Patchwork

by Elle E. Ire

  It’s standard merc humor, but it earns him a small grin from Vick.

  “We’re a little more concerned with the concussion and your mental/emotional status given the trauma involved in the incident.” He ceases prodding at one of the already forming scars, which will mostly vanish in a day or two, and meets her eyes. “The airlock couldn’t have been easy to take.”

  She stares back, unwilling to admit to any measure of weakness. Pure Vick.

  Her stubborn attitude doesn’t deter Isaacson. If anything, his smile brightens. Soldiers know soldiers, no matter which department they serve in. “All righty, then. Scanner shows high tension levels, stress just within the scale’s measurement range, pain manageable but uncomfortable. Your implants dose you?”

  “Serotonin,” Vick admits.

  He glances at me. “You do an emotion purge?”

  I frown and shake my head. “Not yet. She wasn’t… comfortable doing that on-scene.” But we will. As soon as we’re alone, we will. I don’t mention that I could have gone with Vick into Sanderson’s office, that Vick’s struggling with her needs versus her independence. That would embarrass her, and I’m trying hard not to do that again.

  “Understandable. Okay, hop in the chair and let’s get a good look at your processors. You’ve definitely taxed them. They should self-repair, but we don’t want to risk implant overload. Oh,” he adds as Vick grudgingly seats herself, her entire body rigid, “your new doctor arrived earlier this evening. When Alex radioed in, the system automatically included her on the call, so she said she was coming by to meet you.”

  “I’m not exactly at my best,” Vick grumbles just as the hatch slides aside admitting a stranger in a white lab coat, tan slacks, and comfortable white shoes. The coat hangs open, revealing an off-duty blouse in fuchsia with the top three buttons undone and ample cleavage showing. Vick’s eyes go right to the gap and linger a moment before she flashes me a guilty look and averts her gaze.

  “Don’t worry about anything,” the woman says, taking a thoughtful sip from the ever-warm cup of what smells like coffee in her hand. She studies Vick over the rim. “I’ve seen you much, much worse.” After setting the beverage aside, she reaches back to adjust a thick ponytail of straight platinum-blond hair and winks one of her bright blue eyes. Her voice drops to a sultry alto. “And much, much better. How are you, Vick? It’s been a while.”

  Vick’s brow furrows.

  “Ah, well,” the doctor says, undeterred, “that’s to be expected, I guess. Though given where her eyes were roving, part of her remembers.” While Vick blushes furiously, she smiles and turns to me, extending her hand. “Hi there. I’ve heard about you. You must be Kelly LaSalle, the empathic assistant and the latest in Vick’s long line of lovers. I’m Dr. Alkins—Vick’s last female ex.”

  Chapter 11: Vick—A Reason for Everything

  I… REALLY don’t need this right now.

  “My… what?” I sit up straighter, muscles aching with exhaustion from tonight’s events. In the process, I manage to bonk my forehead into the headpiece dropping into place above me.

  “Oops, sorry.” Isaacson lifts his hands from the sensory controls to the right of the seat. “I thought you were settled. You okay?”

  I ignore him, focusing all my attention on the new arrival. She’s attractive, tall, with high cheekbones and a firm jaw suggesting the term “handsome woman” if she’d lived a couple hundred years ago. Hints of muscles stretch the shirt beneath her lab coat. She’s fit and a few years older than me, intelligent and no-nonsense as she takes over from the nurse and pushes me back against the headrest. “Still waiting for someone to control you, I see,” Dr. Alkins comments with a chuckle. She glances at Kelly. “You don’t look like the dominant type, but I’ve seen quieter facades in my time.”

  A choking sound draws my attention to Isaacson, who’s struggling to maintain his composure. Can’t tell if he’s uncomfortable or amused. Either way, I don’t blame him. I’m feeling pretty discomposed myself.

  I should step in, put a stop to this conversation, but I’m too shocked to form intelligible speech. And Alkins looks and sounds like she’s accustomed to being the alpha in any room, bedroom or otherwise.

  “So…,” Kelly stammers, “you two were… together?” She’s talking to Alkins but looking right at me.

  I shake my head at her. I have zero memory of any sort of relationship with this woman. For one thing, she’s not really my type. I prefer softer features, a gentler disposition. Then again, who the fuck knows what my type was before the accident? I’ve heard all sorts of things about my past, most of which sound too wildly far-fetched to be true. I’ve chalked it up to good-natured teasing from the other mercs. But….

  “Oh yes,” Alkins continues. “And please, call me Peg. We’re going to be working together for the foreseeable future, after all.” She pulls down the headpiece, a circlet of metal sized to fit snugly around my forehead and embedded with the latest in sensory tech. VC1 understands how it all works. Me, I just go along for the unpleasant ride. The metal presses, ice-cold, against my suddenly warm skin. “We were quite the item,” Peg says, tapping on the controls and dimming the lights in the room to better see the wall screens. “Lasted longer than any of her other flings. Vick was a relatively new recruit but up-and-coming and fast-tracked for bigger things, and I was just an assistant back then. Whitehouse ran the show here. I knew I wouldn’t get anywhere with my own projects so long as he was in charge, so I applied for a transfer. When it came through, Vick and I decided to call it quits.”

  She fastens padded restraints around my wrists to keep me in place and prevent any aggressive moves on my part while my brain is otherwise occupied. The soft cuffs don’t normally bother me, but tonight a surge of panicked nausea snaps Kelly’s attention to my face. I shake my head again, as much as I’m able in the headpiece, and swallow it down. But the uncomfortable knot continues to twist my intestines. Alkins’s story about us feels… wrong. “I don’t think that’s—”

  “Calibrating,” she says, cutting me off.

  I fall silent.

  “Initiating scan. Proceed with sedation.” Dr. Alkins waves a couple of fingers in a beckoning motion, and I sense movement to the left and behind me while Isaacson fiddles with the controls.

  A tiny mechanical arm about the diameter of a stylus lifts from the arm of the chair. Attached to its end is a hypodermic needle filled with the most powerful sedatives my body can handle—more powerful than any physician would give a “normal” human being. But I’m not normal. And the implants have a tendency to diffuse drugs if they find them threatening to my well-being in any way.

  Interesting that VC1 always fights this one with all her abilities. And inevitably fails.

  Kelly’s hand takes mine—the one on the opposite side from the injector. Hers is almost as cold as my own. I try to tamp down on the nerves so she doesn’t absorb them as much, but I have nothing left and the suppressors are barely functioning at minimal levels. “You don’t have to watch, you know,” she says, leaning down to speak into my ear. This conversation isn’t for Alkins.

  “I know.” But I always watch. I have a rather morbid fascination with facing that which scares the living shit out of me. Also, I prefer to see pain coming. Surprises, in my experience, are rarely good things. At least the machine can perform the injection much faster than a human could do it.

  Kelly cocks her head to one side, looking both at and through me. “Why are you freaking out? More than usual, I mean.”

  Is it the presence of my ex? The night I’ve had? The fight with Kelly before? “I don’t know.” Which might be the scariest part of all.

  The doctor rolls up my already torn sleeve. The needle reangles itself accordingly, then plunges home in one blur-quick motion. It hurts, but I’ve had much, much worse. I don’t even flinch at this. Icy-cold liquid travels up and down my arm to my fingertips, which go numb, and into my shoulder. Then… things get fuzzy from there.

&nb
sp; “You need to let go of her. You’re interfering with the scan,” says Alkins’s voice from somewhere down a long and echoing tunnel. I can’t see her. My eyelids are too heavy to keep open.

  “It’s never interfered before,” Kelly snaps.

  Losing her temper. I’m intrigued since it almost never happens with anyone except me, but I can only tune in and out.

  “…others weren’t specialists,” Alkins says.

  “Deal with it. Shouldn’t be a problem. For a specialist.” The pressure of Kelly’s fingers on mine increases, though I can’t feel actual skin to skin. Doesn’t matter. She’s sticking by me despite our differences tonight.

  I release one last held breath, sink farther into the padded backrest, and I’m gone.

  A hard palm connects with the side of my face, leaving the cheek stinging in its wake. I blink up at Peg, stunned that she’d slap me. Stunned by everything that’s happened tonight.

  “We’ve had some good sex,” she says. “But tonight I show you what I’m really into.”

  I tug on the soft but secure bonds (training restraints, she called them) holding my wrists and ankles to the conveniently spaced slats in the head and footboards of her king-size bed. Well, now I know why she laughed when I admired the craftsmanship.

  I’m naked and spread wide, aroused and confused. She’s spent the past half hour teasing me, and I enjoyed it. Then things changed. Painful twisting of my erect nipples, bites instead of kisses, and now actually striking me. Hard. With every act, her breath catches. Her naked breasts flush from excitement. I’d heard rumors when I started dating her, but she worked in the Medical division. Their motto is “Do no harm,” right? I didn’t figure on her oaths not extending into her off time. I didn’t believe the stories I heard. And the rumors didn’t come close to this.

  I get abused enough in training. I can take a punch or a kick like it’s nothing. But when I have sex… I don’t want to give or receive any kind of pain, physical or otherwise. I want to protect the one I’m with. I want to know someone cares. I want someone to be gentle with me. It’s the only time anyone ever is.

  And it’s not that I have to be in control. I have to take charge in every other aspect of my life. In the bedroom, I enjoy a mutual give and take. What’s happening now is all take, no matter what Peg might think of the exchange.

  I tug harder on the bonds. “This isn’t what I had in mind.” I’m serious.

  She laughs. “Word is you’re the toughest the Storm’s got. And you’re balking at a little pleasure pain? Give it time. You’ll come to like it.” She bites me again, on my inner thigh, hard enough I’m sure she’ll raise a bruise. I yelp in response and twist away, but I can’t get far.

  “This isn’t pleasure! It’s all pain, and I’m done. If this is what you need from me, I’m more than done. We’re a mercenary outfit. I’m sure you’ll find plenty of takers for this kind of thing, but not me.” It’s pre-accident, pre-implants, pre-enhanced strength, but adrenaline is an amazing thing. I close my eyes, concentrate my focus, and snap my arms up hard and quick.

  The bonds tear like paper. When I sit up, Peg moves as if to press me down again. My glare sends her back a step. She’s not laughing now.

  “Don’t. Just don’t. I’m sorry I’m not what you’re looking for. We’ve had some fun. Leave it at that.” I swing my legs off the bed, stagger a bit at the loss of blood flow from the bonds, but manage to retrieve my clothing and yank it on one piece at a time.

  “You’re every bit the slut everyone said you were,” she snaps, covering herself with a black satin robe. “Moving on to someone else when things aren’t perfect for you.”

  I hold out one palm in a halting gesture. “Stop. You don’t get to be pissed off here. You like bondage and pain, maybe you should have tried leading with that. We’ve been together over a month. You never said anything until tonight.”

  She stares down at her bare feet with their red-painted toenails. “You weren’t ready.”

  There’s enough regret, enough loneliness buried in her tone that I close the distance and touch her arm once, briefly. “I’ll keep this to myself,” I tell her. “Others haven’t, and I should have listened to them. You’re right. I get around. But I don’t brag, and I don’t share personal details. Your bosses in Medical won’t hear it from me. No one will hear it from me. If you want to call me a slut, go ahead. You’ll only make me more popular with the other mercs. When you’re an active-duty soldier, the more sexual partners you have, the better your rep.”

  “Get out.” There’s fire under those words—smoldering bitterness and hurt. She doesn’t meet my eyes, doesn’t look up once as I grab my other gear and head for the door to her quarters, but I keep her in my peripheral vision, like my subconscious knows she’s a dangerous foe who hasn’t quite decided on the next phase of her attack.

  I keep my promise. I don’t spread rumors about her. And while she says nothing about me, the fact that we split up and I walked out on her gets around. Like I predicted, it doesn’t hurt my reputation any. I get more dates after our brief relationship than before.

  One thing I notice, though. Whenever I go into the Medical section for anything, she’s always watching me, studying me, sometimes with a bit of longing in her expression, as if I meant a lot more to her than I’d realized. Oh, I thought we might have made a go at something long-term before her revelation about her sexual needs. It’s why I stayed with her longer than the one-night stands I’d become accustomed to. But it hadn’t been a sure thing. Not from my perspective.

  Other times, though, her looks feel calculating, analytical. They send prickling down the back of my neck and up my spine.

  When I hear she’s transferred to the outer-rim base, I’m relieved.

  And now not only is she at Girard, she’s in charge of me and my physical, emotional, and psychological well-being, second only to Kelly on the latter two.

  I’ve graduated from her “training restraints” to the chair’s real thing with her controlling them. And I’m powerless to snap these bonds.

  Chapter 12: Kelly—Photographic

  VICK RECORDS.

  The lights in the treatment room come up. The sedatives Vick was given wear off right on schedule. The second she’s awake, her eyes snap open. An alarm blares a soft warning. Some of the screens of data flash white, then darken. Vick jerks upright, dragging the headpiece equipment with her and causing all the gears and metal parts attached to screech in protest before she throws her upper body over the armrest and vomits on the tile floor.

  It’s not a lot. We missed dinner because of the Alpha Dog emergency and she didn’t eat much lunch, but it’s enough to send Isaacson, who’d moved to stand beside me in order to detach the restraints, leaping backward with a little yelp.

  Me, I let it spatter my shoes. Nothing a cleaning won’t fix. I wrap my arms around Vick’s shoulders, drawing her long, dark hair out of the way and holding her until she ceases gagging. Thank goodness I put up my emotion-blocking mental walls before the doctor began the scans or I’d be making a mess right along with her. The alarms screech louder.

  She’s shaking and gasping. When she finishes, she lets her head fall against me, but the trembling doesn’t ease. It’s a tremendous display of weakness for Vick, and my concern increases exponentially.

  “Off,” she whispers. “Please. Take them off.”

  I don’t know what she means until her arm muscles flex beneath my touch. Her wrists jerk against the restraints. Another screen goes blank.

  “Kel… please.”

  I shoot a glance to Alkins and Isaacson, but they’re both dealing with all the beeping, screaming machinery around us. Red and orange lights flash on the control panels. The screens on the wall are all either black or display nothing but static snow. Whatever set Vick off, it’s taken the technology down with her.

  I’m not supposed to touch the mechanical devices in this room, but under the circumstances I’m making an exception. I’ve seen it done
enough times to know how to unfasten the wrist guards, and I snap them free in two quick yanks.

  Vick releases a long, shuddering sigh. “Thanks.”

  “What happened?” I brush her hair away from her eyes, now closed. Her cheeks redden. Damn. Her growing embarrassment, along with the lingering nausea, seep through my shields, not enough to affect me, but I’m aware of both.

  “Yes, I’d like to know that as well.”

  I jump a little, not having heard Alkins come up beside me. She’s got all her attention on Vick now, with quick glances at the portable scanner in her hand fed by the more elaborate ones all around us. At the back of the chair, Isaacson reaches over and gently loosens the metal headpiece, then slips it off and reels it back into the headrest with minimal screeching. A cleaning bot activates and slides from its charging station against the wall. Whirring, it rolls over and cleans, then sanitizes the tile floor around my feet.

  “I… I don’t…,” Vick stammers.

  “Take your time,” I tell her, continuing to stroke her hair. I hope it’s the right thing. I’m not trying to baby her, just comfort her, but sometimes even I can’t tell what will trigger Vick’s need to be macho.

  Dr. Alkins’s finger scrolls through the data on her portable screen. “You’ve never had that reaction before. What changed?”

  She’s right. Diagnostics are never pleasant for Vick. She’s told me that the scanning process often brings bad memories, both recent and from before the accident, to the surface. Waking up is often accompanied by tremors, chills, and later, nightmares. She hates the procedure, but it’s never been this bad.

  My gaze falls on the open right-wrist restraint dangling from the armrest. “Was it the Rodwell thing?” I ask, keeping my tone as professional as I can. Rodwell restrained her before he sexually assaulted her. In our attempts since to be intimate, I have to take special care not to hold her down in any way. It’s a sure bet to end any romantic interlude.