by JC Hay
He sighed. "Netta—"
"You know the area, don't think I've forgotten that, and given the circumstances, I suspect you’re not currently on Corporate Services’ payroll as of fifteen minutes ago. You know, with them trying to kill you." She took a breath, reached up, and wrapped both her hands around his. "Please. I'll offer you double your daily rate to serve as my bodyguard."
"That doesn't make sense." He started to pull his hands back, and she gripped them tighter. In response his thumb stroked the skin on the inside of her wrist. Hazy memories of his touch from three years before sent traces of warmth to curl along her nerve endings.
Inconvenient, traitorous nerves. She needed his help, not his half-hearted attempts to send her back to the same people who had been hired to kill her. "There's a CorpServ operative after me. You know this city and have at least some inkling of Corporate Services’ tactics. You’re modified for combat and tactics, and you’re available. You're the best option I've got."
"You don't even know what my daily rate is."
"BlueGene paid me a ridiculous salary for my research. I can afford you. Trust me. It's not like I had anywhere to spend it."
His too-human eyes studied her, leaving her squirming as though he could see through her without any enhancements at all. After a moment, he sighed and dropped his hand. "Fine. You just bought yourself a bodyguard. Come on."
Chapter Three
J
oshi hated running. He hated the sick sense of dread that itched at the base of his neck in anticipation of a bullet that could come at any moment. Or worse, that he’d hear the subsonic crack just as the shot hit Netta. Even thinking it made fear and pain claw in his chest like a panicked animal. Easy to accept that CorpServ had no intention of letting him retire; he refused to let them destroy her chance to get out from under BlueGene’s thumb.
The attachment didn’t make sense. He tried to warn her away, knowing that whichever target the assassin had come for they’d be easier to find together than if they split up. But she’d ripped off the scars he thought had healed, brought all his regret over abandoning her rushing back to the fore.
He looked down at the hand gripping his. Too easy by half to remember three years ago, assuaging his guilt by helping a scared woman in a foreign city where she didn't speak the language. Or to remember the warmth of her embrace, the soft fall of her hair in his fingers, and imagine something as stupid as a future.
That ship has sailed, he reminded himself. You destroy things. You don't protect. You don't comfort. You break. That's all you're good for.
She kept up well. That much impressed him. He dragged her into a courtyard in between a handful of buildings and paused. Off the streets, he could take five minutes to let her rest and take stock of their situation. Figure out the best place to get her out of trouble.
Joshi scanned her, telling himself it was to make sure she wasn't hurt in the explosion and not just an excuse to let his eyes roll over her. She had trainers on, so at least she worked in reasonable shoes, rather than following some sense of fashion. Sweat plastered her shirt to her chest and her hair to her scalp, making it too easy to remember how her body looked. How soft her skin felt.
"Stop staring." She stepped away, patted herself down with both hands, then leaned forward, arms braced against her thighs. "I didn't get hurt." Despite her protestations, she gasped for breath.
"Take a second to rest. We're moving out again in five minutes. Sooner if he finds us."
Her head snapped up, eyes wide. "You really think he's still coming."
"Isn't that why you hired me?" He stuck with the obvious, which was easier to believe than the thought she might want him around for something more than protection.
"I hired you because I don't know anyone or anything in this city, except for you. Something your corporate masters arranged nicely."
"Corporate Services pays me. I don’t know where the job is sourced beyond that—it’s what maintains the neutrality." It wasn’t a complete lie. CorpServ may not have said who had initiated the contract, but BlueGene had a representative in the room and had made explicit instruction for how to cut all her ties to the past. "They paid me. Now you do. And that's how we stay alive."
"Then what do you need me to do? I'm ready." She looked at him again, her features focused, controlled. Not shell-shocked and needy like they had been three years earlier. She believed he'd get them out of this safely. Trusted him. A man could get drunk on that kind of faith.
A different man. Not the one who ruined her life in the first place.
Behind her, a white-suited figure stepped into the alley. Too many people around to risk a firefight, which was all that saved them. CorpServ hated having collateral damage. It reflected badly on the agent and the agency.
His suit had been badly singed, but it hadn't been destroyed. No doubt just as armored as the assassin himself. He stepped to the front of the alley and shook his arms free of the jacket. "You owe me for the suit, Mr. Joshi."
Joshi took hold of Netta's arm. He'd be faster carrying her than she would be on her feet. Fast enough to reach the streets? Possibly. Hopefully. He caught her gaze and whispered, "Trust me."
When she nodded, he called back, "Bill me." The he grabbed her and ran.
They came out of the alley with the killer close behind, faster in the straight line but with the twists and turns of weaving through the crowd, Joshi had the advantage. People didn't stop for the killer. Didn't give him space because they'd grown up without space to give. You had to know the crowds and be able to read them if you wanted to pass through, and Joshi did exactly that. They had opened up a lead by the time they got to the elevated train station.
He put her down, and they rushed up the stairs hand in hand. Above them, the chime sounded as another train pulled in to the station. He started the timer in his head. Twenty seconds, then their window would close.
He pushed her in front of him and risked a glance behind them. The other operative had started up the stair rail, his balance compensating for the bad angle and uneven surface. And without people to dodge, he was gaining.
They wouldn't make it.
Joshi grabbed Netta around the waist and charged up the last few steps, hurling them both through the train’s open doors. Other passengers yelled at the disruption and interruption. As Joshi stood and turned, the doors closed. The assassin made it to the side of the train just as it started to pull out. Too late to hit the door release.
They'd made it.
She leaned against him, and he kept an arm protectively around her, pushed away the rush of thoughts about how she felt next to him. Remembering the way she fit in his arm like she'd been made for it. After a few shaky breaths, she whispered, "Are we safe?"
Joshi tried not to smile at the naiveté. "Not hardly. We bought ourselves some time. That's all."
"What now?"
"Now? We need a place to lay low while I figure out where we're going next. How much cash do you have?"
Joshi leaned against the hotel room wall with a wince and ignored how badly the plaster bowed under his weight. Typical. Hasty construction with post-disaster funding, while the bulk of the money lined a corporate pocket somewhere. He tried to ignore the irony; his own job depended on consolidating power with the corporations. He was a foot soldier in the war between them, implicit in their greed.
“When elephants fight, the grass suffers.” He grumbled and pushed away from the wall with his good arm and crossed to the narrow mirror mounted to the right of the bed. With his shirt off, ugly black and red bruises told the story of his fight with the other operative. The bruise along his ribs had been violent enough he could make out his opponent's ring as well as each finger. The titanium mesh plating in his ribs prevented the broken ends of the bone from sliding apart. It might hurt like hell, but he would heal.
His hands were a different story. He'd had to choose between armor and mobility when he'd had his upgrades, and he'd chosen the latter. Going one-on-o
ne with the other operative had shredded the skin of his knuckles. His right pinky and ring fingers were twisted out of joint, and if the line of purple ringing his left thumb was any indication, he'd dislocated it and reseated it incorrectly.
He left his shirt unbuttoned. His hands hurt too damn much to try fighting with the buttons in the first place. Even opening it had been a challenge. Closing it again was out of the question.
A lightweight, prefabricated wardrobe stood on casters against the wall that separated his room from the doctor's. If it were any less obvious, Joshi might find it amusing, but at the moment he found the hotel owner's hand-waving method of appeasing morality-minded fathers to be an annoyance that he had to push out of the way. Joshi braced his good shoulder against the thin, water-blistered pressboard and shoved. The furniture slid to one side, revealing a single door that opened inward. He clucked his tongue in mock scandal, knocked once as a warning, then pulled open the door.
Netta sat on the bed, two long metal needles gripped in her hands as she kicked quickly looped yarn together into stitches on the scarf. The tip of her tongue peeked out between her lips as she stared intently at her work. The look of concentration applied to such a mundane, unnecessary pursuit was the final straw for Joshi's exhaustion, and he gave in to the laugh that bubbled up. "I take it you're okay then."
She snorted, pausing long enough to give him an effective side-eye glance. "Why would you say that? If there's an okay, I'm in the L3 point on the opposite side of its orbit." She delivered her pronouncement in a single breath and returned to her knitting.
Joshi sat down in the single wooden chair and propped his feet on the corner of the bed. "I just assumed. Since you were calm enough to start up arts and crafts." The needles ticked in silence. Watching her felt strange, the whole scene too domestic, awakening ideas he could ill afford to entertain. The tip of her tongue sent his brain skipping down entirely inappropriate paths and forced him to look anywhere else.
The room was as featureless as his own. The same markers on the walls to indicate an extensive augmented reality suite; most everywhere in Mumbai used AR for everything from news to entertainment. No doubt the hotel had set up a selection of faux windows showing some lovely scenery that wasn't the vast docklands that actually lurked outside. He thought about grabbing his ‘net-enabled ARglasses out of the jacket in the other room just to have something else to watch, but his curiosity wasn't high enough to warrant the effort.
Also the other room felt too far.
Once Netta finished a row, she slid the yarn deep onto the needle and clipped some kind of protector over the end to keep the project from falling off. She let out a slow breath and rolled her shoulders then turned her baleful glare on him again. "It is because of my 'arts and crafts' project, as you so derisively named it, that I've managed to stay sane at all. Now, since you don't appear to be going away, I can only presume that you want something else. What is it?"
He couldn't blame her for being prickly. It had to feel all too familiar for her; she’d spent years on the run. Perhaps despite having hired him, she still blamed him for her lot. That would make things easier for him. He could keep his thoughts clear without the distraction, and thinking clearly was the first rule of survival. "Just making certain you're okay. When you're calm enough, you'll want to try sleeping." He pointed at the door to the hall. "Don't open that under any circumstances. There's no windows, or I'd tell you to stay out of line with them too."
"What if I have to go to the bathroom?"
"Then wake me up," he said, stunned that she didn't yet understand how her life had changed. "Or wait. Do not go on your own. We've only got the rooms for six hours anyway."
"Why so short?"
"Because I don't want our well-dressed friend tracing us down, and the easiest way to prevent that is to keep moving." He gave a rueful smile. "I'm also not a robot, so I have to sleep every once in a while, or I won't be any good to you."
Her face softened, and she glanced at the bruises on his chest. "I assume you aren't packing healing accelerants."
Joshi scoffed. "Corporate Services doesn't pay for luxury. They want you to not get hurt and to get the job done. And they don't pay enough for me to get them myself." He pulled the edges of his shirt together, suddenly aware of the way her eyes kept focusing on the bruise.
She nodded at the tremor in his hand and curled up the half-finished scarf. "When were you diagnosed?"
"Diagnosed? Or when did I know?" He rolled his neck to one side and the other, feeling it twist and unknot. He’d had concerns about the tremor in his fingers long before the first bone fracture warned him of Implant Rejection Syndrome. "Not that there's much difference between the two."
"I didn't mean to touch a sore spot—"
"You didn't." He cut her off too brusquely and couldn't miss the flash of hurt on her face from it. "My IRS doesn't matter if we don't survive this thing. Yes, it's late stage, but I'm still plenty good enough to defend you. You'll get what you paid for." He didn't mention that if he failed at his job, neither of them would be alive to make the payment in the first place.
After a moment's silence, she spoke. "I don't understand why they're after you as well."
Joshi scoffed and stood to pace the room. "Because I've outlived my usefulness. At least that's my guess. It's not like CorpServ—Corporate Services, sorry—tell me who's fronting the money for the job."
"The perfect middleman," she said. It didn't sound like she believed it.
He had to resist the urge to turn on a radio or otherwise create white noise around their conversation. CorpServ were known to spy on their operatives, and just spy in general. It was the unspoken rule about the organization—all the corporations used them, because they had dirt on everyone. They knew exactly who did what to whom, when, and for how much. It served as excellent leverage to ensure repeat business. "As for who set him after you? Hard to say. It could be you're a target of convenience. It could be BlueGene, wanting to make sure they covered their bases. Just in case you had a harebrained plan to run off with their research."
She looked down at the knitting in her hands, and there was no misunderstanding the slump in her shoulders. The bottom dropped out of Joshi’s stomach. "You were going to run. Fuck."
"You make it sound like something awful."
Joshi shook his head. "Nope. You've got your reasons. I don't need or want to hear them. At the end of the day, you're the wallet, and I'm the hired help." He had to say it out loud. Keep the wall between them. Anything to push away his desire to comfort her. "If you're looking to run, it's my job to get you out."
Netta stiffened. "Your loyalty only goes so far as your next paycheck, then."
"Now who's making it sound awful?" She winced, and he resisted the urge to take it back. History or no, they didn't owe each other any explanations. Through whatever fates that mattered, he'd been given a chance to clear one of the negatives on his ledger. It wouldn't be enough to make up for a career of mercenary pursuits, but he'd take what small atonements he could get.
Netta watched him stand in the doorway between their rooms and tried to fight back the panic that clawed up her spine. He was leaving her in the room. Alone. Without protection from the killer hunting them.
The rational part of her brain, the one that took pride in all that she'd accomplished over the years, was disgusted by the weakness. Before she’d accepted BlueGene’s offer and the lab in Mumbai, she’d lived on the run for two years. She’d survived, had outsmarted and evaded pursuers both government and corporate. It hadn’t been easy, and the stress of it felt like it would kill her some nights, but she’d done it. She could do it again. She didn't need Joshi's protection.
But she could admit that she wanted it.
"Why you?" When he turned and looked over his shoulder, she realized how awful her wording had been. "I mean, why send you to destroy the lab? After..." She let the words hang between them, hoping he hadn't written off their prior time together as just
another contract.
He sighed, the sound as bone-weary as his expression. "Punishment? Sick amusement? They certainly know that the two of us..."
He let the words trail off, and she wondered how he might have finished the sentence. Bonded. Made love. Fucked. Netta felt a flash of anger at his inability to put a word to it. Something that might give her a clue how he remembered the first time they met. How he felt about it. "The only way they’d know is if you told them."
"They’d know, because there are no secrets from them. Corporate Services got where they are because they have eyes everywhere. It wouldn't surprise me if they have a camera in these rooms already."
A flutter of panic tickled between her shoulders. "It's a smaller risk than going outside, where we know they have eyes."
He nodded. "Indeed. No offense, Doctor. I really need to sleep if I'm going to be at my best."
"It's Netta."
"I remember," he said, voice soft around her name. He turned to pass through the door, arm tucked tight against his side.
She blurted out another question. "How bad are the fractures?"
His shoulders slumped again. "I really am exhausted, Doct— Netta." She'd never liked it, the consonants all in the wrong place, but he made her name sound gentle.
"You've got late-stage Implant Rejection, by your own admission. Depending on what you've had installed, one of the more common symptoms is osteoporosis. If our killer is wired up, and he certainly moved like it, then his fists would have shattered a healthy man's ribs. Yours wouldn't stand a chance." When he didn't say anything, Netta stood and started toward him. "If I'm wrong, tell me."
"Intercostal ballistic weave," he said after a frustratingly long pause. "Not actually that good against bullets, for the record."
She turned him back into her room and pushed his open shirt off over his shoulders. "It's not terrible against small arms fire. Actually good against knives."