by O E Tearmann
"I'll come home. I always come home," Kevin agreed quietly, holding Lazarus's eyes.
Finally, the older man glanced away, down the hall. "Yeah, well." He patted Kevin's shoulder awkwardly. "And don't get Aidan killed either. I kinda like this guy."
Kevin quirked a brow. "Considering you hacked his personnel file to add 'assuming the worst will happen' and 'looking confused' to his list of interests, you have a funny way of showing it," he remarked in his usual dry tone.
Lazarus gave him something like one of his signature cock-sure grins. "Dude, I'm in munitions. My job's to take pot-shots at everything." He shrugged, his old goofy self for a moment.
Kevin rolled his eyes. "Ass."
"Dude!" Lazarus yelped in mock horror. "Quit thinking about ass while you're on duty! Go get ass on your own time!"
Kevin felt the blush kindle in his cheeks as he leveled a glare on his old friend. "I hate you sometimes."
Grinning, Lazarus reached over and tousled his hair. "Yeah, yeah, you hate me."
For a moment, the munitions officer studied his younger base mate. Then he pulled him into a quick, one armed hug.
"Seriously, Kev. Be safe out there."
"I'll do my best," Kevin murmured into his old friend's shoulder.
Early in the afternoon, Kevin and Aidan climbed through the maintenance room cover and into a disused locker room. Carefully, Kevin unrolled the pack of flat white squares from the duffel bag he'd brought along. Moving with deliberation, he peeled the first Synth off its white nutrient sheet, careful not to rip it.
"We'll have some great notes to send to Sector if this stuff does the trick, " he remarked briskly as he folded the thin film over Aidan's hands and wrists, watching it smooth into place. The synthetic human epithelial cell sheet made it look as if Aidan had somewhat calloused hands, but that look wouldn't set off alarm bells. They were travelling as Citizen Acceptable Standing, after all. Any of the jobs CAS folks could get might give you callouses.
Kevin glanced up with a smile. "Last check before we hit the street."
He looked Aidan up and down. It was odd seeing the man in Grid clothing. He looked somehow smaller out of uniform. Vulnerable. Or perhaps that was the anxious hunch to his shoulders.
The man. Man. A man now, yes. But what he'd said that night a week ago…
Kevin forced himself to refocus. Now was not the time to dig through any of that. "Er, your hat… May I?"
"Sure?" Aidan replied, eyes a little bewildered under the hat brim.
Kevin reached up and adjusted the flex-screen in the baseball cap until it clearly showed the gif of a stylized bird flying.
"Screen was fritzing," he added by way of explanation and apology.
Aidan held his gaze with frightened eyes. Kevin's nerves twitched. Looking this nervous in public was tantamount to putting on a shirt with a bull's-eye that read "please stop me for questioning."
"Aidan?" he asked quietly, "May I speak freely?"
The other man blinked. "Uh, yeah?"
Kevin chose his words with care, holding Aidan's eyes. "We're taking CAS level train transport and then a CPS bus. Our meeting is in a little CPS café by the bus stop on Alameda. That's ZonCom land. We're not leaving our own genetic markers anywhere. That's what the Synth is for. They have thousands of people a day on the cheap transport, more than even EagleCorp can track with any accuracy. All they can track and log are the fake fingerprints and cards we've got, and those are attached to nothing. No one is going to pay us any attention unless we give them a reason to. But a furtive attitude draws attention."
Aidan blinked. "Furtive?" he asked helplessly. Kevin let himself roll his eyes and smirk for Aidan's benefit.
"Freaked out. If you look like you're freaked, someone's going to wonder why. Being a face in the crowd is our salvation. Okay?"
Aidan drew a slow breath, eyes closed. Then he nodded. "Okay. Got it." He drew another long breath, opened his eyes. "I got this. Thanks."
Kevin nodded. "No trouble." Turning, he opened the maintenance hall door.
"Oh, don't react to the ad holos when they pop up," he added, working to make the reminder sound like an afterthought. "It's not the done thing on Grid."
The noise of the train station hit like a fist to the ear. The noise of human crowds and the chatter of every ad, vid and jingle projected from walls and floor echoed off the architecture, underpinned by the station's base Muzak. Kevin let the noise wash over him, glancing at his commanding officer.
"Those 'buds would probably be a good idea," he remarked under the sound of thousands of people and thousands of ads. He watched his superior officer slip the 'buds in and pull out his tab for a second, queuing up his own music once the two devices connected.
Kevin smiled, glad he'd gone the extra mile to get the noise cancelling variety for everybody on base and scrub the ZonCom subroutine that made 'buds reject unregistered tabs. The 'buds helped deal with the Gridbuzz so many Dusters got coming in.
He watched Aidan flinch slightly as a popup of a dancing monkey appeared at his shoulder with the words "Job Monkey: Climb Up! Register With Us Today!" flashing around it. The operative word, Kevin reflected sourly, was 'helped', not 'stopped'. So many Dusters suffered from sensory overload on the Grid. They were used to a quieter life.
They passed outside the pop-up's sensor in two steps and the holo's source refocused on the person behind them, leaving the two of them alone. The next one appeared directly in front of them, a waterfall with elegant type reading "Crystal: Pure Water." Beside him Aidan missed a beat and almost stumbled. Kevin worked at keeping from glancing at his companion as he walked through the thing.
This was not good.
The pop-ups stopped in the central concourse, only the wall ads and holos shining cheerfully around the EagleCorp security check in front of the train platform.
Kevin pushed his shoes and cooling coat through the check slot, waiting patiently in the heat as they were scanned and spat out on the other side of the turnstile.
"Card," the bored security man asked, and Kevin pushed his Citizen Card with its chip and its meticulously-falsified information into one side of the turnstile.
"Hand." The guard jerked a thumb at the pad beside Kevin, and he obligingly pressed his hand to it, allowing the machine to read the false fingerprints and genome information of the Synth layered over his hand. The screen turned green, and Kevin took his hand away in time to avoid the little automatic swage armature that wiped it with disinfectant.
"Have a nice day," the man threw out without looking at him. Kevin resisted the urge to roll his eyes, but it took effort. His card popped back out of the other side of the turnstile. Information recorded, fee deducted.
At least, that was what the system thought. Kevin pocketed the card and kept himself cool with that little thought as he waited for Aidan to finish his turn.
His.
It really was going to be hard to stop mulling that over. It shouldn't matter and Kevin knew it. But the sheer fact took some adjusting to. He knew so little about, well, anything the condition entailed. He knew so little.
He knew gender nonconformity and gender changes went on. ZonCom had legalized any gender affiliation for its employees almost a century ago. Of course, that had gotten ZonCom employees banned from a lot of franchises owned by one of the conservative Corporations. But, all he knew was that people outside the norm were allowed, not what it meant. They didn't teach good Cavanaugh kids things like that. They trained good Cavanaugh kids to shy away from the imperfect and the aberration. Damn them.
Kevin only knew of one other transgender person, and he didn't dare ask her questions. Maybe ZonCom domain sites would have something. He'd get in for a look around.
ZonCom had kept their laissez-faire attitude as a recruitment point on the stipulation that they advertised it with all information deemed "unsui
table" by other Corporations behind domain firewalls and signed their extradition treaties with the other five Corporations, but they didn't exactly put energy into enforcement. People still ran to hide in ZonCom's offices. If they had value and hadn't pissed off anyone too high, they stayed hidden.
It was a good setup for ZonCom. A great way to poach talent from the other Corporations and call it protecting diversity. Of course, if they cared about protecting anything but their talent pool, they'd put pressure on the conservative Corporations to stop holding public Morality Law executions, Kevin thought bitterly.
It wasn't like the other Corporations could hurt them. The other Corps needed ZonCom's shipping, marketing and merchandising skills, and it needed each of the other five for one thing or another. The seven biggest fish in the American pond had eaten the rest a long time ago. They didn't need to go after one another over anything but petty details any longer.
Maybe he'd use his day off to get into an international medical paper forum and start doing some reading. Then he wouldn't spend so much time wondering if the next word he said to Aidan would be wrong.
That was another can of worms. That word. Wrong. It had a bad habit of bringing its synonymic friends with it-unnatural, pathological, defective, aberrant. His first instinct had been to recoil from what Aidan had said.
That damn Cavanaugh schooling trying to kick in again. He was glad he'd stopped himself. What would he be recoiling from? A basemate. A friend. The only man he'd really been able to be himself around since Peter went Fringe.
And Aidan didn't look wrong. And he didn't act wrong. In fact, he acted-
The screen turned green below Aidan's hand, and the turnstile dinged.
And you're daydreaming on a mission, Kevin told himself with a quick mental refocus. What a lovely way to get yourself killed.
He smiled as Aidan joined him. "Let's grab seats. Train leaves in five."
The CAS train smelled of cheap disinfectant that tried to resemble lemons. It failed. At least it wasn't fake pine. Kevin popped in his own 'buds, choosing the playlist that he used like armor. The words of the first song made him smile, as they always could.
No, his mind is not for rent
To any god or government
Always hopeful, yet discontent
Focusing on the words, he waited out the ride.
Tweak glanced up sharply as they opened the door to the small back booth, half-standing as if to hide Billie from them before she subsided. Jazz gave them a long, slow look, waved a hand. "Took long enough. Sit."
"Thanks very much," Kevin replied politely, sliding into the seat nearest the two young women.
Tweak eyed him. "Touch me, lose your balls. Got it, Citizen Excellent?"
Kevin held up his hands in surrender. "I'm just here for the discussion. And I don't have a Citizen Standing rating, by the way. I'm not CES."
Tweak snorted. "Yeah. Right."
Kevin forced himself not to retort to that. No sense protesting too much. If anyone asked, he could remark on the girl's paranoia. She had absolutely no proof of his former Standing.
Warily, he brought up the menu holo.
Aidan took his seat, clearing his throat. "Everything's on us."
"Better be." Jazz remarked cooly. Then she seemed to reconsider and held a hand out.
"Jalanda Sims. Jazz. What'd you screw up to get stuck with the Wildcards?"
Aidan breathed a laugh as he took her hand. "A lot of stuff I guess, but some of it other people screwed up first."
"You know, you might actually do better if you didn't begin your conversational gambits with threats," Kevin remarked mildly to Tweak. "Just a suggestion."
"Jack yourself," Tweak shot back, putting in her order.
Over her head, Kevin caught Aidan's eyes, raising his brows. Maybe this recruitment wasn't such a great idea. That kind of attitude wouldn't mesh well with anyone on base.
Holding his eyes, Aidan shrugged and put in his order as well. Kevin relaxed fractionally. The girl was a fugitive running from God-knew-what, and he had just patronized her. Perhaps he'd deserved what he'd gotten.
"Are the boxes on?" Aidan asked quietly. "I don't want to spend a lot more time here than we have to."
"Course you don't," Jazz agreed, deadpan. Kevin noted that she ordered the most expensive thing she could find. Order finished, she sat back. "You paid for the time, Commander. Talk."
Aidan opened his mouth, but Tweak beat him to it.
"What's the job?" the girl asked shortly.
Aidan watched her the way a raccoon watched an oncoming car. "It's not a simple explanation," he began tentatively. "The overall goal is to, well, overthrow the Corporations." Aidan glanced at Kevin, and Kevin caught the pleading in the his eyes.
Leaning forward, Kevin steepled his fingers. "What do you know about pre-Dissolution history?" he asked quietly.
Tweak blinked, glancing at Jazz warily.
Jazz scowled and leaned back in her chair to fold her arms over her chest. "It happened. That's about it. This better not be a history lesson."
"It's going somewhere," Aidan promised, though Kevin knew his eyes were watching, too.
That was fine. Kevin kept his eyes on Tweak.
"What made the system work was group participation," he murmured. "One man. One vote. Of course, it grew a great deal more sophisticated and ultimately far from its base, but that was the core of the system. The right of a man to have a say in his own life. We've lost that, and it's time it was brought back. What we're proposing is a multi-layered endeavor: the de-indoctrination of all levels of society, neutralizing certain parties, and, most importantly, the reigniting of the Flame of Athens, as it was rather charmingly called. The recreation of a form of Parliament or Congress in America. The return of democracy."
For a moment, there was silence. Then Tweak cocked her head. "You eat a d-dictionary?"
Kevin sighed. So much for inspiring words. Beside him, he heard Aidan give a false cough as he fought down a laugh before speaking.
"What he's trying to say is that people like us had a say back then. We're trying to have the chance to bring back a system that lets people be people."
"How?" Tweak asked, the word sharp.
"It's complicated," Aidan muttered. "But, basically, we use the talents we have and can find in others to bring the Corps down from the bottom up and expose all the bullshit they try to hide. Get people to think for themselves again. It's slow. Really slow. But it's worth-"
And that was when Jazz cut him off with a groan, her lips twisted in a sneer. "Oh, will you cut the bullshit? You people are a bunch of dumbasses. Don't feed these babies that garbage!"
Kevin froze in his seat.
"Yeah, we probably are dumbasses," Aidan agreed after a long moment of silence. "But probably not for the reasons you're thinking. And we're trying-"
"By blowing shit up? Stealing Corps cash? Getting their dirty laundry out in the indie news sites? Knocking over supply depots? You know what that shit does?" Jazz snapped. She held up a hand, ticking off fingers angrily as she made her points. "It pisses off the Corps, it makes them crack down on all the poor fucks just trying to do a day's work and makes our lives even harder, and every time you asshats go nuts they get one more excuse. When they crack down, you're their excuse," she hissed. "Every time you go nuts, they crack down a little harder and pass it off as internal security. And you know what, shitheads? People agree. You're the fucking bogeymen. You scare people. You think you fix the whole world? That's your sell point? Bullshit. You've been at it sixty years. I've been hearing all of you say that since I was a baby. I used to believe you, but we're still in this fucking mess. Tell yourself that shit if you need to sleep at night, but don't lie to these kids and tell them they're gonna save the world," she declared, opening her arms to encompass the situation. "Way I see it, you're part of the system, too."
Kevin stared at Jazz in shock. He was familiar with her dubious smile when he spoke idealistically himself, her scorn and backhand comments about "if you guys ever win." But how had he missed this depth of anger boiling inside her? He glanced apprehensively at Aidan, who frowned at Jazz for a long moment before shaking his head slowly.
"Okay, Jazz. Maybe some of that's true." He said the words softly, but there was the note in his voice that Kevin had heard last when Aidan had stared down a border-runner with a gun. "But, you got a better idea? Because from where I'm standing, no one else is doing anything to bring the Corps down." His voice didn't rise, but it took on an intensity that Kevin had never heard.
Slowly, he mirrored her open-arm gesture, holding Jazz's eyes. "Living under the Corps? It screws with you. They get in your head and fuck you over and you don't even notice it. You just know that you hate yourself. You're fucking terrified and you can't get out, and while you're here you might as well buy more shit. They farm people for cash, and people are dying. The people who break their Corporation's fucking rules and end up dead. The chop shops. The work days. The shit in the water and the food. And the shit they put people through. There's that. You seen the suicide rates that the indie reporters put out? The real ones? You seen the real death rates from bad air, bad water, bad food? No food?"
"Yeah, well." Jazz shrugged.
Aidan shook his head, blue eyes like chips of ice. "Well nothing. I've heard this stuff since I was a baby, too, Jazz. I was born in the Dust. Difference is, I can't just say 'yeah, well' and let it go. I want… something better than that."
Silence.
Kevin couldn't help but stare at Aidan where he sat, breathing hard, looking as if he might pull out a shining sword at any moment. He had thought of his new commander as good with people and self-effacing, but he'd been badly mistaken twice today. How much courage did it take to be as honest as Aidan was about his leadership? How much more did it take to be honest about his gender and sexuality?