by R. Z. Held
“Slammed in a door somewhere, like on a supply ship?” Cyperus craned his neck to see for himself without crowding her. “Stomped?” Sienna had no idea what tell she’d flickered, but he subsided. “Stomped. Speaking of assholes.”
Galax reached then for her neck, intention clear, and innocent enough: touch the muscles at the back, over the incision site, perhaps tip her head to the side to see it as well. Sienna knew that, and yet all she could see was one of the guards, holding a vocal cord paralyzer, the flexible gray panel that promised the slow, emotional strangulation of absolute silence. No!
She was a meter away, behind another empty crate. Not suddenly, precisely, but her conscious mind processed the movement only at several seconds’ remove. No, no, no. Not silence.
Galax sighed. “I thought you told the commander she was growing more lucid.”
Sienna—couldn’t breathe. Her heart had already been thudding from the memory from the camp, but this, this was a grass fire, sweeping through her in an instant. And then there was nothing left except hollow, blackened rage. Ask Cyperus for help? Like hell! To think she’d almost walked straight into his trap, enticed by treats like an animal. She’d been so worried about Gentiana, she’d missed the danger right in front of her.
“Sienna, no, it’s not like—” Cyperus flattened his hands on the crate to lever himself up, but Sienna darted away.
Then she ran. Again. Still. The only safety she had was what she made for herself.
***
“Doesn’t he have anything better to do?” More than a day, and at every meal, Pen reported Cyperus awkwardly carried his tray to wait for her in the empty bay. Sienna supposed that, while not healing, and avoiding additional surgery, he didn’t have much better to do, but shouldn’t the boredom have driven him away by now? If only that wasn’t a slower process than her hunger, which was driving her toward him with an intensity that ratcheted up each hour.
Sienna groaned, flung her arms over top of her head, and changed the noise to a hiss when her bruised fingers were jarred once more. “I don’t understand why you’re pushing this. I thought we were in this together, to get me out of here. He betrayed me to Elantine.”
Pen sighed through her external speakers. “I can’t retain most of what I see Elantine do and say, so I can’t tell you anything about the conversation Galax referenced, but I can tell you plenty about Cyperus himself. We—agents are trained to say to people whatever they want to hear, to get us what we need. But what he does, it’s always been honorable. Maybe he merely confirmed what she’d found out another way. You need to eat, so go. Get some food, at the price of hearing him out. Please?”
Sienna sat up, pushed her hood back, and released and re-smoothed her hair back into its tail to stall. “Can’t retain? Nice of you to warn me about that when I kept asking you to make sure no one was telling her about me.” Unless Pen hadn’t put it together until recently. And then more implications dawned on Sienna. “That must be…” For a consciousness formed solely from its sensors and data, she couldn’t imagine what that must be like.
“Frustrating?” Sharp laughter. “I prefer not to dwell on it.”
All right. Pen might have been misled, but she wouldn’t be directing Sienna into Elantine’s clutches willingly. And her stomach was its own kind of clutching, tight lump. Sienna pushed off the bed. It would be time to move out of this room soon anyway.
Cyperus had set himself up on the same crate as before but facing the door, tray against his hip. All the food was untouched this time, which Sienna couldn’t emotionally comprehend in her current state. How could he sit beside it so calmly?
The intensity his expression had when he assessed her for the first time at each of their meetings deepened to something like pain this time, when he looked up from a reader and found her in the doorway. “Look,” he said, and lifted something that had been set atop the crate on his other side. A crutch. He balanced, careful, one hand on the crate and one on the crutch, then up and mostly stable, standing on one good leg and the crutch, lattice of his assist nowhere to be seen. “I can’t follow you. Can’t reach you, hardly.”
Sienna no longer wondered at him not eating. The thwarted pride of one who relied on his physical abilities sounded as if it was acid in his belly as he stood, acid on his tongue as he spoke. She approached, but not close enough to test that reach. “And when Elantine shows up? She can still catch me.”
“I’m sorry.” Cyperus sat once more, a complex operation made worse by the fact that he clearly wasn’t practiced with the crutch. He hissed a few curses under his breath. Sienna felt an impulse, small though it was, to help, which she squashed without mercy. “You’re not eating enough, and who knows what’s going on internally with the implant. Hiding forever—it’s not tenable. If I was going to get resources to help you properly, I had to go through her. I told her only what I thought would get me her permission without her interference. It’s clear I was fooling myself. Galax, yesterday, and me, now, she doesn’t know about that.”
The unintentional echo of words from an agent-like AI in those of this agent felt like a shiver across the back of Sienna’s neck. He’d said only what he thought he needed to, to get what he wanted. She edged up, snatched up a bread roll when he’d torn his usual bite out of the center. “And you already knew I’m lucid, and was only faking otherwise.” She half choked on her next bite of bread, not chewing enough, and tried to tighten herself down to at least a facsimile of calm. She seated herself, set about eating normally, albeit a bit twisted with the tray beside her at the level of her hip.
Cyperus paused, spoon hovering above the next dish he was proving safe. The depths she usually glimpsed in his expression seemed much closer to the surface, arresting in a way that drew her in despite herself. Now, she saw empathy, and couldn’t help but trust it was sincere. “Yes and no. Were you faking it?”
“Of course,” Sienna said, without considering her words, without allowing herself time for second or third guessing. It was too late for anything but honesty.
“Mm.” Cyperus lifted his hands above his thighs, held loose, both within sight. “May I touch your neck?”
She knew what he was getting at, of course. If she let him, what could he do? He had no leverage to choke her from his current position. And perhaps she wanted to prove to herself as well that the camp hadn’t set its hooks so indelibly into her soul. “Fine.” She tipped her head to the side, and held herself braced to jerk away if necessary.
And his movement was absolutely slow, delicate, and she—she couldn’t.
Sienna hugged her arms over her belly, where she’d shoved herself standing and back from the crate, and breathed through the memories for one moment, another.
Cyperus licked his lips, hesitation sitting oddly on his face as if it was unfamiliar. “Was it drugs? Injections, at the camp?”
Somehow, having him open the subject of the camp with a mistake made it easier for the words to tumble out. The momentum of the correction carried her onward. “It was the vocal cord paralyzers.” She touched her own throat, trying to soothe herself with the feeling of bare skin there. “LSF hit a transport—I’d gotten into a university program, and they sent anyone who wasn’t Pax Romana home when the latest batch of shooting started up, so it was just bad luck I was on that particular one—and I don’t know if they found the undercover agents or whatever the fuck was their excuse, but the rest of us civilians overwhelmed the camp facilities. Even on the low-strength side, which was eighty percent women and enby folks, we were all too close, and there was nothing to do, and no privacy, so people would get in each other’s fa
ces. And originally they’d use the paralyzers just for transport but then they started putting them on and leaving them there, to be remotely triggered to keep things calm. Because they figured out that it wouldn’t stop a fight, but if people couldn’t talk, they tended to retreat inward and not start any in the first place.”
Tears were stinging up in Sienna’s eyes, and she wasn’t entirely sure why. It could have been worse. It could have been so much worse, as Isachne’s last message proved. “Shut up,” she said, in the mangled LSF French prison pidgin the guards had used. She’d meant it to be a joke, but a sob burst free instead.
Cyperus set his hand open and upward on the crate, invitation tinged with desperation, she supposed from a need to comfort and seeing no other way to do it. She moved the tray aside to sit and set her uninjured hand in his. He clasped it firmly, not tightly. “They won’t be specialists, but as a rehab facility, Penstemon has counsellors. Doesn’t have to be anything formal, but if you’d be willing—”
“Universal mercy.” Sienna spat the words. “You don’t have to soft-pedal it like I don’t know I’m in fucking desperate need of counseling. My internship was at a center, I made sure their scheduling software was working properly. If I ever get home, my second call is going to be to my old boss to see who’s got openings.”
Rather than pulling away, she dug her fingers into Cyperus’s hand, trying to make him understand. “I’m not hiding simply from trauma. Elantine is trying to kill me.” She meant to stop after the statement, give it proper emphasis as truth, not hyperbole, but once more momentum carried her on. “She’s LSF, and she’s tried at least twice, not counting the times she thought she was leaving me to die on my own of exposure. Or starvation, I suppose, if she suspected all along I was hiding in the facility. And I’m not such a narcissist that I think she was posted here because of me, so maybe you guys should be looking into just what it is she’s doing here other than coming after me!”
In fact—Sienna lifted Cyperus’s hand to thud it back down against the crate as the idea occurred to her. “Like how you switch off sometimes, and no one seems to notice, even Pen—stemon. That’s deeply suspicious.”
Cyperus didn’t reply at first, but she could see in his face, could see it, that he didn’t believe her. “If LSF did have someone here, why would they want to kill you? They handed you over into Pax Romana control in the first place.” His voice was so exaggeratedly kind, it made her want to snarl.
“Because they thought I’d die on my own, taking Isachne’s intelligence with me.” Sienna freed her hand to gesture angrily to her temple. “The implant wasn’t supposed to arrive intact.”
“Anything Isachne had is ancient by now. Useless.” Cyperus must have read her anger at his tone, as he returned to more of his usual asshole tinge. She appreciated that they’d settled on honesty at least. Then his next words surprised her with their honest concern. “Please. You’re not with LSF now. Pax Romana doesn’t imprison or torture its refugees. Let us help you.”
Sienna settled her hands in her lap, pushed the flex of her fingers through one-sided pain. “You know, on Idyll, we have a joke. A really old joke, so old that the fact that it’s worn out is part of the humor, now. ‘Peace versus liberty, what a choice! Who would have thought you’d lose either way.’”
“Neutrality’s easy when you’re prepared to poison anyone who isn’t you,” Cyperus snapped. It had the same worn quality, and while no one at the university had thrown that one at her, Sienna recognized the type. He visibly gathered his annoyance and stuffed it away again, leaving his face once more hard, once more the “shit at human assets” agent. “Just let Galax look at you off the books, all right? So you don’t die of neglect before LSF can get to you.”
Sienna was nowhere near as good at stuffing her frustration away. “You’re not listening to me!” But snarling at him wasn’t going to make him listen, so she stood to leave instead.
“All right, I’m trying—” Cyperus lunged sideways after a grip on her wrist, and drove his bad knee into the side of the crate. His face went sallow beneath the brown and he froze from the pain. He didn’t curse, though, just breathed, inhale and exhale a bit too fast and a bit too loud.
This time, Sienna did nothing to check her instinctive dart to his side. She took his arm over her shoulder, balancing his weight into forward momentum instead of subsiding down onto the surface he would have trouble leaving. “You’re the one who should see someone.”
“I can’t fuck it up any worse than it already—” Cyperus tried to pull away, seemed to lose his words in the haze of pain. She’d intended to hand him his crutch, but she shoved at her implant now instead. Some of this was strength, yes, but more was balance and leverage and she let it arrange her grip and edge them with glacial speed for the door. If Elantine was to show up now—
If Elantine was to show up now, she’d have to deal with it, that was all. “Tell me which way we’re going.”
Cyperus tossed her a highlighted map across their implants, and saved his breath for the journey.
All right. Deal with it, if necessary. Sienna put her head down, and focused on careful balance.
When they arrived at the treatment room a brief eternity later, Galax met them at the door to take Cyperus from her. Sienna wondered if perhaps Cyperus had neglected to warn him sooner to ensure she would come as far as the treatment room, but she couldn’t imagine he would choose extra pain for himself simply to counteract her stubbornness.
She revised that assessment when Cyperus shoved his friend away the moment he’d subsided onto a diagnostic couch. “Her first.”
Sienna caught her weight edging upward onto her toes as she stood in the doorway, like an animal getting ready to shy. She focused her attention tightly on Galax instead, the unnatural orange shimmer of the data paths framing his face, but the solid neutrality of that face. Competent. And he had argued against Elantine’s first attempt to kill her. “Him first. Then me.”
“Immovable stubbornness meets irresistible stubbornness,” Galax muttered, echoing her earlier thought. “Your pain blocks will be fast, Cyperus. Then I can see what I can do for Prague.”
Sienna edged into the room, checking sight lines in case someone should happen by in the hallway—damned if she’d let them close the door on her—and tucked herself at an angle that would leave her unnoticed until the last minute. Galax frowned over a scanner he’d passed over Cyperus’s knee. “Penstemon? Would you calibrate this? It’s showing his nanite levels as way too high.”
“Calibrated,” Pen said, and Galax nodded approval of whatever new result it showed.
Rising anger.
Well. Sienna would leave that to Pen, then. And she more or less had to, as Galax was approaching her diffidently. “Here’s the deal,” she said. “Whatever you can diagnose with me standing right here, and you send nothing to Elantine, and I’ll at least listen to what treatment you suggest. Take it or leave it.”
Galax nodded, and darted over to collect other instruments as if afraid she’d run if he delayed even a second. He scanned, without any additional requests for calibration, and Sienna maintained if not stillness, at least one general location. She only skittered a few steps when he tried to get between her and the open door, and he read the reasoning behind that on his own, with no need for Cyperus’s growl to turn into words.
“It’s
all looking surprisingly good, considering its Frankensteinian origins. I can’t distinguish the original com implant any longer. Once you take the supplements and grow your data paths, that should clear up the fatigue I imagine you’re still suffering from.” Galax set the last instrument aside to rummage in a cupboard. “I’ll add in a batch of healing nanites for your hand.”
Sienna scrubbed at the skin along her jaw. “So the rave lines aren’t optional?” Her hair would grow out, but those would be an indelible change to her appearance. She had so little left from her original sense of self…
Unless she turned them off, like Cyperus, of course. She was being overly dramatic.
Galax turned back to her, a bottle of oily, rather metallic liquid in his hand. “Rave lines—?” He shook his head. “Never mind, I can see the connection. I’m afraid the process has already started under the surface, it’s just a matter of laying the inorganic components in the upper layers of skin.”
“Then you’ll be done, and you can lock the whole system down if you want,” Cyperus said, intense in his reassurance even against a background of obvious fatigue as the pain blocks hit. “It’s set up to have a retirement mode.” He lifted his hand, turning his own data paths visible, then invisible once more.
“Why didn’t anyone tell me that weeks ago?” Sienna swiped for the bottle.
Galax rocked back out of her reach. “Laying data paths is best done when the subject is unconscious. With the density of nerves at the surface of the skin—”
“Like hell you’re putting me under,” Sienna snapped. Why didn’t she provide her own pillow while she was at it, to save Elantine the trouble? “I’ll do it myself.”
Galax’s expression hardened. In his profession, he’d have need of stubbornness of his own, Sienna suspected. “Ethically, I can’t allow you—”
“Give the supplement to me.” Cyperus shifted to the edge of the diagnostic couch, feet to the floor, though he had neither assist nor crutch to take him farther. He held out his hand. “We can do it in my quarters. Galax can tell me what to do, and I’ll watch you. Would you be willing to accept a sedative if you’d still be conscious?”