by Rob Hart
She couldn’t hear it, couldn’t see it, but she could almost feel it—her little custom malware sliding through the system, pulling out the information she needed.
She turned toward the bathroom, counting in her head.
1:00
:59
:58
:57…
The numbers broke apart as something heavy was laid across the back of her skull.
She hit the ground hard, barely getting her hands up in time to stop her face from smacking into the ground teeth first. She rolled, one foot planted, one foot up, ready.
Rick stood over her, his face red and swollen and bandaged, wielding an IV pole like a baseball bat.
Zinnia pushed herself back, tried to get away, stopped against a hard surface. He must have been the one lying on the bed next to the nurse.
“You fucking bitch,” he said, raising the pole over his head, preparing to swing it down.
Zinnia shot her foot into his nuts. They gave under her heel. He doubled over and she struggled to her feet, falling over herself in the tight, awkward space. But he’d already gotten enough of his bearings back to shoot out his foot and catch her in the jaw.
That one made her see stars. She rolled, crawled, did anything she could to increase the space between them, and it was all going to shit, and worse, it was her fault.
She channeled that anger away from herself. She’d give it back to him.
She got to a knee, just as Rick was getting to his feet. Grabbed a bedpan and winged it at him. It caught him in the face, and while it wasn’t heavy it surprised him, which was enough to knock him off his feet. Zinnia wanted to make a grab for the gopher but wasn’t sure if enough time had passed yet. Most likely no, adrenaline dilating time. She should have looked at the clock on the wall when she planted it.
Back on her feet. Rick was a chump. A weak piece of shit. But he’d gotten in a good sucker shot—she might actually have a concussion now, the way it felt like she was standing on a rocking boat.
She looked behind her. No nurse. Maybe the sound didn’t carry. Maybe she’d stepped away. Maybe she was afraid. She turned and found Rick getting up, so she charged, led with her knee into his face, and his head snapped back. He crashed to the floor, knocking a bed aside, and Zinnia looked for something, anything, she could use to restrain him, but came up empty.
Her belt. That’d have to do. She pulled it out, gave it a snap, but Rick stuck his foot out, making her trip and fall. She was still woozy from the head shot. Not making smart choices. She rolled onto her side, caught herself on a bed again, the space really and truly not designed for a goddamn fight, and Rick was standing, this time with the stool the nurse had been sitting on.
As the stool arced down toward her, Zinnia put her arms up. Sacrificed her forearms to protect her head.
This was going to hurt.
“Hey!”
She knew the voice. She knew it before she saw him. Paxton slammed into Rick, and the two of them tumbled to the floor. Zinnia pushed herself back, watched as Paxton straddled Rick, facing away from her, raised his fist and slammed it into Rick’s face. There was a thud like a pumpkin hitting the floor.
This was about to end, after which Paxton wouldn’t let her out of his sight. The nurse would come back. So Zinnia ignored the feeling of her brain rattling around her head, pushed herself up, and ran for the computer station, praying enough time had elapsed that the gopher had gone out and done its thing and come back.
She grabbed it.
Turned to see Paxton, twisted part of the way around, Rick prone underneath him.
He was staring at her.
PAXTON
Paxton stopped at the teller window. The old man behind it was looking down at something in his lap. Paxton slapped his palm on the glass so hard it shook. The man jerked up, nearly fell off his chair.
“Did a woman named Zinnia come through here?”
The man replied with a look of confusion.
Paxton held his hand up by his chin. “Yea tall. Bronze skin. Pretty.”
The man nodded. Pointed toward the doors. “Sent her in a little while ago. Room six, I think?”
“Thanks.”
Paxton hoofed it through the double doors, came onto a long corridor of beds. On one was a sullen teen staring at his phone and nothing short of a nuclear blast was going to get his attention. A little farther down was a girl on a bed, writhing in pain, and a nurse, ducking down next to it, like she was hiding from something. The nurse looked at Paxton and nearly passed out from relief. “Thank god you’re here. Something’s happening over there.”
“Where?” Paxton asked.
There was a crash at the end of the corridor and around the corner. He ran down the aisle and made the turn, found a man holding a stool, ready to bring it down on someone. And on the floor, blood smeared on her face, was Zinnia.
Paxton saw red. He charged the man, put his full weight into him. It hurt Paxton but hurt the other guy more, as they tangled and rolled over each other, until Paxton was able to straddle him.
Situations like these, the best thing to do was restrain the person and wait for help to arrive.
As if that was even an option.
He balled up his fist and slammed it into the man’s face. His eyes went wide, then flicked, like a light being turned out. After a moment Paxton recognized the feeling in his hand. The pain, radiating from the bones of his knuckles up to his elbow. Might have broken something.
He turned to check on Zinnia, found her on her feet, by a bank of computers fiddling with something on one of the monitors.
“What are you doing?” Paxton asked.
Zinnia turned. Looked at him. Confused. Upset? In pain? He couldn’t tell. He was about to ask again.
And then she passed out.
ZINNIA
Zinnia folded to the floor in such a way as to protect her head. Let Paxton rush over to her, let him grab her and shake her, let him be worried and upset. It would distract, she hoped, from the chip she’d planted in her cheek, high up next to her teeth, where it raked against her gums.
She thought about pocketing it but feared that if he searched her, if she was admitted and had to surrender her clothes, or any number of a million reasons, she would lose it, and then she might as well just walk off the job because at this point it was getting to be a bit much.
This was exactly the reason she made her chipsets waterproof. A little more expensive, always worth it. She still had the oblivion in her pocket, but that she was okay parting with.
Paxton ran off to look for help. Zinnia stole a glance at Rick. Still on the floor.
He must have seen her plant the tracker. But things were about to get very uncomfortable for him, on an administrative level. A security guard had witnessed him assaulting a woman. You don’t just walk away from that.
Though the way Cynthia described it, he was a known abuser. Did he have some kind of entrée with the company? Something that would protect him during this process?
Would he try to trade information on her?
There was a pair of scissors on the desk. She could see them now, in her head. She’d seen them during the scuffle, had tried to reach for them, but things were moving too quick. They had bright yellow plastic handles. They looked dull, like they might easily break, but the skin of the throat was a delicate membrane. She could claim he came to, tried to attack her again.
Before she could stand, Paxton came around the corner with the nurse and another man in blue, a rangy guy with a buzz cut. She shut her eyes, playing at being passed out again.
“Where the hell were you?” Paxton asked.
“I was just…I just…” The other blue.
“You were just what?” Paxton asked. “Napping on the job?”
“Please…”
“Don’t ‘please’ me. You’re ten different kinds of fucked. She could have gotten killed.”
Zinnia felt Paxton’s hands on her again, then another, smaller set, the nurse. Probing, checking for breaks, pulling her eyelid. Zinnia placed her palm against her forehead, blinked her eyes. They helped her to her feet, put her on a bed. Paxton asked, “Are you okay?”
She couldn’t tell what he was thinking. He was concerned. That much she knew. It was a good start. “Yes,” she said. “Just…I’m okay.”
Paxton looked down at his watch at the same time Zinnia’s buzzed. The update was complete, the smiley face now on the CloudBand, then dissolving into the usual watch face.
Zinnia’s said: Please report back for your shift.
Paxton looked at it, too. “Ignore that.” He turned to the nurse. “Keep an eye on her.” Then he stepped to the side and began speaking into his CloudBand. He was walking away so Zinnia couldn’t make out what he was saying.
The nurse shone a penlight in Zinnia’s eyes. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you need something for the pain?”
“No.” Of course she wanted something for the pain. She wanted to pop a tab of what was in her pocket. But now was not the time for med-head.
Paxton appeared back at her side. “My boss is going to be here in a few minutes. According to him a lot of shit has hit a lot of fans. But first, before that, do you know why this guy attacked you?”
Zinnia considered saying no. That it was random. Unexpected. She preferred that because it meant spending less time going through those shower interludes, and her acquiescing to Rick’s demands, as if she were some weak little thing that didn’t have a choice otherwise.
But that chip was still in her cheek and she didn’t want Paxton to think about it.
So she told him what had happened.
She left out the part about putting Rick here in the first place, but the story worked, because both Paxton and the nurse, their faces fell further and further. Paxton, in particular, kept glancing at Rick, lying there on the floor, on his back staring at the ceiling, just knowing he was done for. It seemed like a struggle for Paxton to not go over and lay his boot across the man’s face.
At the end of it, Paxton said, “You should have told me.”
The way he said it, it was like a scold, which Zinnia did not like.
“Sometimes it’s best to leave well enough alone,” she said.
He shook his head. “You should have told me.”
Except this time, it sounded sadder. It raised complicated feelings in Zinnia’s gut. Feelings she couldn’t describe to herself but knew she didn’t like.
From there, the room turned into an explosion of people. Lots of questions. Rick was put on a bed and strapped to it. An old man with a face like a meteorite and a tan uniform—the infamous Dobbs—quizzed her on what happened. No judgment, no nothing, just wanted the story. She ran through the version that worked best for her, and in the interim, put together bits and pieces from the questions he asked, as well as the conversations happening around her.
The security officer assigned to the ward, Goransson, had been goofing off or maybe napping in another room. Dobbs admitted that the officer in charge of the update process had accessed her employee profile, which was flagged when she came to Care, and sent out a text saying something crude about her. He’d meant to send it to a single person and instead blasted it out on a security-wide chain.
Which was why Paxton was able to arrive at the right time.
They seemed to be taking her complaint against Rick seriously. She hated to have to play the victim role, but at least he’d pay for it. She was about to mark this down in the win column when she heard Rick yelling from the bed that was being wheeled out of the ward. “Ask her. Ask her!”
Dobbs, from where he was standing across the room, talking to Rick, put his head down and his hands on his hips, shook it back and forth, and strolled over to Zinnia’s bedside.
“Sorry to have to ask this,” he said. “He says you were messing around with one of the computers when he found you. I’m not inclined to believe a shitbird, but I have to at least ask the question.”
Zinnia felt the sharp edges of the chip against her gum.
“I was heading to the bathroom when he hit me,” she said. “I have no idea what he’s talking about.”
Dobbs nodded, happy with the response. Over his shoulder, Paxton stared. She didn’t like the way Paxton was staring.
PAXTON
Dobbs put his hands on his hips, digging his fists in, almost like he wanted to put his hands inside himself.
“Vikram, that dumb son of a bitch,” Dobbs said. “I’ll bust him down after this. Goransson, too.” He sighed, surveyed the commotion in the medical ward. “You, I’m not so sure about.”
“Sir?” Paxton asked.
“You abandoned your post,” he said. “Be straight with me now. You got a thing with this woman?”
“We’ve been seeing each other, yes,” he said.
Dobbs nodded. “Pretty.”
Paxton flushed at the mark of approval.
“So you left your post during an important assignment,” Dobbs said. “And if you hadn’t, that shitbird would have bashed that poor woman’s skull in.”
“About him,” Paxton said. “Zinnia said he did this a lot. Were there any complaints lodged against him? Anything like that?”
“None that I know of,” he said. “Got to look into it a little further. System only just came back up.”
“Well, that’s a problem. Because if this is something he made a habit of, then you better believe I’m going to make as much noise as it takes to get him turfed and put in prison.”
Dobbs nodded slowly, chewing something over. Paxton wasn’t sure what. Mandarin was easier to read than Dobbs. After a few moments Dobbs spoke again, moving in and lowering his voice. “Here’s what I need from you. Are you listening?”
“I’m listening.”
“I need you to be a team player. Can you be a team player?”
“How?”
“I need you to tell your woman that this is going to be handled,” he said. “That this asshole will be expelled from Cloud and within the next ten minutes or so, he’ll be completely unhireable anywhere else in the country. Vikram will pay a price, too. But I’m going to need something in return.”
“What’s that?”
“She doesn’t kick up a fuss. I know she’s probably a little rattled right now, a bit knocked around, which is where you come in.” Dobbs put his hand on Paxton’s shoulder. “I need you to convey to her how much of a pain in the ass this would be, taking it to the mat the way she might want to. Important thing is that justice will get served, just in a way that makes everyone’s life easier.”
Paxton’s mouth filled with sand. His first instinct was to tell Dobbs to fuck off. He took a deep breath, thought about it rationally.
Divorcing himself from the personal connection, it made sense. Keep things contained.
But he felt like he was betraying Zinnia. Telling her to sit and fold her hands, to stay quiet. What if she didn’t want to? What if a fuss was exactly what she wanted to kick up? It wasn’t right for him to stand in the way of that.
“Think you can handle that?” Dobbs asked.
“I’ll do what I can.”
Dobbs squeezed his shoulder. “Thanks, son. I won’t forget that. Now you go be with your woman. Make sure she’s okay. You two can have the day off, rest of today and tomorrow, all right?”
“Are you sure?”
“Absolutely. Consider it my gift to you. You’ve both been through a lot.”
Paxton didn’t know what he had been throu
gh, but he was happy to have the day off. He smiled, without realizing he was smiling, and then wiped the expression from his face. Dobbs nodded and sauntered off to put out another fire.
Zinnia was standing against the bed by the time he reached her. She was holding herself in the manner of injured people: delicately, as though if she moved too fast, she would shatter. A bruise was building steam under her eye and there was a scratch on her cheek. Her knuckles were bandaged, which made Paxton think about his own throbbing fist. He flexed it. Still hurt, but probably not broken.
“So,” Paxton said. “It’s been a day, huh?”
Zinnia’s lip curled. A laugh rattled her chest even though no sound came out of her mouth, just little bursts of air. “You could say that.”
“So everything’s taken care of,” he said. “You’re off shift today and tomorrow. Me, too. I heard the doc say you’re in the clear. You want to get the hell out of here?”
“Yeah,” Zinnia said. “That’d be nice.”
Paxton ignored the urge to kiss her, to put his arm around her, to do any of a million things that might be deemed inappropriate in that setting, but he did stick out his arm and let her take it, thinking that offering a little support, at least, was within the bounds of reason. Paxton cut a path through the people milling about.
They made their way onto the tram. The bruise on Zinnia’s face wasn’t easy to hide. A bruised woman escorted by a security guard. Of course people were looking.
They reached Maple and made their way up to Zinnia’s room. She stepped inside and Paxton thought for a second about leaving, letting her have some time to herself, but she held the door for him so he could follow. She leaned against the counter as she stripped off her shirt and bra, ran her hands down her body, looking for bruises or other injuries. Paxton looked away. Not that he thought he had to. It just felt rude, given the current state of things.