I found Hix. He told me that ear-bug microphone they’d put in my head had also been removed while I was unconscious. I thanked him for the help, and for lifting me out of that Jel’ka pit.
“Think nothing of it,” the Torlik security guard drawled. “Just glad it’s settled. Now things can go back to normal.”
Normal huh? I clenched my new hand. What was normal anymore?
“You’re pretty lucky. The tech the Gatekeeper used to fix your hand, only the wealthiest of Federation citizens can afford. The Gatekeeper must like you.”
I wanted to say, “You mean he wants to own me.” After all, the borrower is slave to the lender. But I held my tongue. There was too much risk that what I said around offworlders would make its way back to the Gatekeeper. I already had enough trouble.