by Megan Hart
Nina had been spreading a slice of whole wheat toast with strawberry jam so decadently delicious it was almost depraved. The man lived like a king. Better than a king, as a matter of fact, since the only kings still on thrones all ruled countries that had fallen into poverty, and none of them could afford real strawberry jam. She bit into her toast and chewed slowly, savoring every bite.
“Same group that’s been behind the rest of the most recent threats, I’d bet,” she said.
“Yeah. The League of Humanity.”
“Sounds like something out of a comic viddy. Wow, this is so good. You sure you don’t want some?” She could go days without eating if she had to, suppressing her hunger and running on energy reserves. She didn’t have to now, and she intended to take every advantage of it.
“That’s . . .” Donahue paused, his gaze flicking to her mouth as his own lips thinned.
She took another swipe of sweetness off her lips, wondering if she had jam stuck in the corners of her mouth. Maybe he was stingy with his jam. She wouldn’t blame him. This stuff was worth more than gold right now. Literally. “Hmm?”
“Yeah. It does. The name, I mean. Sounds like something from an old superhero book.” Donahue shifted in his seat. With a shake of his head, he reached for the pot of jam. Nina pushed the special spoon across the table to him.
“Here’s your fancy jam spoon,” she said. “You wouldn’t want to forget that.”
“What, you think a guy like me uses some plain old regular spoon?” Donahue’s voice had dipped a little lower than usual, something her enhancements allowed her to notice more than someone else might’ve.
Donahue wasn’t smiling, but still, the corners of his eyes creased to show that he did, at least, occasionally allow himself a grin or two. Those creases and crinkles were less a sign of age and more like proof the man sitting across from her might actually get his laugh on once in a while. She might not be capable, herself, of the same raucous laughter and giddy joy she sometimes flashed back to remembering, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t appreciate someone else’s good humor. Maybe there was hope that this assignment wasn’t going to be one long and consistent pain in the ass.
She sat back in her chair to eye him up and down. “Heavens, no. A guy like you was probably born with one of those in his mouth. Made of silver, of course.”
“Of course.” Donahue’s self-mocking tone softened as he spread a piece of bread with the jam and took a bite. He studied her. “You don’t know much about me, do you?”
Mindful of how he kept eyeing her lips, Nina wiped the corners of her mouth with a cloth napkin. It was hard enough to get him to take her seriously; she didn’t need to make a mess of her face, too. “I know what I need to know.”
“Sure. You know my height, weight, my eating and sleeping habits. You probably know the depth of my bank account, or at least some idea about it. You know the groups that have declared they’re out to get me. What else did you have to study up on before taking this assignment?”
“That’s about it. Nothing much else was important. I don’t need to know your personal history in order to protect you.” The truth was, she knew a little more about him than she was letting on. You couldn’t get past a gossip site on the net without spotting a picture of Ewan Donahue with a blonde on his arm. Nina didn’t spend much time on sites like that, and even so, she could recall half a dozen different stories about his social life. She poured them both coffee from the self-heating pot on the table. Donahue had the best of everything. Appliances. Technology. Women. She glanced at him. “Cream?”
“Black. I guess how I take my coffee wasn’t one of the things.” He took the mug she pushed toward him.
Sipping, Nina sat back in her chair again. She might look relaxed, but even with the mug in her hands she was alert to everything in their surroundings. Besides, a mug of scalding coffee could become a weapon in so many useful ways.
“Nope,” she said. “Preparing your coffee isn’t part of my job description. I’m your protector, not your future ex–Mrs. Donahue.”
“There’s never been a Mrs.”
She smiled a little. “Yeah. I did know that. An ex-wife, kids, that sort of thing would be a vulnerability.”
“And you would need to know about that,” Donahue said.
“Yes. It’s useful.”
His eyes narrowed. “But I don’t have any.”
“No exes of significance,” Nina said. “Not no vulnerabilities.”
Donahue didn’t seem to like that at all. Nina couldn’t blame him. She didn’t much like having any, herself.
“I’ve done everything I can not to be vulnerable,” Donahue said.
“The highest security. The best tech. Sure. But . . .” Nina paused, looking him over.
“But what?” Donahue demanded, his frown deepening. “If there’s something I need to be doing to better protect myself, I need to know it.”
Nina shrugged, uncertain how to put it into words. “Cameras and fences, even an enhanced protector, well . . . all that stuff can keep you safe, but it won’t ever keep you from really being vulnerable. Nothing can totally protect you from that, because everyone has something that someone else can use to get to them with.”
“Not me.”
She laughed at that, low and under her breath, and shook her head. “Right.”
“You’re talking about personal things. Ways someone could get to me. Personal vulnerability. Emotional.”
“And you don’t have any?” She scoffed. “Everyone has something they—”
She broke off, her own declaration a lie for herself.
“Something what?” Donahue challenged in a low voice, his gaze intense. “What? Love?”
Nina said nothing.
“No exes. No pets. No family,” he added after the barest second. “Anyway, love is a construct of emotion, ephemeral and insubstantial. You can’t hate or fear or grieve forever, so why should we expect love to last forever? Love is an emotion, and like all emotions, it’s not meant to last.”
“That’s so cynical,” Nina said.
Donahue pursed his lips. “Oh, and you’re not?”
“Not me,” she said with a small grin. “I’m super nice.”
She sipped again, savoring the heat, the flavor, the comfort of a truly terrific cup of coffee. It had become so hard to find real coffee after the fungus plague that had wiped out more than 90 percent of the world’s coffee bean plants. The synthetic replacement might suit people with less sensitive palates, but she could always tell the difference. Donahue had dropped some serious money on this morning’s beverage.
“Nice is not a word I’d use to describe you,” Donahue said.
Contemplating this, Nina let the steam bathe her face before answering. “How would you describe me?”
“Fierce,” he said at once. “Efficient. Determined. Stubborn . . .”
“Takes one to know one,” she murmured, and at the sight of his expression at her interruption, she added without much sincerity, “sorry.”
Donahue didn’t smile. “Strong. Impressive—”
“Thanks,” she interrupted again.
“Beautiful,” he added at last, and she didn’t have anything to say to that but a small bleat of surprise. “No? You don’t agree?”
She thought of her solid, muscular body. She had curves, but they were hard. She thought of her scars. Her eyes narrowed, her head tilting as she looked him over.
“Should I be grateful you think so?”
“I’m not asking you for gratitude,” Donahue said with a frown that told her yes, he probably had been. “I’m just telling you the truth.”
Nina took another slow sip of coffee, relishing the flavor and aroma before she asked, “And if I was ugly? Would that have anything to do with how well or not I can do my job?”
“Of course not,” Donahue retorted, “but it’s much—”
He cut himself off so abruptly she heard the click of his teeth together. They stare
d at each other across the width of his dining room table.
“Much easier to deal with me if I’m pretty?” She took another sip of coffee and savored the deliciousness as a way to keep the bitterness off her tongue.
“I didn’t say that.”
“Synthetic is never as good,” she said after a moment, meaning the coffee or maybe the long parade of blondes in all the media stories about him. “No matter what anyone tries to tell you.”
“Most people can’t tell the difference,” Donahue said.
“Most people have never had real coffee,” Nina pointed out. “Just like most people don’t have special fancy spoons for their jam.”
Donahue’s lips pressed together momentarily. “I’ve worked hard for everything I have.”
“I’m sure most people think the same about themselves.” She paused, considering him. “How bad were you hit on Gray Tuesday?”
Gray Tuesday, when a still-unknown, anonymous hacker had destroyed 90 percent of the entire world’s servers and backed-up data, wiping out nearly a century of stored information. Bank accounts. Education credits. It had taken five years of international chaos, rioting, and destruction before most of the population’s data had been recovered even at 15 or 20 percent, and there were still people who’d never recovered from the devastation. For Nina, who’d been in the midst of recuperating after her surgeries, the loss of her entire previous life’s records hadn’t been so bad. After all, she’d forgotten most of it already.
“I had most of my data on private servers,” Donahue said.
“Of course you did,” she said. “People who had enough money to do that were mostly shiny fine. The way people with enough money almost always are.”
Donahue frowned. “I don’t apologize for the way I live. I’ve earned it.”
The silence between them became too large. Donahue might be an arrogant pain in the rear, but he was her client. If it was easier for him to deal with her because she wasn’t hideous, well . . . it would be easier for her to deal with him if he was in at least a decent sort of mood.
“So,” she said to change the topic, “what is it about you that you think I should know?”
“I wasn’t born with a silver spoon in my mouth, first of all. My parents were both teachers. My sister and I—”
“You have a sister?” Nina interrupted.
Donahue’s expression darkened. “Yeah. Katie.”
Nina didn’t point out that he’d said he had no family. Maybe they didn’t get along. She had a sister she never spoke to. Not her choice and something she regretted, when she allowed herself to dwell upon it. That wasn’t often. At least she could no longer ache about that distance between them. That betrayal.
“Katie and I were ten years apart. She was my mother’s favorite.”
“And who was your father’s?” Nina asked.
Donahue’s expression didn’t change. “He didn’t have one.”
Something in the way he said it made it sound like a lie. Nina didn’t press him on this, either. Family was complicated.
“We never lacked for anything, growing up, but there weren’t a lot of extras,” Donahue went on without giving her time to speak. “After high school I apprenticed in a bunch of places, but settled in at a research and development corporation.”
Secondary education, once considered a requirement for anyone desiring a “better” life, had been replaced with more practical applications. During the Second Cold War, there hadn’t been enough people of working age left on the home front to keep businesses running. With tuition prices at astronomical levels and government incentives to enter the workforce, most kids of their generation had gone straight to apprenticeships.
“I worked in a dairy,” Nina said.
This stopped him for a moment. “You did? Really?”
“Yep. And for a waste management plant. Also for an industrial building factory. Making concrete pillars and stuff.” She grinned at him. “I’m good with my hands.”
“I was always better with my brain,” he answered.
She finished her coffee. “Then we’ll make the perfect team, yeah? Brawn and brains. Oh, and don’t forget the beauty. We both have that.”
“Yeah,” Donahue said after a second or so. Then, “You think I’m vain.”
“Is that what you’re calling it?” Nina said in a posh voice quite unlike her usual tone. “How practically pre-millennial. No, your self-confidence is galactic, as the cool kids would say.”
Another quirk of his lips showed that Donahue did, in fact, have something of a sense of humor, even if he seemed dead set against showing it. “And you think that’s bad?”
“I think,” she said, “it’s good to know your strengths.”
“You know yours.” It wasn’t a question.
“I like to think so.”
Donahue’s voice got a little gritty. “I don’t mean how fast you can run or how much you can deadlift.”
“I know what you meant. You want to know if I think I’m beautiful? Or smart? Or funny?”
“Yes,” Donahue said.
“Yes,” Nina echoed. “To all of that. Humble, too.”
He almost laughed, then. She saw it in the crinkles at the corners of his eyes and the way his mouth tried to curve upward, but at the last minute, Donahue kept his expression sobered. He shook his head.
“You don’t agree?” she asked him.
“It’s not that I don’t agree. It’s that . . .”
“What?” She challenged.
He met her gaze evenly. “If emotions aren’t meant to last, memories are supposed to. Memories are what make us who we are. They make us human.”
“And my memories don’t last.” Nina’s lip curled a bit.
“What was done to you was wrong, and I’m sorry,” Donahue said. “You should never have been implanted with that tech. None of you should have.”
She let her fingers trace a pattern along her thigh, where she’d had part of her femur replaced with a steel rod. That had nothing to do with the enhancement tech, although she knew they’d bundled some of the additional hardware inside the metal. It hurt, sometimes, if she worked out too hard, but never for more than a moment or so. Her body automatically adjusted to get rid of pain.
“I’m not sorry,” Nina said. Then, because she wanted to change the subject, “After the apprenticeship. What then?”
“I worked in the R & D program for a while, then got put on a team dealing with some new software that turned out to have governmental applications. I’m sure you can guess how that went.”
She thought he seemed relieved she’d turned the topic, and for a moment wished she hadn’t. What was it to her if she made Ewan Donahue uncomfortable with her truths? His had done quite a lot to mess her up, after all.
“I’ve had a bit of peripheral experience with government applications, yeah. So what then?” she said.
“Government contracts turned into big money. Big money turned into bigger. And bigger. And here I am today with a fancy spoon for strawberry jam.” Donahue’s grin was more genuine than any she’d seen from him so far. There were those crinkles again. If he knew how much more handsome they made his face, she thought, she bet he’d smile all the time.
Nina gave a small shake of her head. “Is that how you got into politics? Lobbying and legislation and stuff?”
“And here I thought you were changing the subject.”
“I was,” she said. “I can’t help it if the topic keeps becoming relevant.”
Donahue’s grin faded. “Yes, I guess it does. Look, Nina . . .”
She waited for him to continue. He frowned. It disconcerted him when she stayed silent, she thought. He was used to being argued with? Or perhaps having his ass kissed? She didn’t know or care. She’d learned more with silence than she ever had with words.
“It’s not . . . personal,” he added.
“You’ve been creating, supporting, and being crucial in the implementation of legislation that has ef
fectively banned further advancement in the enhancement procedures since almost immediately after they were used on humans,” she said, keeping her voice light. “But of course it’s not personal. How could it be? We’ve only just met. You hired me to do a job that I’m qualified to do specifically because of the exact experimental surgeries you’ve worked to suppress, discredit, and make illegal. That just sounds practical to me, though. Certainly not personal.”
She’d gone too far, she could see that at once. Her response had been anything but impersonal, and far from professional. Nina lifted her chin, meeting his gaze, ready to take whatever he was going to give.
“Nobody talks to me that way,” Donahue said, but she couldn’t tell by his tone if he was pissed off or surprised or grateful. “They might talk about me, but never to my face. And anyone who does, doesn’t last very long around here.”
“Well, I’m not your maid or your secretary or the guy who trims your grass, and here’s the funny thing about my job security. If you want to fire me, you can, but chances are there won’t be anyone at my level to replace me. You’d have to settle for less than the best, and Mr. Donahue, you do not impress me as a man who settles for anything less than the best.”
His eyes narrowed. “You know my opposition to the enhancement procedures is what got me on the League of Humanity’s shit list in the first place, right? Their goal is to open all that research back up so they can use it to fund super soldiers.”
“Of which I am one,” Nina said quietly.
“Which is against the law,” he answered. “And beyond that, morally wrong.”
She again licked the sweetness from her lips, taking her time before replying. Morally wrong. As though her very existence were something to be ashamed of. Like she was a monster, better off being destroyed than simply being given what she needed to live.
“Do you know that I can taste at least three different flavors of berries in this jam? The difference in soil, the amount of sun or water they had while growing. Where in the field they were planted. All of those things gives them different qualities. I could never have tasted that, before.”