Some of the Best from Tor.com: 2012 Edition: A Tor.Com Original

by Elizabeth Bear

  “Come home with me,” Molly said.

  Jada breathed slowly, her eyes shut.

  “You don’t have to go stay outside of town, or whatever you’re doing. My house is safe enough,” she said. “You’re covered in open wounds. You need a shower.”

  “That’s not all to the story,” Jada said. She sounded like heartbreak and tears choked back for too long. “There’s more.”

  “Not right now,” Molly said. “Not right now there’s not. Just come with me.”

  The cleanup was fast and involved no eye contact. Molly reapplied the sealant to all the wounds, from shoulder down, a red mass of cuts and opened flesh. There were only a few inches left, near Jada’s wrist, but that last patch of unmarred skin could wait. Molly worked wordlessly to bandage the scarification, wrapping the white linen around the glistening wounds, wet with antiseptic sealant and blood. She wiped down the utensils perfunctorily and rinsed them in the small corner sink. She would disinfect them before using them again, but she needed to leave the sweltering and impossibly tiny space of the clinic, filled as it was with ugly words and pain like ghosts.

  Jada’s arms trembled, weak, as she pushed herself off the table. Molly bundled the temp-reg shirt up and stuffed it in the woman’s pack—better not to be seen with it on the street. The pants might blend in if no one looked too closely, and the dark would obscure her scars. Jada followed like a shadow. Her story had drained vitality from her, so that her imposing strength seemed wooden and inflexible. Molly bit her tongue until the sharp taste of her own blood bloomed in her mouth. It was the only way to hold inside what she needed to say, to ask.

  Jada’s steps traced hers down the main street, past houses lit dimly from the inside, onto the side avenue, and into her small home. She imagined how it must look to someone from stationside, used to living in luxury: a one-room shack with a bed against the far wall, a kitchen against the other, and a rough-hewn door to the miniscule bathroom. Molly left the light off and grabbed the half-full bottle of liquor from the fridge, inspecting her own smudged fingerprints on the glass neck as if they held a dire secret. Jada closed the door behind them with an air of finality.

  “The shower’s through there,” Molly said.

  Jada nodded, dropping her pack next to the metal-framed bed. “You’ll have to rebandage the arm when I’m done.”

  “That’s fine,” Molly said. “I keep supplies on hand, here, too.”

  Jada went through the door to the bathroom. Molly let out a breath as the thin wood partition shut between them. She collapsed onto her bed. Her tablet bumped her hip. She picked it up and turned it on. The screen was still filled by Jada’s “Wanted” ad. She flicked the page away, wincing. She wasn’t likely to forget what it had said whether she was looking at it or not.

  What was she doing, dragging a fugitive syndicate assassin to her home? They’d have to share the bed; there was no way to sleep comfortably on the floor. In another context, having such a broad, strong, handsome woman between the sheets with her would have thrilled Molly, but not like this. Instead, it was simply alarming.

  The words had just come out of her. It had seemed like the right thing to do, offering a little measure of comfort—a shower, a bed—in the face of that horrible story. The realization that it had only been a few days since Jada had came into the clinic was enough to throw Molly off balance. At the time, she’d been afraid of her, she’d been angry, she hadn’t wanted a thing to do with the whole business—and now, the same woman was in her house. She heard the water to the shower kick on, a dull hum.

  It was difficult not to feel like she’d lost her mind.

  She sipped from the cold bottle, the icy burn of liquor down her throat a comfort of its own. The story, though. How had she not seen through Jada’s brittle sharpness during that first conversation, when she’d confessed to killing Eten? It shamed her to think that she had so easily mistaken agony for arrogance. Another sip, and she shimmied off of the bed. Sleeping in her work clothes was out of the question. She stripped naked in the middle of the room, listening for the shower to cut off and glad when it didn’t. She had her scars, too, and they were private. The ragged, raised brand of white flesh on her flank, that was her own and no one else’s. Exile, it said in the always intelligible language of symbols.

  Molly pulled on a pair of thin shorts and an equally airy tank top. Alone, she slept nude, but she wasn’t alone tonight. The shower cut off. She kicked her dirty laundry into the corner. She would take it all to the washing-shop later in the week.

  Jada stepped out into the main room, toweling her frizzed hair dry. She’d put her same tank top and pants on, but her skin was scrubbed free of road dust and she looked healthier all together. Molly offered her the bottle. She took it, casting her a narrow-eyed look.

  “I’m not trying to get you into bed,” Molly said.

  “All right,” she replied, as if it didn’t bother her either way.

  The dim light from the moon had been enough to wander the house, but Molly clicked on the bedside lamp to re-treat and rebandage the wounds on Jada’s arm. With that done, she turned it off again. They sat side by side on the mattress, passing the bottle back and forth. Molly took one last gulp and passed the final mouthful to Jada, who finished it off with a dramatic tilt of her head. Her throat worked as she swallowed.

  Molly was glad not to have to speak. It was easier to tug on the covers as a hint and crawl underneath them. At first she lay facing the wall, but a warm hand pushed at her shoulder.

  “Can’t lay on my other arm,” Jada murmured.

  “Oh,” Molly whispered, rolling over to face the room.

  The other woman settled behind her, a length of heat against her back. After an awkward, shuffling moment, that thick, bandaged arm came around her waist and tugged her closer. Her breath came out in a huff. Jada’s body fit hers almost too perfectly, cupping her tinier frame with plenty of room to spare. The press of fingertips on her ribs was like a brand in its own right. She shifted and closed her eyes. It was dark, warm, and too close. An unwelcome thrill skated down her spine as Jada moved again, hand sliding on her side. Finally, they settled, and her nerves did also. It had been a long time since anyone had shared her bed.

  In the space of a breath, she forgot to hold in her words.

  “I’ve never loved a single person that much,” she whispered.

  Jada stiffened against her for only a moment and relaxed again. Her palm cupped the curve of Molly’s hip and stroked up, under her shirt, the simple caress of skin on skin knocking the breath out of her in a gasp. She pressed her face into the pillow to muffle it, too late. Jada’s blunt fingernails scratched across the plane of her stomach.

  “Be thankful,” Jada murmured, each syllable a burst of warm breath teasing the hairs on the back of Molly’s neck. “All your decisions are probably much easier.”

  Hours later, Molly lay awake in the loose grip of the sleeping syndicate woman, staring across the room at shadows on the far wall. All your decisions are probably much easier. She must have known—she must have.

  Molly woke first and pried herself out of the cocoon of blankets to shower. The cool water sluicing over her skin was like heaven, washing away the previous day’s sweat and dust. By the time she emerged, wrapped in a towel, Jada was up and drinking a cup of water at her sink. The morning sun illuminated her white skin, contrasting it sharply with the pink scars and red-dotted linen bandages.

  “Do you want to finish today?” Molly asked.

  “Borrow your bathroom, first,” she said.

  Molly dropped the towel as soon as the door closed and threw on a shirt and skirt. She was so unused to sharing her space it hadn’t occurred to her to bring a change of clothes into the bathroom. She ran a brush through her slick, damp hair, cool water dripping down the collar of her shirt. A moment later, Jada emerged and crossed the room to shoulder her pack.

  “Ready?” she asked.

  Molly nodded while Jada walked outside. Wit
h a sharp pulse of adrenaline stabbing through her guts, she picked up her tablet and slipped it into the front pocket of her skirt before she followed the other woman out. They stood in the sun for a moment while Molly blinked hard, adjusting her eyes. Sleep and a shower had rejuvenated Jada, but now that she knew to look for it Molly saw the hard angles at which she held herself, the pinched line of her mouth. Her lips were actually rather plump in her sleep, when she was relaxed.

  They made the walk to the clinic nearly in private; the only other people out were children running errands for their parents—fetching water, going to the market for the day’s milk if there was any to be had, picking up laundry. Molly passed through the clinic door into her domain and sighed.

  This was the last day. The cutting would be finished, and the story, too. The last day, she thought hard, repetitively. All my decisions should be easier, easier than hers.

  Molly rinsed the tools at the sink, patted them dry, and treated them with antiseptic wipes. The stainless steel gleamed, wickedly sharp. Jada had arranged herself lying on the table, her heels hanging off the edge. She’d even put the towel down already.

  Molly pressed one hand over Jada’s to keep her from moving and traced the first beading red line. It curved up to meet the older wounds in an arc, tying it all together, making it one. Jada flexed her hand under Molly’s. Molly squeezed it in return.

  “I was still lying there with him, sure that I was never going to move again,” Jada said.

  I couldn’t survive it, I wasn’t that tough. No one is that tough. I’d carved out a piece of myself and left it cold and crumpled in the fucking foyer. But at least, I thought, my boss and my family, my syndicate, they would be fine. I was old, anyway, as old as he was. It was time. I was okay with that. We’d go out in our private glory—it wasn’t like I would die alone, not really. So I grabbed the knife in my leg and pulled it out. That hurt, but not enough to wake me up. There’s a reason you see so many murder-suicides with couples. They always say it’s possessive, on the newsfeeds, but that’s not right—it’s that you realize a minute too late what you’ve done, and there’s no going back.

  A call came through right then, while I was weighing his knife in my hand and considering how to finish myself off. I had no way to block calls from my boss. The holo popped up from my wristband and he was staring, his mouth open, because there I was in the dark covered in blood and crying.

  “There are police here,” he said to me. “They’ve got recorded video testimony.”

  Suddenly I knew why Eten was late getting home. I laughed, because what else was I going to do? He’d gotten us. He well and truly had. Killing him hadn’t done a damn thing. I’d choked his life out of him for no reason.

  Maybe he’d bargained for immunity for us both, but I hadn’t asked.

  I hadn’t asked. I just acted, because I’m stupid that way.

  I ripped that wristband off and threw it. The syndicate was dead. Eten was dead. I was dead, but I owed him something.

  —“This,” Molly said.

  “Yeah,” she answered.—

  We had spent fifteen years together. Almost every day, I saw his face when I woke up and when I went to sleep. We ate from the same table. We shared the same bed. We did each other’s most important scars. I knew every inch of him, and he of me. Fifteen years is a long time when it’s half your whole life. I used my own hands to end that.

  Maybe he’d arranged immunity. Maybe that was his deal, and he was afraid to tell me. Maybe I killed our future, or maybe he was planning on taking us both out, together. You understand, I’m fair game—not just to the police, but to any syndicate with a grudge against good old dead Dawnslight. There’s no running away. They catch you when you run, they do. There’s only running as far as you need to, and finishing your business. I’m old enough. I did enough. I made the choice, and rolled those dice, and there’s nothing else.

  That’s just how stories like mine end.

  Molly finished a last swirl and peeled it up, away.

  “Are you sure?” she asked as she set aside the tools.

  “Positive,” Jada murmured.

  Molly picked up the steel tray and put it on the edge of the sink. She ran the taps cool, rinsing the scalpel of its gory coating and the tweezers as well. The water ran pink down the drain. She’d forgotten her gloves; her fingernails were caked with blood. She frowned, scrubbing at them. The weight of her tablet dragged at her skirt like a stone.

  “I need to take this out to the incinerator,” she said, gesturing to the tray. “Do you mind?”

  “No,” Jada said. She lifted her arm above her head, turning it to and fro.

  Molly pushed the door open with her elbow, holding the tray away from her body. She walked under the minimal shadow of the side of the building, through dry and cakey dirt that came up in clouds under her shoes. Half-dead scrub bushes were barely managing to grow at the back of the building by the incinerator, more branch than leaf, brown and crisped. Molly dumped the contents of the tray into the mouth of the machine—the whole town used it, but it was located behind the clinic for medical convenience—and closed its lid. She punched the button with a quivering finger and closed her eyes, listening to the whoosh of the core heating.

  Her red-crusted fingernails drew her accusatory gaze when she slipped her tablet into her hand. She pulled up the wanted ad. It was one of those impossible decisions you just have to make, because not making it is the same as making it, Jada had said. There was a link at the bottom to the police hotline. She tapped it and put the tablet in whisper-mode, lifting it to her ear.

  “May I help you?” a cool voice on the other end asked.

  “I have this woman in my clinic,” she murmured. “The one from the ad.”

  “Excellent,” he said, no warmer. “Our patrol is nearby. Stall her for twenty minutes, ma’am, if you can safely do so.”

  “The money,” she hissed. “I’ll tell her to run for the hills if you don’t promise me they’ll give me the money the moment—”

  “Yes, of course,” he said. “They will be authorized to transfer funds upon their successful operation. If you do your part.”

  “Thank you,” Molly gasped and shut the link.

  Her breath stuck in her throat. She put a hand to her mouth, pressing hard enough to cut her lips on her teeth in a burst of pain, as if she could physically hold in a scream. Fifteen thousand, instead of three; fifteen thousand could buy so much more than the gene therapy. Fifteen thousand could buy air conditioning, could buy clothes, could buy food. Fifteen thousand was a life.

  She wanted to laugh at herself—of course it was a life. Jada’s, specifically.

  Molly’s heart hammered against her ribs as she walked around the side of the building. What if Jada had heard her somehow, had picked up her bag and left already? The door would have made a sound, she was sure, but—it hadn’t been so long ago that Jada had pressed fingers to her vulnerable spine in threat, real or fake. There were uglier possibilities than her leaving without a good-bye, if she had heard.

  Twenty minutes, Molly thought wildly as she came inside with the empty tray. Jada was sitting on the table, dabbing sealant on her wounds with a wad of gauze. She flicked her eyes up, cataloguing Molly in a way that made her cold to her toes—a sharp focus, predatory—then looked back down at her arm.

  “You did a good job,” she said.

  “For a doctor,” Molly replied.

  Her voice was steady. She had assumed it would come out as tight as her throat felt, or raw like it was full of barbs. Jada was right, though; the lines made a macabre but beautiful painting on her skin, red and white, a canvas of flesh. She briefly regretted not fitting Eten’s name in somewhere, but perhaps that would have been too obvious.

  “My name isn’t Molly,” she said into the budding silence, refusing to let it settle.

  Jada put aside the gauze pad. “I assumed.”

  “You gave me a story,” she said.

  “You want
to give me one, too?” Jada asked.

  Molly pulled the chair out from her desk and yanked it across the floor with a screech of wood on tile. She thumped it in front of the examination table and sat, hands in her lap.

  “You don’t have to listen,” she said, looking at the dried blood again. “You could leave. You’ve finished your—business, your responsibility.”

  I’m giving you a chance, she thought desperately.

  “Tell me,” Jada said, her posture sagging into a slump. She cradled the wounded arm over her lap, and neither woman moved to bandage it. The cuts told a tale, of and between them.

  Molly reached up, tentative, and put her hand on Jada’s. Her fingers were still red with her sunburn, peeling finally. She didn’t pull away. Molly tilted her head back and their eyes met, locking, as their hands did also. She wet her dry lips with the tip of her tongue, tasting the sharp tang of the wounds she’d made with her teeth.

  “Molly isn’t short for anything,” she said. “I picked it out of a book.”

  “I was from the E-6 station,” she said.

  My name was Sharad Rathore, and I was a doctor. I had money but not enough money to pay for the school I’d been through, and my father had lost his job.

  I was a good daughter. Doctors have access to all kinds of things—especially in a big hospital where it’s always busy, where people fail to fill out necessary paperwork all the time, and where the security checks are very lax. So, I thought I would sell. Just a little. Enough to make ends meet.

  —“Oh, that was—” Jada began.

  “Stupid, I know,” Molly said.—

  I didn’t know that the syndicates did not appreciate freelancing. It messed with their business, threw off their sales. I was too cheap and too accessible. I realize they could have just killed me, but instead, they set me up. That last meeting I had wasn’t with a buyer. It was a police officer, and the judge they sent me to was syndicate-owned. I went to the court and watched them decide what was going to happen to me without saying a word, shaking in my shoes. The courtroom turned me into a little girl again. But they said they were being very lenient, and it was to be exile instead of prison.