Marked

by Alex Hughes

  He had very little patience with me in particular, and I’d only sat down with him three times: once when I was hired, once when I was rehired after my fall off the wagon, and once when I’d had the vision that had ultimately saved Cherabino’s life. He could still ruin any chance I had of employment with a single word to one of his friends. But he also used to be married to Jamie, decades ago.

  “I’m not getting any younger, boy,” he prompted.

  “I don’t know if you knew this, but I’m one of Jamie Skelton’s old students.”

  “Does this have a point?”

  “Do you still have your Guild pass?” I asked.

  And now I had his attention. He leaned forward. “As it happens, I do. It’s current. Jamie and I still talk, sometimes.”

  Relief washed over me. The first part, the hard part, of my idea was done.

  I started talking.

  I left, half an hour later, having been chewed out to within an inch of my life for allowing Cherabino to go to Fiske’s without a hell of a lot more backup than just me. For repeating the same stupid mistake in backup that had gotten Bellury killed, he said.

  I walked out black and blue, chastened on every level, but I walked out with a promise.

  He’d speak for me.

  • • •

  I asked Cherabino to drive me to her house. “I’d like to stay with you tonight,” I said. I kept flashing back to the vision, and to the case, and to tomorrow’s sentencing. I didn’t want to be alone.

  She glanced around to make sure no one was watching and kissed me on the mouth, just long enough to be a real kiss. Then she led the way to her car.

  Cherabino drove back to her apartment, making steady conversation to distract me. “They’ve set up an inquiry into the visit to Fiske’s house. I have an appointment with the union lawyer; supposedly it’s a split opinion on whether your vision is sufficient cause.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. It hurt, but I said it.

  “I was the one who charged in there. I’ll take my lumps. If it saves Jacob, it’s worth doing. It’s worth doing a hundred times over.” I didn’t correct her. I couldn’t bear to put yet more worry into the air.

  Cherabino kept up a steady stream of conversation, determinedly cheerful, the entire trip, while she plotted something. Hopefully something that involved a nice dinner; she was a hell of a cook, and I’d appreciate a good meal.

  Finally we pulled up to her house and got out, me pulling the bag I’d brought from the back in the hopes this might happen.

  The door clicked behind her, and I felt her decision.

  She jumped me. Her lips were on mine, her body forcing mine back against the wall. I kissed her back, like she was oxygen and I was suffocating. Our minds merged and her hands were everywhere.

  A nagging thought pushed at me as I had my hands in her hair, on her back, on her body. A nagging thought that wouldn’t let me go, even as she sucked on my collarbone in the most delightful way. . . .

  She knew where this was going, and my body was right there with her, standing at attention and eager to please. But.

  I grabbed her hands, gently; she pulled them away, suddenly, shutting down an automatic defense reaction only by sheer will. She stepped back, chest heaving, three buttons down the front of her blouse undone, showing the lace of her bra. Had I undone the buttons? Had she?

  “Too fast?” she said, uncertain. “I can slow down.”

  I struggled to breathe, to think. Only a promise, only a promise and knowledge of unavoidable consequences kept me those two feet apart; I wanted to close the distance with everything I had in me. “Do you have tea?” I asked. “Hot tea, maybe?”

  “Um, sure,” she said, straightening her hair. “You want tea, I’ll make tea.” She was confused, a little taken aback, a little offended. But the Link was on full-bore, and she couldn’t help feeling the conflict, the “stop” within me. “Hold on, I’ll make you the damn tea.”

  When she brought two steaming coffee cups out of the kitchen, I was settled on her too-small couch. I’d finally gotten myself under control, though the memory of the last time we’d been here was still strong; she jumped me then too, and I’d turned her down then too, for reasons that had seemed good at the time.

  I bricked up my mind, little by little. I reminded myself of my promise. Of the very real risk to her life if I was killed tomorrow. And then I took the tea from her. It was warm, and the warmth seeped into my hands.

  She sat down on the far end of the coffee table, not far, but not very close either. “What’s going on, Adam? I thought this was what you wanted. Considering.”

  I took a breath, and met her eyes. “You made me promise that this Link between us would fade. You’ve made me repeat that over and over and over again until we both hear it all too often. Sex is the opposite of that.”

  Now she was wary. “What are you talking about?”

  I found a coaster and set the hot cup down on the far side of the table from her, untouched. “Sex with telepaths doesn’t work like sex with normals, Cherabino. It’s . . . it’s a bigger deal. It’s a much bigger deal.” I struggled to say out loud what I’d grown up with. To explain why that promise changed everything. “If two telepaths are very careful, they can have a one-night stand. But only one, and only between total strangers.”

  She frowned. “What does—?”

  “Let me explain this!” my voice cracked out like a whip.

  Her face fell.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, and I was. As much as every apology hurt, as much as I hated every one, this time I said it. This time I was sorry. “It’s not that I don’t want to. Trust me, Cherabino, I want to. But we’re not strangers. And worse, we’re Linked.”

  Now she looked away, but I could feel slow understanding seeping in.

  “You made me promise you—I promised you, Cherabino—that the Link would be temporary. I promised. And I meant it. If we have sex tonight, that promise will be broken. The Link becomes permanent. And tonight, tonight that could kill you.”

  She backed away, toward her gun in the other room, slow, slow. “What do you mean kill me? How dangerous are you, exactly?”

  “In the wrong context, I’m a loaded bomb. If they kill me tomorrow . . .” I took a breath. Regrouped. “In the right context, I’m a puppy dog. You can ask Kara. It’s not—”

  “Why in hell are you always talking about Kara!”

  I stood up, defensive. “Why in hell do you keep pushing me? I’m only a man, Cherabino. Eventually I will tell you yes and you won’t be able to deal with the consequences.”

  She took a breath, and another. I felt her, slowly, clumsily, feeling for the Link. She wanted to read me. She wanted to know what I was really thinking.

  I opened every door I had and let her walk right in. She could see whatever she wanted.

  She went two steps in, poked around, and then ran.

  She turned, sat on the bench near the door, heart beating far, far too fast.

  She’d seen my feelings for her.

  “Should I leave?” I asked, damning the pride, the anger, all the rest. I was doing the right thing, damn it. Why did the right thing always end up with me caught up in thorns, bleeding for the thing I couldn’t have? “Do you want me to leave?” I repeated. The buses would have stopped for the night by the time I got to the stop, but a taxicab should come out this far. I had money. I could leave.

  It would hurt like a second-degree burn on my soul, but I could leave.

  “I thought you wanted sex,” she said very quietly.

  “I wanted to sleep. Like we did before. Just that. Just—”

  “Could you really kill me?” she asked.

  “Maybe. Yes. But I wouldn’t. Not on purpose. But if we have a deep Link . . . if they kill me, if they do worse than kill me . . . you’ll get the backlash. You c
ould die too. You’ll get the pain too. They could torture me, maybe. It’s a risk. And I won’t, I won’t risk—”

  Then she turned away. “I think you should go now.”

  I took a step toward her. Reached out to touch her shoulder. “This doesn’t mean—”

  “Stop it.” She pulled away.

  “I—”

  “Stop it. If you say one more word, we are through.”

  Anger and relief and rejection mixed like oil and water inside my soul. I swallowed them down and added shields until I could breathe. “I’ll get my coat, then.”

  As I waited outside in the cold night, I wondered if Swartz hadn’t been right the first time. Maybe I didn’t deserve a relationship, not yet. I looked back at the house, at all I’d said no to, and wondered. If I could say no to that, maybe I didn’t deserve anything at all.

  Maybe tomorrow was just as well.

  • • •

  “Little Five Points,” I told the cabbie, by impulse.

  “Where, buddy?” he pushed. He was a rough-looking impatient guy who’d have been perfectly at home in the London cabdrivers’ world of a hundred years ago. He even had the grayish hat, worn from years of use.

  I squelched the impulse to drop the information in his head, instead giving directions out loud. Then I sat back and sat on my conscience. I needed that boy’s screams out of my head. I needed Cherabino’s rejection out of my head.

  The section I wanted was nowhere near Joey’s territory. It was in a more upscale club area, surprisingly well lit, with a steady stream of foot traffic, most on the way to clubs or on their way back from them. Heavy brick buildings dominated the area, but there were wide sidewalks, cheerful art on every corner, and playhouses and salons and every other kind of business. Drugs were a large part of the minds around here, especially those headed down to the end of the street. In another mood, that would have bothered me. Now it just meant I was in the right place.

  The cabbie let me out on a corner with a brick building lit up with flashing lights. I tipped him just enough for him to forget me and looked up the dark street.

  The guy from the meeting had had very specific information about where to get Satin, and it started about a block from here, at the back of a closed antiques store.

  All I had to do was knock and tell them the password—hero—and they’d let me in.

  Maybe it was an old password, not good anymore, the decent part of me put in, hoping.

  The rest of me—the dark, angry, fatalistic me—knew the password was much too current.

  • • •

  It was a matter of fifteen minutes to get what I needed, or as much as the cash on me would buy. Two doses and a medically wrapped needle that should be safe. A beginning, at least.

  I should have shot up in the alleyway behind the place, or the one next door, with the rats climbing over the Dumpster behind the burger joint. I should have locked myself in a bathroom somewhere in one of the clubs and ignored the sticky floor and done it there. But instead I got another taxi and headed home.

  That was my first mistake.

  Paying attention to the cabdriver, who was talking about his kid, was my second mistake. Despite all odds, the kid went to the same school that Swartz taught at. He was off his usual route. He had just dropped somebody off. But he kept going on about the school, and the teachers who’d actually woken up his kid and got him liking school.

  The kid was a troublemaker, apparently, walking with the wrong crowd. Until this one coach intervened. Sent him home with a note. And then started teaching him baseball.

  “He still can’t hit worth a damn. But he goes to practice most every day and takes care of the balls. He’s learning how to pitch, he says. He’s home at a decent hour, and when I go to school to pick him up, he’ll introduce me to his friends. It’s the damnedest thing.”

  He dropped me off at my apartment building, taking the one twenty-ROC note I’d saved for the trip without complaint. It was at least three dollars short, never mind the tip, but he’d said he appreciated me listening.

  And now the tall building sat under the streetlight, the cracked and worn steps mocking me.

  I climbed them, slowly, and then the stairs up to my floor, the minds all around quiet and sleepy. Every step had an axiom from the program. Most all of them held Swartz’s voice, line after line of wisdom and censure mixed together.

  When I reached my apartment, I put the bag with the drug on the coffee table. I sat, in front of it, telling myself tomorrow might be it. They might kill me, if my idea, if my plan didn’t go well. Rex might kill me, for accusing him.

  But all of that, no matter how it happened, all of that would still make Swartz proud if I stood up like a man. If I did what I thought was right and changed what I could and accepted what I couldn’t.

  If . . . if I didn’t take the poison in front of me. Hangovers destroyed lives, Swartz said, but the highs were worse, because they seduced the very life from you.

  I threw away the damn drug.

  And then I sat, in the middle of my bedroom’s wave generator, and called Swartz.

  Selah picked up, bleary, but that was okay. She still let Swartz tell me he was proud of me before I had to hang up.

  CHAPTER 22

  The next morning dawned bright and early. Too early. Far, far too early.

  Captain Harris drove me there in total silence, my own nerves threatening to get the best of me.

  Cherabino probably wouldn’t have driven me anyway, not after our last fight.

  • • •

  The captain’s Guild pass was yellow, a bright, cheery canary color with lettering on both sides and a picture of him as a much younger man. I had never seen a yellow Guild pass. White, green, red, pink, silver, and many other colors, but never yellow. Perhaps it was only that the pass was so old, from a time when I’d still been in early Guild schooling. Perhaps not.

  Even under full lockdown, that pass got Captain Harris admitted to the Guild immediately, the guard in the atrium giving him a smile and a greeting. I, on the other hand, got only censure.

  The tension was building in me with every beat of my heart. Boom. Boom.

  Would this work?

  Boom. Boom.

  Would I . . . as me . . . leave the Guild intact? I had a fistful of dice, no more.

  Boom.

  Finally we stood outside the Guild Council chamber, once again with no seats to wait on. The most annoying company run by normals had seats to wait on. Not this one. Not the Guild.

  Jamie was waiting for us. She was surprised—and happy, and sad—to see Harris.

  “Justin.” Her voice was even.

  “Jamie.” So was his. Unimaginable currents lay between them, in a dimension much deeper than Mindspace. One I couldn’t touch and feel.

  And then the moment was over.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked Jamie quietly.

  “I’m here to stand with you. I’ve already spoken my piece.” She looked away then, and I could feel her sorrow, her grief, starting to creep out of the bounds she’d placed around them. She held her arms together, one thumb running over her wrist, back and forth, back and forth, the physical sensation designed to calm her, to override her emotions. It was working, slowly; most of what she projected without meaning to was that calm movement. At a Level Ten, Jamie had all sorts of coping mechanisms no one else had to have, like a giant who had to be careful where he placed his feet. I felt the deep grief leaking out again.

  You knew the people in the flyer that crashed? I asked quietly.

  All of them. Some were students. Some . . . some I knew in school myself. She sent layer upon layer of faces and memories and emotions. Then she stopped, pulling it in.

  There was nothing to say in the face of such facts. I’m sorry, I said, the words hurting me as the situation hur
t me.

  Before she pulled away, I saw one, small thought: she had missed me too, mourned my loss with so many others. Del Meyers too. Too much death, too much loss. At least I’d come back. The others . . .

  Without any real Ability beyond whatever Link they’d once had, Harris pulled the taller Jamie into an embrace, rubbing her back. She was stiff, but collapsed into it finally, crying.

  I was disconcerted. I’d seen Jamie cry perhaps twice, ever. If she was crying, the world had fallen apart.

  The door opened and the court officer said quietly, “They will see you now.”

  I trudged in and faced the court that could be my death. Jamie and Harris followed, quietly, her wiping tears.

  • • •

  Diaz, the head of the Council, looked like he hadn’t slept since the last time I’d seen him, like he’d aged ten years in two days. Even Rex had his polish scraped off, and the others—what there were of them—haggard. Except for Johanna, but her makeup was piled on deeper than I’d seen before. The Research chair, who’d had the questions asked about her department earlier, was noticeably absent, as was Charlie, my old classmate. Green was angry, fighting stupid angry, but the rest of the Council was full of sadness and shock. All of Mindspace rang with it, until it shattered your soul.

  Diaz’s hand shook.

  After the court officer introduced me and Jamie, she introduced Harris by name and the rank “neutral person.” Diaz paid a lot of attention then.

  “I’ve heard of the flyer crash,” I told the Council. “You have my sincerest sorrow with you. If there is any aid I can give, I will give it.”

  “Thank you,” Kim Lee said, the woman in charge of Finance, and the only woman at the table by appointment. The others had died or been replaced all too recently. “The Guild calls on all its members in need.” You are not a member, her mind implied.

  Adam Ward, Rex said, with a dark satisfaction. “You are accused of conspiring against Guild interests and providing false accusations leading to unnecessary harm of a high-ranking Guild citizen, accusations that may or may not have led to a decrease in security that contributed to the death of leading Council members. Is there anything you have to say before you are sentenced?”