by R. Z. Held
“No, I haven’t—I swear—I’m useful! I led the team that figured out how to make the nanites non-infectious, that’s been enormously useful to the empire, hasn’t it? Now they don’t have to worry about any more civilians like me harboring your technology. Why would I do that if I was working against you?”
Nothing changed in Malaxis’s face, nothing seemed to go in. Some part of Genevieve screamed at her now to rush him, she had nothing to lose, but she was frozen. She didn’t want to die.
And she was frozen still, when he pulled the trigger.
***
The world began again. Or maybe it hadn’t stopped, only Genevieve’s ability to take it in, briefly. Her legs must have collapsed, folding her up, because now she was looking at the world from a half-seated position on the floor, one hip and heels of her palms smarting from where she’d landed on them. Malaxis, eyes still so flat, ostentatiously ejected the empty magazine from his gun, exchanged it for one he displayed to her, full. One step, and he had the gun right back in its earlier place, at the extent of his arm at such a low, negligent, humiliating angle.
She was sobbing, that came to her next like it was someone else doing it. She didn’t understand. Why—? Malaxis was unreadable, but Goon Two showed more, glaring down at his com unit before lifting a sneer to her as if blaming her for whatever malfunction he’d found there.
“You’re trying to scare her into using some kind of backchannel, to other conspirators,” Carex said, in a tone of dawning understanding. Perhaps even a slightly exaggerated one, the grumpy asshole equivalent of a situation where Eriope would have deployed a bright, “Did I say that out loud? Oopsie!”
Genevieve wasn’t processing fast enough to use the information, though, if that’s what he’d intended. She was shaking too hard. “But—I don’t have—”
“Of course, if she doesn’t have a backchannel or a conspiracy, you’re torturing her to no purpose.” Carex leaned down and helped her up—actually helped her up. Genevieve wasn’t sure she understood that either. Only then, when her pants clung wetly to her inner thighs in the movement, did she realize she’d wet herself. The smell reached her a beat later. She could hardly imagine Carex’s disgust with her, but none of it showed on his face.
Malaxis tracked his gun only on Genevieve but he twitched his chin and Carex spat a particularly acid curse. Genevieve cut her eyes over without moving, and found Goon Three had shoved his gun into the hollow beneath Carex’s ear on his other side. He wasn’t exploding into a graceful series of moves to disarm the goon either, but that was probably because she was in the way, Genevieve figured. She had no more stomach to sink, it hadn’t come back since she’d thought she was dead, but the core in her that had refused to lie down and die when she’d been infected with the nanites chugged and ground into a chain of logic.
What kind of conspiracy did they imagine she was involved in? One to use their research to—
The burnout would make a hell of a good weapon, she realized with a jolt. And the empire couldn’t possibly be aware of it, or they’d probably have bombed Tsuga and the lab from orbit. Develop the original burnout process a little to encourage its spread, and unspeakable agony and tendency to suicide could hit any number of their active units.
Wasn’t that ironic, enough irony to choke her, that she hadn’t even considered the idea until now.
Having had the idea, Genevieve pushed it away. The important thing right now was that if the soldiers were determined to find evidence of backchannel communication that didn’t exist, she—and Carex—would never be able to prove that negative. Negotiating their way out of this wasn’t an option. What about outside help? If they stalled long enough, would someone notice the two of them were mysteriously off channels? If Malaxis had planned his timing this carefully, Lemna would be long gone, if she’d even bother to interfere.
“And here I thought you weren’t implicated in this,” Malaxis sneered at Carex. “Take him down, and then hold Amsterdam for me. She can watch what’s in store for her.”
As easy as that, Goon Three shot. The back of Carex’s knee, then the other. Genevieve’s system automatically damped her hearing in the middle of the first shot.
Another moment when Genevieve should have thrown herself heroically at someone came and went as she sobbed and Carex collapsed from beside her. But they didn’t seem inclined to kill Carex or her quite yet, and if she did force their hands, who would they interrogate next? Pyrus? She still had plenty to lose, and Malaxis’s aim didn’t waver from her forehead.
Genevieve nearly bit through her own lip in an effort to keep from moving to help Carex as she watched him curl protectively onto his side and bleed. The nanites would be healing him already, and it was a simple matter to cut off pain nerve impulses, keep them away from the conscious mind. Every Install learned how. Goon Three jostled her as he grabbed her upper arm, and took up his earlier post with his gun at the back of her head. He reangled her to watch Carex, which, whatever their motives, she was willing to accept. She knew he’d be all right, but she still had to be sure.
Malaxis tucked his gun away, smoothed his jacket, and knelt beside Carex. He leaned his weight on one hand atop Carex’s nearest shoulder blade, flattening him prone. Genevieve expected more bluster, or curses, but she’d never seen Carex in combat before. Perhaps this eerie silence came from that space. Malaxis withdrew something from his pocket, resolving into a knife when he flicked it open.
“What the fuck?” Goon Three muttered from behind Genevieve’s head.
“With Installs, you’ve got to take their wings.” Malaxis shoved Carex’s shirt aside, forced open the panel in his back, and grabbed out a handful of folded carbon composite plates. When the wing was mostly splayed out, Malaxis shifted his grip to the central rib and slashed with the knife, easy as macheting a stubborn vine at the roots. “He knows. That’s why he’s not moving. Otherwise I might hit something important.”
You’ve got to take their wings. When denied a chance to charge through the photovoltaic cells in the wings, an Install’s systems could run on bio power, but not efficiently. It robbed the body if you did it too long, and if that body already needed all the power it could get, to heal other wounds—
The only option was to shut the nanites down to their lowest possible levels. Genevieve could see it laid out in front of her, so neat, as Malaxis took the second wing, so messy. Severed, bloody organic tendons dangled from the contact point as Malaxis threw it aside. He didn’t rise yet, however, just reoriented to peel aside bloody fabric to judge the healing that had already occurred in one of Carex’s knees.
He apparently didn’t like what he’d found, because he pushed to his feet and slammed a vicious kick into Carex’s abdomen, curling him onto his side again. Carex wheezed, but made no other sound. Genevieve keened on his behalf as kick after kick fell. “Cracked ribs don’t need splinting, and a little internal bleeding will keep him quiet. Not too much, though.” Malaxis stepped back, ostentatious in his self-control.
Genevieve would give him a “little internal bleeding” and see how he liked it—she didn’t consciously realize she’d lunged for him until Goon Three growled and jabbed the gun into the back of her neck hard enough to bruise. “Amsterdam,” Carex snapped, the breathy burr to his voice diminishing the power of the order not at all. “Don’t be stupid.”
Goon Two cleared his throat, cutting across the charged silence. “We’ve got a surge in confused chatter on channels all around the building, Johannesburg. They’ve been missed, it won’t be long until someone comes looking.”
Malaxis strode over to the kitchen and snatched up a towel to wipe his hands and blade. “We’d better change our venue. How much time do we have?” He returned to lean over the com unit, flipped the knife to hold the hilt toward Goon Three. Goon Three must have shown some kind of reluctance or confusion, Genevieve wasn’t sure, but she could guess the order before it came. Malaxis freed his attention to glare at his minion. “Hurry up and take h
ers, dumbass.”
Perhaps it was a good thing she stank of urine, snot sliding down her upper lip. Genevieve held up her hands. “Please, I’ll go quiet. You don’t have to shoot me too! I’ll go quiet.” And Goon Three didn’t shoot her. She felt his touch at her back before she slammed down a wall on every sensation from that part of her body. She’d endured, let it happen, once before, when an enemy’s nanites had taken over her body, rewiring and changing it too much to stand in their wake.
She’d stepped free on the other side of that, her self still intact. She would do it now. Wings grew back. Pyrus had warned her of that, once. Now it seemed more of an assurance.
She felt nothing until hot liquid splattered onto the backs of her legs. Blood. Carex hadn’t bled that much. Automatically, she shifted her attention to her system’s reports, ready to take manual control to cut off the blood loss, but the sheer carnage indicated by the urgent warnings flashing up from the natural muscles shocked her into losing her grip on the pain.
Gray sparkles impinged on her vision and she was—screaming—her conscious mind wasn’t recording impressions properly—
“—are you doing, butchering her? We need her alive!” Malaxis grabbed her shoulder—catching her so she didn’t fold up once more. Genevieve stripped out all sensation below the neck, heard her wings fall as Malaxis tossed them aside, one thud rather than two.
“Permissions,” Carex ground out, from the floor.
“Our orders come from the highest levels,” Malaxis snapped back, calm not yet shattered, but certainly bent. Good.
Genevieve knew what Carex meant. Medic permissions. He wasn’t a medic, but he was high-ranked, and presumably could perform some of the same functions. She knew he was burning energy he didn’t have, to reach to her system, but she paved the way before him to do whatever the fuck he could, and the blood slowed and stopped.
“Get him,” Malaxis said, and shoved his shoulder into Genevieve’s stomach to hoist her roughly up. “We need to be out of here ten minutes ago.”
Genevieve had an excellent view of the back of Malaxis’s legs, and with nothing better to do, she considered forcing her own system to take her unconscious. But then wonder of wonders, a channel opened. From Carex.
Yes, oh yes, did she want to talk to Pyrus. The numbness of what was surely shock gave Genevieve a clarity to think beyond simple declarations of love, however. As the channel dropped out again, she shoved words together in her mind with panicked speed, considered how they would sound to listeners, tried again.
They were getting off the elevator now and wind slammed into them. On the roof. Some kind of flyer, to get to their ship to leave the planet as soon as possible, presumably.
No. This was her chance. If she had no other options left, and had to do the worst thing she could think of to escape, he needed to be ready.
The connection had dropped by the time she finished speaking. She had no way to know how much Pyrus had heard. But she had to hope. Hope he’d heard enough, hope he’d understood, hope he’d never have to act on that understanding. Rather than hold her pain block against the jostling as Malaxis dumped her into their vehicle, she cut off her consciousness completely.
Part II
If not for her system clock, Genevieve would have had no idea they were in transit for eight days. She was aware for very little of it—enough to eat, use the bathroom, and decide the only thing she could do was consider her stink a fitting punishment for whichever soldier had to sit in abject boredom at the bolted-down little table in their cabin each day. She supposed the door didn’t lock, or maybe there were things that could be wrenched free and used as weapons, but she certainly couldn’t discern what those might be in the cubbies of bunks with bare mattress pads.
When they arrived at their destination, she walked to the holding cell under her own power, but barely, and had no energy to spare for peering into corners in the semidarkness or speculating about where they had been taken. Carex would know. She’d ask him, just as soon as she’d collapsed onto her stomach on the new bed—with sheets this time—and slept another day.
When the lights next came up for what Genevieve assumed was morning, given the lack of windows, she sat up and made an effort to take in their surroundings. It was actually surprisingly room-like. One bed, comfortable for one person, or possible for two without personal space. Genevieve edged over from Carex’s sprawl, having recovered said personal space on waking. Walls in a gentle shade of orange, a table and chairs, and soft bedding. That was the operative word, Genevieve realized, petting the fabric. Soft, fragile, and ready to shred into pieces if put to anything other than the intended use. The table and chairs were similar, made out of wood—and Genevieve figured she knew from wood, considering where she’d grown up—that would splinter harmlessly if you looked askance at it.
The bathroom had a frosted plastic privacy panel that shielded it from someone on the bed, though not from the other angle, which must be where some of the surveillance was. Genevieve pushed herself off the bed to investigate the shower. “Monitor how much pain you’re blocking when you’re under the water,” Carex growled, half into the single pillow that had somehow ended up in his possession.
“I’m not stupid.” Genevieve regathered her strength for a moment with a grip on the end of the privacy panel.
“You haven’t seen your own back.”
Genevieve checked over the sink, but without a second mirror to reflect back to the slightly warped silvered plexi there, the very thought of craning around to see caused a kind of pain her system couldn’t block since it was a mental, anticipated one.
By the time she finished washing both herself—back held mostly out of the spray—and her clothes in the sink, Carex was asleep again. She took the opportunity to yank the top sheet out from under him and wrap it over her shoulders before he grumbled his way back to wakefulness. “All yours.”
Through painful experience, Genevieve determined that sitting in the chair normally was out of the question, so she turned it around to lean on the back as Carex showered and she resoundingly ran out of momentum. She couldn’t remember being this exhausted in her life. At very least she never had been since becoming an Install. The military could practically have left their door unlocked.
Carex let his pants stay unwashed and thus dry, rather than going for the sheet look. Genevieve roused herself out of her stupor when he approached, and edged her chair around to present her back. “How bad is it, really?”
She loosened her hold on the sheet to provide the necessary slack, and Carex slipped it down with a surprisingly gentle touch. “Scarred to shit, but stable, looks like. Pyrus is the one who’d actually know, but I’d guess you’ll need surgery to clear away the scar tissue before your wings can even start to grow back.”
Could be worse. Genevieve hadn’t explored the limits on her range of arm movement, but at least the damage was high, not low, to make sitting and bending impossible. She shivered, and pulled the sheet closer, like it was anything to do with temperature. “You want me to check yours?”
“Nah.” Carex settled heavily into the second chair, in the same backwards manner as her. “Still working on the broken ribs.”
“You…” Genevieve start
ed, stalled out as she looked around the room. She didn’t like the idea of their captors hearing them discuss anything at all, but she couldn’t see the harm in this particular subject. “Didn’t seem surprised by it. That they went for our wings, I mean.”
“Can’t say I was.” Carex’s gaze went vague, into memory. “Don’t know if you realize, but Installs are used in two main capacities—out at the front and then on fully conquered planets to keep the larger force of unalts—unaltered soldiers—who often have local ties and sympathies…in line. On one planet, they figured out about the wings and used it to fight back. The brass came down hard and probably executed everyone in the ranks who knew, but word passed among the Installs. And clearly the brass kept a record, in case it proved useful later.”
A flap opened at the bottom of the door, and two trays scooted through. Carex retrieved them both, and conversation lagged while they fell on the food. It didn’t last very long. Genevieve considered her dignity—long since gone, she should admit that to herself now—and ran her finger around the edges of each compartment and licked it. Then she licked the tray itself. She glanced at Carex’s, but it wasn’t like he had anything left over either. “Calorie limited. I was afraid of that,” he said, and lofted the tray into the nearest wall. It fell with a plastic clatter but seemed otherwise unharmed. Carex subsided, his usual level of anger apparently more than he could maintain.
To keep their available bio power limited too, Genevieve filled in. “Still a nicer hole than I expected to be dropped in,” she offered. Lemna’s threat of execution to Eriope was very much on her mind as well, but if they’d wanted to do that, they’d simply have used the gun in her room once it was loaded.
Carex gave a bark of laughter. “Because that unalt—what was it, Johannesburg?—fucked up. I’d bet you beer for life that his orders said if he had to grab someone, it would be you, and quiet, so they could monitor for backchannel communications while your supposed conspiracy tried to plan how to free you. Instead, the brass probably have all of Tsuga crawling up their asses, enraged, so they’ve put us in the strictly aboveboard detention facilities. This is Headquarters we’re in, the heart of the Pax Romana complex. You should feel honored.”