Jumper hissed, green eyes squeezing shut. His whiskers twitched as his black nose sampled the night’s scents. “He’s still there. Down that little alley. I can smell him.”
Fitz sorted through all the information her olfactory augs supplied, her computers rushing to catalog everything—cheap perfume from a nearby brothel, a whiff of RTZ, and the stink of multiple unwashed bodies. As sensitive as her augs were, she wasn’t able to identify an individual by scent alone, like the cat.
It put her at a disadvantage not to be able to question Jumper. When they returned home, when this mess was all over, she’d talk to Doc Ski about finding a cybernetic veterinarian, if only to implant a transceiver in the cat’s skull so they could converse silently.
The Empire’s first augie cat. Jumper would love it.
She thought-clicked on the program for the spy-flies. The box on her wrist popped open, allowing three tiny metallic insects to buzz free, whirling around her head as she adjusted their telemetry. Three windows opened on her inhead display, three views of her face as the minions watched her, awaiting their directions. She sent them into the dead end alley, only three more insects buzzing around the foul passageway.
Since she’d left the Warren, more escape routes, secret rooms and hideouts had been built over the ones she remembered, making the alley look like a new building had sprung up in the cramped space. The opening at the bottom remained; a manmade cave that appeared too small to host even a child. Cases, cans and boxes stood in front of the opening, disguising it.
She guided one of the spy-flies low, trying to get a look back into the darkness, but without luck. Thermal revealed only a warm-blooded creature, big enough to be a man, curled into a tight knot. If she moved the bot in too close to him, his enhanced senses might hear the whine of its drives, or feel the backwash of the anti-grav unit.
Movement in one of the inhead windows caught her attention. A small black shadow drifted down the alley. She glanced behind her and cursed. Jumper wasn’t there. He’d slipped past her while she’d programmed the bots. He must have rolled in one of the noxious puddles, as filth caked his fur. He began scratching vigorously, let out a series of piteous meows, and checked out each disgusting lump and piece of garbage in the alley. His disguise of a starving Warren cat might have worked better if he hadn’t been carrying several kilos of extra weight. He stood on his hind legs to nose into a barrel, tipping it over and spilling its contents in a clatter of metal and breaking glass.
One of the boxes in front of the opening moved, shifted to one side.
Fitz held her breath, grounding her spies on the walls, one behind, the remaining two on either side, giving her a three-sixty view. In the darkness of the alcove, she saw movement.
“Kitty?” The voice sounded rusty, hoarse, and almost unrecognizable without its usual cultured accent. Almost, but not quite. Fitz’s heart pounded against her ribcage. A crazy mixture of fear and elation stormed through her mind as her fingers slid into her pocket and closed around the module.
A hand extended from the darkness, a small dark mound on its palm. Playing his part well, the cat edged forward, nose wrinkling. He snatched the morsel and withdrew to bolt it down. A chuckle sounded in the darkness, then the man unfolded his lanky form from his cramped refuge.
He leaned down to scratch the cat under the chin. “Sorry, Kitty, but that’s all the food I have.”
Slow, sweet shivers climbed Fitz’s back at the view from behind him. She could never mistake the finest butt she’d ever seen, ever caressed. As he stood, she noticed how thin he’d become, but his shoulders were still broad. One of the side bots fed her the image of his profile. The nose was long, aristocratic; the cleft in his chin shallow. His hair was…gone. Except for a short tail at the base of his neck to hide his spike’s socket, only a dark fuzz stubbled his head. He’d cut off all his hair. That made sense. A man on the run, hiding in the squalor of the Warren, wouldn’t have time for the extravagance of long hair.
Her body remembered the sweet sensation of all that golden hair sliding across her bare skin; the exquisite torment of it tickling her thighs as his tongue and lips drove ripples of pleasure through her. She groaned, her head thudding back against the wall.
She cursed, suddenly remembering to scan the inhead windows. The squalid alley was now empty; even the cat was gone. She’d lost focus, let her emotions waste her best chance of catching him. Fitz pushed off from the wall.
Weight slammed into her, driving her back against the rough blocks. She still held the module, tried to engage it, but he moved faster. The specifications said he’d be quicker, stronger. The logical side of her brain accepted the facts, but she hadn’t believed he’d be this fast. Even her augmented senses could barely follow his movements as he pinned her wrist and pounded her hand against the wall. The module dropped from her fingers, bounced at her feet, and his boot came down on it, crushing it into useless bits of plexisteel and composites.
He leaned close, his nose brushing hers. “Sorry, Gray Eyes. Was that something important?”
The eyes boring into hers were a familiar blue, but with no warmth, no sense of recognition in their depths. His lips twisted in a cruel parody of the smile she knew so well.
“Well, if it isn’t Ransahov’s little augie attack dog. I thought maybe I’d killed you.”
“Sorry to disappoint, but you missed.”
“Gray Eyes, I don’t miss.”
The familiar phrase, delivered in his voice but without his accent, twisted a lance of pain in her gut.
“Maybe you’re not as good as you think.”
He shook his head, nose brushing the tip of hers. “Nope. I hit you. Right here.” His fingers stroked the front of her shirt, above her right breast.
“I had body armor on.”
“Not in that dress you wore. It left little to the imagination, and I have a very active imagination when it comes to a beautiful woman.” He slipped his fingers inside her shirt, his brows crinkling as he ran his hand across her smooth unblemished flesh.
“I don’t understand. I know I shot you. Right here. I saw the bolt hit; I saw the blood.”
Fitz tried for an enigmatic smile, despite the tremors rolling through her. “It’s a mystery, isn’t it, Wolf?
He cocked his head at her. “Who’s this Wolf guy?”
“You are. You’re Wolfgang…”
“No.” The strength of his denial belied the confusion in his eyes. “I’m…”
“Who? Who are you then?”
The elegant features twisted. “I don’t know. All I remember…”
“Do you remember anything before you woke up in the medical bay?”
“I, ah… You. I remember you, Gray Eyes. You were there, bending over me when I opened my eyes. I wanted to crawl inside those silver orbs and stay with you forever.”
“But nothing before that?”
“No.” The word seemed to hurt him.
“That’s because you didn’t exist before that second. You’re a scrap of programming DeWitt slipped into Wolf’s computer while they were doing the augmentation upgrades. It overwrote your personality. Tritico paid the cyber-tech to hijack your body. He figured you were the only person strong enough, with the right access, to kill Ari, and he wants her out of the way so he can go on doing business the way he always has. He programmed you to kill her.”
She stroked her hand down the side of his face, felt the rough scratch of whiskers. “Come back with me, Wolf. We can pull the program out. Stop it now before anyone else gets hurt.”
He flinched back from her touch. “Don’t call me that. I’m not your Wolf. And I’m not a piece of bad code. I exist, damn it. I’m human, and I want to stay alive.”
“We’ll figure something out. I promise. We won’t just delete you like a random cypher…”
“Cypher…” He trailed his fingertip down her throat. “I like the sound of that. No more Wolf. Call me Cypher.”
His mouth claimed hers, hard and hungr
y. His tongue forced past her lips, demanding her response. All the anger, fear and frustration of the past few days ignited a laser bright heat inside her, fusing her mouth to his. He ground his body against her, pinning her to the wall. She wrapped one leg around his hip, needing to be closer, needing the encumbering clothes gone. His hand slipped beneath her shirt and cupped her breast.
When the need to breathe drove him to lift his mouth from hers, he searched her face, his eyes hooded and dark with passion. “You don’t seem like the type to seek hard anonymous sex in Warren back alleys. Who is this Wolf to you? At first I thought you were his bodyguard, just an augie charged with protecting him, but it goes a lot deeper, doesn’t it?”
“You…Wolf is my bonded partner. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do to get him back.” She lifted her hand, displaying the thin platinum ring circling one finger. Her index finger held a second, larger band. “These are our bonding rings. I’d never heard of the custom before, but you—Wolf—said it was common on his homeworld, Willcommin. I kept yours…his, while he underwent the implantation surgeries.”
“Bond-partner, huh? Lucky man.” He kissed her again, softer this time. It ended too soon for Fitz.
She placed her fingertips against his lips. “You told me once you would be at my side for as long as I needed you, for all eternity. Keep your promise now.”
Cypher shook his head. “Sorry, Gray Eyes, but I can’t do that. Although, I’ll admit your kiss almost made me change my mind. The truth is, I’ve grown accustomed to this body. It’s quick, and strong, and smart. I’m going to need all those attributes if I go after Ransahov again.”
Fitz raised her chin and put as much frost into her gaze as her aching soul would allow. “If you do, I’ll be forced to stop you. Don’t make me do that.”
“You might try, but I don’t think you’ll succeed. My advice would be to stay out of my way. I’ve already stolen your Wolf’s body, and after the Emperor is dead, maybe I’ll come back to claim his woman.”
Cypher stepped back, crouched. Organic muscles and cybernetic assists uncoiled, hurling him upward. He somersaulted, caught a projecting ledge, then scrambled the rest of the way up the wall like a four-legged insect. His augmentations allowed him to use every crevice, every crack, to pull his body upward. By the time Fitz started to move, he’d rolled onto the roof.
Without the full use of one hand, she picked her way more slowly, looking for ledges and larger projections. When she reached the rooftop, she spied him four buildings away, hurtling across the gaps between them in great arching leaps. He skidded to a stop, turned and bowed to her, then leapt into empty space.
Fitz watched for long minutes, but he didn’t reappear on the next rooftop. She sunk to her knees, and the tears came.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The sounds of celebration flowed through the streets and alleys of the Warren as night settled over the city. From the corner, singing erupted from a tavern, enthusiastic but discordant. Weapons fire echoed in the distance, either in joy or violence. In the Warren, it was sometimes hard to know the difference.
Seventh Night of Founder’s Day week was a time to gather with friends and family, to sing and exchange gifts, to celebrate and reflect on memories of holidays past. He had no past, no memories, but he had been given a gift today, perhaps the most precious gift he’d ever received in a lifetime measured in days, not years. Gray Eyes had given it to him. A name. Cypher. A puzzle, a mystery, a zero. It fit him like a hand-made, five thousand credit suit.
“Cypher.” He savored the word on his tongue as he lifted the bottle of homebrew in a toast to his beautiful adversary. The rotgut seared his throat and sent him into a fit of coughing. The aftertaste was part solvent, part aircar fuel, and all heat. This stuff could kill a man, eat out his stomach and his brain. It seemed to have done a good job on the two stumbling derelicts he’d kicked out when he confiscated their burned-out hovel. And their stash of homebrew. He didn’t care what it tasted like; all he wanted tonight was to get drunk, blotto, shit-faced, and forget that he had no past to remember.
Images stirred in the back of his mind. A boy singing in a high clear voice. One note faltered, and a hand swung from the darkness, driving him to the floor. Words growled. “Can’t you get anything right?”
Cypher’s head snapped back with the memory of the blow, striking the edge of the window. The Other whispered inside his mind, You see? Perhaps it’s better to have no memories rather than the ones I have of this holiday.
A second, longer swig from the bottle went down more smoothly, or perhaps the first had deadened the nerves in his throat. He licked his lips and found the sweetness within that fire, much like the taste of Gray Eyes’ mouth. He twitched at the bolt of lust coursing through his body.
Making love to her would be like mating with a quolla—deadly, terrifying, but exhilarating. While he thrust into her, she’d probably be driving a knife under his ribs, but to feel her moving beneath him was well worth the risk.
Cypher chuckled at The Other’s sharp flare of anger building in the depths of his brain.
Across the narrow street lay the store front where he was to meet Smiley tonight. In the waning light, he could see that the building, like the entire row of its neighbors, backed up to a sprawling warehouse. A blaze had swept through the northern end of the structures, leaving only skeletal beams jutting out of the wreckage. In the Warren, with its sub-standard construction and ramshackle tenements, fire was an ever present danger. Even the public urinal odor of the previous squatters couldn’t overcome the wet ash stench of this room.
He’d wanted to run away, not crawl back to Smiley, but that damned compulsion had taken control of him again, robbing him of free will and driving him here. He drained the bottle and hurled it against the far wall, the sound of its shattering brittle to his enhanced hearing. The hooch was worthless; he’d guzzled the entire bottle and hadn’t felt the slightest buzz.
Cypher slid down the wall beside the window, from where he could watch the comings and goings at Smiley’s den. Even during the end of year holidays, nights this far south were mild, but he wished he could have retrieved his jacket. He pulled his knees close and wrapped his arms around them for warmth.
After the confrontation with Gray Eyes, he’d fled his hidey-hole with nothing but the clothes he’d worn. The thin tee-shirt did little to keep him warm. He’d been forced to abandon not only his coat, but also his pistol and what little money he had left. By now that area would be crawling with enforcers, probably wireheads too. There was no going back. But more than the loss of those things, he missed the cat.
He had no illusions as to why the feline sought him out. It was for the food he gave it. For a back alley denizen, the black cat was surprisingly overweight. It must know the location of every soft touch, fat gerbat, and trash dump in the Warren. Even after it had scarfed down the remainder of his greasy meat pie, it had elected to hang with him. The comfort of having another warm living being next to him—one that wasn’t trying to kill him—was an unexpected pleasure.
His hasty retreat from his hiding spot had left him with no resources and few options. As a stranger in the Warren, it would take days to make the connections to earn enough credits to buy a ticket up to one of the orbital stations. Days of hunger and cold; of sleeping in cardboard boxes and stewing in his own stink.
He hated the thought of crawling back here, of begging Smiley for the rest of the payment that should have been his to begin with. He’d upheld his end of the bargain, hadn’t he? Risked his neck to try to kill an Emperor? Didn’t he deserve at least part of his money for that?
He realized he’d dropped off to sleep only when the sound of music and off-key singing jerked his head up from his knees. A quick scan of his inhead chrono showed he still had several hours before they were due to meet.
A line of musicians in motley costumes snaked through the street, a crowd of drunken revelers following, doing their best to drown out the band. The march, played o
ut on a homemade celesta, pipes and drums, slipped inside Cypher’s head and began to repeat until long after the merrymakers had passed.
One man remained, standing in front of the building across the street, trying to appear casual, looking nowhere in particular. Cypher’s combat systems went hot, zooming in on the lone figure in multiple spectrums. No weapons, no body armor, and yet his threat assessment program highlighted him as a danger. His face had the bland openness of an accountant, but that was the beauty of the augie program. You could hide a killing machine behind the face of an angel.
He might be a Black Jacket or an enforcer, but neither of those would be foolish enough to track an assassin down without a weapon or backup.
The man jerked at the sound of fireworks exploding overhead, their multicolored glow reflecting on his bald scalp. With one last glance around, the watcher climbed the building’s stairs and knocked on the same door Cypher had a few nights ago. Light spilled out, then disappeared as he entered.
So, I’m not the only person visiting Smiley tonight.
One hour passed, and most of another, before the bald man reappeared, descended the stairs and hurried away. It might be nothing more than a visit from Smiley’s tax accountant, but Cypher’s gut said different. And trusting his gut had kept him alive for a long time. No, that was not his memory, but The Other’s. Still, it was advice worth heeding. Time to get this mess over with, to explain what went wrong.
It hadn’t been as simple as the op-plan. Security had been far heavier than he’d anticipated. Not that an Emperor’s security would be toilet paper-thin, but this level of paranoia had been insane. Praetorian guards had lined the wall and prowled at every exit. Only his advanced planning, and a healthy dose of luck, had allowed him to get out alive. It was as if they had known what he planned—she had known what he planned. He scrubbed his hands against his pant legs as he stood and exited the shabby room.
Cypher (The Dragon's Bidding Book 2) Page 13