He fed far too many of his remaining tokens into an equally old processor unit, its faceplate covered in graffiti. Quantity was more important to him this morning than quality, so he punched up a double order of meat pies and a cup of coffee. The additional creamer and sugar he wanted cost him extra, nearly exhausting his finances. He carried his breakfast to a table from where he could watch the monitor.
The textured protein in the pie had a flat, metallic taste from the processor’s misaligned replicator lens, but at least the unit had the grease right. By the time he wolfed down the first one, his fingers were covered with it. He’d started on the second one when a voice on the monitor caught his attention. He glanced up as an image of himself sashayed through the crowd on the arm of the fat admiral.
“…and extremely dangerous. The authorities have reiterated that she should not be approached, but anyone who believes they’ve seen this woman, report it to Imperial Special Security Forces immediately.”
Interesting. They were still reporting that the assassin was a woman, but Gray Eyes knew he was a man. She’d got a good look at him, and recognized him from their first encounter. Why hadn’t she corrected the newsies’ misconception? Unless she hadn’t told them. Unless…
The half-eaten pastry fell from his fingers, and he felt the flutter in his chest of a missed heartbeat.
Unless he’d killed her.
The wound in her back hadn’t been that bad, and her partner had reached her quickly enough to see that she got medical attention, but the explosion… He’d used two high explosive grenades when one would have probably done the job. That screw-up had nearly taken him out, too. Both Gray Eyes and her partner could have been pulverized when that fountain came apart.
A lump of ersatz meat jammed in his throat and he gulped his coffee to wash it down, the hot liquid scalding his tongue. Why was he worried about that wirehead’s fate? They’d only crossed paths twice, and both times she’d tried to kill him. Her safety should be the furthest thing from his mind. With Gray Eyes out of the picture, there was one less person gunning for him.
A martial flourish from the monitor drew his attention: the Imperial Anthem. The royal seal dissolved into the arrogant face of a red-haired woman. The Emperor. So she wasn’t dead. Not even wounded, from the looks of her. Unless it was a computer-generated image, but the graphic running across the bottom of the screen proclaimed the broadcast was live. She stood before the huge window in her office, and behind her the rising sun painted Striefbourne City’s domes and spires in rose and gold. She assured her subjects that the perpetrator of last night’s atrocities would not go unpunished. He returned to his breakfast, tuning out the imperial tirade.
He’d planned to work his way closer to the dais and strike at the climax of Ransahov’s speech, but Gray Eyes had recognized him, forcing him to launch his attack too soon, too far away. He’d screwed up. When he’d fled last night, he’d feared as much. One more reason to avoid his meeting with the Smiling Man. Smiley didn’t appear to be one who accepted failure gracefully.
But it wasn’t his fault; it was that stupid needler. It made no sense to use a non-lethal weapon, but Smiley had insisted on it, and not the Cauldfield, to spray Ransahov and everyone who shared the stage with her. From the way Red handled it, warning that even a scratch would kill him, he’d assumed the darts were poisoned. It hadn’t been enough.
The last meat pie lay cooling on the plate, grease congealing beneath it, but his appetite had deserted him. He gulped the last of his coffee, found a square of rough paper, and wrapped the remaining pastry. With his finances almost gone, he needed to shepherd what he could. He slipped the packet into a vest pocket and shuffled out of the eatery.
One last glance over his shoulder at the monitor brought him to a stumbling halt as the blurred image of his alter ego dissolved into another face, one he had seen only once before, reflected in the polished metal of a lift door. Cold blue eyes stared at him from an aristocratic countenance, framed by dozens of thin ceremonial flaxen braids.
“…wondering if the absence of the Emperor’s new military Triumvir had any significance,” the voice-over intoned.
The Nameless Man lurched for the exit, forgetting his disguise in his terror. That had been The Other.
He wandered with the aimlessness of a drunk to foil any tails, but a wirehead didn’t need to be in sight to follow him. Eventually, he arrived back at the entrance to his hidey-hole, checked it in all the spectrums his new abilities gave him, then slipped into the narrow alleyway.
His den appeared undisturbed, so he crawled into the comforting darkness. With food in his belly, all he wanted now was sleep—if The Other would let him. He moved the crates by the entrance so they partially blocked the opening, leaving him only a slender strip to see out through, then rolled into a ball and closed his eyes.
In that hypnagogic territory between awakening and dreams, he made love to a woman. He sensed her flesh warm beneath his body, felt his palms stroke soft skin underlain with firm muscle. He buried himself inside her moist heat, felt her legs wrap around his hips, pulling him deeper inside. They moved together. Her tongue invaded his mouth with all the sweet fire his body experienced occupying hers. He lifted his mouth and whispered against her lips, “I love you.”
He felt her smile, and she gazed up at him with so much promise in those silver gray eyes.
Gray Eyes.
He slammed out of the dream, still hard and aching with need. His breath came in short hard pants, and tears mingled with the sweat on his face. He wasn’t sure how long he lay there shaking, his arms locked around his chest in a poor substitute for her embrace. Would there ever be sleep for him again? Eventually he rolled over and stared through the narrow opening into the alley’s gloom.
A clot of shadow flowed across the dirty pavement. In a panic, he fought to remember how to engage his night vision to see what that darkness hid.
“Meow?” the shadow called.
A cat. Just a cat. Hundreds of the scrawny animals haunted the back alleys of the Warren. His jacked-up senses picked up the scent of spices and grease from the meat pie in his pocket. The creature must have smelled it and come to investigate. It crept closer, belly low to the pavement. The white paws it slowly eased forward were gritty and gray with filth.
He pulled the pastry from his pocket and discovered he must have rolled on it during the passion of the dream. It was little more than crust and grease ground into the paper, but he unfolded it and reached through the narrow opening to splay it out for the cat.
“Come on, kitty. It’s not much, but probably more that you’ll find around here.”
The cat studied him with wide green eyes, then rushed forward and began to bolt down the offering.
He nudged the crate aside, widening the opening to reach out and scratch the cat behind the ears. It squeezed its eyes shut and wrinkled its nose in pleasure, purring.
“Oh, you like that, don’t you, kitty?” He felt himself smile, a foreign sensation.
Meal finish, the cat pushed its substantial bulk through the door of his sanctuary and curled beside him. Stroking the cat created a strange sensation in his body that might have been pleasure. He rolled onto his back and his newfound friend crawled onto his chest, stuck its head up under the Nameless Man’s chin, and purred louder. The sound soothed his body, quieted his mind. Reassured by the buzzing lullaby, he drifted into sleep.
This time he didn’t dream.
CHAPTER TEN
Fitz raised her face from her hands as Doc Ski strode into her office. Arching an eyebrow, the doctor asked. “The day’s going that well, uh?”
“You have no idea.” Fitz gestured toward a computer display. “This is a bill from the Imperial Horticultural Society for a hundred and fifty thousand credits. Seems that foul smelling monstrosity I blew away last night—or murdered, as they put it—is one of only three specimens on the entire planet.”
She leaned her chair back and sighed. “We were incredib
ly lucky. The emergency rooms were clogged with injuries—mainly broken bones, cuts and scrapes—but surprisingly few serious wounds. With all the bolts and needles flying around that room last night, it’s a wonder no one but Pettigrew was killed.” Fitz scrubbed her face, her eyes empty with exhaustion. “And I still haven’t found the slightest trace of Jumper.”
“Food makes it better. Eat. Doctor’s orders.” Ski placed a tray on the desk, pushing aside the welter of tablets and data chips cluttering the work space.
The sandwich Fitz recognized, a thick slice of steak coated with melted cheese, but the pale frothy fluid in the glass stumped her. She sniffed it. “What’s this?”
“A protein shake. It’s good. Drink it. I want, no, I’m ordering you, as your physician, to eat three meals a day, plus snacks—high calorie and protein. And sleep in your own bed tonight, instead of crashing on your office couch like an unwelcome house guest.”
“Not going to happen.” Fitz took an experimental sip of the shake and found it quite good. When she tried to lift the corner of the bread to peer at the slab of steak, her hand locked up, fingers refusing to obey her. The doctor noticed.
“You need to get your shoulder fixed. The symbiont can handle the damage to your cells, but can’t do squat about repairing the mangled hardware inside you.”
“No one’s going into the tank until the techs have gone through it piece by piece to make sure DeWitt hasn’t left us any more nasty surprises. The last thing we need now is for me to go in for a minor repair and wake up a homicidal maniac. As I recall, in her freighter incarnation Lizzy’s medical bay had a program in the auto-doc that could repair minor hardware damage. I’m sure they have something similar over in Cyber-Ops.”
“If that’s all I’m going to get, I’ll have it set up for you by this evening.” Ski dropped into the chair across the desk from Fitz. “I’m sure you didn’t ask me over here so I could nag you, though. What do you need?”
“Have you learned anything useful from Von Drager?”
Ski shook her head. “No. If I try to maneuver him around to talking about his past, he shuts down faster than an emergency airlock. That boy is carrying around some serious guilt about something.”
“A lot of innocent people died in his original experiment.”
“True, but I’ll tell you one thing about him. He’s not a doctor. Well, not a physician anyway. He’s a xenoarchaeologist; he studies dead alien races.”
Fitz paused, the sandwich halfway to her mouth. “What? He worked for Special Operations, and then DIS, as a medical researcher. In all that time, someone must have done a background check on him to see what credentials he had.”
“Remember, he’s had years since he killed off his original identity as August Lazzinair to build a new history, and I don’t think they were as interested in his medical qualifications as what he claimed to know about the Lazzinair Procedure. I’m not saying he hadn’t had some training. He knows as much as your average field medic. He can treat a wound, set a bone or put in an IV, but most of those just require shoving the patient into an auto-doc. Hell, I could name you a dozen merc units whose med-techs don’t have half as much training.” Ski thought for several seconds before continuing.
“According to what he told Wolf back on Baldark, both the symbiont and the Tzraka are relics from some ancient super race. As a xenoarcheologist, he must have come across the symbiont on an expedition and, like a rank amateur, ran with it, never thinking it would require years of medical trials and tests. We know nothing about the long-term consequences of living with this entity. Hell, for all we know, in a couple of centuries it could turn us all into two-headed, flesh-eating monsters.”
Ski shook her head and forced a laugh. “I first heard about Lazzinair’s experiments in medical school, and found them fascinating. Supposedly he’d committed suicide by then, and I felt heartbroken that I’d never get the chance to discuss his findings with him. Now I’ve met him, and it’s a hell of a disappointment to learn I know more about the symbiont than he ever did.”
A crash from the outer office interrupted them, followed by shouting and running footsteps. The door flew open as a black streak tore across the floor and vaulted to the top of the desk, scattering tablets and data chips. Jumper collapsed on his side, flanks heaving.
A red-faced guardsman followed him through the door. “Sorry, ma’am. This mangy stray blew through the security check point…”
“Mangy stray? You can just kiss my fuzzy buns.”
“That quite all right, Sergeant. He’s mine,” Fitz said. With his dirty white paws and matted fur, Jumper did look like a stray—albeit a slightly overweight one—and he emitted a particularly pungent odor.
With one last glare at the cat, the soldier withdrew.
Jumper struggled to his feet. “I found him, Boss Lady. I found Wolf, or that other guy. Maybe he’s not as bad as I first thought. He likes to feed homeless kitties.”
“Where?” Fitz asked.
“The Warren. But we have to go now. I caught a thought about him going somewhere else this evening… Oh, what’s this?” He stuck his head in the glass and began lapping up the protein shake. “This helps get rid of the taste of that nasty gerbat I put in my mouth as part of my cover.”
“Fitz, you need to get your shoulder taken care of before you go up against him again,” Ski said.
“No time.” She thought-clicked her comm, connecting to Lieutenant Pike. “Has Cyber-Ops brought by the new prototype for the shut-down module?”
“They did, but I haven’t finished testing it. There seems to be a few bugs.”
“Doesn’t matter. I need it now. Bring it up to my office immediately.” Fitz rose and peeled off her jacket as she headed for her quarters to find other clothes. A uniform, any uniform, but particularly a black one, would raise too many questions in the Warren. She scrounged through the closet and eventually found a bag of forgotten work-out clothes—sweat pants and a tee-shirt sporting a large rip from an enthusiastic game of zero-g handball. They’d let her pass unnoticed in the Warren, plus they already smelled a bit gamey. By the time she returned to her office, Pike had arrived with Bartonelli in tow.
The lieutenant passed her the module, but she nearly dropped it as the fingers of her damaged arm locked up.
“Damn it,” Ski said. “You’ve no business going after him in less than top shape. The auto-doc would only take an hour or so.”
“You found Youngblood?” Pike asked. “Give me a minute to change and we’ll come with you.”
“No. Leading a raiding party into the Warren would only scare him off. Just me. And Jumper.” Fitz strapped a miniature surveillance package to her wrist and slipped the shut-down module into one pocket. “I don’t plan on getting close to him. I’ll just shut down his spike as soon as I get into range.”
“About that…” Pike scowled. “I mentioned some bugs? Seems there’s a problem with blow-back. It takes down every augie in a three-meter radius, user included, unless you’re shielded.”
“If I shut him down, he’ll return to being Wolf and I won’t have to fight him, so that’s not a problem. You ready to go, Jumper?”
The cat pulled his head out of the glass, white droplets clinging to his whiskers. “Someone call Momma Dragon and have her tell Faydra her Big Tom is okay. My telepathy won’t reach that far.” He pawed the bread off the half-eaten sandwich and snatched the cheese-coated meat. “This would be a whole lot easier if I had those hands I asked you about.”
Fitz tucked the cat under her arm and charged out the door.
___________
The Warren hadn’t changed in the decades since Fitz left it. The narrow alleys still smelled of stale beer and staler bodies, of urine and the tang of burnt hydrocarbons. She could taste its acrid bite in the air. A smattering of rain seeped between the buildings and washed the oily residue into black puddles. Discarded food wrappers, broken beer bottles, and the bloated bodies of dead gerbats littered the pavement.
She dialed her olfactory augmentations to their lowest setting and fought her stomach’s queasy protest. Her auditory systems ran at their most sensitive, allowing her to hear the hum of flyers slicing through the air meters above her, and the sounds of screams and laughter drifting through the walls of the tenements on either side. A drawn out rumble of thunder announced a military shuttle climbing out of the port and heading toward orbit. The perpetual twilight this far below the city resounded with the clicks and buzzes and crashes of a hive full of human beings, but nowhere could she tease out the single sound of one man’s breathing.
She eased each foot forward, placing them with delicate care to avoid the slightest sound. If her augmented hearing could pick up the faint scrape of her shirt’s fabric against the plastcrete blocks of the wall, so could his.
A few meters ahead, a dead-end alley jinked to the left, leading back to a hidey-hole she remembered from another age, when a ragged child needed a sanctuary. At the end of the narrow passage, a slap-dash bridge had been cobbled together to join the windows of the facing apartments, no doubt to provide the occupants a quick escape route. Back then, the darkness beneath it had seemed a comforting retreat for a frightened child.
Behind her, a shard of glass clinked against masonry, sounding as loud as an explosion to her keyed up senses. She whirled.
Jumper stood, one paw raised and a guilty look on his face. His ears flattened against his head. “Sorry, Boss Lady.”
She wanted to yell at him, but because of his one-way communication, she couldn’t even do that now, not without giving her position away. On the way here, she’d argued with him, warning he should remain in the aircar, but she’d learned the hopelessness of ordering the cat to stay behind long ago, and he had as much riding on the success of this hunt as she did.
Cypher (The Dragon's Bidding Book 2) Page 12