“I handled it without full biohazard procedure for years and I never developed symptoms. That’s why I had to inject it.”
“So how are you going to hide this? I think you should come clean with Prescott. Don’t you ever learn?”
“Esther simply passes off my results as Alva’s. He has no idea what we’re doing. He gets vitamin shots and gives tissue samples. Simple.”
“He raped and murdered small boys. Someone’s sons. Forgive me for going out on a limb, but if you don’t know if this is lethal, and you tell him so, what’s unethical about doing it? And shouldn’t he pay for what he did?”
Adam stared into his cup, frowning. Then he looked up. “And shouldn’t I?”
That was it. Nevil was incensed. Adam was getting his science confused with his piety. “Is that it? Atonement? How does that help us? How does risking the life of our leading weapons scientist make sense when we’re losing a war? Damn it, Adam, that’s selfish.”
It was the first time Nevil had dared say that they were losing. He hadn’t even realized he believed it until the words erupted from him. But it was just a matter of doing the math; the human population was now less than 0.1 percent of the total it had been before E-Day, even on the most generous estimate. They needed a miracle, and science didn’t do those.
And yes, he thought Adam was being a martyr.
Adam cradled the empty cup in both hands like a fortune teller reading the grounds. “I’m just a bomb-maker, Nevil,” he said, “who happened to have a brilliant wife who left some valuable notes. But I was also an officer in the Royal Tyran Infantry. And I never asked my Gears to do anything I wasn’t ready and willing to do myself.”
Nevil had never served. It ate at him. It was hard now to get through the day without thinking of Emil and how that was what it meant to do the right thing. Sacrifices had to be made.
“Okay, you can infect me as well,” he said. “More test subjects, better data. I’ll do it.”
“No,” Adam said. It was a voice he rarely used, his Major Fenix persona. “You will not. And that’s an order.”
CHAPTER 9
Fenix won’t cooperate, end of story. I’ve examined him, and he’s obviously under a great deal of stress, not really surprising given the state of the prison, but he’s not presenting as mentally unfit on tests. I suspect he’s giving me the answers he knows will fall in the normal range. He knows how to sound perfectly fine, because he’s probably been living behind that facade for years, and he’s highly intelligent. This is a man typical of his social group—the archetypal stiff upper lip of the founding families, and the unwillingness of the Gear to admit what he sees as weakness. He wants to be punished. He feels he’s failed his comrades, and disgraced his family name and regiment. And the thought of being set free but relegated to a civilian on top of that ignominy, and a mentally ill civilian at that, is almost worse than the prospect of death or a life sentence for him. That, unfortunately, makes him NFT—Normal For Tyrus. By the way, who’s Carlos?
(Dr. Monro Alleyn, consultant psychiatrist, in an informal note to the Judge Advocate’s office. Copy to Chairman Prescott: check before adding to redacted file.)
THE RUSTY NAIL, KALONA STREET, JACINTO: BOUNTY, 11 A.E.
Everyday, routine places had gaping voids in them now, and not just because the grubs had destroyed them. Everywhere that Anya looked, Marcus was not there, and he would not be there again.
She walked into the Rusty Nail, usually her last port of call when looking for him when he was off-duty and not answering his radio. It wasn’t as if he took much downtime anyway, but when he went to ground—and it was almost always when yet another Gear he knew well had been killed—this was where he ended up. He’d park himself on a bar stool, order a shot, and sit there staring into the glass for hours.
It was usually only one or two drinks, the bar staff told her. Once, though, they said he’d worked his way through a whole bottle of Maranday apple brandy and walked out six hours later, still remarkably steady on his feet.
I know. He showed up in my quarters, fell asleep on the bunk as soon as he took off his jacket, and I had to leave him there when I went on watch. The only time he ever stayed the whole night, and I wasn’t even there.
Curzon. That was all he’d said by way of explanation, Roland Curzon. He said he’d hit him once. It took Anya some time to work out that the fight with Curzon had been when they were kids, and that the grown-up Curzon had just been killed on foot patrol.
Marcus never forgot a damn thing: not a name, not a callsign, not a detail on a map, or anyone he felt guilty about.
“You going to come in?” the barman called. It was Chas. He put a small beer on the counter for her, slopping it from a glass jug. “Haven’t seen you in here for ages.”
Anya stood in the doorway, looking instinctively for a battered tan leather flying jacket hunched over the bar, but knew she wouldn’t find it. She walked to the counter and picked up the glass, conscious of the looks she was getting, but then it was always like that. She was usually the only woman in the bar. That didn’t normally bother her because most of the guys who drank in there were Gears, HQ support staff, or medics from JMC, and she knew plenty of them by sight. But this time she felt exposed and … resentful. That was the word. She resented anyone drinking there when Marcus couldn’t. It was a strange mix of emotions.
“I’m waiting for Dom,” she said.
“Hasn’t come in yet.” Chas leaned on folded arms. “Hey, I’m really sorry about Marcus. Don’t worry. He’s as tough as old boots, and that place is going to have to shut down anyway when the grubs get there. They won’t wait forty years. And if they do, then we won’t have a problem anymore, will we?”
It was an interesting thought, but the kind of dumb, dishonest but well-meaning reassurance people gave each other when there was no real hope. Anya looked for a spare seat at the bar. If she sat at a table, she’d be inviting company that she didn’t want. One of the brand-new second lieutenants, Donneld Mathieson, was at one of the tables but he seemed to be getting up to go, probably on his way to play thrashball again. He was a nice kid, always cheerful, always volunteering, always on the go. He’d have his own platoon in a month or two.
Kid. God, I’m thirty.
Even if things work out, I’ll be pushing seventy when Marcus is released.
It didn’t matter. He was hers, and she was willing to wait forever if that was what it took. She’d made up her mind twelve years ago after the medal investiture, with her mother’s posthumous Embry Star in her hand and the loss still so raw that it almost stopped her breathing. Carlos was dead, too; Marcus was in pieces under his I’m-just-fine shell. Unfamiliar alcohol, a desperate need for comfort when the world hurt so much, and then he walked her back to Helena Stroud’s silent, empty apartment, and their hormones and shared misery took over.
We shouldn’t be doing this, he said, not an enlisted man and an officer. Okay, I said, we’ll just have to be discreet. Sneaking time together was a thrill at first. Then it got to be a habit, a dirty little secret, and that wasn’t what I wanted at all. What’s the opposite of a platonic relationship, where you’ve got the guy’s body but you never lay a finger on his soul? There’s got to be a word for it.
Anya took a few pulls at the beer—they must have been brewing wheat this time, oddly sweet stuff—and swirled the dying foam around the sides of the glass. She’d never known Marcus’s mother. But she’d known his father well enough to understand how fixated both of them had been with their research. Marcus had every possible comfort as a child except time and attention.
Their concern was always for his future. It was never for his here and now.
Chas rattled an empty jug on the counter in front of her. “You want a top-up?”
Anya was caught out by her empty glass. She’d been sitting here longer than she realized. There was still no sign of Dom. Well, it was just beer. It wasn’t as if she was in here every night getting hammered. She hardly
drank.
“Why not?” she said. “Thanks, Chas.”
Come on, Dom.
She had bad news for him anyway, but it wasn’t as if he didn’t know it was coming. The JA’s office confirmed that the only appeal possible had to be against sentence, and as it had already been commuted from the death penalty, the only route left was medical.
Why the rules? Why do we still have damn rules? The whole world’s been reduced to one city, we’re under martial law, and we cling to rules that aren’t relevant any longer. She checked her watch: 1805 hours. What are you doing now, Marcus? Did you get my letters? Are you reading them? What are those animals in there doing to you? Why won’t you let me visit?
“Hey, Anya.” Someone slid up onto the stool beside her. She heard the whisper of fabric and caught the scent of carbolic soap with a top note of liquor. “You okay?”
It was Barry, one of the trauma surgeons from JMC. She couldn’t recall his surname or if she even knew it. There was a kinship between doctors and CIC Gears because they worked in the same meat-grinding operation. Anya deployed men, listened to them getting hit and yelling for casevac, and men like Barry tried to put the pieces back together again in ER. This was the nearest bar for the medics to flee to after their shift and find some oblivion.
Man down. Man down. She must have heard that thousands of times over the last thirteen years and it still turned her gut over every time. The call would go down the line, and she’d hear it over the RT, just as she’d heard her mom. Man down. T-Four. T-One. T-damn-well-dead or crippled.
“I’m waiting for Dom,” she said.
“Oh. I see.”
“No, not oh. It’s not like that.” Anya bristled more at the idea that Dom had given up on looking for Maria than the suggestion she’d hopped beds now that there was no more Marcus. “He’s been in town trying to raise funds for Marcus’s appeal.”
Barry just looked at her.
“You get prisoners in from the Slab occasionally, don’t you?” she said. Her glass was empty again. Damn, she had been here a long time. “What state are they in when you see them?”
Anya knew she was putting him on the spot. She watched him blink. She watched him put his glass to his lips to buy time while he found the kindest way to tell her what she already feared she knew.
“What do you want?” he said at last. “What you want to hear, or the truth?”
It had to be done. “The truth.”
“Shit. I thought you might.” Chas appeared like a ghost and topped up Anya’s glass as if she was going to need it. Barry held his out as well. “Well, the biggest cause of mortality is other inmates. A knife in the back … blunt force trauma … look, we don’t get many. Really. Three since I started at JMC. Normally they sort their own crap, and there aren’t that many men there now anyway. It’s been distilled down to the hardcore ones who are too evenly matched to get a result.” He paused as if he realized he’d worded that a little too brutally. “Two years’ life expectancy was about right in the past, but the fittest have survived. We had one come through the other day, but—well, he was shipped out again, nothing wrong with him, so I imagine he’s back inside now.”
Anya didn’t know what kind of look she had on her face. She knew that she felt weepy, but she’d always been good at gritting her teeth and hiding it, or so she thought. Barry twisted on the stool a little and looked into her face.
“Have you heard from Marcus?”
“He won’t see me and he hasn’t replied to my letters.”
“Might not be getting them.”
“He told Dom that we both had to forget him and that’s the last thing he said.” Why the hell am I telling him this? To hear it out loud, so that I finally believe it? “How am I ever going to do that?”
“Come on,” Barry said. “How long have any of us got? I could be dead tomorrow and so could you. How old are you? Thirty-five? You’re still young.”
“Thirty,” Anya said, teeth gritted and suddenly feeling unreasonably pissed off.
“Well, you’re gorgeous. You could have any man you want.”
Anya couldn’t look away from the beer. She was angry, but it was a formless, vague resentment. It wasn’t explosive. It was just simmering. It was about everything: Mom pulling that crazy stunt, grubs, Marcus being gone, Marcus doing insane, stupid things, Marcus throwing away what little they had, Hoffman doing what he had to—but mainly Marcus.
How could you do it to me? How could you leave me alone like this?
“I know I could,” she said, daring to admit for once that she knew she was beautiful. She’d never felt this acid before. “Which is why I want Marcus. The alpha female has a right to the alpha male in the pack. Right?”
Barry put his hand on her elbow. Somehow it slid to the top of her thigh. She froze.
It was the kind of thing Marcus would never, ever do in public. And that was why it pissed her off—not because Barry was groping her, but because she wished that Marcus would at least have held her hand in public, just acknowledged their relationship and not pretended he wasn’t sleeping with her. There were too many dead for anything else to matter, too few chances to live.
“Sweetheart,” Barry said, “if you wait for him, that damn thing’s going to heal over before you get laid again.”
So she hit him.
It came out of nowhere. Tempers always did. Even as she felt her fist connect, she was off the stool and nose to nose with Barry, somehow both grieving and furious at the same time. She didn’t know how hard she’d hit him. He was just sitting there with his hand to his jaw, wide-eyed, but her right hand was one white-hot ache for a moment.
“Yes, I’m saving it for him, okay?” Everyone turned. “It’s him or nobody. That’s what I’m going to do. Keep your hands to your damn self.”
The adrenaline ebbed so fast that she felt as if a plug had been pulled. Her instinct was to apologize, but Barry had already slid off his stool and was backing away.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Look, I know. I was out of line. Okay? Forget I said it. I’d better go.”
Anya had to get a grip. And she still had to wait for Dom. She climbed back on the stool as the doors closed behind Barry and tried not to meet anyone’s eye. Chas managed it, though.
“I’d better stick to soda now,” she said quietly.
Chas nodded, polishing a glass on a grubby rag. “Uh-huh.”
Her knuckles were starting to hurt. When she checked them out, the skin was broken and weeping watery blood. She sucked the joint ruefully just as a hand touched her shoulder, and she swung around ready to lash out again.
“Whoa,” Dom said. “What’s wrong?”
Anya was just relieved to see him. “Sorry. I made a fool of myself. Had a beer too many. Barry—you know, the surgeon, the one with the blond sideburns. He felt me up. I hit him.”
Dom was all instant indignation, an outraged brother ready to defend his sister’s honor. “Right, I’m going to go break his fucking legs. Asshole. Where did he go?”
“Dom, just leave it.” She gripped his forearm. He hadn’t even changed out of his combat rig, just taken off the armor plates and put on a jacket. “It wasn’t like that. He’s a nice guy. I just lost it. It’s Marcus. I’m just angry all the time.”
“You’re going through a kind of mourning thing,” Dom said. “When Bennie and Sylvie got killed, me and Maria had bereavement counseling. They tell you all kinds of useless shit, but some of it’s true. Like getting angry with the person who’s gone, feeling they’ve run out on you. All kinds of crazy mood swings. It passes.”
“I know. Remember?”
“Yeah, sorry. Shouldn’t have said it like that. But just remember this is sort of like …” Dom trailed off. He didn’t get as far as saying death. “But if that guy’s hassling you—”
“He isn’t.”
“Okay, but if he does, you tell me, okay?” Dom stared into her face for a few seconds, waiting for the kill order. She couldn’t have wished
for a better friend. Then he settled down next to her, apparently satisfied that gutting Barry could wait until tomorrow, and folded his arms on the counter. “Well, I did it. Took goddamn months, but I did it.”
“What?” Anya grasped at every straw and felt a fool for it. “What have you done?”
Dom took out an envelope. When he folded back the flap, it was stuffed with ration coupons, the real hard currency in Jacinto. The only way to build up a pile of those was illegal—the black market, or even claiming rations for people who were dead but had somehow missed being recorded as deceased. Either way, Dom was on thin ice.
“I sold my Embry,” he said.
That broke her heart. What made it worse was looking into Dom’s face. He shone with pure devotion. He never once asked her what she’d done with her mother’s medal. It appalled her that she hadn’t volunteered it, and she wasn’t even sure why she hadn’t.
“God, Dom. I’m sorry.”
“Hey, don’t be. Some dick’s prepared to starve a neighborhood because he wants a medal he didn’t even win. Works for me.”
“Look, I’ve still got Mom’s.” She was complicit now, offering to get involved in his coupon deal. “Take it back to him and swap it.”
Dom smiled sadly to himself and put the envelope back in his jacket. “No. That’s all you have left of your mom. Marcus buried his in Carlos’s plot as soon as they pinned it on him. Mine’s mine to give for him.”
He took off his jacket and laid it on the counter, then nodded at Chas for a drink. Anya always found it hard now to take her eyes off the tattoo on his arm, the heart-shaped one that said Maria. Dom knew exactly what it meant to love one person and never want another. Yet he still gave up time that he could have been searching for Maria to help Marcus. Tears pricked at Anya’s eyes.
“Okay, the JA says the only appeal we can possibly lodge is on medical grounds, but it’s a long shot,” she said, wiping her nose discreetly on the back of her hand. “If they find he’s not responsible for his actions, then the guilty plea can be set aside. But then he’ll end up discharged from the army anyway. He won’t be pleased about that. Or being labeled mentally unfit.”
Gears of War: The Slab (Gears of War 5) Page 28