Law of Survival

by Kristine Smith

  “My right knee gave out when I walked down the ramp.” Jani massaged the injured joint. It had begun to ache soon after she arrived at the hospital—now that her augie had backed down, it hurt every time she flexed it.

  “Let’s see what we have here.” Montoya braced her foot atop his thigh and pushed up her trouser leg. “Oh, my.” He probed the egg-sized bruise below the patella. “You’ve got some nice soft-tissue damage there. Augie quelled the worst of it, but I’ll still fit it with a chillpack to ease the swelling.”

  Jani cupped her hand over her knee so Montoya couldn’t probe it anymore. She could feel the heat radiate from the injury like a localized fever. “Can’t you inject it with something so it heals faster?”

  “No.” He glanced up at her and smiled his regrets. “If I give you anything while augie is still active, your healing cascades will go into overdrive. A month from now, we’d have to remove tissue and bone growths, or worst case, have to rebuild the joint entirely.” He pulled open a drawer in the base of the scanbed and removed a packet of gauze and an aerosol canister. “And there are just some risks we can’t afford to take with you right now.”

  Jani leaned her head back and stared at the ceiling. “Meaning?” As if she didn’t know. As if she hadn’t heard the same excuses from a multitude of medical faces over the last few months.

  “Meaning that you could react adversely to one of the accelerant proteins. If you did go into anaphylaxis, the only thing we could treat you with is adrenosol and your therapeutic index and toxic threshold overlap. In other words, a dose sufficient to help you could just as easily kill you.” He pulled her hand away from her knee, sprayed her bruise, and wiped the freezing foam with the gauze. “We need to develop desensitizing proteins specific to you. We’re close, but we’re not there yet.” He continued to spray the cooling, cleansing foam, then dab it away. “On the other hand, there’s a chance you won’t need them. If your response to past injury is any indication, your body is a healing accelerant factory on its own.”

  Jani looked at the à lérine wounds on her right arm, and compared them to the faint scars on her animandroid left. The real had caught up with the counterfeit—the wounds had already healed to silvered threads, as though she’d had them for years, not months. The residual weakness in her right knee served as the sole reminder of her most recent health disasters. According to every physician she spoke with, both Neoclona and Service, anyone else who had gone through the myriad adversities she had would be bedridden. Or dead.

  John tells me I’ll outlive everyone I know. All she’d lost in exchange was the right to call herself a human being. I am a hybrid. A race of one. The idea hadn’t bothered her so much when she lived on the run—when all that matters is getting through today, who thinks about tomorrow?

  But as her body continued to change and the inevitability of the process dawned, she’d come to resent every aspect of the transformation. That her life had become the eggshell walk of the chronically ill. That she couldn’t put anything in her mouth without wondering whether it would sicken her. That she couldn’t think an odd thought without worrying whether it was just a passing weirdness or the sign of a brain that didn’t process things the same way anymore.

  Add to that the reactions from others—the orderly who switched duties whenever she came in for a check-up because he thought hybridization contagious. The nurse who crossed herself when Jani looked her in the eye. The doctors who called her names when they thought she couldn’t hear. Goldie. Pussy cat. John would kill them if he knew. But to what purpose, when others would take their place who felt the same. Even the kindest remarks, from Niall and Dolly, aggravated and worried her. She changed, and everyone could see that she changed. She couldn’t hide it anymore.

  She looked down at Montoya, who had finished with the foam and gauze, and now adjusted a padded coldpack around her knee. “Calvin?”

  “Yes?”

  “I’m tired of being a medical miracle.”

  His hands stalled. He didn’t look up. “I’m sorry, Jani.”

  Jani studied the top of his head. The first traces of a bald spot had formed on his crown, a thumbnail-sized imperfection in his thick cap of straight black. I spit in the eye of the inevitable, he had told her when she asked him why he didn’t correct it. His refusal to tweak his own little defect colored his judgment regarding hers. He was one of the few white coats who treated her like a woman named Jani, not a cross between a freak and the publication opportunity of a lifetime.

  Jani tapped Montoya’s bald spot to get his attention, then pointed to his jacket. “Where were you when you got the call?”

  He grinned at her and sat up straighter. “My parents’ fortieth wedding anniversary. Brothers, sisters, children, grandchildren.” The grin wavered. “The party had just started to wind down. The call came at just the right time—I didn’t have to help with the clean-up.” He looked down again, but not soon enough to keep Jani from spotting the longing in his eyes.

  “Guess it’s my turn to say I’m sorry.”

  His head shot up. “Did you plan this?” He waited for her to shake her head. “Then don’t apologize.” He looked down again and fiddled with the coldpack. “So, I heard buzz that it was a robbery attempt.”

  “More than likely.” Jani had no intention of discussing her certainty as to the professional nature of the attack. She placed a hand over her left shoulder, on the spot that Lucien had touched just before the shot. Touched. She winced as she pressed her fingers into the area. Make that grabbed. She’d find a bruise there in a few hours, augie or no.

  “What’s wrong?” Montoya stood up and kicked the stool back into its niche beneath a bench, then pushed back her T-shirt and probed her shoulder with the same uncomfortable thoroughness with which he’d examined her knee. “A robbery, huh? I’ve lived in this city awhile, you know? Robberies in garages happen. Not in the Parkway area, though. Too many Family members. Too much high-priced security.” He took a scanner from the top of a nearby table and pressed it to her shoulder. “Bit of a wrench,” he said as he read the display. “I don’t need to reseat the arm, but it will be sore for a few days.”

  “Is this another ‘augie will provide’?” Jani got down off the scanbed and tested her knee. Thanks to her internal factory, the sharp pain had already receded to a dull ache. Unfortunately, the motion aggravated her Montoya-induced vertigo—she had to keep one hand planted on the bed frame as she adjusted her trouser leg. “Why wouldn’t criminals come to the Parkway? That’s where the money is.”

  Montoya eyed her with professional scrutiny as she walked across the room. “A Chicago robber would not attempt to kill his victims. Bad for business. His colleagues would nail him before the ComPol did.” He walked to her side. “Speaking of the ComPol, they’re here. A detective inspector and a detective captain. John deposited them in a lounge down the hall.”

  “Really?” Jani recalled the green-and-white skimmer that had dogged the ambulance. She waved away Montoya’s offer to help with her jacket, since he’d have detected the small but weighty presence of Lucien’s shooter and personal effects in her side pocket.

  “I wouldn’t advise talking to them for at least two days. Not until we’re sure augie has settled down.” Montoya blocked her way to the door. “You’re not yourself. That feeling of invincibility isn’t the thing to take with you when you deal with authority.”

  Jani patted his shoulder. “Calvin, I was dealing with the ComPol back when you still had a full head of hair.”

  “That’s cold.”

  “I’ll be fine.” She stepped around him and out the door.

  The Outpatient wing was deserted at that late night hour. That made it easier to hear the raised voices emerging from the lounge where the ComPol awaited. Three voices—two women and a man.

  “Ms. Kilian has nothing to say!” the man shouted. His voice was cultured Michigan provincial flavored with Earthbound Hispanic.

  “Why don’t we let Ms. Kilian tell
us that!” one of the women countered.

  “No!” the man responded. “Absolutely not. She is on bioemotional restriction and cannot be questioned at this time!”

  Jani sneaked into the lounge entry so that she could gauge the combatants before stepping into the fray. The women appeared to be her age, and wore the professionally dour dark green of ComPol detectives. The man was older, a brown-skinned walking wire dressed in casual trousers and an expensive pullover. He spotted her first, and turned his back on the women’s verbal barrage.

  “Jani.” He hurried over to her, his expression at once tranquil and alert, the way Val looked when he felt he needed to calm her down. “You shouldn’t walk around.” His face was shallow-boned and dominated by an aquiline nose, his hair a grizzled cap.

  Jani took a step back. “Who the hell are you?”

  “Joaquin Loiaza.” He pulled up short and bowed from the waist. “John has asked me to represent you in this matter.”

  “You’re a lawyer?” All the reply that elicited was a slow affirmative blink. “What the hell do I need a lawyer for!”

  “That’s our question too, Jani,” one of the detectives piped.

  “Did you see anything?” the other asked. “The garage’s monitoring system was knocked out by the construction—you’re our only witness.”

  Loiaza turned on them. “Ms. Kilian has nothing—!”

  “Jani?”

  Silence fell as everyone looked to the voice, a rumbling bass that made any word sound like a command from on high.

  John Shroud stood in the hallway. He looked a study in ice: bone-white hair, milk-pale ascetic’s face, an evening suit of palest blue. “Should you be walking about?” He turned his attention to Loiaza, who stiffened. “I asked you to see to this, Joaquin.” As usual, John had filmed his eyes to match his clothing—the crystal blue glare moved from the lawyer to fix again on the reluctant client. “I’ll see you back to your room.” He walked toward Jani as though one quick move would dislodge his head. Spine straight, stride long and smooth. A weighty step, but fluid, like mercury.

  Jani tried to dodge, but two ice-blue arms snaked around her and held her fast.

  “You will come quietly.” John spoke in her ear, sounding like Death come to collect his due.

  “I don’t need your lawyers, or your goddamned help!” Jani gripped the arms of the visitor’s chair, supporting all her weight on her hands as she struggled to sit without bending her knee. The furniture in John’s office was all ebon wood instead of battered metal, the floor covered with Persian carpets instead of cheap lyno. Yet still she sat, and still she argued, as she had so many times before in the basement of the Rauta Shèràa enclave hospital. “I could have found out what they knew. Who they suspected. Right now, I have nothing!”

  “Any information they have, Joaquin will obtain through proper channels.” John fell into his chair. The ergoworks screeched in protest. “Now are you going to tell me what happened tonight, or are you going to make me guess?” He slumped forward and worked his hands through his hair.

  Jani counted slowly in an effort to quell her ire, using her throbbing knee as a metronome. “A robbery attempt.” She watched John’s hair catch the light like finely drawn platinum. She could still feel the pressure of his arms where he’d held her. “How long have you had that headache?” She imagined pressing her fingers into his nape and massaging the tension from the knotted muscle.

  “I got it right about the time some misinformed idiot told me you’d been shot.” John lifted his head. His melanin-deficient skin showed every crease and shadow of fatigue. “A robbery attempt.” He sat back in his chair. “Well, time’s passage has taught you consistency—that jibes with what Calvin said you told him. He and I managed to exchange a few words before I found you wandering the halls looking for trouble.” He sounded all-business now, which meant his bullshit detector was activated and calibrated. “We agreed that it was utter garbage, of course, and that you’re hiding something. So, what are you working on that could have precipitated this attack?”

  “I push paper.” Jani heard her voice rise, and tried to lower it. Her hand went to her left shoulder again. “I write reports. Those are not shooting offenses, even in this town.”

  “How do you expect me to lie for you if I don’t know what the truth is?”

  “Who’s asking you to lie? This is Chicago. Things like this happen all the time.”

  “A robbery attempt gone awry? Jani Moragh, who do you think you’re talking to?”

  Jani flexed her knee. It scarcely hurt at all now. Either her little factory ran full-tilt or she was too angry to feel the pain. She rose shakily. “You started this interrogation right off the bat. Back in Rauta Shèràa, you’d at least offer me coffee first.” She limped to the door. “Good night.” She checked her timepiece. “Make that good morning.”

  “Wait a minute!” John hurried after her. “One of those detectives asked me whether Pascal carried a weapon in the course of his duties and if he still had it when he arrived in Triage. I told her I had it locked away in my office, and I know damned well she’s going to show up inside the hour with a Request to Cooperate warrant and demand that I produce it.”

  Jani leaned against the doorway. Her stomach rumbled. She felt lightheaded. “I can hold it for him just as easily as you can.” She dug Lucien’s shooter out of her jacket pocket, taking care to leave his wallet and other things behind.

  John plucked the shooter from her hand and walked to a large armoire that loomed like a monolith in the far corner of the room. “The bioemotional restriction on your MedRec prohibits you from carrying a dischargeable weapon.” He opened a door and activated a touchlock. A small panel slid aside, and he inserted the shooter in the niche. “If you behave, it can be lifted by year’s end. If you’re caught carrying, it’s an automatic two-year extension, and there’s not a thing I can do about it.”

  “Who’s asking you to do anything about it!” The shout rang in Jani’s ears. The room spun. She slid down the wall, gasping each time her heel grabbed on the thick carpet and forced her to bend her knee.

  John hurried to her side and knelt in front of her. He checked her eyes and pulse, then removed a sensor stylus from his pocket and pressed it against the tip of her right index finger. “Your blood sugar’s in the basement,” he said as he checked the readout. “When did you last eat?”

  “Dinner.” Jani rested her head against the doorjamb. The sharp wooden ridge dug into her scalp, but she didn’t have the strength to move. “I met some friends at Gaetan’s.”

  “Oh?” John loosened her jacket collar, then straightened out her leg. “Who?”

  “Steve Forell and Angevin Wyle.” Jani felt her mouth move, but the words sounded hollow, as though they came from another room. She hugged herself as a wave of the shivers overtook her.

  John rose with a rumbling sigh. “Just sit quietly.” He walked to the wall and slid aside a floor-to-ceiling panel, revealing an inset kitchenette. “Don’t move,” he warned as he disappeared within. Water ran. Something ground and gurgled. Soon, the weighty aroma of brewing coffee filled the air.

  “What did you wear?” John’s voice growled above the sputter of the brewer.

  Jani took one deep breath, then another. Her head cleared. She didn’t think caffeine could diffuse through the air, but this was John’s coffee. “The green thing.”

  “The mermaid dress.” John emerged bearing a tray, looking like heaven’s headwaiter. “It’s very pretty, but I rather wish you’d have tried one of the others.” He handed her a cup. “The copper column is nice, I think. Off the shoulder—”

  “Everybody’s been out on the town tonight.” Jani gestured toward John’s suit, slamming the door on any further discussion of her shoulders. “Where were you?”

  John eyed her in injury as he set the tray on the floor, then worked into a cross-legged position beside it. “A chamber music recital at the Capitoline. Calvin was—”

  “His p
arents’ fortieth. I know.” She sipped her coffee. Make that tried to sip her coffee. She stared into her cup at the few centimeters of dark foam that filled the bottom.

  “I want you to leave here in a relatively alert frame of mind, not in orbit.” John handed her what looked like a brightly wrapped chocolate bar. “And not under arrest. Or under sanction, observation, or any other of the legion of oversights possible in this town. Removing Pascal’s weapon from the scene was remarkably stupid—you should have handed it to one of the emergency techs immediately.”

  “It felt good to carry again.” Jani examined the bar skeptically. “I hadn’t been without for over twenty years.”

  “I find that a sad commentary on your life.” John drew one knee up to his chest and draped his hand over it. His spine remained straight, though, his manner formal. Even after all these years, he still hadn’t gotten the hang of casual, and the fact that he tried to pull it off under such tense circumstances raised warning alarms. “You don’t need to live like a fugitive anymore. You have freedom, and with freedom comes alternatives.” His voice dropped until it sounded like a whisper from inside her head. “There’s no need for you to live here just because it’s the only place on Earth that you know.”

  Jani nodded vaguely as she tore away the bar’s purple and green wrapping. Her mouth watered as she inhaled the scents of chocolate and caramel. “What is this?”

  “A meal bar,” John snapped. “Now, as I was saying, there’s no need for you to stay in Chicago. You could live anywhere.”

  “I have lived anywhere. Anywhere and everywhere. It’s nice being able to stay in one place for a change.” Jani broke off one end of the bar, catching the filling on her finger just before it dripped down the front of her jacket. She touched her finger to the tip of her tongue, and tasted the buttery gold of the richest confectionery. “S’good.” She popped the piece in her mouth.