by Lee Hayton
As the beeping continued, the sounds of a sterile hospital filtered through to my consciousness. The squeak of rubber soles on linoleum tiling. The quiet whisper as people spoke while trying not to disturb anyone else. A cajoling entreaty as medication was applied, seemingly without consent.
What the hell was I doing in a hospital? I cracked one eye open, flinched away from the bright, white light above me, and closed it again.
I’d been caught by the animal control bot. Was that it?
No. There was other stuff afterward. A crump beneath my feet as the earth tried to shy away from what was coming. A brick wall bending out in impossible ways.
The explosion.
I sat up and opened my eyes again, this time keeping them that way, blinking against the brightness, streaming tears.
There’d been a woman. Possibly the same one who’d freed me from the cage. I hated to admit it, but people often looked the same to me. I couldn’t tell for sure that it’d been the same person who’d fled past me and down the stairs, screaming as she ran to her doom while trying to save her life.
How had she known there was an explosion coming?
I was hooked up to an IV, but it didn’t take much to lift up the edges of the securing tape and slip the needle out. I left it dripping its saline solution onto the floor and stood up, testing out legs that seemed made of rubber. After three shaky steps, they remembered how to work, and I made it all the way to the door.
It was while I was standing there, clinging onto the door frame, that I realized my ass was hanging out for all to see. I tried to hold my gown closed with my fingertips, turning a reddening face back toward the room that was blessedly empty except for me. Where on earth have they put my clothes?
I staggered back to the bed and checked in the cabinet beside it. All my clothing was in a small, plastic bag. Rumpled and crumpled and stained and torn. After a few seconds of consideration, I still changed into the distressed outfit. Despite the clammy bloodstains, I preferred having a layer of denim covering my nether regions. At least, I did for public viewing. I wouldn’t have cared if I was at home.
Speaking of home, if I didn’t find a permanent one soon, then bloodstains would be the least of my problems. Even a one-room tenement with a shared bathroom would do me. I was sick of trying to cope out on the street.
You shouldn’t have killed your best friend, then.
I blinked that thought away and moved back to the door. A nurse strode past, not even glancing in my direction. A couple, the man with an arm around his wife, moved the other way, grief slowing them down.
I slipped into the corridor behind them, then ducked into another patient’s room when I heard someone calling out that my room was empty. If I had to hazard a guess at why the woman’s tone was so worried, it would be because of the anticipated bill.
Not that I could pay it either way. Still, having me strapped in bed with a needle in my arm probably felt like it gave them more leverage.
The room I was in now was a small ward. Four beds, three with curtains drawn around for privacy. Whenever visiting time was in this hospital, I believed I’d missed it. Either that or no one cared for anybody on this floor.
The woman in the one bed with a clear view waved at me. I offered her a hesitant wave in return, then walked over to her bed. My current run of luck informed me that I’d soon be caught by the hospital staff in any case. Might as well see what this person wanted in the meantime.
“Hey, there. Were you looking for me?” the woman asked. I sat down beside the bed, not answering but not telling her no either. “Can you get me a glass of water?”
There was one waiting on her bedside cabinet, but with the number of bandages wrapped around her eyes, it didn’t surprise me that she couldn’t see it. I pushed the glass into her hand and then aimed the straw for her grasping lips. She gave a sigh as the first mouthful hit, then drained half of the glass in the next sip.
“What happened to you?” I asked as she finished the rest of the water off in another suck of the straw.
After she swallowed, the woman shrugged. “I was trapped inside a building that exploded.”
I frowned at her, trying to decipher the individual features of her face to see if they fit with the woman who’d helped me out. I gave a shrug. Who would know? The name floated up out of the haze of memories.
“Are you Stefanie?”
The woman’s face brightened, then turned as dark as the shadows in a closed closet. “I might be,” she whispered. “It depends on who wants to know.”
“I was trying to get you out of the building when it exploded,” I said. I didn’t care if the woman chucked me out—visiting her was just something to do to stay indoors.
“You were outside?” Stefanie reached forward and grabbed both of my hands in hers. I was so surprised for a second that my claws extended, but I retracted them before they could slice into the tender flesh of her palms.
“I heard you.” She frowned. “I think I heard you. Somebody was yelling.”
“I called out for help from two men who were passing. They seemed to know that the building was about to explode.” I frowned and leaned forward, whispering, “It seems that you did too.”
Stefanie’s head flicked over her shoulder, as though she could see anything with that wad of gauze over her eyes. “Are you from the alliance?”
I sat and considered the question for a moment. Although I couldn’t be sure how much of the building was still standing, it seemed reasonable to assume that this woman would have an access card to some, if not all, of it. That would get me in, even if guards were protecting the site, or police crawling over the building. An ID could get me into the secured floors and even into the computer system.
The computer system with a record of a child I’d long believed dead.
“I am,” I said, leaning even further forward to whisper directly into Stefanie’s ear. “They sent me to check that you were okay.”
“I knew they would.” Stefanie’s face glowed with pleasure from the imaginary attention. “Tell them to set aside the good bedroom for me when I get out. I want to sleep in the big bed.”
I nodded, then remembered her bandages and said, “Yes.” When I leaned on the bed, I was cautious not to touch her side, in case it was damaged. Even when my hand came down on the bed, it was difficult to tell where her body was. The outline under the sheets just seemed to hit her waist, then stop.
Frowning, I moved my hand further over, feeling my pulse tick in my throat. The woman’s thighs should be where my fingers now rested. I ducked my head, checking underneath, in case they had Stefanie strapped up in some weird arrangement. Nothing.
I sat back up, feeling a cold chill move from my toes all the way up to my lower back. Stefanie’s eyes seemed to be the least of her worries, and there was certainly no need for the “big bed.”
Her body appeared to be cut in half by the explosion.
Does she know? I wondered as I stared at the woman’s open face. If her wandering hands had discovered it earlier, whatever drugs were in her drip had brought her to a state of peace with the new knowledge.
I was about to move away, to find someone all in one piece to make friends with, when I stopped. Who cared if this woman didn’t have legs any longer? All I wanted was her access card. Are you so high and mighty you won’t steal from the disabled?
Although it made my stomach churn, I decided that—on balance—I was an equal opportunity thief. However, I no longer wanted to hang about making idle conversation. If the drugs wore off, or Stefanie otherwise discovered the new truth about her body, I wanted to be long gone. Let a real friend help her adjust—I wasn’t cut out for that sort of thing. Just look what happened the last time I made a friend.
But you don’t know what happened, you coward. Just ran off, didn’t you? Slit Norman’s throat in the moonlight then scarpered out of there.
Another line of thought that I shut off like it was a leaky tap. Just like a worn-out wa
sher, no sooner did I try than the memories ran through, dripping into my head against my will.
“Do you want another glass of water?” I said, forcing all the good cheer I could manage into my voice.
It was such an effort that I was disappointed when Stefanie shook her head. “Could you just stay close and hold my hand while I fall asleep?”
The meek voice coming out of such a damaged figure melted my heart. How could I say no? Also, as soon as the woman fell asleep, I could rifle through her belongings looking for her identity card.
“Of course.” I gave her hands a big squeeze. “I’ll be right here.”
Whatever lurked in the darkness behind Stefanie’s bandaged eyes, didn’t seem very welcome. Her breathing would start to even out, slow down, then she would gasp, her shoulders rising from the bed. After a second, her body would relax, and the cycle would begin again.
Finally, the slower breathing managed to settle into a steady rhythm rather than jerking back to wakefulness. I waited for a few minutes just to be sure, then carefully withdrew my hands from Stefanie’s weak grasp.
The bedside cabinet seemed my best bet. After all, that’s where I’d found my own set of clothes stashed. I knelt down and pulled the doors open, holding my breath in case that helped.
A blouse tumbled out, falling silently but giving me such a fright that I dropped backward with a gasp. I slapped a hand over my mouth immediately, looking with wide eyes toward Stefanie.
Thank goodness. The woman was still asleep.
I’d started to relax when a hand reached out and grasped my shoulder. In my leaping panic, my mouth dried up until it tasted like I was sucking dead batteries.
I turned around, hoping against hope that it would just be a member of the nursing staff with a gentle inquiry as to my wellbeing.
My unlucky streak continued.
I looked straight into the eyes of my old employer. The one that Asha nicknamed the “average man.”
Chapter Five
The average man sat behind his desk, staring calmly at me. That’s what I hated most about him—the stillness.
Someone who yelled and stomped and pulled at their hair, I could understand. Even if that wasn’t the outside expression I chose to use, my insides felt like doing all of those things quite frequently.
Sitting still while observing the world in all its foul glory with perfect equanimity? That was an abomination well outside my remit for understanding.
I cleared my throat, seeing a shadow move across the desk. One of the henchmen behind me but I wasn’t going to turn and give my old boss the satisfaction of seeing me squirm. I forced my hands to stay where they were—resting lightly on the arms of my chair.
I’d asked my question. The silence between us was a war. In the past, I’d lost a battle precisely like this, but I had learned the lesson well.
I wouldn’t break first.
My eyes glazed, drying out as they slowed their blink rate to match my opponent’s. As the minutes elongated, time changing form with the weight of expectation in the room, my heartbeat slowed. Boom. Boom. Boom. I fancied that if the silence went on much longer, it would cease to beat at all.
“If I were to find you a job, then I can’t promise you the information.”
I ducked my head forward to hide the quick smile of triumph that danced across my lips. I clenched my teeth, fighting to retain the same composure I’d held since I entered the room.
“If you can’t guarantee it, then I’ll be on my way.” I turned and stood, nodding to the man behind me—a command to move out of the way. An order he ignored.
The average man cleared his throat. “I can promise that I’ll look, but if the information isn’t there, well…”
He shrugged. As our eyes locked again, I raised a single eyebrow. Oh, really?
“You can look now, I’ll wait. If the information is available, then I’ll take the job. If not”—I returned the man’s shrug—“then you’re not out anything but a few minutes of your time.”
“I think you’ve miscalculated how long that would take to find out.”
“It’s an animal shelter, not the office of the chief executive of the empire. I’m sure you’ll manage.”
The man sat back in his chair, raising his forefingers in a triangle that he pressed against his lips. “If we do strike a deal, it’ll mean a long period bedding down with the rebel group. I hope you understand that.”
“It won’t take long.” I rubbed at my forehead where the headache from the animal shelter had decided to return. The sickening thump reached my eyes, pulsing the room, so it appeared to breathe. “Once I’m in there, they’ll give me access to everything. You know what rebels are like. Lazy. Forgetful.”
“Not these guys. They blew up an entire building, and no one had word of it beforehand.”
I snorted. “They blew up an old building in mid-town. If anyone heard about it beforehand, they’d probably cheer the rebels on. It’s not exactly prime real estate.”
“It took planning.”
I leaned forward, losing my patience. “It was an inside job by a small group who didn’t even think out their exit properly.”
“You don’t know that.”
I shook my head. “I do know that, and so do you. Stop pretending. If they’d been from outside, the animals wouldn’t have been let loose. An outside organization wouldn’t care about a bunch of cats on death row. By this time tomorrow, I’ll probably be back here with the evidence that they’re a bunch of tree-huggers who want to set the animals and flowers free.”
If I hadn’t known my old boss so well, I might have thought the slight twitch of his lips was a smile.
“I’ll see what I can find out.” He leaned forward and flicked his fingers at me. “If there’s anything there, I’ll let you know when you bring back what I need.”
That was the best I’d be able to do. My prior knowledge of the man taught me that much. I nodded and left the room, remembering to breathe again when I reached the hallway and began the long walk downstairs.
Although my old boss—correction, my current boss—could have the newest and best-equipped office in Uptown, he chose to slum it, along with the rest of us miscreants in the poorer suburbs.
Close to the people he spied on, manipulated, and feed to the wolves of whichever corporation paid him the highest price.
Oh, yes. Being back in the fold was good.
My best bet at infiltration was to sit by Stefanie’s bedside and let her crew come to me, so I did. The streaks on her face where fingers had gouged deep rivulets indicated that the knowledge about her legs had penetrated the fog surrounding her mind.
Whenever that had happened, it was well over by the time I got back to the hospital. Stefanie was drifting on an opioid haze, smiling as I sat down by her bedside.
Lucky that. I didn’t want to cause a scene.
If this bid failed, there were other ways to infiltrate. It would take knowing where the base for their operations was, though, and that in itself would take time. Luckily, the nurses had—in their wisdom—put a morphine pump at Stefanie’s control.
I loved the old-school controls. Who needed a machine guided dosing system when you could just rely on the patient to decide when and how much to pump.
By the looks of things, Stefanie was headed for an addiction program by the time she was discharged from the hospital. Best of luck to her, if it came to that. Street drugs were cheaper than rehab. Easier on the mind as well.
“Hey up, Stefanie.” A man wandered into her room late that afternoon, carrying a box of chocolates that he proceeded to feed to himself. He gave me a nod, then ignored me as he stole a chair from another bedside.
“How’re you feeling?”
Stefanie’s stoned gaze should have answered that quite nicely, but the man insisted on getting an answer out of her before he was satisfied. When the poor woman finally muttered “Okay.”
He nodded and sat back in his chair, unwrapping a caramel cen
ter. “Thought so,” he chewed with his mouth open so he could slurp in great lungfuls of air. “I told them back at work, you’d be fine.”
“Do you work with Stefanie at the shelter, then?” I leaned forward, inserting myself into the conversation with all the grace of a hatchet.
“Not anymore,” he said, then snorted. A thin line of mucus shot out of his right nostril, attaching to a chocolate already on the way into his mouth. I watched fascinated as he bit into it, exposing a creamy center, apparently unaware. “That place is completely shattered now. They won’t be getting it up and running again. Probably just pack the whole operation in.”
“The animal shelter?” I frowned as though confused. “But that’s good, isn’t it?”
The man’s eyes narrowed. “Who’re you, then?”
“I’m a friend of Stefanie’s.” I extended my hand across the bed, right atop where Stefanie’s legs weren’t. “I was picking her up from work when the place exploded.”
“You remember her,” Stefanie suddenly said, joining the conversation even though her eyes were tightly closed. The bandages were off them today. The scarring and angry red skin made me wish that the medical staff had left the gauze in place a bit longer. “This is the friend who tried to get me out. When the door stuck.”
“Right.” The man nodded. “Heard about you. Good job.”
“It wasn’t.” I waved my hand over Stefanie’s injured body. “I mean, look at this. I fucked everything up. We fucked everything up, didn’t we?”
His eyes narrowed at the use of the word we, but I pressed my point home.
“It would’ve been good if someone had bothered to run through the escape plan, don’t you think? Perhaps you’d like to escalate that upstairs. Let them know to include it next time around.”
“Whatever.” The man shoved another chocolate into his gob, chewing loudly. “You tell ‘em if you’re that keen they get the message.”
“I’m not high enough up the totem pole for that,” I said. “But if you want to introduce me to the upper echelon, then I’m game.”