Clarkesworld Magazine Issue 120

by Neil Clarke

  The sleek black rectangle unfolded on spidery limbs, and Eris realized it wasn’t a carry-case. It was an autosurgeon. A shudder ran all the way through her.

  “Wait,” she said, her mouth feeling suddenly thick and warm. “Here?”

  “Here, yes,” Ndirangu said, his voice sounding even more distorted than usual. “There’s little time to waste. I gave you a dermal sedative through the glove. That’s mentioned in the waiver as well.”

  Eris felt the old hospital panic kicking up through her, dulled only halfway by the drug. She backed away and stumbled. Someone caught her—Kit caught her—and lowered her down onto the floor. She felt a pillow slide under her skull, cushioning it. Her whole body was heavy and she could taste copper in the back of her throat. Familiar.

  “It’s fast,” Kit’s voice said. “You won’t remember it. I don’t.”

  Then the autosurgeon was spreading overtop of her, reaching with calipers and braces, clicking and sliding. Too familiar, too familiar. Before the prostheses, they’d tried twice to grow her arms, but the surgery always failed. The flesh never took.

  She squeezed her eyes shut.

  “Didn’t have to spring the sedative on her,” Kit’s voice came faint, accusing. “Could have just told her.”

  “Not with her profile,” came Ndirangu’s, but different now, free of the mask. “She’s not as tough as she thinks she is.”

  Eris wanted to say yes I am, yes I fucking am, but she wasn’t sure and her mouth was too numb and her whole body was turning rubbery and—

  Eris woke up doing calisthenics in her empty apartment. She could see her reflection in the dulled smartglass window across from her, bending and stretching. The display told her it was morning, nearly ten o’clock.

  “What the shit?” she demanded, or tried to. What came out was a strange slur through clamped jaws. Then her mouth opened without her and spoke back.

  “Sorry. Just getting calibrated.” The voice was hers, she could feel it rumble in her chest, but it wasn’t hers at all. “I’ll be out in a minute.”

  It all came back like a tsunami. The man with the shaved head and slashed suit, the one thousand credits, the black-clad OCI agents waiting for her in the dark. Doomsday cults and a dead woman with a flower in her gut. The last thing she remembered was putting her signature on some kind of a waiver.

  On a brainshare waiver. That was why she couldn’t move her own muscles—Kit was moving them.

  Fuck that. She tried to wrench her right arm down and away, abandoning the stupid yoga pose.

  She got nothing. Not even a twitch.

  “You can have your mouth back while I finish up,” Kit said.

  A weird tremor went through Eris’s tongue. She spat, like she was getting a bad taste out, but somehow managed to slobber it down her chin. Her reflection in the window was drooly and dazed-looking.

  “Where’s the implant?” she said.

  This time the reply came in Kit’s voice, slightly raspy, thrumming through Eris’s head. Subcutaneous. Some skin-spray to cover the scarring. Should be undetectable.

  Eris watched with some measure of revulsion as her reflection started doing jumping jacks. This was so fucked.

  “This is so fucked,” she puffed.

  I’ve been looking at your augments. Really modded the shit out of your arms, didn’t you. Reflexes way past standard. No wonder the artinerves are nearly burned out. No wonder you can drive like that.

  There was some admiration in her voice, but Eris didn’t want to hear it. She felt sick and angry, imagining Kit sitting on the couch testing her arms out like a new toy or some shit. Like all of her was a toy.

  “Yeah, that makes it so worth it,” Eris said. “Maybe I should lop a leg off, too, huh?”

  Her face in the window twitched, which had to be Kit.

  That’s not what I meant. I meant it was good wire work. That’s all.

  “I could always drive like that,” Eris said. “So fuck you.”

  The jumping jacks stopped.

  Done calibrating. Kit, acting like she hadn’t heard the last bit. Not the worst body I’ve had to work with. Just go about your normal routine, if possible, and I’ll be ready to take over when Schorr contacts you.

  Suddenly her muscles were all hers again, and she toppled. She caught onto the edge of the orthochair as she went down; the cantilevers whined and propped her back up. Her wobbly legs turned solid again. She straightened, muttering curses.

  “Go about your normal routine, Eris,” she said through her teeth. “Ignore the OCI bitch kicking around in your brain.”

  But it was a relief to have her body back. And whatever Kit had been doing had actually left her feeling pretty good. Loose, warm. Bit of a sweat on. She put her hands on her hips and surveyed the dull gray cube of her apartment, looking for evidence of the agents’ intrusion, but they’d left everything in its place or not-place.

  A tumble of clean underwear and colorful shirts heaped on the end of the couch, which was also her bed. Work bench in the corner strewn with parts and a coil of conductor wire. On the floor beside a vat of sealant, her dad’s old magnetic chess set that she sometimes hooked to the net when she was feeling masochistic. Canary-yellow scarf, jacket with a stubborn oil stain. Two juggling balls rolling and bumping against the heaped jacket where the third was trapped underneath.

  Apart from her cab, it was all she had to show for a decade in the City. It seemed messier and shabbier and shittier knowing Kit and the faceless one had been lounging around in it. Nearly made her want to clean up.

  Over on the kitchenette counter, she saw the filigreed black calling card waiting. She gave it a wide berth as she slid open the fridge. There was nothing floating in the gel but hot sauce and a tube of yogurt. She felt antsy, and hungry now, too. She picked the calling card gingerly off the counter and slid it into her pocket. Maybe Schorr wouldn’t call anyways. Maybe the OCI had wildly miscalculated.

  As if she could be that lucky. Eris left and locked the door behind her.

  “Bet you can do all kinds of nasty things with them.”

  Eris was nearly home again, halfway through the corridor from the main hub with a biodegradable bag of groceries slung over her shoulder, when the ragged man who’d been sauntering a few steps behind her spoke. She turned over her shoulder.

  “Fuck you say?”

  “Nothing,” the man replied, but his eyes trailed longingly up Eris’s left arm, which was still twitching sporadically, then the right. His skin was pale, sallow, and his eyes were shot through with pink. Tweaked on something. “Just that you can probably do all kinds of nasty things with those artis of yours, is all.”

  She would’ve let it go, because tweakers and technophiles weren’t worth the time to spit on, but she was still antsy. Maybe the OCI were watching through her eyes. Maybe they’d sent this fuck as some kind of test. Or maybe Schorr had sent him.

  “All kinds of things,” the man repeated with a placid smile, reaching to run his fingers over the exposed polymer. She batted them away hard; he blew on them and laughed. “Beauties, them.”

  That was it. Eris set her groceries down. “They could tear your tiny fucking prong off if you don’t get lost, cunt.”

  The man’s smile dissolved. He gave a slow blink, then his face turned angry. “If you can’t take a compliment, wear skin sleeves on them,” he said.

  He took a menacing step and Eris stepped back in sync as she checked him over again, trying to guess if what he was on would make him quicker or make him clumsier. The veins in his neck were all taut blue. Could be Taurus, which would be bad news.

  Eris wanted smash her knee up into his thickening hard-on and only unload the stunspray if necessary. She didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of touching him with her arms.

  But she was frozen. A weird thrum was going through her locked-up muscles and she couldn’t move a millimeter. The man took it for fear and his smile came back. He had a nose for blood in the water; he was glancing u
p and down the empty corridor.

  Eris couldn’t even cuss out whatever dumb fucking glitch in the brainshare implant was seizing her up. Her jaws were clenched too hard.

  The man went to grab her arm, and suddenly she moved.

  Too fast to understand. She felt contact, displaced air, and displaced cartilage, then she was wiping something warm off her forehead while the man wailed on the dirty floor of the corridor. Blood was gushing from his nose and his kneecap was shifted over from where it ought to have been.

  She’d gone through his grip somehow, done his nose in and crunched his knee and come back up like elastic. She wasn’t even breathing hard. She was a fucking ninja.

  “Next time you’re dead,” she said, feeling wild, feeling dangerous, even as she picked up her smiley-face-decorated grocery bag. “Got it?”

  He only groaned. Eris headed back to her apartment, riding the adrenaline like a riptide. It took her a moment to realize what had happened.

  “I don’t need your fucking help,” she said. “Kit? I know that was you, Kit.”

  I know you didn’t need help, came Kit’s gravel voice. That was just for my personal satisfaction. If Ndirangu asks, it was all you.

  Eris considered it. Kit didn’t sound like she was lying. She sounded kind of pissed off and pleased at the same time. “Alright,” she said, then, grudgingly, “I guess that was pretty slick. How you did the knee like that.”

  I’ve done better, Kit said, and for a second Eris liked her.

  Then the calling card went off in her pocket.

  Kit did the talking, and it surprised Eris how much she managed to sound like her, down to the cursing. Then again, she was a professional and the conversation hadn’t been a long one. Schorr’s distorted voice had requested her for a transport job, vehicle provided, an hour’s work at most, possible pursuers to shake. In exchange, five thousand credits, and none of it going through her cab for the Guild to skim fees off of.

  Kit, in Eris’s voice, had agreed, and the calling card had denatured to a handful of gritty black gel that she’d dumped in the nearest recycler. Eris had gone home, eaten and put away groceries, and dipped her arms in sealant to take a shower. She didn’t think Kit would be watching, but she did it without looking down much just in case.

  And now, in the growing dusk, she was walking down Pier 24 to the boxy white delivery van that had been left docked exactly as Schorr had described. She’d already stopped at a specific trash receptacle to pull out a smartglove and tiny gun. Eris felt a cold ball of ice in her stomach. She knew that whatever she was transporting was going to be unwholesome. She hoped it wouldn’t be a dead body.

  She stopped in front of the unmarked van and grimaced. “That woman, Carrow,” she muttered, picturing her passenger’s icy blue eyes. “Was Schorr the one who killed her?”

  For a moment there was no reply, and she imagined Kit out getting a tea or something, but then her voice sounded in her skull. He has an alibi. But Ndirangu’s positive he ordered it. Ndirangu’s usually right.

  “Why’d he have a blur mask and you didn’t?” Eris asked, hoping Kit couldn’t tell she was delaying the inevitable. “You forget yours?”

  There was a pause. Haven’t earned it yet. Hopefully this op makes it happen.

  “Wait, you’re not some kind of fucking rookie, are you?” Eris demanded. “I thought this Schorr guy was a big deal for the OCI.”

  I was the best match for the brainshare. Kit’s voice sounded slightly miffed. I’m taking over now.

  Eris felt the thrum all through her body again. She’d always hated being a passenger and she hated this even more. At least Kit left her her mouth, tingling and thick-feeling but functional.

  “I can drive,” she pointed out.

  Liability issues. We’re now on clock for an official OCI operation. Besides. I can drive, too.

  Kit peered inside the van. Eris thought about pointing out the non-standard dampers and a drive stick that would take some adjusting, but Kit seemed to be looking in the right places. Maybe she’d been the one driving the silver upcar yesterday, which now seemed like at least a whole week ago.

  Kit walked around the outside of the van next. The back was hermetically-sealed and humming refrigerated. Big fancy lock on it, too, with sliding black flanges and glowing red vents.

  “So you don’t know what he’s transporting?” Eris asked.

  No.

  “You going to look?”

  Deadman’s lock on there. If I fuck up the whole thing will self-torch. So, no.

  “Fair.”

  Eris didn’t like not knowing, but there were a lot of things she didn’t like going on.

  She felt a little dart of satisfaction when Kit nearly bashed them into a wall undocking, not prepared for the upped sensitivity in her arms. But she smoothed things out after a few minutes and then Eris could tell that she was a pretty decent driver, despite the van handling like a blue whale or something else huge and extinct.

  Dusk deepened as they drove, and all the City lights were coming alive. The harsh arcs of artificial sunlight, the soft blue-and-purple bioluminescents like bruises, the swirl of neon and argon. The lights were under them and above them and reminded her of the field of stars she’d always had overhead as a kid but didn’t quite measure up.

  The van’s onboard was programmed to feed directions bit by bit, the same way Schorr had done from her back seat, but it didn’t take long for Eris to figure out they were heading to the same place as last time.

  “Take the under,” she said. “Quicker.”

  Kit stayed the course for a second, thinking it through, then grudgingly dipped into Eris’s recommended traffic vector.

  You know your way around like you were born here.

  “Been here ten years. Cabbing for five of them.” She paused, then, maybe because of the lights, she spoke again. “Sometimes, it feels like I was born here. Feels like New Tenochtitlan was a dream. It’s different over there.”

  Your parents were first-generation emigrants to the colony, it says. Relatively wealthy.

  “Yeah,” Eris said. “Wealthy. And they gave it all up to go live in the dirt like the good old days. Gave up their Vaxine and their genetech, too.”

  There was a long silence. The lights weren’t as beautiful now.

  How did you lose your arms? Kit finally asked.

  Eris ground her teeth. She’d hoped Kit would be one of the people who never bothered asking. “You know everything,” she said. “You tell me.”

  Your file doesn’t say.

  “Because I was born like this.”

  A pause. That doesn’t happen anymore.

  “Not in the City,” Eris said. “In the colonies it does. No genetech, remember?” She breathed out a bitter laugh. “My mom died having me, and my dad sent me away when I was twelve. Thought it would be better for me here. But he stayed. Haven’t spoken to him in years and years.” Something pulled too close for comfort in her peripheral. “Get some fucking space off that,” she muttered. “We’re wider than you think.”

  Has to be close. I called in a scanner to see what’s in the back.

  The dull gray upcar pulled even closer to them as they drove, and Eris felt a shivery whine in her teeth as the scan started. She hoped Kit was focused on that and not the old tears building up behind her eyes. She couldn’t move her hands to press them away, but she had enough control of her face for a few hard blinks. She didn’t like thinking about the colony.

  “So what do we have?” she asked flatly.

  Kit didn’t answer for a second. When she did, her voice had an edge to it. Nothing. There’s nothing in the back.

  Eris felt the ball of ice again, this time rolling slow down her spine. They were in the lower streets now, deep City, where the lights were old and yellowed and fought a losing battle with the thickening dark. Eris was trying to think of reasons why someone would pay her to transport nothing at all when they arrived at the alleyway.

  Kit swung her o
ut of the van. Her shoe crunched on something in the shadows and she was momentarily glad Kit was running things, because if it had been just her she would’ve jumped at the noise like an idiot.

  “Good work.”

  It was Schorr’s voice. He was standing at the mouth of the alley, hands in his pockets, his electric blue eyes glowing enough to illuminate the bones of his face. Two tall men with the same close-cropped hair were at his shoulders. Eris remembered what Kit had done to the tweaker in the corridor and it made her feel a little better.

  “Let’s have that five thousand now, or I hop back in and drive this shit straight to the sweepers,” Kit said with her mouth. Over the tailored shoulder of Schorr’s suit, Eris saw two more white vans in the alley, identical, and something was being unloaded from the closer of them onto a hoverjack.

  Schorr moved just slightly and her view was blocked. “I’m a man of my word,” he said, tapping at his tab. “Drop the van at this sataddress. Enjoy the rest of your night.”

  Eris felt her own tab, wrapped around her wrist, rumble at the data transfer. “What, you’re not going to unload it?” Kit demanded.

  “Nothing to unload,” Schorr said. “You were driving one of the decoys. I’ll put your mind at ease.” He slid his hand against the deadman’s lock. The doors sprang open. Eris saw a billow of steam and then nothing else, just bare white walls as the scanner had predicted.

  “Okay.” Kit made a show of checking the payment on her tab. “Pleasure doing business, I guess.”

  Schorr swung the doors shut, and Kit climbed back in the driver’s side. Eris caught a last glimpse of what they were unloading: a big crate, bigger than she was, covered in a black shroud that seemed to eat the light.

  As soon as they were around the corner, Kit triggered the autopilot and jumped right out of the van, rolling more gracefully than Eris would’ve managed.

  “So what now?” she demanded once they were on their feet.

  Sneak in. See what he actually brought down here. Kit unrolled the smartglove and pulled it on, then slid the gun—it was a biogun, calcium spikes instead of traceable bullets—into Eris’s waistband. It was pretty fucking uncomfortable.