Wanted and Wired

by Vivien Jackson

  Something was seriously wrong with his body. It wasn’t just the surge of being so close to Mari, of touching her. Kissing her. That had been so intense that he’d ascribed his bizarre loss of control to her. But there was more to it. Something else was fucking with him. He could run a better diagnostic if he had access to the cloud, of course, but even a closed system like the Pentarc would be more effective if he established a physical link. Not that he particularly wanted to plug anything into his head at the moment.

  The deep, pulling discomfort at the wound site faded, chased off by the drugs. Adele decontaminated her needle, wrapped it in a wad of flower-print flannel, and tucked it back into her sewing kit.

  Heron licked his teeth, tasted metal. Anxiety. “I need a port.”

  Adele gave him a one-eyebrow-up look. “Cash Cow is on in about ten minutes, and I always play, even during lockdown. Nobody would know any different if you were to piggyback on the wire.”

  He reached up and grabbed her hand. Her lacquered nails felt sturdy, but the rest of her was paper light. Thin. Almost insubstantial.

  Adele was getting old. He knew it but didn’t want to think of her as frail. He needed her to be his touchstone, his haven. His world was spinning, and he needed her stillness. He just wasn’t any good on his own.

  “I’m sorry about coming in here. I didn’t know you’d be in your room and sort of hoped you wouldn’t.”

  She patted his hand. “No worries, sweet boy. I’m always happy to see you, even when you’re in mortal danger.” She stepped away, humming as she made for a burled wood buffet littered with decanters. “Chocolate? I got it eighty proof.”

  “Driving shortly.” Usually, he would have no trouble metabolizing alcohol, but today? Best not chance it.

  Adele shot him a look as she poured herself a drink. Even from across the room, that stuff smelled like turpentine. “There you go resisting temptation. Eventually, you’ll have to get over your guilt and start living again. I thought for a moment when you introduced her that you’d turned a corner. Forgiven yourself. Don’t you think it’s about time?”

  Heron sank against the back of the antique settee. It was too short for him, as were most of Adele’s furnishings. He couldn’t drop his head back. Couldn’t close his eyes and pretend he was home and a kid and innocent. Couldn’t relax.

  And really, really couldn’t have this conversation right now.

  Instead, he touched the needle mark on his arm, just one more flaw on a canvas of scars, and rolled his sleeve down. “Thank you.”

  Adele breezed past him, headed for the entertainment unit on the far wall. Cash Cow in ten. Right.

  On the way, she bent and dropped a kiss on his antiseptic-damp hair. “Always, boy. Always.”

  • • •

  In an alcove with a commode along the far wall, Mari swung the saloon doors closed behind her and shucked the torn, bloody robe.

  Low voices drifted in from the other room. She followed Heron’s half of the conversation through the com and Mrs. Weathering’s half through plain old earpower. Walls here in Pentarc, when you could get ’em, were awfully thin.

  The cramped alcove was lit by a free-fae box, and Mari took a moment to thank the thing. True, programmers shoved nanos together all the time, made them do things. The nanos themselves weren’t supposed to have will. But sometimes, they did. Sometimes, they snuck away and formed shit of their own volition, mostly these boxes, which somehow produced light without a discernible power source. Gray-market nutjobs hocked them, and street-corner priests worshipped them. Damn useful things all around. Mari knew they were just machines, but it still made her feel good to offer a thank-you here and there.

  But she still didn’t feel any embarrassment when she kicked the robe aside and stood there bare-ass naked. Wasn’t like the free-fae was watching or anything.

  Right?

  She slipped on snug pants riddled with utility pockets. She usually wore skirts and petticoats, knockoffs of the West Coast fashionistas, but for jobs, she stuck with combat longstockings or pants. Girl needed to move fast sometimes, and those pockets came in handy for ammo.

  She did wonder what it’d be like to doll up for Heron. He might not even recognize her if she was painted and primped, but her ego sure could sure use a little jaw droppage.

  In the other room, Mrs. Weathering said something about guilt, and Mari paused for a second with her hands on the zipper.

  No way would he tell her what they were up against, what she’d done this morning. She trusted him. Of course she did.

  But she still paused and listened, waiting for his reply in her com.

  “Thank you.”

  Now, why was it she thought he was talking to her when he said that? He wasn’t even in the same room, but she could feel him all in her head. In her chest. It tingled, tickled. She shook herself, took a deep breath, and tried to regain focus.

  She sausaged a stretchy, long-sleeved number over her head and reached back into the bag. Her hands skimmed the H&K’s barrel, and she bit her lip. Put it together, just in case? But the custom stock, molded to fit against her cheek when she was prone, combined with the length of the weapon when it was all fitted together, made it unwieldy for tight spaces. No, the snubby would have to do.

  After some hesitation, she dug deeper, pulled out an aramid-core button-up, and slung it over top of her shirt. From the interchange she’d spied on between Heron and Mrs. Weathering, it didn’t look like Mari was going to take them down the cabling vent after all, but that didn’t mean there weren’t other, more ballistic dangers looking to catch her before this day was done.

  More mumbling from Mrs. Weathering and the melodic trill of an entertainment console fizzing to life.

  Mari secured her still-damp hair with an elastic and tucked the snubby into her waistband. She’d forgotten to pack socks and missed them when she shoved her feet into rubber-soled boots and snapped up. The humidity in there made the mostly dried blood between her toes sort of gooey, a gross reminder of what she’d done.

  There was a mirror with another fae light above the commode, but Mari didn’t so much as glance. No purpose to it. She knew what she looked like: cold-blooded killer. Monster.

  “Hey, poppet,” Mrs. Weathering called from the other room, and Mari started. “Cash Cow’s on in six, and I’m about to log on.”

  “What she means,” Heron subvocaled, “is that you can stop skulking and join us.”

  Mari scowled but didn’t deny she’d been skulking. She repacked her duffel, shoving the blood-stained robe deep and laying the rope and descenders out on top, untangled, just in case she needed to get at them quick.

  She was a little wigged to note, when she started zipping up the bag, that her hands were shaking. Never a good sign for a shooter. She stared hard until the tremors stopped, and then she grabbed the bag handle and made her way back to the main room.

  She ducked in, reflexively scanning the room for exits and changes since she’d seen it last. The console was booting, Mrs. Weathering was drinking something brown and foul-smelling, and Heron was kneeling at the far side of the entertainment set, out of the monitor’s sightline. He was also wearing driving gloves, covering the sense-tips. Because he was planning on driving? Or because he wanted a line of defense in case he had to touch her again?

  Ha. Maybe that grope in the foyer had been harder on him than he let on. Mari plopped down next to him on the rug—too close, of course.

  Gloves also offered another clue about his relationship with Mrs. Weathering. Neighbors didn’t usually keep clothes for each other on hand, and she had called him sweetling.

  Mrs. Weathering fiddled with some jacks, talking to herself the whole time. Something about trying to figure out which was the new socket connector on this bloody new upgrade hardware—she hoped it hadn’t all gone over to hands-free because everyone knew first-to-market t
ech was rubbish anyhow. All the while, her grumbles covered up the fact that Heron had jacked into the console.

  Mari flashed a glance at Heron and saw that he was looking right back at her. And frowning.

  “What?”

  He reached over and plucked something from her still-damp ponytail. Even though his hands were safe and gloved again, energy spiked at the point of contact, and Mari had an urge to lean into it and make him touch her, damn it.

  “Feather.” A pause and then, soundlessly, “Pity. I rather liked you naked.”

  Something like lightning forked all through Mari’s body, and she bit back the words that bubbled up, afraid they’d seem too enthusiastic if she let ’em out. No question about it, though: he’d been flat-out obviously flirting with her that time.

  It took considerable control for Mari not to climb onto Heron’s lap right then. She felt very good about herself for resisting. And very bad for continuing to indulge naughty thoughts that she was sure he could read perfectly well.

  Mrs. Weathering plugged in two connectors, and the ancient holo adapter crackled to life. She tuned the socket behind her ear. The room filled with the campy sounds of Cash Cow intro music. She settled in right in front of the unit and grabbed her brew-filled tumbler.

  “Um, ma’am? I just wanted to say…” Mari began, but she heard an unmistakable shhh in her head.

  Heron’s hand snaked out along the loud paisley rug. He grabbed her wrist.

  “They’re scanning the whole structure for residents,” he mouthed. “Note how she’s positioned herself right in front of the holo unit? If they scan the signals and peek in, they’ll only see her. We should be quiet just in case.”

  “Can’t you just fuzz out their reception or something?”

  Mrs. Weathering cackled and took a swig of her drink. The chemstick pinched between her fingers really needed to have the ash flicked off, but she didn’t seem to notice.

  “The agents in this building aren’t the decision makers. They’re just grunts following orders. I am giving them a chance to work through their protocols, hoping they’ll give up and go home.”

  “And what if they don’t?”

  Heron’s mouth twitched, and his thumb brushed the top of her hand. He didn’t answer her, not out loud and certainly not in her mind. Instead, his thumb figure-eighted her first two knuckles, dipping along that sensitive skin between her fingers.

  Soft leather, but damn, she missed the contact with his skin.

  They sat in tense silence for about four minutes. On the holo, Cash Cow blared on, trilling its signature moo music. Right before the interval, Mari thought she saw a flicker, a miniflash from the entertainment console.

  The tumbler slipped from Mrs. Weathering’s grasp. It hit the floor before Mari realized that Mrs. Weathering’s face had gone slack, too. But Mari didn’t get a chance to register that properly, because in the same instant, Heron gripped her hand. Hard.

  And then he let go.

  Chapter 5

  One minute, Heron was crouched on the floor, and the next, he was over by the floral-print settee, kneeling beside Adele. He’d felt the electrical surge, had traced it real time through the tower wires.

  The surge had come through the moment he’d used the Pentarc closed system to poll the cloud. Bots must have been lurking there, waiting. And now he’d confirmed that he was here. Worse, that Mari was here.

  Ten thousand thoughts birthed like stars in his brain, and he sorted them instantly. Drones on every floor. Lifts covered. Reinforcements arriving.

  He’d planned to take Mari down through the other spire, sneak her out. But now, as he looked at Adele crumpled on the rug, he shifted plans on the fly.

  He walked right past the viewfinder on the holo, but he didn’t give a fuck. They already knew he was here. He drew a sign in the air, cutting transmission. The display went dark. “No more peeking.”

  Tenderly, he bent over Adele, checking her pulse. Steady. No flutters. Thank God. She was okay.

  He’d measured the voltage on the flash, and he knew it wasn’t strong enough to knock her out for long. Still, it pissed him off that she’d taken another hit for him. He’d gone to a lot of trouble to make Pentarc safe, to make it his, and Adele was one of the people he’d tried to insulate most.

  The worst part of this fucked-up day was not that the job had gone wrong or that he’d gotten jacked. It was that he’d brought Adele here to keep her safe, and he’d brought Mari here for the same reason, and now both were in danger.

  Heron wasn’t used to having his plans upset like this. It made him…angry. No, more than that. Furious.

  “She gonna be okay?” Mari asked. She’d gotten to her feet and retrieved her duffel.

  In the dim blue glow of the free-fae light, her eyes looked big as desert marigolds. Somebody who didn’t know about her love of all things deadly might end their assessment right at those eyes. Delicate, they’d think. Delicate and precious.

  Heron agreed, to a point. But he also knew what Mari was capable of. Delicate, precious, and…completely badass. The perfect mix.

  “Yeah.” He pinched a sliver of metal from behind Adele’s ear. Careful, so it wouldn’t ache when she woke. “The electrical surge fried her com, but it wasn’t a permanent implant, just a surface rig like yours. She’ll wake up and smell burnt silicon for a couple of days.”

  “You know, I bet they didn’t do that to everybody on this floor, or not even to everybody watching Cash Cow, though considering that moo music, maybe they should. I’m thinking those feds were looking for us.” Mari’s fist tightened on her duffel strap. Her mouth was stern. “How’d they know we were here?”

  “I don’t know yet. Maybe they had tracers in the mercs, and they projected our position from the time of those kills.”

  “Maybe they knew you were friends with Mrs. Weathering.”

  Heron pulled a ball-fringe pillow down from the recliner and tucked it beneath Adele’s head. “Family. And let us hope not. Then they would know altogether too much about me.”

  He’d spent most of his adult life shielding his identity and those of the people closest to him. If somehow the authorities tracking Mari also knew who he was, what he was—worse, what he’d done—well, that changed the equation.

  Changed a lot of things.

  Heron loosed a signal and threaded it around the Pentarc, counting the threats. Three drones were on this floor now, and the actual feds would be coming up the stairwell shortly. Heron accessed the Pentarc broadcast to fuzz their com channel, so the drones wouldn’t be able to talk to the officers.

  With the subroutines already set up in the Pentarc architecture, this should be easy. No big deal.

  And yet. A blip from the drone down the hall slipped through his net. Fuck.

  Mari still stood there, perched like a bird on a lightning rod. Heron didn’t even have to concentrate to hear her thoughts: One bullet left. Of course, if Mrs. Weathering has some hydrogen peroxide around, I’m pretty sure I packed that canister of shaved magnesium dioxide. Could whip up a bomb pretty easy, blast our way out of here if necessary. Do so enjoy blowing shit up.

  “I can still hear you, you know,” Heron said, rising to his feet. He tapped his temple to emphasize the point.

  “And what?” she sassed. “You want me to be all sweet just because you’re in my head? Information: this is the sweet me. Any sweeter and you can brace yourself for a replay of that whole thing by the door, so don’t push it, partner.”

  Oh, that was it. He moved past her, way closer than he had to, and, on a breath, murmured, “I believe the correct phrase here is ‘Bring it.’”

  • • •

  Mari was still processing the innuendo—no, that was some balls-out flirting right there—when she noticed that he was ahead of her, already turning the door handle and leading them back into the corridor. />
  “Whoa, cowboy, I thought I was the muscle.”

  The free-fae light bleeding in from the parlor was low, granted, but she could still see the flare of his eyebrows, the tightness around his mouth, when he turned back to her.

  “We don’t need muscle anymore. They came here, invaded my home, attacked my family. Fuck that. They aren’t playing nice, so neither am I.”

  He didn’t explain further, but Mari felt a thrill at his words. She fisted her bag straps in one hand and steadied the little pistol in her other. Which left no hands to hold on to Heron in the dark.

  Not that she needed to, as it turned out. “Don’t need muscle” apparently also meant “don’t need the cover of darkness.” The corridor emergency lighting was on, but the air had thinned, like they were at high altitude.

  “I am altering the atmospheric controls throughout the Pentarc, remixing the O2 balance in specific locations. Not enough to slow us down in the hallway but enough to incapacitate the feds in the access wells. Adele and the other residents are still locked in, at least until we’re clear. You and me? We can just walk out.”

  Mari trusted this man—this machine—implicitly, and she followed him through Mrs. Weathering’s door, back out into the west-spire corridor. But she still felt off her feed, uncomfortable. In her experience, going face-to-face, preferably with a firearm in her fist, was the best way to handle confrontations with folks who wanted to kill her. They almost always backed down.

  Or they had until today. The grim reminder settled cold and yucky in her gut, and she wasn’t smiling anymore.

  As she and Heron approached the elevator, Mari caught a flash of stainless steel and raised her weapon reflexively. Just off to the right, she spied a floater drone, hovering between Heron and the shiny metal doors.

  “Get down.” She aimed without pausing her stride, making the calculations on the fly, knowing that she’d have a split second between her max range and the machine’s. Though she had no idea what the snubby’s dinky load would do against carbon fiber, she wasn’t just going to let a robot take her out. Not today.