Second Chance Angel

by Griffin Barber

  “I ran to you to hurt you. I ran to you for revenge.”

  “And is she with you now?” Ncaco asked, leaning forward and placing elbows on his desk, suddenly very eager.

  Unease rippled through me.

  Muck nodded.

  “May I speak with her?”

  “Be my guest. She can hear you.” I felt Muck’s permission to take the controls and pushed into override. It was damn difficult, because we didn’t fit together seamlessly, not yet. That was going to be a liability in a fight. We were going to need to work that out, sooner rather than later.

  “Muck calls me Angel,” I said. My voice sounded horrible! All low and raspy, but not in the sexy way like it used to get when Siren would drink the good stuff. This was like gravel in a metal drum. This was the voice of a . . . a . . .

  A man.

  “A pleasure to make your acquaintance, Angel,” Ncaco said. “Of course, I hope you realize that if this is just Muck playing games with me, I will know, and I will take extraordinary measures to express my displeasure.”

  “It’s not Muck,” I said.

  “Prove it.”

  “Siren worked for you. You own the club where she sings her memories. She never met you in person, but you supplied the emotional amplification tech that makes her act possible. Tongi never used your name, but he let slip once that the tech came from a Turgon owner.”

  I felt Muck’s shock at this revelation, and only the fact that I was in override kept him from physically flinching at the news.

  “Indeed. My controlling interest in A Curtain of Stars is not widely known, and I required silence on the matter. Well enough, between that knowledge and your attempted intrusion in the elevator I believe you.”

  “Did you take her?”

  Now Muck did flinch, and snatched control back from me, shoving me hard against the back of his skull.

  I didn’t care, I had to know.

  We needed to know.

  “That wouldn’t make sense, would it?” Ncaco asked. “There is a very old saying from Earth: ‘Who benefits?’ Siren was making me money hand over fist at the cabaret. Why would I want to change that? Besides—”

  He stood up and bounce-walked around the desk, coming to stand with his long-fingered hand resting on Shar’s bowed head.

  “If I wanted Siren gone,” Ncaco continued, “she would be gone. And no one would think to look for her. Least of all a fugitive angel and a washed-up ex-soldier turned bouncer with barely a pot to piss in.”

  “How do we know Angel didn’t just get lucky?” Muck shot back. “You Turgons believe in luck, don’t you?”

  “Oh yes,” the crime boss said, grinning again. “Lady Fortune and I have a long, stormy relationship. But right now, I think she smiles on me. Because, my dear Mr. Muck, I am going to pay you a lot of money to help me find our missing singer. That is how you know I didn’t take her: Who benefits? I stand to lose significant revenue from the club when the patrons find out she’s no longer on the bill, not to mention my personal investment of time and effort in Siren herself.”

  Muck stared at Ncaco for a long moment. His thoughts churned with worry and disbelief and not a little fear of what this small, cute, and ultimately terrifying predator might do.

  I didn’t feel the same level of fear, but I was definitely developing a healthy respect for the Turgon’s ability to project violence and intimidate others. He unnerved even me, and I should not have any feelings beyond a programmed desire to survive.

  “Then we’re back to square one,” Muck said slowly. “With Shar.”

  “Yes,” Ncaco said. And then he moved so fast that both Muck and I, even with mod-enhanced reflexes, barely caught it.

  He grabbed Shar by the nape of the neck with one hand and hauled him from his seat.

  The door at the far end of the room slid open again, and two burly Jhissa undulated in. For such an ungainly-looking species, the three-meter-tall octopods moved gracefully, especially at speed. They charged directly toward the copse of trees, then stopped, instantly motionless, huge eyes unblinking.

  Ncaco’s smile widened and he gave the two Jhissa a nod, then tossed Shar several meters through the air with barely a hint of effort.

  The closer of the two Jhissa—a female, as indicated by the triangular red mark tattooed into her abdomen just below her head—glided forward and caught the falling drug pusher with two of her pincer-equipped limbs.

  “Orderth?” she asked in a lovely, lilting lisp.

  “Space him,” Ncaco said.

  “Yeth, Nthaco,” the Jhissa said.

  Shar suddenly came to life, struggling against the iron-hard grip of Ncaco’s bodyguard.

  “No! Ncaco, wait! I didn’t! I have information . . . You don’t want to do this!” the drug dealer began screaming. “I’m sorry! It was only the one time!”

  “You had strict orders not to deal or get high at the club, Shar. Remember?” Ncaco squeaked as the Jhissa moved inexorably toward the right wall of the room. “I warned you once, because I like to think my reputation for casual violence leaves room for the occasional small mercy. I see I was wrong.”

  As soon as Ncaco pronounced the last word, the Jhissa’s companion joined her and keyed in a complex sequence on a panel that I hadn’t paid attention to when we arrived. There was a beeping, and a section of the lovely trompe l’oeil wall slid to the side, revealing a transparent airlock door. While Shar continued to kick and scream increasingly incoherent pleas for his life, the Jhissa opened the transparent door and shoved him into the airlock. The partner closed the door with a thud of finality. The female Jhissa raised her hind limb toward Ncaco, apparently in a question.

  He nodded, and the male Jhissa, responding to an unseen signal conveyed by his partner, opened the outer airlock seals.

  We couldn’t hear Shar’s screams, of course, but we could see a fine mist of blood from his mouth as the rapid decompression ruptured his alveoli. Great purple bruises bloomed on his face as his sinuses followed suit, and the hands that battered desperately at the outer hatch slowed as his brain starved from lack of oxygen. Shar began a writhing, gape-mouthed dance as he drowned in his own blood. When he finally slumped to the floor and stilled, black blood seeped from his nose and mouth and the wreckage of his eyes.

  Ncaco turned back to us, eyes glittering.

  “I suggest you start with Shar’s illicit pharma transactions. Not the ones for me, the ones he was trying to hide. Someone paid him to distribute some new kind of pharma, something I didn’t source,” the gangster said in his terrifying, squeaky voice. “I would suspect some new ‘player’ trying to make a name, but there have been other disappearances. If looking into the pharma fails, maybe check and see who else has gone missing. Find out what connections exist there. And remember, ‘Who benefits?’ Also, take this.” He reached into a desk drawer and pulled out a spherical object small enough to fit comfortably in his diminutive hand.

  “Angel should recognize it, and it may help,” he said, holding it out to us. “Let me know when you have something. Ping my office net for your expenses.”

  “All right,” Muck said, taking the object and putting it in his pocket. Once again, he impressed me. Even with the horror we’d just seen, he managed to sound laconic.

  To the outside observer, anyway.

  Inside, his mind echoed with obscenities screamed as loudly as possible.

  I was a bit more sanguine, but only a bit. Shar had been scum, living on borrowed time, and finding Siren was all that mattered. I was more interested in exactly what Ncaco had handed us.

  Ncaco continued: “Excellent. My people will call you a cab downstairs. I believe Dengler has already departed on other business, so you will not have to engage with him. I bid you good day, Angel and Muck.” Dismissal complete, Ncaco turned and began walking toward the door he’d entered from.
/>   Muck swallowed, knees a bit weak with relief.

  “Oh, and one other thing . . .” Ncaco turned back to pin us with that jewel-eyed stare one more time. “Do not ever again interfere with an execution of one of my people. I suspect Shar would have vastly preferred the poison my nurse put in his medichine to the fate you secured for him.”

  Muck nodded, unable to speak.

  Ncaco smiled, returned the nod, and resumed his walk toward the door without another look at us. The two Jhissa followed, the door closing with a faint click behind them, leaving us alone on the grass, staring at the ruin that had been a man.

  “Let’s get out of here,” I said, and tickled the visual receptors in Muck’s brain so that he would see me standing in front of him, blocking his view of Shar Pak’s corpse.

  Muck swallowed hard and got to his feet.

  As we walked, I noticed his hands clenched into fists. Without bothering to think about whether or not it was wise in the long run, I sent a targeted illusion into Muck’s nervous system: My hand, sliding down the inside of his arm, coaxing his right hand open, twining my fingers with his as we walked. His fingers twitched, but the horrible tightness in his shoulders eased, just a touch.

  Mission accomplished.

  * * *

  We returned to Muck’s shitty digs in a cab. Neither of us had much to say as the station lights blurred into a continuous line outside the windows. When we came to a stop, he stumbled as he stepped out of the vehicle. I could feel fatigue shredding the edges of his awareness.

  It had been a damn long day.

  “C’mon, Muck. Stay with me,” I muttered inside his brain. Once again, I let him feel my hand in his, only this time I urged him through the front door of the coffin-flop and up to his unit.

  “That’s my line,” he said out loud as we passed another tenant. She gave us a look like we were crazy, but Muck didn’t notice and I ignored her.

  It wasn’t like we were the first crazy she’d ever seen, or likely the last, living in this dump.

  I got him into his unit before the shakes took over. He was stuck in a loop, picturing that spray of blood from Shar’s mouth over and over again. It was almost enough to make me push into override, but something told me that would only make matters worse.

  Sometimes, when one can’t control one’s mind, all one can do is control the body. Thus the shaking, because Muck was holding himself together so tightly his muscles were starting to spasm. His horror and anger and fear all built up inside and painted the red of Shar’s blood-thickened death spittle ever brighter in our mind’s eye.

  Something was going to give.

  I made sure all of the privacy protocols were engaged on the unit. No one needed to see, or hear, or ever learn about this. I even quickly added a layer of my own special brand of encryption coding to the electronic privacy veil around us. It wouldn’t hold forever against a more persistent threat, but it would at least give me enough warning to push into override and get us out of there if necessary. Then I made us take a deep breath.

  “It’s all right,” I murmured. “You’re safe. No one can see. Let it out.”

  He gasped, and then opened his mouth in a silent scream of agony. No air passed his vocal cords, I made sure of that, but they vibrated with the sheer blast of emotion anyway. His muscle spasms deepened, and he shook in first one sob, and then another as his mind replayed the death of a man he hadn’t even liked.

  That was the thing I didn’t quite get: Muck had despised Shar. Why take his death so hard? Unless—

  Unless it wasn’t about Shar at all. Unless it was about watching someone die? Someone he’d protected? Or was it about death itself?

  I flipped a quick command to his mods to begin a slow infusion of a gentle sedative. I didn’t want to knock Muck out before he’d achieved the emotional catharsis he needed, but I didn’t want him to get so worked up that he couldn’t sleep either. And then, while he was distracted by pain and loss, I did the unforgivable.

  I went snooping. Slowly, carefully, I wound my syntaxes past the healthy barriers he’d slammed into place that first night, just to see what I could find.

  If I expected some great epiphany, I was sorely disappointed. All I found were fragments of memories and a blank wall; nary a whole sequence in the bunch. Of course that, in and of itself, was telling. Someone had been in here before me, and I don’t mean his lost angel. Someone else. Someone who had known that Muck had seen horrific death before and had taken the memories but left the emotional fallout. Someone destructive, someone who could care less about the well-being of one Ralston Muck.

  By the time I worked my way back out to his conscious awareness, the sedative had started to take hold, and Muck felt a little calmer.

  “I’m sorry,” he said aloud, the words broken and rough. “I don’t know . . . I’m not sure why . . .”

  “It’s all right,” I replied. Once again, for the third time in as many hours, I let him feel me as I manifested in his physical sensory receptors. This time, he felt me stretched beside him, his head pillowed on my chest as my hands stroked his short, disheveled hair. “It doesn’t matter. Death affects everyone differently. Especially those of us who’ve seen it before.”

  “Yeah,” he said, and I could feel the sedative pulling at him, adding to his overall fatigue.

  “Sleep,” I suggested. “We can pick it all back up in the morning.”

  “Mhm,” he said, his breathing slowing, turning deep and even. I continued to let him feel me stroking his hair, like a mother with a distraught, sleepy child. I thought he was asleep when he spoke again.

  “Angel,” he whispered.

  “What?”

  “I’m glad you’re here.”

  “So am I,” I replied. And to my surprise, I meant it.

  * * *

  When Muck woke the next morning, I was gone.

  Not gone, gone. I was still in his head, anchored to his mods, overseeing his restorative functions even as I indulged in my own. But I was no longer physically manifesting for him. He tried to hide it, but I could tell he was disappointed.

  I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.

  “Good morning,” I said as I flooded the coffin with simsol. Muck cursed and threw one arm over his eyes.

  “Why in seven bloody black holes would you do that, Angel?” His voice sounded pissed, but at least it had lost the horrible broken emptiness of the night before. It’s amazing what a good night’s sleep will do for a man, I suppose.

  I know I’d put the time to good use: by completing my survey and interpretation of his speech patterns. I needed him able to speak to me even when surrounded by others.

  “Because we have work to do. Get up. How’s your head?”

  “Fine, why?”

  “I mickeyed you last night,” I said, using street slang for the mild sedative I’d administered. “You needed the sleep. But now you’re good, so get up.”

  “Up” was a bit of a misnomer, since he couldn’t actually move much in the tight confines of the coffin. But Muck did sigh and toggle on the autoclean. I could feel him wishing for the luxury of an actual shower, with real water, but it was an old wish, like an old-fashioned, half-remembered photograph worn thin from handling.

  Once washed and dressed, we slid out of the coffin and headed out into the flow of station life.

  “Where are we going?” I asked. “And don’t answer out loud. I don’t want everyone noticing us.”

  “Down this corridor, then we’ll take a right onto the main ring.”

  “Oh. All right. Why? Some new lead come to mind?” I asked, excitement at the prospect rising in me.

  “No. But there’s a really good sausage vendor down that way. I’m hungry,” he murmured.

  My excitement faded. “Oh.”

  Muck chuckled, drawing a look from another pedestrian sharin
g the walkway with us.

  “Don’t worry, sweetheart. I think better on a full stomach.”

  “I’m not your sweetheart.”

  “Closest thing I got right now.”

  “Huh. Sucks to be you, I guess.”

  That little interplay caused him to grin all the way to the beat-up, greasy sausage booth. The man behind the counter scanned Muck’s retinas to debit his account, then handed him a small simpaper tray holding a sausage sandwich piled high with simonions and simpeppers. Grease stained the bottom of the simpaper tray. Siren wouldn’t have touched it with a ten-foot pole, but I had to admit that it smelled appetizing and made our stomach rumble in anticipation. He needed the fuel, that was certain. We’d been taxing his reserves without replacing enough of the necessary nutrients ever since I’d invaded him.

  Muck didn’t share Siren’s dietary prejudices, and he ate the whole thing in about five bites. I was impressed . . . and a little nauseated. Being male was so weird!

  “So,” Muck said as he munched on the last bite. He wiped his mouth with the one small napkin the sausage man had provided and wadded it up with the tray before chucking the whole thing in a recycler as we walked by. “Should we check this thing out?”

  He pulled Ncaco’s little sphere out of his pocket and clenched it in his fist. The moment our skin surrounded the ball, recognition flashed through me. My memory backups!

  Quick as a thought, I applied the encryption keys that were hardwired in my programming and the memories came flooding in. Truth be told, they were a torrent for which I wasn’t entirely prepared. Muck sucked in a deep breath as he suddenly remembered what Siren had willfully forgotten, but I managed to throw up a privacy block before he saw more than a few flashes.

  “Siren’s long-term memories?” he asked, still uneasy.

  “Yes,” I said. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that Ncaco had them.”

  “Dengler probably handed the backup over to Ncaco after seizing it from your—I mean, Siren’s apartment. Anything useful?”

  “Not yet. Maybe later. This is all her old stuff, mostly from before we came here. Things from the war and the like . . .”