Overload Flux

by Carol Van Natta

  Her hands started to shake. She slid them into her lap quickly.

  “The only reason I wasn’t there when… that day was because I’d moved into a cashflow-only hostel the night before. Vadra wasn’t like I remembered her, or maybe she was, and I never knew it, but she was chemmed out of her mind every night. I told her I was turned down for the job and was leaving Rekoria.”

  Foxe nodded, his expression compassionate. “You heard about Vadra’s death. You reached out to friends for help, which is how we found you.”

  Onndrae took another sip of coffee. Her hand was steadier. “The newsfeed says illicit chem dealers killed her, but I thought Loyduk had done it, and they’d be watching the spaceports.”

  Mairwen hadn’t heard the police’s theory of the murder, and suppressed a derisive snort. Foxe had been optimistic when he’d predicted it would take them weeks to figure it out.

  Foxe asked Onndrae to give him the names of anyone in Loyduk Pharma who might be involved, but she said as far as she was concerned, all the executives were complicit, one way or another.

  “I’m tired and scared, and I’m tired of being scared. I just want to keep my family safe.”

  Foxe’s eyes had quit drifting to Mairwen, so she assumed he was done using his talent.

  “I can understand that. We’ll do what we can to help you.” He tilted his head toward the camera controller unit, which Mairwen took to mean he wanted to stop the recording. She complied.

  “Agent Morganthur will escort you to one of our security teams. They’ll be staying with you until we can get you someplace private and safe.”

  That was Mairwen’s prearranged cue. If Foxe had judged Onndrae to be another imposter, he would have had Mairwen call the team in and let them deal with it.

  As Mairwen led Onndrae through the joyhouse hallway, she surreptitiously studied her temporary charge. She thought Onndrae might once have been a person who smiled a lot, but was now weighed down with fear, anger, and loss. She had an uncharacteristic urge to reassure the fragile woman that she’d been right to trust Foxe.

  Their walk was without incident, and she transferred Onndrae to the two La Plata staff who would become her bodyguards and protectors for the next phase of her life. Mairwen nodded in response to Onndrae’s whispered thanks and left.

  Back in the meeting room, Foxe had packed up the holo camera set and was waiting for her. He looked worn but pleased. He’d already put on his greatcoat, as if the room had become too cold for him, or he was anxious to leave.

  “Much more interesting than blackmarketers selling bad clones,” he said as he gave the room one last check. “Thanks for making Onndrae feel safe.” He caught her gaze with a warm smile. “Me, too.”

  For five heartbeats, the pull of him was so strong she had to fight to keep herself still and her breathing steady. He looked away and the moment was gone. She belatedly realized she hadn’t responded, and hoped he wasn’t offended.

  After she drove him back to the office, the rest of Foxe’s day was taken up with meetings. He later holed up in his office in deep thinking mode, barely aware of his surroundings, pouring and forgetting multiple cups of coffee, neglecting to eat. Hours after everyone else had left the building, he finally emerged from his office. He was surprised to find her standing outside the door.

  “Have you been out here the whole time?” He looked unhappy as he ran his fingers through his hair.

  “No, just the last four hours.”

  She’d followed him to meetings and back, then parked herself in the hallway, with periodic forays to the stairways, lifts, and the fresher. It was nice to have a stationary security post that was indoors for once.

  He shook his head. “Remind me to tell Zheer you deserve a bonus. Let’s go home.”

  She was puzzled that he was bothered by her doing her job. Where else did he think she’d be? And more disturbing, how were Velasco and Alhamsi providing security during their shifts if they weren’t near him?

  He grabbed their coats and handed hers to her, then put his on as they walked the empty halls to the lift. The lights came on and off as they passed by.

  His greatcoat smelled of wool and him, which curled into her nose as she drove him home. He’d taken to always sitting up front with her, and she’d taken to allowing it as a harmless chance to immerse her senses in him. Less harmless was the comfortable familiarity of walking into his townhouse with him, almost like it was where she should be. She was glad he’d gone to bed almost immediately, because it gave her time to stare out the curved window in his darkened living room and think.

  For nineteen years, she’d dreamed of freedom, and she’d patiently, painstakingly prepared her escape. The Citizen Protection Service thought she was dead, but as masters of deception themselves, they wouldn’t be entirely surprised if they discovered she wasn’t.

  The CPS remade people like her into “paracommando pathfinders,” though everyone, even CPS top brass, called them trackers. They were not-quite-human weapons trained to be patient and relentless hunters—and cold executioners when ordered—but those same skills made them good at deceiving their masters. She wasn’t the first tracker to escape and wouldn’t be the last.

  The CPS taught extreme self-reliance and crushed any perceived relationships, but active trackers still found ways to communicate with each other. The fact that a significant percentage of trackers disappeared wasn’t a secret; nor was the fact that a few were recaptured, blank-slated, and returned to limited service as little more than automatons, as if they were capital crime convicts. However much trackers distrusted or disliked one another individually, their common enemy was the CPS, and their common dream was freedom.

  She’d made that dream real, but four years into her hard-won new life, she didn’t have any new dreams. She’d read books and watched trids to teach herself to blend into normal society, but she hadn’t recognized in herself the softer emotions they’d described. She’d proven she could live like an ordinary person with an ordinary job, but that was as far as she’d gotten. She had no relationships because she didn’t know where to start, or with whom she wanted to start one. She’d thought she might be damaged beyond repair.

  But now, meeting Luka Foxe and being plunged into his investigation was changing her. He cared about doing what was right, about justice. It was what drove him, what fired his intuition and his love of solving mysteries. He dreamed of justice for his friends, for everyone, and sacrificed for it. He cared about others, too, even people he didn’t know. He even cared about her, a little, even if it was just to help him manage his scary talent.

  Working for Luka and seeing how he lived made her realize she’d been merely existing, content with having freedom but doing nothing with it. And doing nothing with herself or her extraordinary skills, which she’d thought had no place in a civilized world. She’d taken more initiative and risks in the last week than she had in the nearly four years since she’d hidden herself away on Rekoria, and it made her feel alive.

  Luka made her feel alive. All her actions had been to support him, protect him, or please him. She wanted to make him laugh, to know what he was thinking, to learn what he tasted like, to feel the pressure of his breath in her ear. Her body and her emotions responded to him, regardless of the constant warning pings from her brain, and it both thrilled and alarmed her. There was a fine line between want and need. She was afraid she was becoming as dependent on him as he was on her, but for very different reasons.

  She quietly let herself out Luka’s front door, checking reflexively for scents or sounds that might mean trouble. Nothing had changed; he was safe, and his townhouse was secure.

  Maybe it was enough that she was free to worry about such things, and free to stay if she chose to see what she and Luka could discover for themselves and together. She could still escape and hide herself away again if she had to, though the thought of it made her chest ache abominably.

  CHAPTER 9

  * Planet: Rekoria * GDAT 3237.036 * />
  The fog of the day was still lingering when Mairwen arrived at La Plata, earlier than usual because Velasco had requested time off for personal reasons. As usual, when Mairwen took over the shift from him, he lit out the second she appeared, leaving her to figure out where Foxe was and what his plans were for the afternoon. She finally found him occupying a fourth-floor office that, from the smells in it, used to belong to Leo Balkovsky.

  The new office was much larger than Foxe’s and more easily accommodated his habit of pacing, but it was still a closet compared to Zheer’s presidential suite.

  Foxe was in an audio conference. He was as dressed up as she’d seen him, with tailored pants and fitted dark wool halfcoat with a high-necked green shirt that complemented his hazel eyes. She hoped her grey pants and simple waist-nipped blouse and sweater were acceptable for whatever activities he was planning.

  He waved her in and pointed to a chair and narrow desk in the corner. She walked quietly to it and draped her overcoat over the back of the chair.

  “...asking you for your opinion,” said the man on the other end of the call. “It’s not every day we could get the benefit of the preeminent reconstruction expert in the galaxy.”

  Foxe rolled his eyes at the blatantly insincere flattery. “As I said, I have an exclusive contract with La Plata. You’ll have to ask them.”

  “I looked up your record. You used to be a good cop.” The tone was accusatory.

  “Yes,” agreed Foxe blandly, unmoved.

  “Fine. I’ll see if La Plata is interested in doing its civic duty,” said the man, the barb thinly veiled. The call disconnected.

  Foxe turned to her and shoved his hands in his pockets. “The Etonver police have finally discovered who I am. They want me to reconstruct the Amhur murder scene for them for free, conflict of interest notwithstanding. I respectfully declined.”

  She was glad he refused. He didn’t need to go through that again. “Cheeky of them.”

  He smiled at her words, then swung his arms wide. “Welcome to my new office. I guess they got tired of me monopolizing the conference rooms.”

  “Perhaps it was the wear on the carpet,” she said, giving his pacing feet a pointed look.

  “Or that,” he chuckled. The sound of it washed over her like a balm.

  “Would you like some coffee?” he asked, pointing to a new, elegant-looking dispenser on the credenza. “I made extra, just in case.”

  She shook her head. “I’m allergic to caffeine.” He looked disappointed, and she regretted making him feel that he’d somehow failed her.

  She walked with him to the conference room for what he promised was his last meeting of the afternoon, then took her customary post near the door. When he realized she planned to wait for him, he shooed her away.

  “The only danger here will be terminal boredom during the finance discussion. Go use the gym or relax in the lounge or something. It’s going to be at least two hours. I’ll ping you when I’m done.”

  She didn’t know what to do with herself. She went back to his new office. She decided to think like a tracker planning an incursion, and examined the office more closely to determine its security strengths and weaknesses, then checked the locations of available exits. She noted the nameplates for all the offices so she could look them up and know who should or shouldn’t be on the floor.

  That only ate up seventeen minutes, so she grabbed her overcoat and walked downstairs to the lounge on the second floor.

  There was some sort of celebration going on, so she avoided it and continued down the hall toward the back stairs. From behind her, she heard her name called, and recognizing the voice, turned to see Beva walking toward her, waving with one hand and carrying a covered plate with the other.

  “Just the person I wanted to see!” Beva said with a smile as she caught up. She petted Mairwen’s upper arm. Where once Mairwen would have flinched at being touched, she now found it wasn’t objectionable, at least from Beva. Perhaps it was a side effect of liking Luka’s touch.

  Beva smiled even wider. “Nice sweater. I hate you. You make even off-the-rack clothes look trés chic. Get you to a good autotailor for something flattering, and you’d be plasma hot.”

  Beva, bubbling over with good humor, steered Mairwen into a tiny office that turned out to belong to Beva. “There’s a mess of berry seedcake left in the lounge, so help yourself. My co-workers are so sweet. They brought it in for me because I got the promotion.”

  “Congratulations,” said Mairwen. She was surprised to find she meant it, even though she hadn’t interacted with Beva often.

  “How do you like your new job?” asked Beva. “Got to be a nice change from working for Isak Malamig.” She winked.

  “So would working the night shift in a riot zone.” Ordinarily, she wouldn’t have said anything, but Luka responded positively when she expressed her odd sense of humor. Her brain grumbled that he was a bad influence.

  Beva let out a huge laugh that shook her whole frame. “Mais oui, ain’t it the truth!”

  Mairwen saw Beva was about to drop the plate of cake she was carrying, so she caught it in time and put it safely on the desk.

  “Merci, cher. Reason I ask about your new job is because my new job is to direct a new division for providing personal security services. I want you to come work for me when your assignment for Foxe is done.”

  Mairwen was nonplussed. “I’m not qualified. I’m not… good with people.”

  Beva laughed again and waved away the protest. “I’ve seen your record. You’re plenty qualified. As to the other, you’re quiet, is all. It’s nice to have a friend who talks less than me, and clients are looking for competence, not conversation. Besides, Luka likes you, and I like you, so you can’t be that bad.”

  Beva looked at the clock and gasped. “Oh my, gotta run—our youngest son is graduating tonight. All his aunts, uncles, and cousins are coming. We’re taking up an entire row in the auditorium. You think about my offer, hear? We’ll talk again.” She hurriedly rolled her thincomp and thumbed the desk lock.

  “Yes,” agreed Mairwen, because it was simpler that way.

  Beva grabbed her overcoat and the plate of cake and was out the door in a flash. Mairwen felt like she’d been caught in a whirlwind.

  She wondered when Beva and Luka had talked about her and why. Or perhaps Beva had merely observed Luka’s ease with her. She wasn’t as bothered by the thought of being noticed as she was before, but it still made her uneasy.

  She also wondered what it would be like to be a part of a family, even a small one. Mairwen remembered Beva saying she’d been happily married to the same woman for nearly thirty years. Mairwen couldn’t begin to imagine what that kind of familiar, trusting relationship felt like, but it sounded surprisingly… appealing.

  She walked down to the first floor to find the gym, which she’d seen but never used, since night-shift guards had little need to visit the office. The gym was larger than she’d remembered, but perhaps its size was dictated by being directly over the basement weapons range. The exercise equipment was well maintained, and the human smells not overpowering, suggesting the room was cleaned daily. The company had posted instructional displays in several common languages on how to use each machine, and the employees had added the funny, mostly sex-referenced, illustrations to go with them.

  Since she still had well over an hour to fill, she got her spare running clothes from the vehicle and used one of the booths to change out of her civilian clothes. She supposed she’d have to buy more of them if she took the job Beva was offering, or for that matter, stayed with Luka, if he wanted her. Perhaps Beva, who was evidently interested in such things, would help her select appropriate clothing, regardless. She was still baffled by the choices available when shopping, so she avoided it as much as possible.

  She didn’t want to try a new exercise machine without first seeing how normal people used it, so although she was alone in the room, she selected one of the force isolation machines
, and kept the isolation net mass within a believable range for someone her size. In full-tracker mode, she could handle significantly more, though without eating well, she’d pay with sore muscles and joints later.

  It felt good to build up heat and sweat with the steady repetitions of each pattern, to use her upper body’s physical exertion to keep her thoughts grounded, and not on the entirely too good-looking man who was now her boss. She stopped in time to shower quickly, change back into her civilian clothes, and stash her exercise clothes in the car. Though it was humid and chilly in the underground parking area, she was still feeling warm, so she carried her overcoat instead of wearing it as she walked back.

  She was just approaching the door into the building when it slammed open, propelled by Malamig as he barreled through. His jacket was gaping open, and his unflattering orange shirt looked wrinkled. The angry look on his face had her instantly wary, and when he saw her, he veered toward her with stiff strides.

  “What are you doing in here?” he demanded. The wind shifted, and she got a good whiff of fresh bourbon from his clothes and breath. “Oh, right, you’ve got a vehicle now that you’re a satellite to the star, the heir to the fecking throne.” His regional accent was thicker than usual.

  Mairwen stayed neutral and silent. Drunk or chemmed people were irrational.

  “You think you’re set now, don’t you? Movin’ up in the world?” His lip curled in a sneer. “Well, don’t count on it. This company does what it fecking well wants, and to hell with rules.”

  He leaned closer, and Mairwen zeroed her offended olfactory sense.

  “I should have been made director.” He shook his finger in her face. “I’ve got the seniority, and I worked my ass off for it, and they gave it to that jumping Rienville slut because she has ‘field experience.’ That’s fecking code for ‘gives great tongue.’”