She reached down, and it nuzzled her hand, pushing the biohacked skull knobs into her palm. She wondered if its tactile sensors were dulled by all those alterations. Like Heron, unable to feel pain.
“Her name’s Yoink.” Even in a near-whisper, Chloe couldn’t quite disguise that chirrup to her voice as she snuck up behind Mari. “She’s Kellen’s. He keeps most of the rescues back at the Pentarc while he’s treating them, but Yoink’s a ballsy little gal, has no problem flying. He used to be a veterinarian, back before secession. Um, Kellen, not the cat.”
Mari looked at the cowboy. He’d cracked open that metal case and was yanking stuff out of it. Medical-looking stuff. Vet stuff. He lined up gauze and injectors and anesthetics on a tray near Heron’s chair. Lordy hell, was he going to dig around in Heron’s head here, while the plane was up and everything? What if they hit turbulence? Boy had balls, or else his hands were steadier than hers.
Which wasn’t even possible, of course.
Last thing out of the case was a plastic bag full of kitty biscuits. Without looking over, he gave that bag a shake.
Yoink twitched one ear and looked up at Mari like, “Sorry, lady, but you ain’t edible,” and she was off like a prom dress.
Ditched. First by Heron, then by a weird little biohacked cat.
But Chloe was still hovering. Smiling. Great. She held out a squeeze thermobottle, hot to the touch and emanating the unmistakable whiff of coffee and rum. “We have some clothes back in the racks. Want to see?”
Mari took a long pull on the bottle, shuddering as the go-juice jolted through her system, at once padding the ragged ends of her nerves and soothing her to clarity. She looked out through the high-impact glass. This time of night, she couldn’t see the cloud deck, and really, she had no idea what she was looking at anyway. Heron was busy, Kellen and Garrett were busy, and Mari suddenly felt bone tired. “Racks?”
“Places for people to sleep. Bunks?”
“Oh.” Maximum distance on this plane must be pretty long if people were sleeping en route. But then, everything here felt off, out of her usual.
She followed Chloe back through the access tunnel, which was made even narrower by stacks of shipping crates like the ones she’d seen in the Pentarc. Contraband. Smuggled goods. One smelled mouth-wateringly like tea. Her stomach grumbled, but a bare-bones plane like this wasn’t likely to have a stocked kitchen. Galley? Feh. Terminology again.
Although Mari had to duck a couple of places, Chloe didn’t. Wasn’t often that Mari felt tall or gangly. Wasn’t often she even thought about what she looked like, but tiny doll-like Chloe probably made most women insecure.
Navigating the length of this ship wasn’t anything like walking the aisle on a 787 or a land jet. This one had been designed for purposes other than the comfort of paying passengers, and Mari was careful to keep her hands tight to her sides as she picked her way along. Some of the bulging pipes looked like they’d burn her if she touched them. Even the machines, the ones with blips and buttons that she passed, snerked at her, seemed to ask her what the hell she was doing here.
She was starting to wonder the same.
She’d grown up in the last vestiges of wilderness, new-rural Texas. She was used to scraggly trees and dirt and burnt sky, fences and guns and campfires. Tech had always mystified her. When she was a kid and Auntie Boo had told her all about her scientist father, Mari had ascribed holy powers to the kinds of technology he worked, and even as she’d grown older, she’d been a little in awe. Okay, a lot.
Heron had been trying to cure her of that for the last year, showing her pieces of tech that weren’t magical at all, that were things she could wrap her hand around and control. But here in the labyrinthine passageways of his plane, some of that old distrust grabbed at her. The tech here was too big, too mysterious, too confining.
She crossed her arms over her chest and hugged the drink bottle close, careful not to touch the machines.
Chloe passed her wrist over a scanner, and the doorway leading to the back of the plane opened. She stepped through.
Four bunks, each with a plastic footlocker at the end, dominated the narrow space. It might be cramped and utilitarian, but it was also tidy and smelled no different from the rest of the plane: equal parts metal, machine cleaner, and tea.
Chloe arced her wrist over one of the plastic boxes, unlatching a shin-high footlocker chased all over with purple nano-ink fairies. The lid rose, and with its movement, the soft color changed to blue and glowed: free-fae.
But something about the way that particular blue reflected off Chloe hit Mari in the gut, and she stopped cold in the doorway.
Chloe didn’t reflect the light. At all. She ate it up, like a perky blond, mini black hole. The physics in the space surrounding Chloe were not just fucked up. They were impossible.
Mari peered closely at Chloe in the faintly blue light, and…yeah, now she could see it. Textures were off. Her flight suit shouldn’t have been that smooth, almost plastene. A certain amount of translucence, Mari could wrap her mind around, but the deeper she looked at Chloe, the deeper her gaze went. If she went on looking, she’d keep on sinking.
She reached out to touch Chloe’s shoulder and wasn’t really surprised when her hand passed right through. Cool space, thick like fog but insubstantial.
Holographic.
“So, what’s a free-fae collective doing with a locker full of clothes?” Mari made her voice as kind as she could. Didn’t want to scare Chloe off, didn’t want to sound threatening at all. A free-fae collective probably spent her whole life in fear.
Chloe didn’t turn. She hunched a perfectly rounded shoulder and shook her head. “Oh, you know what they say about folks always wanting the thing they need least.” Her parametrically curved chin angled toward the fae-lit footlocker. “But technically, none of these things are mine.”
Mari looked and saw a riot of color in that box: wine red, sunset orange, heaven blue. Every color she could imagine, in fact, and in a variety of textures, from neoprene to bubbles to velvet.
“You’d look pretty in the orange,” Chloe said, doubtlessly trying to turn the conversation.
Free-fae. Lord. Heron was harboring a free-fae collective on his ship. Not just a little, light-box, middle-finger-to-the-nanovats collective either. These nanos had gotten together and made a person. That had to be at least sixty kinds of illegal. And here Mari’d been worked up over a little capital murder.
She drew her hand back, but not before she stroked the holographic shoulder. It rippled like the disturbed surface of a pond. Chloe turned, looked back, smiled tentatively.
“I guess he knows.”
“Dr. Farad?” Chloe’s brow made a pretty dent of concern, but then it melted back to pixie cheerful. “Oh yeah. He knows everything about me. I’m his, or, I mean, from his original nanovat, back when he was a postdoc. You know, in Texas? But we’re good now. He’s helping me with autogenesis and self-awareness. Also Spanish. But shh. I’m secret.”
Whoa. “Um, you probably shouldn’t say that out loud to strangers.”
Chloe’s laugh tinkled like a china wind chime. “You aren’t a stranger, Mari. We know all about you, too.”
Yeah, that didn’t creep a girl out. Except when it so did. The look Chloe was laying on her right then felt warm. Too warm.
“So, the dress? Tell me you love it.” Chloe practically bounced. Or the holographic equivalent. “You are going to put it on?”
As in strip down right here? But Chloe just kept on looking, and Mari guessed that yep, that’s exactly what she was expected to do. And it wasn’t that big of a deal.
She figured most humans—whole-organic, post-human, whatever—worried about their bodies once in a while. Hell, even she had fallen into that trap when she was younger. How many hair colors had she gone through, trying to find the right one God had missed? She’d gone dow
n the same rabbit hole her mother had, for a while, trying to improve upon whatever physical mess she’d started out with. Trying to become better, best, perfect.
But after Corpus, after skirting so near death and getting a second chance, she’d quit self-alteration cold turkey. This was the body, the one with the bubble butt and tree-trunk thighs, the one with weird, overlong toes and a resistance to nice-looking abs no matter how hard she worked, this was the body that brought her back. The one that had saved her, that kept her ticking against all odds. Girl had to love a body like that, beautiful or not.
But Chloe’s covetous holographic eyes, tracking her every movement, sort of did make her feel admired. And what was that Heron had called her, back in the cargo vent?
Gorgeous.
Mari set her bottle down, shrugged out of her armored shirt, and yanked the ruined tank over her head. She unfastened her pants and kicked them and the boots off her feet, stripping down until she was ass-bare in the bunk room. Even when Chloe perched on the edge of her bunk, her pale-blue eyes literally glowing, Mari didn’t feel embarrassed of her plain, unaltered, whole-organic body. It was clearly a thing that Chloe envied, and that made Mari more sad than shamed.
Chloe could look like anything she wanted—her whole existence was just a loose confederation of nanites and light particles held together with digital will—but she wasn’t real, couldn’t know smells and tastes and touches. Sure, she could be programmed for a variety of inputs, but those inputs weren’t the same thing as human senses. Chloe would never stroke that sweet kitty down the corridor, never smell flowers or sex or ghost peppers. Never taste Jamaican rum or her own tears.
And if the continental government had its way, every fae in the country would be sent back to the vats, jumbled together into a messload of nanites to be reprogrammed and reconditioned and set to work the way they were intended.
Chloe should never have existed, the scientists said and the courts agreed. She wasn’t a real, living person. But Chloe’s attention was pretty rapt, and pretty damned alive, when Mari drew the orange silk free of that footlocker.
She passed the fabric over her head. Cool and indulgent, like skinny-dipping. She pushed her hands through the short, snug sleeves, pressed the closure seam along her side, and looked over.
Chloe’s eyes were big as Gatling barrels. “I bet it feels like whispers.”
Mari cracked a grin. “Nah. Whispers would tickle more.”
Chloe laughed. Mari supposed Chloe could modulate her voice just as easily as she could change her appearance. She wondered why Chloe had chosen this face, this voice.
“Dr. Farad traded for that dress in Xi’an.” Chloe’s fingers cricked, as if she longed to touch. “And he held on to it, even though he could have traded it for a fortune. Real silk, no polys in it at all.”
“Heron bought this?”
Chloe nodded. “Oh sure. For you.”
“No, that can’t be right.” Mari said it without thinking, the reaction trained into her by years and years of disappointment. Never assume they mean the compliments. Never assume that smile is for you. Her world wasn’t populated by people who gave a shit what she wore. Or even, sometimes, that she existed.
What if he did give a shit, though?
“But I am right,” Chloe said. “I have a complete recording of the conversation the day he acquired this piece. Shall I recite it for you?”
“No, no, you don’t need to do that.” Mari brushed the silk with a hesitant finger and had to bite her lip to quell a bizarre surge of emotion. A need to grin like a crazy person. Or maybe cry. Was it physically possible to do both at once?
She hugged the information to her, this unexpected insight into her partner’s life. Back when she was wondering what Heron did on his downtimes, she had assumed that he, like so many other folks who worked on the fringe of legality, raked in his earnings and used them to indulge. For a freelance jobber, that’s what downtimes were for: celebrating the fact that another contract was complete and all team members were still alive.
Somebody with Heron’s résumé could have bought a lot of stuff to show for it: a fabricated island or a cloud node or at least a garage full of fast cars just like the one clamped down in the cargo vent.
But not Heron. He spent his downtime plucking treasures out of ruined places, harboring a collective of free-fae in direct violation of UNAN executive order, and keeping tabs on a crew of regular folks who appeared to depend on him.
And thinking of her.
She pinched the silk between her thumb and forefinger and met Chloe’s glowing gaze. “There’s got to be a way for you to feel this. It’s the fingers version of delicious.”
Chloe laughed. Mari thought maybe that sound, the sound of a fae laughing, was what got them their name. It was like tiny bells chiming, that laugh. Fairy giggles. Made a body want to laugh right back.
“That’s exactly what he said.” Chloe effervesced again, floating around Mari and through the hatch. “He’s been working on figuring out an integration protocol. I’ve donated some samples, and I think he’s close to a live trial. But I’ll warn you, if you mention it, he’ll go on about it for hours. Things he considers obligations, like caring for me and the rest of the crew, he takes way too seriously. Which, of course, is why we all love him so much.”
Yeah, thought Mari. Yeah.
Chapter 8
Heron kept his eyes closed lest he inadvertently watch her. But he still felt her. Inside his plane. Inside him. He wasn’t used to having her so close, so connected, especially for an extended time. It was almost more than he could stand, the rush of pure processed sugar jammed between tongue and soft palate, soaking into his system.
If he kept at this, he’d orgasm by osmosis.
He needed distraction, something decidedly not-her to sink his attention into. He stretched along the metal and cabling sinews of the plane, inhabiting the familiar. Chloe hummed Bach in the galley, shimmering in and out of visibility, a bright bit of digital fuzz and not in any way distracting for Heron. His neural was full of such things.
In the ward room, Kellen was reading a newsfeed and scratching Yoink between the ears. Garrett was stretched out on the deck in the cargo vent, only his legs visible, sticking out from beneath the car’s left quarter panel. He had a rag jammed into his pocket, but he wasn’t cleaning sand out of the wheel wells. Not yet. Likely, he’d wait till Heron was off the plane and detached. Not feeling every touch on the metal.
They were considerate, his crew. Chloe melded into the digital white noise more often than not. Kellen, Garrett, and the cat had predictable movements and weight distribution, and more important, they knew better than to stroke anything they needn’t. They knew their captain was rigged in tight with this ship and that if they so much as thumped a bulkhead, he would feel it.
Mari, however, had no idea.
Or did she? She had guessed as much about the car.
But she certainly wasn’t acting like she was aware of any such thing at the moment. Understandable, of course: she was sleeping. Restlessly. Excruciatingly. The pinpoint of sensation, the rack she lay on, was lit up like a chandelier in his sensory array. On her back, legs and arms splayed, fingers clenched to fists. Her neck arched, the crown of her head slipping beyond the top of her thin pillow. She snored.
Heron gripped the arms of his pilot’s chair. He shouldn’t watch. He shouldn’t listen or want. So much.
Did she shift on purpose in sleep, rubbing, kneading?
He huffed out a breath, shook his head to clear it. Yoink, done with her scratch, stretched and jumped down from the metal table. Deliberately, Heron followed her. Seven pounds, quadruped. Clambering toward the narrow galley. Probably hunting for a snack. Bottomless pit, that cat, but Kellen loved her, and Heron found her a useful experiment.
When his crew needed alone time, privacy, he could tuck them away from h
is input feed, focus on Yoink’s biohacked transmitters, follow her through the ship. She became his eyes and ears, a warm, furry tickle on his awareness. And she didn’t mind when he tagged along. Sometimes, he thought she even welcomed the company.
But she wasn’t particularly helpful today. In the doorway to the galley, she unkinked her spine, digging her reinforced claws into the rubber floor, and then her ears pricked. She turned. Her padding steps led her unerringly to the racks. Exactly the place he had hoped to avoid.
Chloe had left the door open, and Yoink slunk inside. She leaped up, snuggled in the crook beneath Mari’s ear, and wrapped her furry self up in Mari’s cinnamon hair. Purred.
Heron yanked his sensors. Disengage. Only…they didn’t. The sensors clung to Mari like Yoink’s claws on the deck. He tried to set up a privacy partition, as he’d done countless times, but even after he placed the block, he was still there.
Beside her, above her, all around her.
Weight distribution on the rack shifted under the press of her shoulder blades, her silk-draped rear, as she inhaled. She nuzzled the kitty in sleep, and it pushed back against her neck. Her eyelids crinkled, her brows came down, and she whimpered. Nightmare? He longed to stop the dream, to stop himself, but he couldn’t.
He couldn’t.
Transmission commencing. Not now, damn it!
A chunk of his resources shifted to deal with the transmission burst, to block it, and all the while, his id indulged itself. Damn him, it did. He wrapped his senses around Mari, seeing with Yoink’s machine eyes, touching her warmth through the deck temperature sensors, inhaling the tang and soap on her skin through the air reclamation controls feeding into his olfactory perception. He drowned in her, soaked in her, fell into her.
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