John groans, hanging his head. “I know, honey. I know how badly you want a baby. But we can't stay in this dangerous place and risk our lives for the potential of a child. The potential.”
Tiff stands and strides over to her much-larger husband.
He looms over her, and Tiff obviously doesn't have any shits to give, poking him straight in the chest with her stiff pointer finger. “Listen, Terran”—poke—“I come from a very fertile family, and if this stupid”—poke—“Zondorae bullshittery hadn't happened, I'd be the happy mother of about a thousand little Johns or Tiffs.”
John grabs her finger, kissing the tip. “Yes, very likely, but there are too many variables for us to risk it.” His eyes are steady on her face. “To risk you. I can never risk you, Tiffany.”
She tears her finger out of his grasp and folds her arms. John sits in the chair behind him and pats his lap. Tiff squints at him for a few seconds then huffs over there and sits down. John kisses the back of her neck, and she leans back against him. But her face is restless, unconvinced.
Disaster averted. For now.
“Tiff,” Mom says, “what if we just get back home and try to get pregnant when we're ovulating in our world.”
My head snaps to Mom. What if the baby's got webbed fingers? I mean—she's almost forty-two. Sort of ancient. Don't care if chicks are shooting out eggs like machine-gun fire in their forties, doesn't mean you should breed.
“What if it doesn't work?” Sophie asks softly.
All the men sigh. Women want babies.
I smirk. We guys sure want to give them to women. I mean, is there a guy alive that doesn't want to spread his seed? Crude, but true. Hard to separate that from that protect-the-chick instinct, too. It's all mixed up together.
It's a dilemma. But we can't make babies if we're dead. And the longer we hang in bot world, the more chances we have to get dead.
Or Compliant, which sounds way worse.
Before we can discuss her in detail, Kim comes out, her hair wrapped in a cream towel and piled on her head.
Gramps jerks his thumb at her. “She's coming, end of discussion.”
I guess that's that.
“What?” she asks. Her large eyes seem even bigger without the distraction of her dark hair everywhere.
“We don't know if we want to bring a Thompson relative to our world,” Tiff says bluntly, still clearly pissed at John.
“I see,” she says, her gaze taking in the remnants of the food. Her eyes well with tears. After all, we've totally encroached on her space, and Brad the Chump should be coming along any moment to fuck things seven ways to Sunday, as Dad likes to say.
Gramps doesn't miss anything about her altered state. “You're blinking with us.”
She nods, eyelids fluttering back the tears as she wallops in breath that depletes the oxygen in the room.
I don't know if her tears are grateful or sad. Can't tell that shit. With Dee, I can see if she's sad. With my mind.
Do you want Kim to come? I send to Dee.
Yeah, she's good, Pax.
I thought so, too. Having Dee echo my thinking makes it legit.
Sophie stands suddenly. A stricken expression tightens her features like a corkscrew. Her bluish-green eyes are slits. “I can't find my purple purse.”
Wow, let's alert the media. My eyes find the big orange monstrosity on one of the chairs. I point to that. “Isn't that—”
“Nope,” Jonesy interrupts, having moved on to licking Cheeto dust from his fingers. Hog. “That's the big purse. There's a little one that looked like those hot pants Jade was wearing.”
Oh yeah, a vague memory of a glittery purple thing with puffy lips surfaces in the front of my brain. “Okay…” I jerk my shoulders to my ears.
Her lips thin with anger.
My bad.
“It was attached to my orange handbag.”
Still not getting the importance.
Uncle John jumps up from the chair, nearly upending Tiff from his lap. “The grid.”
Kim's eyes widen. “Could it have become lost when we were tossed into my alley?”
The room goes silent.
“Do you remember having your handbag when Mitchell threw you over the grid end?” John asks tersely.
Sophie gives a miserable nod.
“What's happening?” Mom asks.
“What's happening is Sophie dropped her mini-purse on the grid.”
“It's been triggered?” Kim asks in a voice squeezed down to a wheezing whisper.
“Hold on, guys,” Gramps says, hand absently patting his pocket.
Kim walks over to a drawer and pulls something out. “These were my brother's.”
“Contraband?” Gramps asks, with a twinkle in his eye, as he grabs the pack of cigarettes.
She grins, but the smile is a tense grimace. “Absolutely.”
“I do think a lot better with some nicotine.”
“Amen,” Clyde says, coming to life in the corner.
Gramps lights up, shoots out a smoke ring the size of my neck, and says, “Looks like we better blow this Popsicle stand before the bots come and try to rearrange our body parts, I suppose.”
“Am I still coming?” Ron asks.
His voice does come out clearer now that I re-broke and healed his nose after our supper of deli meat, chips, and those cookie things.
Gramps whips his palm around, filling the space with the sick smoke. “We don't know for sure that Sophie's purse fell on the grid. It could have just as easily fell on the alley side.”
We stare at him for a few seconds.
Then an earsplitting wail of sirens pierce the air.
“Or not!” Gramps says, standing.
Kim pivots, runs to the door, and engages the deadbolt. Her hands tremble. She puts her palms flat against the door. “I can't be Compliant.”
Gramps walks to her, putting the stub of his lit cigarette out on the deep tread of his boot. He puts the butt behind his ear and leans over the back of her body. “There aren't enough thugs to get you from us, Kim. Stay close, and we'll see who's Compliant.”
She turns in his arms and puts her face against his chest. “I'm scared,” she whispers.
“It's all right, sweetheart. I've never been one to comply anyway,” Gramps comments.
No shit.
Then something thuds against the door, rattling the frame. And Gramps pulls her behind him.
“They're here,” Kim says mournfully, fisting the flannel shirt Gramps wears.
“Fuck,” Tiff spits in what sounds like a resigned bark.
“Yeah,” I agree.
“Bring it,” Mitch says, and I frown at him.
Never heard that one before. “Bring what?” I ask through the blaring.
His sharp blue eyes are ice chips in a hard face. “Whatever they can. They will not have my mistress.”
He's halfway to Dee when the door cracks through the middle, a metal battering ram impaling its center like a toothpick through a tongue.
In walks Brad. Well, in limps Brad. And some guy who has Kim's eyes, but the body of a bot.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Brad
There's the miserable little cunt.
Right there. Looking a tiny bit worse for wear.
I squint. Are those leaves in her hair?
Whatever.
Deegan Hart is in sight. I wouldn't admit it in our world, but I wanted to nail her. Bad. This not-being-able-to-produce-kid's thing has made every guy on earth rabid. But they want to protect the bitches, too. I don't have that problem, thankfully. See, when hardly anyone can even have kids, women somehow are worth more. Yeah. Right. They're worth the value I assign them. And Deegan has always rubbed me the wrong way. I thought she would be impressed with my wealth and obvious good looks on our home earth.
She wasn't.
The more I pushed and tried to win her over with that fake, syrupy romance shit most bitches dig, the more she avoided me. Then I started just hassling h
er—stealing her energy and whatnot.
I would love to just cement her negative reaction to my advances in the fact that she's just too dumb to know a good thing when she sees it.
But that wasn't it. No. She's numbered. Deegan Hart is smart enough to know I wanted to sample the wares and take whatever I felt like. Practically a Thompson legacy. Not giving. I wasn't going to offer her anything but a fun time. And maybe another go if I liked sticking it to her.
But Deegan's too smart for that. Somehow, she knows my intentions. And that fucking Body, corpse-humping, psycho parallel world shifter brother of hers is always lurking around like an overprotective shadow.
Hate his ass.
No longer. The cyborgs here covertly terminate all children by mandate, in stark contrast to my earth, where conversations stops at the sound of a child's voice. The cyborg world leaves only a small percentage who have the potential for something worthwhile. Translation: Paranormal abilities to manipulate in some way.
I salivate looking at Deegan. She's got the DNA I need to pump my way into this world before the cyborgs completely take over. Before they start wailing about AftD, Empath and the rest, if I can get a few of those parallel-shifting spawn out of her, the worlds I can control would be limitless.
I signal to my other cousin, now a quite-willing cyborg, and he knocks the head off the nearest cyborg that won't quit its caterwauling. These fucking cyborgs are even more persistent than zombies. And that's saying something. I know, having been on the receiving end of zombie diligence.
Deegan is not the only numbered IQ in the room. Mine is nearly one-seventy. I’m top dog on this other blue marble. Smart enough to fuck everyone up. This world is much better for who I am. Too bad I can't just move back and forth between my home earth and this one. I need a Pax for that. Can't control him, though.
It'd be fun to try.
That's why Daddy Dearest lets me run the sleazy zombie show. Once the AftDs take the spunk out of the female zombies and make them alive, they're quite fun to force into whatever little game I feel like playing.
The horror of them knowing they must obey is too special to ignore. Fear standing in their eyes is like a drug. It's my new addiction. Of course, a few AftDs have been unwilling to force the zombies they raise to do what needs doing.
We eliminate those dissenters. It's a loss, though. AftD is a rare ability. And raising corpses requires at least a level four on this earth. Interesting how the phrasing and terminology is just a hair off my home world's verbiage.
After I conquer Deegan and get a new strain of paranormals—only the powerful type, of course—then I can branch out in other areas.
Other worlds.
I don't have my ability-stealer talent on this world either. Otherwise, I could just rob Deegan of her abilities and her energy then just keep her around for basic recreational use. Like a nifty fuck toy.
My grin fades as I remember I'm basically a mid-level AftD in cyborg-and-zombie paradise. That makes my use of the zombies all the sweeter.
My talents here are insufficient for autonomous recreational entertainment.
What we could do with some blinkers in the family, as the Hart clan refers to Pax's ability…
“Deegan.” I glance down at the decapitated cyborg and breathe out a sigh of mixed disgust and relief at the sudden silence. Dad will be pissed at the loss of that. Each cyborg is critical for Compliance assurance. My eyes narrow at the slip of a girl I've been chasing all over the place.
Her face isn't anything special. She's not classically pretty. High cheekbones and coal-black hair frame eyes that are deep green, like the forest. Deegan is exotic, not pretty. Still, her lack of perfection doesn't make her less desirable. I want her more. She has a face people remember after only seeing once.
That face currently glares defiantly at me. I will love breaking that spirit.
I take in the mofo at her right. Now that's a big damn zombie. He's indigenous to the planet. At least, that's what the cyborgs tell me.
I don't like the way he hovers around her. But she raised him, so them there is the breaks.
“Let me introduce myself properly—now that the noise has died down.”
I bestow my benevolent smile on their little posse.
Deegan's great-grandpa stares back with a look that should incinerate me into a pile of ashes.
He'll be the first one we make Compliant. Mac O'Brien was a pain in the ass in my world. And now that I've been helpfully blinked to this world, I have the means to see my agenda through. And I so fucking will.
“Miscreant.”
I look toward the voice that uttered that one word.
A rotting pile of slop looks back.
I frown. Don't like the bright eyes of that zombie. Looks like he's about ready to pull something out of his degrading bag of tricks. I remember he's one of the first to be raised in our world. What was his name?
I tap my chin. Claude?
Whatever. He gets second slot after old grandpa, who's obviously had regeneration.
Can't make the dead Compliant. But there's always the blow torch. I scrunch my nose. This world has some primitive bullshit I don't like at all. Then again, it has some stuff that's mighty fine. Like the zombie whore houses that I run.
My attention turns back to Deegan. Now, if she had just let the Brad of this world have his way with her, I wouldn't be in this little disaster.
There would be two Brads to one Deegan.
Speaking of which. I signal Harry, my right-hand cyborg cousin, a second time, to call in the sneaky Ace in my deck of cards.
A moment later, Jeffrey Parker strolls through.
The looks on their faces! Best. Thing. Ever.
*
Gramps
Parker strolls in.
Fuck a duck.
“Hi, guys.” He smiles. Mr. Congeniality.
He hops over the downed bot, halts in front of our loose group, and nods absently. His surreal presence is not to be outdone.
The other Parker comes in directly after him.
Beaten.
Tied.
Gagged.
That's our boy. Getting the Bot Hospitality first-class treatment.
Jeffrey Parker is older now than when we first made acquaintance with each other. I suppress a chuckle—probably about my regeneration age that I am now.
Our Jeffrey's sharp gaze finds me. He blinks, and those hard hazel eyes tell me a lot.
He's been tortured. The Parker I know would never deign to raise corpses for their little pimp-and-whore byplay. Nope.
So he's paying the price for his resistance. Looks like he has more broken than unbroken fingers, and I can more or less see one whole eyeball. The other is hidden by swollen and reddened flesh.
But they've got their Parker, who appears to have a flock of geese banging away in that skull of his. Fruitcake.
Bet he's numbered, like our Deedie. That would mean he's insane and brilliant. Not a good combo.
I tap my breast pocket, and a few smokes flop around in there. Suppose I should be freaking out about our future about now. But I’ve never been one to panic.
Figure something will present itself for me to use. Not sure what, at present. Things are looking a tad grim.
“Please, Brad—think about what you're doing. What you're committing to.” Kim's eyes move between Brad and the bot I assume used to be her brother.
Brother Bot stares back impassively.
Bad.
Thompson hikes an eyebrow, jerking his square pretty-boy jaw back, and barks a chuckle. “Listen, cousin, I don't care if you're a relative or even if you can still birth a child.”
Hmm. News to me. I study Kim in a new light.
“You clearly kept some amazing Healer skills under wraps while springing these other-world birds from jail. We had special spots in the camps just for them.” Brad's eyes sweep everyone.
Camps. Ah yes. The paranormal Auschwitz of bot world.
“Brad,” Kim
pleads, shooting a furtive glance toward the bot whose eyes resemble hers. Though his are on the cold side. Like frozen molasses.
No help on that front.
Brad tosses a casual punch to Jeff's solar plexus.
I tense as Jeff grunts, eyes watering.
“You lowlife,” Caleb growls.
Yup. I'd love to give this punk an esophagus love tap.
I eyeball his Adam's apple with pure lust.
Thompson whips up a palm. “Parker's been fun to work over. Stubborn as the day is long.”
Jeff's eyes plead with mine. He seems to be trying to tell me something.
I remember my strange little teleporting number I pulled in the Rome world—or Papilio—blinking soldiers.
Wonder if I'll get lucky here?
I concentrate, trying to scoop into that well that seemed to be full when I was in that other strange world.
Nothing.
I feel each beat of my regenerating heart. I read the fine print on the pulseforms, about how the potential side effects were a longer list than the bennies. Didn't matter. What mattered was eking out a little more time in this life to annoy my family.
I grin at the thought of still kicking around at one hundred—or better yet, the new life expectancy marker that's been predicted to top out at around one hundred thirty-five.
“What are you smiling about, Mackenzie?” Brad asks, tone seething. “You have nothing to be happy about. You and your useless band of familial rodents will be thrown into the camps for use as our wonderful cyborg-run government sees fit. And a few scientists have an interest in some of the abilities manifesting in your family.” His smile grows broader. “An avid interest.”
Ignoring his prattling on, I rifle through my head, trying to find what Jeff seems so intent to communicate with me.
There. Shock bites at me. No. That can't be right.
The fine print had said in rare instances, dormant genetic markers would manifest as the body frog-leaped backward in its biological clock. Almost like a puberty do-over.
I ignored that tiny fine print. Who would ever, for any reason, want to return to adolescence? Miserable time of life.
Yet, here I am, having gone through the regeneration without a bleep of any side effects on the radar.
Death Series 08 - Death Blinks Page 16