The Chaos of Luck

by Catherine Cerveny

  Phobos, it seemed, was falling out of the sky.

  Chapter Four

  I must have had a Euphoria crash, the shock of events eroding my buzz. Without t-mods stabilizing me, I blacked out. All I knew was one minute I ran down the street in my bare feet, the next I lay in bed fully clothed with sunlight streaming through the window. I had flashes where I remembered running and possibly hiring an air-hack, but little else.

  I rolled over, groaning. Everything hurt. My head. My body. Gods, even my hair. Every nerve felt raw and exposed. With agonizing slowness, I eased out of bed. Standing took incredible effort as my feet protested any weight on them.

  When I’d first moved into the condo, I decorated my bedroom in creams, pale pinks, and soft lavenders. The furniture was bleached wood—synth, not real—and the bed linens patterned with delicate florals. I wanted something that didn’t reflect anyone’s taste but mine. Everything was meant to be light and airy as if it might float away on a cloud. Now the colors were glaring and I couldn’t open my eyes without wincing.

  “Blinds,” I croaked out. The window covering snapped shut, plunging the room into semidarkness. That eased some of my agony. I’d need stronger stuff to handle the rest.

  The walk to the kitchen was the longest of my life. Along the way, I called out to the unit AI to shade every window. I’d kept the condo’s color palette light and delicate throughout, and right then, I needed sunshades to walk from one end to the other.

  A fumble through the cupboards turned up the aerosol vial pain meds. I took several puffs, breathing them into my system. That was when I noticed my palms were scraped raw. Most of my nails were broken and the polish chipped. Assessing myself, I saw my knees were bruised and scratched, and my feet…well, not good. Bloody and embedded with gravel. I could apply skin renewal patches and regrow the skin in about a sol, but I needed a shower first. Otherwise, I’d heal in all the dirt, which led to infection.

  It took a few more minutes to realize the cramp in my stomach was hunger and I was overwhelmed by thirst. When had I eaten last? I had no idea.

  I drank water straight from a pitcher in the cold unit. Next, cold take-out pizza—a surprise since the cold unit was usually bare. I rarely ate at home, and when I did cook, Alexei ate everything in sight. He could shovel down a surprising amount of food, but then he burned more calories than I did.

  The hike to the shower took forever and I peeled off my dress as I walked. Somewhere along the way I realized my c-tex bracelet was missing. Fuck. If it wasn’t in the condo, I was screwed. Aside from connecting me to the CN-net, it contained my One Gov citizenship chip. Most people’s chips were implanted in their palms once they became full citizens at eighteen. Naturally my family hadn’t gone for that, so mine was in my bracelet. Without it, I could say good-bye to any full citizenship rights like the Renew treatments and the Shared Hope program. My calorie consumption allotment would be halved and I wouldn’t be allowed to own a business or property. I’d become a ward of the state unless I could prove my identity and secure a new chip.

  Even without the chip problem, finding another c-tex bracelet would be nearly impossible, and if I did, it would cost a fortune to replace. Gods, it had to be somewhere. I couldn’t have gotten into my condo without it since it held all my access codes. I’d find it eventually.

  The glaring light in the bathroom was not pleasant. As for what the opaque window mirror reflected back at me…Ugh. Everything was black-and-blue, even my breasts. I recalled being groped at Red Dust. At the time, I hadn’t felt anything but amazing and invincible. Now I just felt violated and stupid. I should never have tried the Euphoria.

  The shower felt like needles digging into my skin, and every scrape stung like tiny knives as I lathered with soap. Eventually it became bearable as the pain meds kicked in, but it took forever to clean myself. Washing my hair was sheer misery. My broken nails snagged in the strands so I used clippers to clean up the ragged mess.

  It was only as I dried myself that I remembered the encounter that had sent me spiraling out of control. Who the hell was that man? Someone connected with my mother’s family obviously. Someone who wanted to reach out to me and…what? I had no idea and my terror had been enough to trigger a Euphoria crash. That, and Phobos exploding. No, I couldn’t be remembering that right. My gut…No, I’d effectively turned it off.

  But as I towel-dried my hair and started feeling human again, I couldn’t help but wonder if I’d hallucinated the whole thing. Maybe the explosion hadn’t even been real and I’d been blinded by an overhead light at the same time Phobos passed by. I poked at the idea, uncertain. I could have imagined the explosion. Or maybe I hadn’t and these feelings existed because something really wrong was coming. Something I wasn’t prepared to handle and the Phobos incident was a wake-up call. What if…Gods, I didn’t even want to think about it, but what if something had happened to Alexei? Why, I had no idea, but what if it was so awful, I couldn’t deal with it? What if he’d been hurt…or…I had to find my c-tex immediately!

  I threw on the bathrobe I kept on the back of the bathroom door and hobbled to my bedroom. I tore through the room, finding nothing. Then I searched the condo, looking into everything because gods only knew what my frame of mind had been while I’d crashed.

  Ultimately, I found it between the couch cushions. When I powered it on, the charge was low. I slapped it on my wrist, where it began charging as it tapped into my bio-energy. I had over a hundred unchecked shims, which was kind of insane. How was that even possible when…

  Holy shit, it was Tuesday—Sunsol afternoon. I’d been out cold for two and a half sols?

  I scanned the messages. Nothing there that I really cared about, though I did see a few from Lotus, which was good news. That meant she wasn’t in the same mess I was. Then I flipped to the CN-net news feed, gasping as I read and flicked through the imagery.

  The night I’d been at Red Dust, there has been an explosion at the Phobos penal colony, the result of a prison break. Dozens of inmates had escaped. All were recaptured though several were dead. No names had been released. Phobos, which was porous, had actually cracked and splintered from the force of the explosion and there were concerns as to whether the penal colony should remain on the moon after the damage it sustained. Fuck. I’d witnessed a prison break.

  Logically, I knew Alexei wasn’t connected. I knew he was out there somewhere dealing with the tunnel collapses in the off-world mines and speaking to the union leaders. I was overreacting because of the Euphoria crash. Yet at the same time, I didn’t really know what sort of situation he was in. The last Tarot reading I’d done hadn’t left me feeling warm and fuzzy. I had no way to confirm where he was. No way to talk to him or see if he was okay. Alexei frequently went away on Consortium business but this was the first time I’d ever felt so disconnected from him. Seeing the explosion on Phobos brought up memories I thought I’d buried since Brazil.

  My knees gave and I sank down on the couch. No, I couldn’t let my thoughts drift in that direction. This wasn’t Brazil. History wasn’t repeating itself. Alexei was fine and there was no reason to believe otherwise. But what about this anxiety I couldn’t shut off? What if something had happened—maybe not on Phobos but in one of the off-world mines? What if I lost him again, only this time, it was permanent?

  A little over five months ago, that’s what I’d believed—that he was dead and I’d lost him forever. I hadn’t even realized I’d found something worth having until he was gone. And then he’d walked back into my life, determined to prove himself to me. I’d lived with the fear that I could lose him. Something else could take him from me. So I’d held myself back, terrified to go all in with him. I know I had. If I didn’t fully commit, it wouldn’t hurt so much if he disappeared again. Except I could see now I’d been lying to myself. If being without Alexei was my new reality…

  I couldn’t go through that a second time. I didn’t want to imagine a future without him in it. I needed my cards. Even if
he didn’t want me using the Tarot for him, I needed to run a spread now. I had to see if he was okay. I couldn’t settle until I checked, his feelings on the matter be damned. Yes, once I ran the cards, everything would feel better.

  I pushed up from the couch on unsteady legs, about to hobble to my office, when explosive pounding smashed against the door. Stunned, I yelped and froze in the entrance hallway. Then the door opened and thumped hard into the wall. I think the plaster behind it may have cracked on impact.

  Alexei stood in the doorway, looking more disheveled than I’d ever seen him. His thick black hair stuck up in all directions as if he’d shoved it impatiently out of the way and he hadn’t shaved in at least a week. He was dressed like he’d just gotten off a shift at a construction site, wearing a dark T-shirt of some indecipherable color stretched over his broad shoulders and chest, canvas pants full of pockets, and work boots. Speechless, I watched him enter and slam the door behind him. He dropped something that looked like it might be shoes, but I immediately lost track as I found myself backed up and pinned to the wall by his body.

  His lips crashed down hard on mine as he kissed me with enough force and heat, it seemed he might devour me. His tongue plunged into my open mouth and a hand fisted in my damp hair. His other hand slid down my back to cup my butt then lift me up on my tiptoes to grind against him.

  It was a kiss that should have had me tearing at his clothes, desperate to get him naked. Except after the Euphoria crash and my crawl through the back alleys of Elysium City, the kiss hurt. He was too rough, too demanding, and my body was in a hurry to remind me how much I’d abused it.

  “Alexei, don’t. It hurts,” I whimpered against his lips.

  Immediately he stopped and set me back on my feet. Then he frowned as both hands came up to caress my face, my shoulders, and down my arms, examining me. The frown deepened as he inspected my skinned palms and broken nails.

  “Your poor hands,” he said, kissing one then the other. “I’ve always loved watching them move when you talk or you run your cards and how soft they feel against me. Seeing them like this feels like it might actually kill me.”

  Of all the things he could have said, that was the most unexpected and made me cry at my own stupidity. I never imagined he might notice a thing like that. He wiped away my tears and pulled back enough to take in my entire sorry state: bruised, cut, and practically falling apart in front of him.

  “My people found your shoes in a deserted hallway at the Red Dust nightclub,” he said, drawing my attention to what he’d dropped earlier. The shoes I thought I’d imagined were real, making me feel like I was in some twisted fairy tale. “They lost track of you for over an hour. Then your bracelet powered off. And now I see you like this…Do you know what this does to me? How much it terrifies me? The Euphoria you took isn’t the same as what’s available elsewhere. It’s enhanced military-grade pain management mixed with opiates to increase the pleasure response. The Consortium was using Red Dust as a test market before releasing the product on a wider scale. You could have…I don’t even want to contemplate what could have happened.”

  “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done it.”

  “No, you shouldn’t have,” he agreed, voice hardening. “What the fuck were you thinking?”

  I shrugged weakly, not looking at him. “I just wanted to feel something besides this edginess that’s been eating at me for weeks. I thought it would calm me. Believe me, I won’t do it again.”

  “Good, because I’ve shut down the club. As far as I’m concerned, testing is over.”

  He’d done what? “But…But what about the people working there?”

  “Do you think I’d care about any of them if you died?”

  I ducked my head, utterly humiliated. I should have known he’d react like this. Still, “They shouldn’t lose their jobs because I made a bad decision.”

  He took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. In a calmer voice, he said, “They’re all Consortium people. They’ll be redeployed elsewhere.”

  “Oh. Okay,” I said, letting it go.

  He waited a moment, then said, “The fact that you’re not arguing about this actually worries me. Why aren’t you asking about the enhanced Euphoria and demanding to know what it’s for?”

  “I would, but I don’t think I can spare the brain cells to ask the right questions.” I looked up and met his amused expression. “Besides, I’m just so glad you’re here.”

  The amusement faded. “I’ve spent the past two sols out of my mind. Even though I’d been assured you were home, I needed to know for myself you were safe.”

  I groaned. “You shouldn’t have to waste your time babysitting me. I know you’re busy with projects that cost billions of gold notes and you don’t have time for this.”

  His thumbs stroked the insides of my wrists, moving in unhurried circles. “You are never a waste of my time. If you need me, I’m here. It doesn’t matter what it is. Just don’t make me relive this nightmare where I thought I’d lost you. Don’t ever do that to me again.”

  “I really am sorry. I haven’t been thinking straight,” I admitted. “You’ve been off-planet for the Consortium before, but I never worried like I did this time. It felt different. Everything in me has been so unsettled, and the feeling won’t stop. I just wanted to shut it off.”

  “Different how?” he asked softly.

  I shrugged, not sure I could explain. “I saw what happened to Phobos. I was looking right at it when the explosion happened, then my Euphoria crash hit. You weren’t involved, were you? The Consortium didn’t have anything to do with what happened on Phobos, right?”

  “Why would you even think that?” he asked instead.

  “I don’t know. It’s just…” I shrugged again. “Maybe it’s all mixed up in my head because everything happened at once. You were off-world, I took the Euphoria, and I’ve had this awful feeling of doom hanging over me. Plus when I ran the cards—”

  “I asked you not to run the cards for me. That’s not why I’m with you,” he said patiently.

  “I know, but it’s like asking me not to breathe,” I confessed. “Regardless, when I got up this morning, I realized how much the explosion on Phobos felt like Brazil all over again. I thought maybe that’s why I’d been feeling so unsettled. Maybe Phobos was a warning you were gone and I would never see you—”

  “No,” he said urgently, interrupting me, hands stilling on my wrists. “I allowed foolish decisions to come between us and made mistakes I don’t intend to repeat. I don’t regret my actions in stopping your mother, but I regret putting us in a situation where that was the outcome. I regret the time we lost.”

  “I know. Or I thought I did. It wasn’t until this morning that I realized how scared I am. It made me see how much I’ve been holding back because deep down I thought you would hurt me and disappear again. I thought if I acted like this didn’t matter, it wouldn’t hurt if you were gone.” I swallowed around the lump in my throat, knowing he was the only thing in the world truly holding me up. If I lost him a second time and never told him all the things I’d been afraid to say, I couldn’t live with myself. “I love you. I was a coward not to tell you before. I should have let you know how I felt and how much you mean to me.”

  He went utterly still. There was a look on his face I’d never seen before, a kind of amazed wonder that shocked me. “I didn’t think you would ever say it.”

  My eyes widened, outraged. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Careful of my hands, he lifted my arms until my wrists rested on his shoulders. His lips curved into a smile and his hands settled around my waist. “I knew you were afraid, but I worried that if I said anything, you would run. I wasn’t entirely certain you trusted me enough to let me in. And the thought of losing you was so paralyzing, I didn’t want to risk what you’d already given me. You needed time and space to decide how you felt, and I tried to give it to you.”

  “What if I’d wanted to go?”

&
nbsp; “I would have let you. Or I’d like to think I would. I’m not certain since I’ve waited too long for you to let you go. I love you. I’ve loved you since Brazil. I just haven’t said the words because I knew you weren’t ready to hear them, moya lyubov.”

  My mouth opened and closed like a fish’s. “Brazil? That was a year ago!”

  “I know, but as I said, you weren’t ready,” he whispered. “Now you are.”

  “Alexei—”

  “Say it,” he murmured. His hands went to the sash of my robe, tugging gently on the knot. “Please, I need to hear you say it.”

  The awe in his voice made my stomach flutter. “I love you.”

  He sighed and bent until his forehead rested against mine. In that moment I knew he belonged completely to me. The Consortium may have created him, but only I owned him.

  “Again. I need to hear it again.”

  “I love you.”

  “I adore you, Felicia,” he murmured. “I will love you for as long as this life will let me. I don’t know how to stop loving you.”

  I felt tears threatening again as I reached up to run my fingers through his hair. Nothing in my life had felt like this. Absolutely nothing. This man knew me better than anyone did or ever could, and to think he loved me this much while I ignorantly bumbled about, trying to sort out my life…

  “I’m sorry I never told you before.”

  His hands slid under my robe and pushed it off my shoulders. “Then you’ll need to make it up to me.”

  My breathing hitched. Any lingering aches and pains from Red Dust were forgotten. “How?”

  Whatever he’d been about to say or do next, it all stopped as he pulled away, his eyes trained on my bruises. He pushed aside my robe until it was on the floor, swearing viciously under his breath in both English and Russian when he saw the extent of the bruises covering my ribs and breasts.