She pursed her lips and continued tapping away at the screen until she came to the file that she was looking for. Another smile spread across her face and she chuckled a little. That bastard Sanchez had made it after all. They were a hard pair to kill. The laser had tagged him in the chest, collapsing his lung and blowing out his shoulder joint on the way out. Thankfully, the shot had missed his heart, and the strike itself was clean. One benefit to the laser guns was that they didn’t leave behind the shrapnel of a conventional weapon. She’d been hit with a real bullet or two in her time, and it wasn’t an experience she wanted to relive.
With that question settled, she moved on to her next agenda item. The other great thing about the tablet was that it was connected to the internet. One of the most annoying things about the pits was the lack of internet. Some of it was being restored, but much of it was still patchy, slow and unreliable. In some ways it had restored privacy that was nonexistent in dome life, but it made many other things inconvenient. Some of the pits that were in close proximity to areas of former technology glory, like the areas north of San Francisco and the Silicon Valley were actually bringing an underground network of sorts back again. Xero was ambivalent about the whole affair, and hadn’t done much with her home area yet. There was a certain appeal to living off the grid.
With Sanchez accounted for, that just left the matter of figuring out what became of Argon. There was no way to try and contact him directly through the tablet that wouldn’t lead to suspicion and traces on their communication that were unacceptable even in dire circumstances. The sanctity of the Grease Weasels was bigger than the safety of any one member, and it wasn’t worth the risk. Even if Argon were in dire straights, with her communication abilities severely hampered there wasn’t much she could do. Hopefully if the shit had started to fly he would have tried to make contact with home base back in the pits where they might be able to activate some of their covert ops teams to come to the rescue. She trusted Milo to make the best tactical decisions for the circumstances.
She spent a few precious minutes combing through the hospital records on the off-chance that someone fitting Argon’s description or going by his real name or any of his various aliases had been admitted to the facility. When she came up empty handed, she moved on to the last productive thing she could do while in possession of the tablet. Digging through a few layers of search engine filters, she tapped into a few of the more well-known taboo websites in search of any news regarding the riots in the flats or any associated instability dome-side.
She had just located an article that contained a photo of some of the carnage in the flats when the same nurse marched back into the room.
Xero sighed and dropped the tablet on her lap, lifting her hands in the air to show surrender in an attempt to avoid full restraints or premature sedation. “Busted,” she said with a mild attempt at sheepishness.
The nurse wasn’t buying it. She stomped her way to the bed, the smooth porcelain veneer of her dome drone face cracking into a sneer. Her eyes beady eyes were squinted into even smaller bland brown pin points. “How dare you,” she said. “You just violated not less than seventeen hospital policies.”
Xero shrugged. “So sue me,” she said, unable to help herself. She was really slipping on this trip. Good thing she could blame the drugs for her cheeky behavior.
The nurse snatched the tablet from the bed with a careless speed that seemed to surprise her, and Xero smiled, knowing that she’d successfully gotten under the nurse’s skin. The nurse took a second to collect herself, and with deliberate carefulness she placed the tablet back into its rightful cradle at the foot of the bed. With a very purposeful breath she smoothed down her white scrubs and a smile pushed itself out to her lips like a tube of old play dough.
“More than one can play at this game,” she said, the creepy smile slowly drooping towards her chin.
Xero just kept smiling innocently. “Play what?” she said, knowing messing with the nurse wouldn’t lead anywhere good, but not really caring anymore. It had been a rough week, and she was only hastening the inevitable anyway.
The nurse finally couldn’t maintain the fake grin any longer, and it died on her face like a fallen soufflé. “Lights out for you,” she said and grabbed a capped syringe out of her scrub pockets. As Xero suspected, the nurse must have been contemplating it even before she messed with her, considering she had a syringe ready to go.
Thankfully there wasn’t much more Xero could do before healing further from her injuries, so an early sedation wasn’t much of a punishment. The nurse stuck the syringe into one of Xero’s IV lines and gave a little miffed cackle before slamming the empty syringe into the sharp’s container on the wall and plodding out of the room. The door slammed and locked again behind her.
She began feeling woozy, but she smiled a little bit more knowing that the nurse had just violated some of her own sacred hospital policies. Unauthorized sedation of a patient for one, and not monitoring a sedated patient for stable vitals before leaving the room for another. If you pushed anyone far enough, they would break, and Xero had a knack for figuring out what would make someone violate their own code of ethics. It was one of the things that had made her an excellent psychiatrist.
The lights dimmed on her vision again, and she silently hoped her intuition was right, and the nurse wouldn’t take any further steps towards vengeance. Then again, waiting for catastrophe was half the fun.
CHAPTER 8
Fate smiled on her gamble, and she woke up once again in the hospital, this time significantly more intact than she had been before. Rapid healing protocols were one of the few things they didn’t have out in the pits that they she really wished they did. It didn’t work well for chronic or infectious shit like cancer or lung zaps, but it was a goddamned miracle for straight forward wound healing. Less than a day had passed, and she felt nearly 90% improved. Medical personnel must have agreed because within hours of waking up they began preparing to have her transported to another facility.
Very little in the way of communication or answers was provided during the course of the transfer, but it was all pretty standard bullshit. Once she was out of the locked down hospital environment she’d have a lot more leeway to get access to the kinds of equipment and information that she was accustomed to. Everyone she’d dealt with during the discharge and transfer process had been low level peons. Some of the higher level officials she was used to doing business with were conspicuously absent, leading her to think there was even more shit going down than she originally thought.
She was proud of herself for behaving for the majority of the experience. The nurse she’d had so much fun with never returned, likely having been fired or transferred to another ward for her insubordination. When she was younger, she had trained herself to be a professional and hide her true emotions from her clients. She had a natural talent for being a chameleon—for observing the behaviors of others and mimicking them. But when the exiles happened, when everything changed, she had let go of those inhibitions and those feelings of captivity. She wasn’t proud of everything that she’d done in those days, but she had learned new skills that she still used today. However, she still fought against the urge to just let it all hang out and watch everything burn around her. These days she had bigger responsibilities, which she sometimes felt like living up to when the mood struck her. There was a whole colony that relied on her to keep shit together, which was probably a mistake on their part.
At the end of the day she found herself unceremoniously dumped at a fancy hotel room. It was odd, the way she was so brusquely handled, but taken to such expensive accommodations. The kind of treatment they received and the lodgings they were given varied by dome city and by the current political attitudes of any given area, but usually the two matched up—if they were given shitty quarters they were usually treated like shit too. Since the majority of their business ran out of the Phoenix, they were usually guaranteed a relatively posh experience, and she was indeed b
eing given the highest standard of everything from first rate healthcare to a top ranked hotel room, but she hadn’t seen a single familiar face since she’d passed out on top of Sanchez.
The hotel was in downtown Phoenix, a place she’d been in many times, but it was actually a few rungs up in extravagance from what they were used to receiving there. The Niagara Hotel was supposed to be the epitome of modern comfort, but there was something almost sad about it. The front of the building was all shiny chrome and soft baby blue neon tubes flowing across the wide picture windows in an attempt to simulate running water. Everything about it seemed to promise a bright future where nature and technology would merge into some symbiotic harmony. As Xero gazed at the sign she laughed internally at its ludicrous pretense. This whole place was one big lie, a symbol of the propaganda parade that everyone in the domes was surfing. Their resources were dwindling. Their days were numbered. It was only a matter of time before they lost their false visions of glory and superiority and were buried under the dirt and despair that everyone else had been living with for the last twenty years. But until then, Xero would happily enjoy their swanky hotel.
After an uncomfortable ride with a cadre of military personnel in a vehicle that was not unlike the one she’d crashed several days prior, she was more than happy to leave the company of the all the grunts and the hospital personnel and finally have some privacy. Or at least relative privacy. There were always eyes watching. A true professional managed to do their business despite prying eyes, but sometimes extreme measures were necessary. A quick sweep of her surroundings would give her a good idea of what approach to take. She was so thirsty for information, she felt like some poor sap in the desert constantly crawling towards an oasis mirage.
After reaching the precipice of the new room, a recruit that looked young enough to be her son roughly thrust her across the entry way. She bit her lip and smiled. “Is there a problem?” she said, trying to keep her voice as neutral as possible.
The young man was wearing a blue dress uniform so crisp it looked like it had come right out off the assembly line. He was thin, and his buzzed hair was such a pale blond that she almost couldn’t see it. He reminded her of some of the nondescript serial killers and mass murderers that had periodically made headlines in decades past.
The recruit’s eyes stayed cold, but his lip curled in disdain. “You’re the problem,” he said and stopped, clearly holding back further expletives.
Truth be told, Xero felt kind of uncomfortable, which was funny for a woman that had the confidence to directly command a legion of several thousand people. After she’d gotten past medical clearance they had issued her a woman’s military uniform, which consisted of a dark navy coat that buttoned up to her chin, and a matching navy skirt that hugged her legs and stopped well above her knees. The uniform itself was fine. She’d spent more than enough time dressed in all manner of outfits, and she could wear anything comfortably given the right circumstances. It was just the dissonance. Attitude-wise she was having problems controlling herself for reasons that she wasn’t totally sure about. The uniform was clashing with how she was feeling like portraying herself, and stripped of her wig and makeup, her wilted neon Mohawk flopped backwards across the center of her starkly nude head. She didn’t feel quite like Xero or Anastasia, and those were two personas that were not ready to play nice with each other.
Xero raised her eyebrows and inhaled, relishing the rich smell of the suite, making sure the enjoyment showed on her face. “You jealous or something?” she said.
The recruit’s mouth wrinkled into something resembling a craggy lemon. “I would never be jealous of something like you,” he said.
Xero closed her eyes and let a gregarious grin plaster itself across her face. “Yeah, good thing, considering someone like you would never be able to appreciate luxury like this anyway. It would be a total waste,” she said, not letting her smile slip for one second.
The recruit’s fists clenched so hard she could see the blood draining across his knuckles. “Some people work for their rewards,” he said almost too quietly to hear.
Her smile persisted, but any traces of Anastasia were gone. Her eyes were dead, and the change had an immediate effect on the recruit. His lemony mouth froze into fear.
“I…I didn’t mean it like that,” he said. His fingers fidgeted inside his pristine white gloves.
Xero walked towards him, one foot crossed in front of the other like she was going down a catwalk. The government issue pumps had enough of a heel, and the military skirt was short enough that she may as well have been peddling skin for money. The recruit took a hasty step backwards and tripped on his own feet once before righting himself against the back wall of the hallway.
She advanced until she was just a few inches from his face and leaned her arm against the gilded wallpaper beside his head. “I’m pretty sure you meant it just like that,” she said in a voice that dripped with seduction, but her eyes remained cold and empty. They were honest eyes, eyes that said she’d slit his throat, fuck his dying body, and think nothing of it.
He swallowed, using his eyes to scan both ways down the hallway, hoping to find backup without having to chicken out and verbally call for them.
She cocked her head to the side. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to hurt you,” she said. “Your own life is punishment enough.” As much as she would have liked to actually kick his punk ass to teach him a lesson, it probably wasn’t worth the paperwork. There were too many other variables at work at the moment, and in the hotel hallway there were definitely cameras about. The rest of her permanent detail was downstairs attending to tactical or administrative details, but they could return at any moment.
She pulled away and stood a few feet from him with her hands on his hips. He made an attempt at straightening himself out, and ventured one last attempt at redemption. “You’re a filthy rebel. You don’t deserve any of this,” he said.
Xero thought of the front of the hotel with its ornate façade and all the lies it represented. She almost felt sorry for this young piece of shit. “Honey. You have no idea what I live through on a daily basis, and you have no idea what awaits you in the future. If you ever run into me again, you might think about being nicer. You never know, one of these days I might just end up being your boss for real,” she said, poked him in the nose, swayed back into her hotel room, and slammed the door in his face.
It was another politically questionable event, but it had felt so good. Totally worth it. Although it was somewhat frivolous in terms of actual safety, she slipped the chain lock on the door so that she would at least have a heads up if the mouthy recruit or some other dick wad decided to bust in on her while she was trying to relax.
She leaned her head back against the door and closed her eyes, overjoyed at finally having some privacy. The room followed the style of the rest of the hotel—all chrome and soft blue lights illuminating things that really didn’t need illuminating. The curtains were made of a blue fabric that had blinking fiber optic cables interwoven into the panels. An executive desk made out of more chrome and stainless steel was pressed against the opposite wall, and if it was half as soft as it looked, piled high with feather pillows and fluffy chenille blankets, she was going to sleep well tonight despite all the fuckery. Piles of soft blue and white towels, pajamas, and an oversized bathrobe were neatly stacked in rows on the metallic dresser next to a large flat screen television.
It was going to feel really good to wear something that wasn’t a hospital gown or a misogynistic uniform. This was the kind of place she would have stayed at back in the early days of Alphamine. She had never been caught, and if the dome exodus hadn’t happened, she probably would have been staying at places like that every weekend. As nice as places like that were, she still missed their headquarters down in the pits. It wasn’t clean, and it wasn’t pretty, but there was no where else that she could have such complete freedom.
Just as she stepped away from the door there was a knock.
Through the peephole there was another pair of soldiers, but these two were older and higher ranking than the other she’d been dealing with since waking up at the hospital. It was about time they sent someone of an appropriate rank. She was having fun fucking with the rookie scum, but eventually that could get her into a difficult spot.
After opening the door, she immediately had a good feeling about the officers just from seeing their expressions. They were wearing camo uniforms instead of the obnoxious dress uniforms that she’d seen everyone wearing since being released. They were still serious and lacking any outward emotion, but in her eyes, she saw something.
“Agent Pietrovich?” the taller one said. He had dark skin and a thick but groomed mustache. He was of medium build, and he was taller, older, and a few ranks higher than his partner, who was also darkly complected but clean shaven.
She cocked her head to the side. “Yes?” she said.
The older one extended his hand. “Captain Stone,” he said and gave her hand a firm shake. “I just wanted to thank you,” “We heard about what you did for Sanchez.”
The younger one stepped forward and shook her hand as well. “Lieutenant Avery. Thank you so much. Sanchez is like a father to us,” he said.
Xero nodded. “Sanchez is a good man. I’m glad he’s going to pull through—that was entirely too close for comfort,” she said.
There was a tall upright piece of travel luggage behind the two of them. Stone wheeled it forward and gave her the handle. She raised an eyebrow.
“Everything you need should be in there. There are things happening out here—it’s not safe. Once you go back inside we’re going to reactivate the security cameras out here in the hall for safety purposes. Orders from the higher ups are to not let you out of the room until you’re moved to another facility for debriefing tomorrow, but you let us know if you need anything, and we’ll make sure you get it,” Stone said.
Under Dark Sky Law Page 6