I was so close to killing him. She pressed a hand to her neck as another wave of bile danced in the back of her throat. “I, umm. Sorry.”
“It’s all right. You don’t need to apologize to me. Someone else has been worried about you.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t come back sooner… We got held up at the outpost, and by the time we landed, I could barely walk.”
Garrison smirked. “Sounds like Pavo missed you.”
Her face burned. “You did not just say that.”
“Had to retaliate for your question.” He winked.
“I was exhausted. Nerves fried. Emotions hanging on a thread. Body said ‘enough, sleep now.’”
“Been there.” He idly flicked at his terminal, checking off approvals for basic budgetary requests like food, water, and clothing. “Glad to hear he’s okay. Your text message wasn’t very detailed. Understandable given your location.”
Risa recounted her infiltration, locating Pavo’s cell, and walking straight into General Everett on the way out. Garrison didn’t look as surprised as she thought he would. “You knew he was PVM?”
“Suspected. I’m more alarmed about Shiro. None of our usual sources picked up anything out of the ordinary. They went the extra mile creating his existence. Go take care of your daughter. I’m going to rattle some trees.”
Risa squirmed. “Kree’s not my daughter… She’s a kid I almost killed with a fucking bomb you people sent me to plant.”
Garrison shot her an accusing glare. It lasted a moment before softening. “You don’t really mean that. That’s not all on us. The target was good, even if it was one of our own. You’d always been so meticulous about ops before that.”
Risa slid off the desk, standing. “I rushed it. I had the revenge I’d spent so long wanting right in my hands and I… didn’t want them to get away.”
“That little girl needs you. You keep saying you’re tired of all the lies.” Garrison reached over and squeezed her hand. “Does that include the ones you tell yourself?”
Eyes downcast, Risa trudged to the door. While crossing the large room, she stared at her childhood bed. Once, it felt like the safest place in the universe. All she had to do to get away from bad things was curl up under a blanket. Kree doesn’t deserve to grow up like I did.
She hurried out into the hall and raced across the command floor. A few heads popped up as she speed-walked to the base of a long curving ramp, which led up to the third level. Technically the second, as the command area and officers’ quarters were one level beneath the ‘ground’ floor.
The stained metal plate marked ‘Death Row’ swayed back and forth over the mouth of the corridor by where her private room waited. Any Liberation Front operative involved with demolition work got their own private bedroom. More than most, they knew every mission they accepted could easily be their last. The short waiting list surprised no one. Bunk beds and group showers seemed a better alternative to a sudden, painless death.
Risa stopped at her door, hesitated for a moment, and crept in. Kree sat amid the floordrobe, sideways to the entrance, wearing her oversized purple ‘moon boots,’ underpants, and an electronic helmet with a black visor over her eyes. It didn’t look like a Sens-helmet, which meant her consciousness remained in the real world―though the video game sucked up her attention.
Without lifting the visor, the girl grabbed a small plastic box and hurled it in the general direction of the door. “Go away! I’m not hungry.”
That wasn’t aimed at me. She hasn’t looked. Risa pushed the door closed behind her. Kree screamed “Go away!” three more times before jumping to her feet and tearing the helmet off, holding it over head in both hands as if to hurl it at the person intruding on her space.
As soon as the child looked up, the tiny rage-filled face relaxed to a momentary expression of bewilderment. Three seconds later, Kree dropped the helmet in the pile of clothes. Two seconds after that, she burst into tears, wailing and crying in place.
Risa blinked. That’s not the reaction I was expecting. “Hey…” She walked over and sat as close as she could on the bed, arms wide. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m mad at you!” Kree sniveled. “You went away, an’ I tol’ you not to go, but you went away. I tol’ the angel I wanted you to be my mommy, so you’d die ’cause I was mad at you…” Venom left the little girl’s voice, reducing it from a shriek to a soft mewl. “An’ then you didn’t come back…” Silent tears gushed down the child’s face.
Kree thought she killed me.
Risa bit her lip. She lowered her arms as the six-year-old made no move to come to her. For a moment, she glanced at the door and pondered leaving, unsure how to deal with the little tornado of emotion in front of her. The girl’s chest heaved from great, gasping sobs. Prominent ribs made her worry about Kree’s health. How many days has she been ‘not hungry?’
“I’m sorry.” Risa gazed down at the floor. “I thought Pavo was going to die if I didn’t help him. He was in a bad place, and I needed to help him.”
Sniveling gave way to irregular sniffles punctuated by short bursts of crying.
“Do you still want me to go away?” Risa regretted the question as soon as it took flight. What if she says yes? Do I brush it off?
“No!” Kree yelled, stomped, and flung herself into Risa’s lap, again lost to sobs.
She cradled the girl, holding and rocking her for a few minutes.
Osebi poked his head in. “Everyting all right?”
Risa sniffled, and nodded. “She’s…”
“Happy ta see ya.” He winked, and backed out.
With the little body clinging tight to her, Risa’s doubt grew into a tsunami. How many orphans had her bombs created? Saris, the synthetic millipede driver, had a point. No matter what humans do, there would always be a government. Even if the MLF had been genuine, and succeeded in burning the Earth-loving UCF and ACC to the ground, they had no guarantee that the creature reborn from the ashes would be better. It might very well be much, much worse.
I’m saying you should endeavor to be happy, said Saris in her memory.
“Yeah, right,” she muttered.
Kree gave up trying to grab a hold on her ballistic stealth armor, and gathered her hands at her chin. Risa plucked a blue shirt from the rug and pulled it over the girl’s head to improvise a dress.
“When was the last time you ate?”
“See-bee made me eat a egg.” She wiped at her eyes.
“You need to have lunch. Come on.”
Kree didn’t move, so Risa carried her down the hall to the nearest common area. Her cybereyes’ chronometer indicated the time as 13:22. Ralek lay on the ground half under one set of bunk beds, pounding metal on metal. His muttered tirade of obscenities switched to nonsense words after Kree giggled.
“I don’t think even your angel’s gonna be able to fix this pad. It’s gotta be replaced, and this frame is so damn old we can’t get one with a compatible socket. Every five years, they change the design so you gotta buy a new one.” Ralek grumbled a few unintelligible words and pummeled something under the bed.
Risa shifted the girl onto her hip, holding her with one arm while dialing up a small bowl of OmniSoy mac and cheese. After carrying both child and food to the round steel table, she set Kree on the edge of the table and put the bowl in the chair.
“Hmm. That doesn’t seem right.”
Kree laughed.
She rearranged them, and nodded. “Much better.”
Risa took the next seat, and handed Kree a plastic spoon. The girl dug in without hesitation. Lancaster passed by the opening at the front of the common area, sparing a wave.
“Good to hear about Pavo.” He smiled.
This is supposed to be a shadow force of military intelligence, yet no one can keep their damn mouth shut. She braced her cheek on one hand and chuckled. Kree’s smile threatened to collapse back to tears.
“It’s okay.” Risa pulled the girl’s hair off her face, attem
pting to tame the wild mane with a few brushing passes of her fingers. “I’m sorry I scared you.”
“Are you gonna go away again?” Kree froze.
Risa continued fussing with the girl’s hair. “Not if I can help it.”
Kree seemed satisfied, smiled, and resumed her assault on the faux pasta. The more Risa watched her eat, the more profound the sense of being responsible for the little person’s life became. She pictured the bomb timer stalled at two seconds. All the political strife between two planets paled in importance to the innocent being in front of her. If Kree deserved anything, it wasn’t having her mother murdered by thugs, living on the street for a few weeks, and getting killed in a terrorist bombing.
She cringed at the voice in her head. Yeah. Terrorist. What else uses bombs on civilians? The other kids from the mine all thought her ‘weird’ for talking to angels, or scary. Each had found someone within the Front to latch on to. Survival mechanism. Risa sighed. They didn’t belong here, but she couldn’t say they’d be better off on the street than with the MLF. Garrison had saved her from who-knows-what. Drugs, the Syndicate, gangs… young girls didn’t last long on their own in the deep tunnels of Primus.
“Finished.” Kree sat up, smiling.
Risa spent a moment washing out the plastic dish before tossing it in the bin next to the reassembler. Ralek was gone; she hadn’t even noticed him leave. Kree followed her back to their room, where she asked Risa to put on a cartoon. Risa set up a datapad to serve as a holo-bar, projecting a meager twenty-four-inch panel. They sat on the bed, and Kree became engrossed in the laughter of a bunch of animated mushrooms of various pastel colors.
Her thoughts drifted back to the picture of Garrison and Serena. A knot clenched and unwound in her stomach. Killing Andriy had been more than an assignment, more than national security―it had been personal. The man had stolen his wife. Risa ran a hand over Kree’s head. The girl smiled and snuggled closer.
With the little mushroom villagers’ journey occupying Kree’s attention, Risa slid the NetMini from her belt and called up the picture on the physical display so the holographic light didn’t cause a distraction. The two-by-four-inch screen left the image too tiny to see well, so she zoomed in on their faces, staring at them for almost fifteen minutes while feeling heartsick at the turn all their lives had taken. Serena, Garrison, Kree… and her own. She looked up from the screen at the pink doll perched on her desk. The one she’d relentlessly begged her father for at eight.
Who would I have become?
She unconsciously tightened her arm around Kree and glanced down at the NetMini. Two little dots of violet light drew her attention to her reflection on the touchscreen surface. Lifeless silver eyes with luminous pupils. Risa tried to remember what her real eyes looked like. Raziel had given them to her, frozen in medical gel. Gruesome as it was, she thought back to the two orbs suspended in peach-hued slime. Jade green.
Like Garrison’s.
The NetMini slipped from her fingers. She grabbed for it, and stretched the image so his eyes filled the small screen. Her breath caught in her throat.
I gotta know.
Risa sat up and set Kree on the Comforgel pad. “I’ll be right back.”
Kree gave her a look as though she’d announced suicide.
“I’m not leaving the safe house.” Risa gripped Kree’s shoulders. “I promise I am not going outside. I need to talk to Garrison. Only a couple of minutes.”
A lingering suspicious squint remained on the child’s face, but she calmed. “‘Kay. ’Member, you promised.”
Risa kissed her on the forehead, and darted out the door.
4
Someone Thought Dead
The slam of the door against the wall startled Garrison’s attention off his terminal. His pistol fell inches short of aiming at Risa as she darted across the room. At the sight of her, he dropped it and jumped to his feet, rushing around the corner of the desk to catch her in mid sprint.
“What happened?” he asked.
Risa stared into his eyes for a moment. “I… Your eyes are green. Jade green.”
“That’s… not exactly a secret. What’s got you riled up? The look on your face, I thought something’d happened to Kree.”
“I have to know.” She looked down.
“Know?”
“If you’re really my father. What’s her name…? Maybe-Hannah, the medic. She can check.” Risa pulled on his arm. “Please?”
He stiffened. His expression flickered to fear, then pity. “What if this test doesn’t give you the answer you want?”
Risa took a deep breath, held it for a few seconds, and let it slide out her nostrils. “Then I’ll have to figure out how angry I am with you for ordering my father’s death.”
Garrison looked to his side and down.
“You’re afraid of knowing…”
He pivoted a quarter-turn to the right, took one step, and stopped, hands on his hips. “If it’s true, and the odds are damn remote, that’d mean she lied to my face and wanted to be with that Corp son of a bitch, knowing.”
She grasped his arm, above the elbow. “Maybe she didn’t even know. It’s not like our tits light up the instant we become pregnant.”
He wiped away a chuckle and smiled for a moment before the somber expression resurfaced. “I suppose, given the short time frame, it’s possible she might not have realized. I’d like to think she’d have changed her mind about the assignment if she knew.” He raised a hand. “But this is mental jumping jacks. The odds of me being your genetic father are about as good as―”
“Five minutes. Please.”
Garrison pinched the bridge of his nose. “I don’t know.”
“You’re scared you’ll feel different about her death, like the way my feelings about Andriy changed when I learned he killed my mother.”
“Yeah.” He hardened his gaze on her. “All right. Fine. You never were able to back down once you got an idea in your head. Are you sure you want to know?”
“I’m sure.” She risked a smile.
He leaned over his desk long enough to lock the terminals and re-holster his sidearm. “The medtech’s name is Hannah, by the way. She works with Eva and Neal.”
“We have three medics?” Risa followed him to the door.
He shook his head as he walked. His expression said he didn’t much want to go, but his pace said he’d rather get it over with. “Neal and Hannah came in with the Benton Mining Company people you evacuated. Both agreed to stay on with us at least for a little while.”
Risa nodded, not that he saw her, and kept at his heels until they crossed the command room, headed up to the first floor, and down a hallway deeper into the compound that led to the garage as well as the infirmary. As luck would have it, Hannah happened to be on rotation when they walked in. The blue-eyed blonde looked up with a half-awake smile.
“Sir.” She jumped up. “Am I supposed to salute you, or―”
“Not important to me, but Maris will lose his mind if you don’t.” Garrison chuckled.
“Hi, Risa.” Hannah grinned at her. “What’s up?”
“Do you have the equipment to do a paternity test?” asked Risa.
Hannah covered her mouth and glanced at Garrison. “He wants to know who to kill?”
Risa blushed. “Uhh, no.” She dropped her voice to a whisper. “I want to know if Garrison is my father.”
“Ohhhh.” Hannah fidgeted until he nodded. “Yeah, it’s a pretty simple process really. Most med scanners can do a rudimentary cross-check on nuclear DNA. It’ll take a couple of minutes and a drop of blood.”
Risa grabbed the edge of the desk to keep her hands still. “Okay.”
“Do it,” said Garrison.
Hannah ran to a table past a row of eight cots, mercifully empty of wounded, and scooped up a handheld device about the size of a brick. She grabbed something out of a large plastic cylinder, nabbed blue sanitary gloves, and hurried across to the right side of the room. Af
ter setting the items down on a white table, she beckoned them over with a wave. The objects from the cylinder appeared to be disposable lancets. Beeps and chimes came from the device as Hannah navigated a software menu, then snapped a lancet on to the end of the brick.
“Okay, who’s first? Need a hand.” The blonde smiled and held up the device.
Risa held her arm out.
Hannah pressed the tip to her wrist until it clicked. A mild nip signaled a hair-thin needle extracting a drop or two of blood. She swapped the lancet for a sterile one and repeated the process on Garrison’s forearm. After tossing the second tip into a trashcan, she typed with her thumbs on a touchscreen. A pair of empty helix patterns appeared in a counter-rotating spin. Bit by bit, colored blocks filled in.
“About two minutes.” Hannah smiled.
“What, no juice and cookies after taking so much blood?” asked Garrison.
His deadpan left the woman speechless for a few seconds until he smiled.
Risa held her stomach to keep the butterflies from rioting. She glanced up at him, trying to plan her reaction to the results in either direction. Garrison remained as blasé as if he waited at a noodle counter for his lunch. She threaded her arm around his and held his hand, taking his calm as a sign the answer wouldn’t affect his opinion of their relationship. He already thinks of me as his… Nothing would change when the machine says negative. She swallowed. He’s convinced it will.
Hannah looked up at a beep from the device. She swiped it from the desk and regarded the screen for a moment. “Uhh, wow. I honestly wasn’t expecting that.”
“Expecting what?” Garrison’s grip on her hand tensed.
“Umm…” Hannah glanced back and forth between them for a moment. “The creepy eyes kinda threw me, but yeah… I can see it.” She held the device up so they can read the text superimposed over the now-stationary DNA helixes: ‘Probability of parental relation 99.015%.’
Garrison fell into a chair at the end of the table, likely for a patient to use while receiving shots or having blood drawn. He stared into space. Risa held his hand, covering her mouth with the other.
Ghost Black Page 4