Nika looked at the spacer closely while Snow settled Banjo as best as he could.
His hair was a natural salt-and-pepper gray, and cropped short. His clothes were from a vending machine, faded, as if they’d been through the wash cycle more times than they were designed to. His eyes were gray, flecked with hazel, and his nose had a slight hook that most people would have had removed by now. This was a man who only came to a modder when he needed medical work.
“Free trader?” she guessed. Doing something illegal, otherwise he would have taken his burn to a medical center.
He grinned, showing slightly crooked teeth.
She’d have liked to fix his burn for him, but how much longer would Banjo remain under the anesthetic?
“Sorry, but our machine’s otherwise occupied at the moment. If you’re short on time you’re best to try one of the other shops.”
“I’ll wait.”
Snow made a strangled sound, which might have been him biting down hard on whatever he’d been going to say. Nika hoped so, anyway.
He’d be waiting a long time.
Nika checked Banjo’s weight. “Snow, do you want to check this gentleman’s neck for him while I set Banjo up?”
Snow nodded and moved over to sterilize his hands. “Why don’t you sit down?” His voice was shaking. So were his hands.
“This place has changed.” The stranger looked around. “Where’s Tilda?”
“Tilda died.” Snow’s hands steadied as he carefully peeled away the collar from the burn. “I’ll need to take your shirt off.” His voice was still up and down, but from the way he calmed when he was doing mod work, Nika would bet he’d been around modders all his life. Good ones. She probably knew them.
“Tilda’s dead?” A look of panic crossed the spacer’s face, just for a moment, so that Nika thought she had imagined it. “I thought she’d live forever.”
She lost track of the conversation as she gave herself up to designing Banjo’s new face. Given the lack of raw materials, Banjo would have to provide a lot of his own. Waste not, want not, but he was going to be a lot more svelte coming out than he had been going in.
Distinctive face, not noticeably ugly or noticeably attractive. Not a threatening face either, because people like Banjo and Tamati relied on their looks to scare people. A little weakness in the hands and forearms, to make it harder for him to assault people.
A quick analysis of Banjo’s body told her he’d been infected with Azovirus. They’d had an epidemic twenty years earlier. It only affected prepubescents, so Banjo wasn’t as old as he looked. Azovirus thickened the muscles, made them bulky and sore. Banjo’d had mods. She could see that in the cell changes, but none of the mods had removed the Azovirus itself.
Why were so many modders so ineffective?
She coded to remove all traces of the virus from the cells.
Maybe a special, too, for they were modders, after all, and their job was to make people look good. Sparkling chocolate eyes, to go with his voice. Besides, it was penance in a way, given that she’d thrown acid in his face.
She worked fast, conscious of the limited supplies and the limited timeframe. Banjo’s anesthetic would wear off soon.
When she came back to the present, Snow was still dressing the other man’s burns. Without his shirt she could see that the burns stretched across his back and down his left side, his ribs stark and prominent against his pale skin.
“You really should get that burn fixed properly,” she said. “You’ll be waiting a long time if you wait for this machine.”
“So your partner here was saying.”
Snow bit down on his bottom lip but didn’t deny the association.
Nika started setting the controls on the Netanyu.
“I want to see your design,” Snow said. “Excuse me,” he said to the spacer.
Nika came over to finish dressing the burns while Snow checked out her design. If she were in her studio, she’d have given the stranger something to eat. He looked half starved. “How much can you afford?” she asked.
“Depends.”
“I’ve heard there’s a place on the Low Road that might do this sort of thing, no questions asked. But it’s pricier than we would be.” Alejandro’s friends had started going there after she’d kicked Alejandro out.
“Your partner recommended the local hospital.”
“Yes, well. He’s still coming to terms with the reality of a shop on the docklands. Hospitals have to report damage like this.”
“This is not bad.” Snow studied the specs. “It’s quite clever, actually.”
“Of course it is. Now will you come over here and finish this so I can set up the machine.”
“It’s my machine. I’ll set it up.”
She let him do it. Snow needed to feel he had some control.
Banjo’s finger twitched.
“Just do it fast. The anesthetic is about to wear off.” Then, because it sounded bad, she lied to the stranger, “He’ll be in pain.”
Snow clipped everything together with the expertise of someone who’d done it a lot of times before. Maybe she was wrong about how young he was.
He closed the machine cover and flooded the chamber with anesthetic gas just as Banjo started to lift his hand.
The hand flopped back.
Snow looked as drained as Nika felt.
Nika finished dressing the spacer’s burns. “Get this looked at. Go to Wazlecki’s on the Low Road. Or one of the other shops along the docks here, but get it done. It will turn septic if you don’t.”
Spaceships were not sterile environments. They carried the bugs of a thousand worlds. Space itself mutated them, and human flesh—particularly damaged flesh—was the ideal breeding ground for all kinds of pathogens.
“Thank you.” The spacer stood up. “It feels better already. I can actually move.”
That was the nerveseal. “It won’t last.”
He pulled on his shirt. “I hope that next time I need medical aid you will be available.”
He smiled at them both, then left.
The door chime as he exited set Nika’s nerves dangling.
“He didn’t say if,” Snow observed eventually. “He said next time.”
“I expect it’s inevitable in his job.” Nika turned away. “You should lock the door.”
It took him three tries before he set the code properly. “What do we do now?”
He sounded young again. As soon as she was alone with a computer, Nika was going to find out more about Bertram Snowshoe.
“I’m going to ship off-world. I’d recommend you do the same thing.” She looked over at the machine, slowly filling with suspension fluid. “The Netanyu has an automatic shutoff. It will disengage when it’s ready. Banjo will come around then. If I were you I’d be gone long before that.”
Snow chewed at his bottom lip. He looked around the shop. “I can’t go. I sank everything I had into this shop.”
Whereas she, at least, had a successful practice behind her, and while it hurt to walk away from the equipment that had taken her years to acquire, she could afford to start again.
Most people came out of training into an apprenticeship. They didn’t buy a shop.
“What about your family? Couldn’t they tide you over?”
“I’m not running to him.”
Him. Singular. Father? Brother? And why wouldn’t he go? Simple pride? Or family disagreement? It didn’t matter. In a way, Nika was responsible for what had happened. Sure, Snow would be in a hospital now—or availing himself of his own equipment—but he wouldn’t be on the run if Nika hadn’t thrown acid in Banjo’s face.
She sighed. “You’d better come with me.”
7
NIKA RIK TERRI
It had taken Nika twelve months to realize that Alejandro’s jealous
y, manipulation, and instant rages were classic controlling behaviors. By then she’d lost most of her friends, and she knew that she’d have to escape his clutches by herself.
After her unsuccessful attempt to charge Alejandro with assault, she’d started working on her escape plan. Alejandro wouldn’t stop. Ever. Not unless he lost interest in her. Those plans had taken a temporary respite when Alejandro’s boss had made a deal with her. It was the day after Alejandro had paid Banjo to beat up Detective Sanray. The first day in the long six weeks while Nika worked, desperately, to keep the man alive.
From the cultured voice and the recognizable SaStudio body mod, she’d thought he was a customer at first.
Sanray was stable for the moment. She closed the door and led her new client down to the office. She’d designed her office to match the Lower Sierras too, but this was based around the colors of the Ramdassan Sea. Aquamarine waters and lilac algae.
“So, Mr.—” She waited.
“Executive Leonard Wickmore.”
“Executive. What can I do for you?”
“Please, call me Leonard.” He smiled, showing beautiful white teeth. Samson Sa, of SaStudio, was meticulous about teeth.
“Alejandro’s CEO.” He smiled, disarmingly.
Nika had been wary.
“I like some of the work you’ve been doing with Alejandro’s business associates.”
If, by business associates, he meant the wounds she’d been healing, he could like as much as he wanted. “I’m a modder, not a doctor. I don’t plan on continuing the medical treatments.”
He continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “We could help each other. You help my team when they need it. Sometimes we don’t want to draw attention to ourselves.”
Alejandro had always been vague about his job. He worked for Eaglehawk, one of the Big Twenty-Seven companies, and was proud of it. He’d told her his work was top secret. Nika had never pried. She should have found out a lot earlier. Why would any company have so many injuries they didn’t want to take to a hospital?
She waited.
“In return, I’ll send Alejandro off-world. He’s due a promotion. I’ll keep him away from Lesser Sirius while you work for me.”
She didn’t plan on working for anyone except herself, but it got rid of her immediate problem. And the machines dealt with medical problems. “It’s a deal. But if he comes back, the deal is off.”
That had been six months before Tamati, and Nika already knew she’d exchanged one death penalty for another.
She had lost four of her new “clients.” Two who’d been so badly injured even her Songyan couldn’t heal them before their injuries shut down their life functions. The other two had come out of the machine clean and fresh—and one markedly improved—only to find Wickmore, and a heavy, waiting for them.
“You were given one job, Chandra,” Wickmore had told the first, his voice as reasonable and gentle as Alejandro’s could be.
“I’ll fix it.”
Wickmore raised his right hand. It contained a small rod. “We get it right the first time.”
Blue lighting arced out one end and caught Chandra in a crazy dance. The lights went out, except on the Songyan, where the surge protector clicked in, leaving Chandra to finish his dance in the dim light of the machine LEDs.
“Get rid of the body,” Wickmore had ordered his heavy.
It was the first time Nika had seen a sparker. Now she knew firsthand what damage they could do. Especially a sustained blast.
Wickmore had paid for her rewiring, but she’d known since then she had to disappear. Despite the studio. Despite the Songyans. Despite her career. Otherwise one day it would be her dancing at the end of the sparker.
So she had investigated what one needed to do to disappear so completely that no one—not a violent ex-partner, or an executive in one of the Big Twenty-Seven companies—would find her.
She had exit plans, because who knew what Alejandro might do when he was in a rage, or Wickmore might do as calculated punishment. How to escape from the shop if one of them attacked her. How to lock him inside while she got away. How to get away even with the resources of a Big Twenty-Seven company after her. The secret was to be so inconspicuous they wouldn’t notice her. Going to a lawyer and changing her name was noticeable. Having a fling down at the docks was not.
The day after Chandra died she had gone down to the docks, found herself a drunk spacer due to ship out the next morning, and convinced him to marry her. As part of the marriage contract she had added her name to his. Legally, she was Nika Rik Terri James.
The minute James shipped out Nika had taken herself and her new identity off to the banks, where she’d opened accounts in the name Nika James.
Next day, after a flurry of I-can’t-believe-we-were-both-drunk-enough-to-do-this messages from James on-ship, they’d canceled the contract.
But she hadn’t changed her name back.
* * *
• • •
Nika booked passage for Nika Rik Terri on a liner going to Atalante. It was leaving the following morning and would take four weeks to get there. She booked a bunk for Snow on a tramp going to the Pleiades. It left at the same time as the liner, although from a different dock. Then she booked passage for Snow and Nika James on the first ship doing a business run between this world and the nearest station hub.
She used the time while they waited for the ship to depart to have some business clothes made up for them. They’d blend in better on the ship that way.
“Do you want to design your outfit?” she asked Snow, for that was polite. A modder didn’t design another modder’s look for them. You made it yours, right down to the clothes.
“Thank you.” Snow picked his outfit with care.
“That’s an old-style collar for a suit like that,” the tailor said. “It will stand out as noticeably different.”
Everyone was an expert in their own field. Even tailors.
“That style suits me better,” Snow said.
The tailor looked to Nika. She was paying.
Should she remind him that the point of this was to blend in? Then Nika shrugged. What would they notice? An out-of-fashion suit. They certainly wouldn’t notice the face that went with it. Except perhaps as someone they didn’t want to know.
“It’s his choice.”
The fashionable color for business suits this year was maroon. Legs were tight, jackets broad. Snow’s outfit, with its old-fashioned collar, was dark gray. It looked good on him. He would be a fine modder when he’d had more experience.
Nika stuck to maroon and slicked back her hair in the severe style most businesspeople were wearing this season.
Even with Snow’s outré color scheme and his old-fashioned collar, they fitted in with the other businesspeople streaming onto the shuttle, but Nika didn’t relax until the shuttle was in space. So far, so good, but they were a long way from safe.
Snow picked at the prepackaged meal that had dropped onto the food tray in front of him. “I might have been able to save my business if I’d stayed.”
He was too young to have a business. “Most people don’t buy a studio straight out of school. They do an apprenticeship first.”
“I had that sorted.”
Nika raised a brow but didn’t argue. Snow’s life was his own. She turned her attention to her own meal. She had no idea what they were eating. It was green with crunchy purple noodles, and it tasted metallic. She studied her drink. A clear, carbonated beverage. It looked like water with bubbles. Tasted like water with bubbles.
“You wouldn’t be able to afford new stock. You’d have spent it all fixing yourself. If you could program the machine after Banjo got through with your hands.”
Snow shuddered. “Will he come after us?”
“It depends how angry we’ve made him.”
Ta
mati would come. Banjo? She wasn’t sure. He worked the docks. If he was away too long he’d lose his business. He’d be more likely to spend the time ensuring that the other businesses he took protection money from didn’t do the same thing Snow had. She had, Nika amended.
“Was your studio insured?” Maybe he could claim for the damages Banjo was sure to inflict.
“They don’t insure shops in the docks.” Snow scowled at a purple noodle. “Except I didn’t know that before I bought it.”
Sometimes you bought what you could afford. Sometimes, too, you had to ask yourself why the business was so cheap when mod studios were so expensive.
“Why Lesser Sirius?” It wasn’t an obvious choice for someone just out of school. They’d be more likely to choose Cassiopeia or New France.
“Are you kidding? This is where all the good stuff is happening. Rik Terri, Karma, SaStudio.”
Nika hoped it was coincidence he mentioned her studio first.
Snow leaned close to her. “I had an appointment with Rik Terri. I had to wait five months.”
She didn’t want to think about the appointments she’d walked out on.
“I was going to get something small done. Whatever I could afford. Maybe my hair.”
His beautiful copper hair. “Is it natural? That color, I mean?”
He nodded. “I like this color.” He looked momentarily mournful, then brightened. “But it would be worth it, to see what she would do.”
“Nothing. She’d do absolutely nothing.” Except pay him for a gene read so she could work on the color in her own time.
Now was the time to tell him who she was. Unfortunately, if she wanted to disappear, she couldn’t tell anyone. Not even Snow. Even if it made her uncomfortable.
“She’d do something,” Snow said confidently.
“Snow, when you can’t improve on perfection, you don’t. Artists don’t destroy a perfect flower.”
“An artist can always make things better.”
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