Wanted and Wired

by Vivien Jackson

  When he found her, every time he found her, the roiling of the universe calmed somewhat.

  He wondered if time would make him more comfortable riding the cloud, but right now, it was still a struggle. He kept coming back to Mari, latching on to her whenever he felt overwhelmed. Which was pretty damned often, he had to confess. But she made it bearable.

  Well, as bearable as this morning was likely to get.

  Several chairs away from him sat the mech-clone husband of Angela Neko, and on the far side of him, the recently widowed continental senator herself. She kept her back I-beam straight and her gloved hands folded primly in her lap. She was much smaller than she looked on vids. If she put her elbows up on the tabletop, she’d resemble a child.

  A fact of which she was probably keenly aware. He had a sense that Angela Neko was aware of everything. Almost as much as he was.

  “My plane is landing presently,” he told her.

  A corner of her mouth twitched up. “Ah. And I’m guessing Marisa Vallejo is aboard it, or have you spirited her away?”

  In response to the cacophony of newsvids claiming her husband had been murdered, Angela Neko had issued several statements denying the reports, even questioning who might have started such a horrible rumor. The lie seemed to have taken root. Some services had even started pushing the actual footage of the hit, under censorlock, of course, and pointing out how it was an obvious fabrication. Pundits had been picking the vid apart for two days now.

  Because clearly, Daniel Neko lived. The Global News Network had broadcast footage of Senator Neko and her husband attending an awards gala last night. While Heron struggled to get back to his body, while Mari sloughed through drinks at dive after dive in Dallas, Angela Neko had taken her mech-clone, the one that looked exactly like Daniel, out for a night on the town. And everyone who paid attention to those sorts of things had seen it.

  Heron slid a look at the machine Daniel now, marveling at it. He coveted a more thorough examination. From a surface view, he could discern no traces of mech. Only deeper bioscans gave the tells: power routing instead of neurotransmitters, titanium core that affected his mass significantly. Systems that Heron read as organic on first pass now seemed, on further inspection, far too precise to be the clone part of mech-clone.

  The Daniel Neko unit was eons more advanced than even the N series machines, which, of course, made Heron wonder what Mari’s dad was up to. Indications were that he was working for the TPA technocrats, no longer tinkering in an academic lab, and concentrating instead on more weapons-oriented research. Apparently, that information was only half correct, though installing a mech-clone as the contracted spouse of a UNAN senator certainly could be considered an act of war.

  Did he have other mech-clone moles in high-ranking positions? If he did, could he marionette them at will? God, the thought. With enough well-placed mech-clones, Damon Vallejo could control the world. Only he had to realize that Heron would try to stop him.

  Or was this whole business with the nanotransmission and Mari’s abduction supposed to have distracted him?

  And how about Angela Neko? Was she another attempt at distraction? Or had someone else sent her here?

  On the off chance she was a spy, he would have to keep her away from the other residents. Especially Chloe.

  Heron didn’t look at Angela directly, but he could see her from three angles, through the lenses of the Pentarc security monitors. Her clasped hands weren’t clenched or tense, but something about her seemed off. She toyed with the fingertip of one glove, and once in a while, her eyes would dart to the door. Who did she expect to walk through it? And what would that do to her impossible equanimity?

  She had secrets, probably a billion of them, not the least of which was her reason for requesting haven.

  Her hotel had been attacked in the early hours of this morning, minutes before she was scheduled to leave it. On the same night Mari had been abducted and wounded. On the same night Heron had been trapped outside of his own body, probably by the tech those mercenaries had implanted in his head.

  In his experience, coincidences were unicorns. They didn’t exist. Either one entity had moved on multiple fronts last night, attempting to alter the landscape of geopolitics, or more than one entity had been involved. Vallejo and his Texas technocrats were obvious culprits. Heron had seen, had heard the conversation atop Enchanted Rock.

  What he couldn’t figure out was why Vallejo would have wanted to kill the senator, especially mere days after assassinating her husband. Kellen had suggested that she wasn’t mourning her husband, but she certainly wasn’t her usual put-together vid-slick persona this morning. In person, she was unexpectedly fragile. Wounded.

  The intrigue monster had a lot of tentacles, but Heron was confident he could follow all its convolutions and locate the source, the heart of evil. He could destroy all of its pieces if he so chose.

  But first, he needed to secure his haven. His home. His precious things and people.

  He was going to start by turning the Pentarc into a fortress. He would keep his mothers, both Adele and Fanaida, safe, and his treasures and friends and responsibilities, and Mari too. Of course her. The queen could have her floating haven; he had a yen to make one of his own, beyond the reach of UNAN or Texas or the Vatican Protectorate or any of the multigovernmental or corporate entities. Most of all, he knew that no one could stop him.

  And yes, that thought was a little bit terrifying.

  And fucking awesome.

  “Can I ask you a question about her, Dr. Farad? About your shooter?” Senator Neko said, breaking into his thoughts.

  “Certainly. I don’t promise to answer, but you are welcome to ask.”

  She leaned forward slightly. “Is she really Damon Vallejo’s daughter? Or is she something…”

  Else. Something else. He knew her next word before she said it, and his mind buzzed, hunting for an answer that wouldn’t put Mari in fresh danger.

  But then the two-story black doors at the far end of the conference room swung open, and the tension evaporated.

  Mari. Heron resisted the urge to stand up and run over to her, just so he could touch her as soon as she walked in. As it was, he couldn’t completely swallow the bulb of emotion in his throat when she sashayed through those doors, safe, with a grin on her lips, a slink to her hips, and no sign at all of all the things she’d endured in the last few days.

  She thought her talents precious few, but Heron counted her resilience as one of the most arresting things he’d ever seen in a person. He hadn’t even begun telling her all the things he loved about her, but he thought that maybe he’d get the chance soon. And he’d tie her down this time, so she couldn’t slip away before he finished.

  “Heron.” She mouthed it, didn’t even speak out loud, but he heard her voice all over his skin, all through his blood.

  “So fucking good to see you,” he told her, wondering if she’d be able to hear. Chloe wasn’t in there anymore, but Heron didn’t need any boost to read Mari’s mind. Not anymore.

  Angela Neko stood, smoothing her elegant, old-wool skirt and pasting on one of those beatific political smiles. Beside her, mech-Daniel stood up as well.

  Mari ignored both of them completely, ate the space of the conference room with her long strides, and planted herself right in front of Heron’s chair at the head of the table. She palmed the armrests, leaned down, and laid a soul-wallop of a kiss all over his mouth. Her unbound hair curtained them from the rest of the world, but Heron wouldn’t have minded if everybody saw. He had half a thought of broadcasting this all over the West Coast. Hell, all over the world.

  “Likewise,” Mari murmured against his mouth.

  So she had heard him. It shouldn’t surprise him, how connected they were. Not anymore. He met her eyes, and the spark that lit between them flared hot in his blood, his neuromatrix, his cock. As if she sense
d as much, she snaked the tip of her tongue and touched it fleetingly to his bottom lip, and when she drew it back in, her grin looked positively impish. “Senator Neko, Mr. Neko, it will be a pleasure meeting both of you, just not right now. I have a guess why you’re here, and believe me, I’m not going to resist arrest. I’ll even confess. But first, I gotta beg about twenty minutes with Dr. Farad here. Been a while since I’ve seen him, and we have some unfinished business to see to.” As if to make her point, Mari reached one hand over and popped the top hook on her corset.

  “Clearly, you have no idea why I’m here,” Angela said.

  That made Mari pause. Alas. Heron could have continued even with an audience. Instead, when she turned to face Senator Neko, he set his hands on Mari’s hips. He didn’t so much as tug, but she lowered herself onto his lap anyway, almost as if she’d read his mind. Her weight pressing down hurt for a moment, but not in a bad way. In an excruciatingly hot way, in fact.

  “Oh, fine. You can watch if that’s your thing.” Mari shifted her ass on Heron’s lap and reached down for the hem to her battered crinoline.

  Angela’s placid look never wavered, but mech-Daniel looked away and blinked rapidly. Too rapidly. Only a machine could flutter that fast. A person would have flushed.

  “You don’t have to impress your seduction skills on me, Mari Vallejo,” the senator said firmly. “According to the marketing materials, your base-level rebuild, before they fitted your face onto it, was originally intended for sexual gratification. Daniel’s is similar, so I have a decent idea how effective it can be.” Angela indicated the Daniel mech-clone with an inclination of her head.

  Mari stilled. Heron stilled. For a moment there, she swayed, but his hands on her hips kept her steady.

  “Where did you get these marketing materials?” asked Heron.

  “Damon Vallejo, of course,” Angela replied.

  Heron’s brain spun up, parsing, pulling old conversations, pulling his partial feed from the crest of Enchanted Rock. Pulling all bios of Mari from before, during, and after the Pentarc. Data sets slid into place, sorting themselves. God, that bastard had told Mari the truth out there. Had he told her all of it, though? Had Damon Vallejo told her the truth about herself?

  And yet, she’d come in here and kissed him, teased him. She wasn’t acting like a creature ashamed of who—of what—she was. He fanned his hands over Mari’s hip bones, slid them over her belly, holding her, embracing her, protecting her as much as he could, though not from bullets this time.

  “You heard him? Who all heard him?” Mari’s voice was tiny. Heron wasn’t used to that tone, but she’d used it before. It was the voice of a younger her, a child in a woman’s body. It cooled his ardor somewhat, but it made him want to hold her tighter.

  “Heard him? Yes, I’ve heard him go on about his technological prowess. And I’ve heard him complain about Dr. Farad, too, which I understand is a long-running bit of competitive bullshittery that frankly makes me want to vomit. Damon’s fought me on secession for a long time, but now he’s made it personal. For you, too, I see.”

  “He’s working for the TPA,” Mari murmured. “Everybody’s taking sides.”

  All the big players were sorting themselves, and eventually, the sides were going to line up to fight for real, no longer through proxies. Every future Heron could posit had that happening, but he’d been shielding Mari from his bleaker thoughts. Now, he wished he’d just come right out and shared some of his information, some of his worries.

  The Mari he held between his hands right now was solid—she could handle it. Maybe she always could have.

  He should have trusted her with more, sooner. Instead of letting her find out all this on her own, he could have just told her.

  “You might think about doing the same,” Angela said.

  Mari shook her head. She’d dropped the hem of her skirt and now placed her hands on top of Heron’s, over her waist.

  “I didn’t mean to harm your husband, ma’am,” she said. “And I sure as shit didn’t mean to start a war.” She was facing away from him, so Heron couldn’t see her face, but her fingers were cold atop his. Strong, capable. But deep-space cold.

  Angela Neko smiled again, but it wasn’t the high-gloss smile of a politician. It was the grimace of a woman who was smiling even though she felt like doing something else. “I know that. Which is why I’ve instructed our entertainment regulators to retrieve all copies of the security vid of Daniel’s demise. Official story is that it’s doctored anyway, and I will stand behind that. If anyone doubts that my husband is alive, they have only to see vid of us together. No one is going to arrest you…any of you.”

  “I’m guessing that you want something in exchange for our freedom,” Heron said. Angela might have her reasons for going along with the hoax—and from what he’d heard from Kellen, Heron had a pretty good idea what some of those reasons were—but in his experience, generosity like this never came without a price.

  “See? Dr. Farad knows how to play this game. Yes, I’ll want a boon in exchange for my complicity. Two, actually, since you stole my helicopter.”

  Heron clenched his teeth. For himself, he didn’t mind owing favors. He didn’t mind doing favors for people. But he would balk flat-out at putting Mari or his crew or his mothers in any more hair-raising situations. “Borrowed.”

  Angela grimace-smiled again. “Call it what you will. In exchange, I seek haven for both mech-Daniel and me. Here. Undisclosed. For an indeterminate period of time.”

  Heron narrowed his eyes on her, but she didn’t flush beneath his scrutiny. Like her robot husband, she just met him stare for knife-edged stare.

  “Done,” he said. “We have the room, and I will guarantee your safety in exchange for Mari’s immunity.”

  Senator Neko let out the breath she’d been holding. She nodded. Without breaking her eye-lock on Heron, she addressed Mari. “Mari, you may not have meant to start a war, but one is coming. I advise you to prepare yourself. All of you.”

  Neither the senator nor her mech-consort had taken a seat again, and now they both straightened perceptibly, which Heron guessed was their way of saying the interview was at an end. When Angela nodded curtly, murmured a farewell, and turned to leave the conference room, Heron felt Mari flinch. She let out a little sound like a kitten’s mewl, but it was too soft for the others to have heard. Well, Angela, at least; mech-Daniel turned back and flashed her a look before he followed his wife out the double doors.

  Through his inputs, Heron watched the pair pause in the corridor, looking lost. Then Adele found them, and Angela shed some of her tension visibly.

  Heron could have listened in. He could have followed the trio through the Pentarc, watched where Adele led them, made sure they weren’t allowed to wander the premises. He could have done that and kept a significant portion of his attention right here in the room. But he didn’t. He released them, released as much of the rest of the world as he could, and focused on Mari. God, she felt good here where he could touch her, hold her. Kiss her.

  Long moments after the conference room doors closed, she just sat there on his lap, holding his hands, not saying anything. Eventually, she sucked in a breath that he heard rattle in her chest.

  “It’s true, what she said. At least I think it is. I’m a rebuild of some sort. Post-human.”

  “And that is a bad thing?” Heron tried to quell the roil those words cooked in his gut. She looked so wistful when she said them, which poked the hive of his own insecurities. When he was a little kid, he’d endured some mild ribbing for his neo-hippie upbringing and his Arab features, but altering one’s body was a choice, not a circumstance of birth. He’d chosen to fuck with nature, to fuck with himself. The queen’s alterations had saved his life, but even so, he had consciously accepted them. He’d chosen to become other.

  And not just other. A unique monster made even more complica
ted by the dispersal of his consciousness into the cloud. If Mari still harbored some of those low thoughts about altered humans, she would never be able to look at him without loathing that part of herself. And, ultimately, loathing him as well.

  He slid his gaze off hers.

  “Let me look at you.” She hauled her body sideways, sliding off his lap so she could glare down at him.

  Her dark-whiskey eyes set him on fire inside, but he tried not to interpret that look as a come-hither. Tried really hard. Her face was bunched up in her superserious expression, and that helped somewhat. She raised her hands, leaned toward him again, and pushed the hair away from his forehead, exposing his eyes and the projection alts at his temples. He watched for it but didn’t see the slightest dismay in her face when she gazed down at him. “No. That right there may be the best thing I’ve ever known.”

  Joy walloped him. Briefly, he thought about lighting up the neon in Vegas or spiking the Nikkei, but instead, he just drew in a long breath and let it out slow. His facial muscles only vaguely remembered what a silly grin felt like, and they approximated one.

  “I’m no good at this stuff, at telling folks how I feel,” Mari went on. “Never have been. And honestly, I don’t remember clearly what happened down on that job in Corpus. I tried to get Nathan to tell me, but he was…oh, that’s another thing. Have I told you about Nathan?”

  Same Mari, same whiplash-inducing conversation. He was used to the turns, generally, but this one sobered the tone. Heron knew that Nathan was the remote who’d gone dark on Mari, exploded her hiding spot, and left her for dead. He knew that Mari had searched high and low for that guy for years, had taken risky jobs just so she could get better information on his whereabouts and her father’s. In Heron’s mind, Nathan Grace was just a step down from Dr. Vallejo on the ladder of folks he wanted to eviscerate on Mari’s behalf.