Zero Factor: A Cybershock Story

by Stacy Gail

  Couldn’t she do this without making physical contact?

  Dayum, she really was a deadhead. After all, she had touched him once already and the world hadn’t mushroomed up. And she hadn’t just touched him. She’d kissed the frigging breath out of him, molded her body to him like an alley cat in heat while the juncture between her thighs had given her a new and startling definition of hot and ready—

  “Either you do this now, or I leave your skinny ass here to deal with Colonel Fynn’s tender mercies.”

  “I’m not skinny.” With a do-or-die huff, Via stripped off one glove and tried not to vomit when desert-dry air touched the exposed skin. “You’re going to talk to me while I do this.”

  “I don’t want you distracted.”

  And she didn’t want to be inundated by images she couldn’t help but see. “Too bad,” she said while her palms began to sweat. Her bared hand came to hover above his nape. With a horrified kind of fascination, she watched her fingers tremble as she stopped a fraction of an inch away. “You talk to me so I can think about something else, or this doesn’t get done. Why do you think it was Fynn who tried to kill you?”

  He made that growling sound of impatience. “You’re a psionic, you saw it as well as I did, yeah?”

  “I saw your commander praise you for never shirking your duty and reward you for it. Then there was this explosion and I saw…your boot. And Weddo—God, Weddo’s body…”

  “You seem pretty hooked on that guy Weddo. Isn’t he a little old for you to be knocking boots with?”

  “Knocking boots?”

  “Shyte, you’re such a noob, it hurts. Having sex, bubble-farmer.”

  “You know,” Via said when she was finally able to find her voice, “I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone more heinous than you. Just my luck.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I’ve known Weddo since I was fifteen,” she all but shouted at him. “He’s a genuinely good guy, but I doubt you even know what that is.”

  “Maybe I don’t, now that you mention it.” He kept his back to her, and she shivered at the darkness crowding in on his tone. “You doing this or not?”

  “I’m on it, I’m on it.” Sucking in a breath as if she were about to dive headfirst into uncharted waters, Via placed the sensitive pads of her fingers against his nape…and saw.

  Saw a boy silently crying into a thin pillow in a dorm crowded with children crying out their abject loneliness.

  Saw an older boy plucked out of a playground fight by Colonel Fynn and instructed on how to break his opponent in a more efficient manner.

  Saw the colonel fasten a gold medallion around that boy’s neck, who accepted it with a stiff salute and proud lift of a squared-off chin.

  Saw the day he was told his eyes would be replaced by cyberoptics and to accept it like a good little soldier.

  Saw a teen running headlong into a mine that lost him a leg and scarred his face.

  For a moment that seemed like an eternity, all she saw was Locke.

  “Do you feel it?”

  Via barely heard him through the psychic noise. But if she could just keep him talking, she might not get lost in who he was. “I feel…” So much. So much of who he was. “I feel a bump, but it’s tiny.”

  “That’s the microchip. Cut along the ridge and dig it out.”

  “It’s going to hurt.” Obviously, but she felt it was only fair to say it.

  “Pain is a zero factor, citizen. Don’t worry, I won’t flinch.”

  He wouldn’t, Via thought as sensation after sensation washed over her, and with every wave her heart broke a little more for the lonely boy who had been made to become a living robot, desensitized to pain and alienated from any of the warmer emotions that made a man human.

  “So, this Fynn guy,” she managed, squinting in an effort to see past the cascading images in her head to where she laid the knife’s edge against his skin. “Why are you so convinced your commanding officer was the one behind the bombing today? Both in the vision and in real time he praised you, rewarded you. Then after the blast he yelled about insurgency, so I’m thinking the bomb somehow came from the outside—”

  “It was the cigar, detonated by his smart-link.”

  Via stilled for just a moment, until the surprise passed. Then she drew the blade across his skin with a cringing wince. “Sorry.”

  As promised, he didn’t move a muscle. “Don’t be. Just hurry.”

  “How can you be sure?” Via went on, now needing the distraction for another reason. The sight of his blood made her stomach want to run for the nearest exit. “Everything was so chaotic—”

  “I’m positive. What you saw today was an attempted TK.”

  “TK?”

  “Short for team-killing, or killing a member of your own team. I just don’t understand why Colonel Fynn would do such a thing,” he added, and the encroaching darkness in his tone returned, as deep and desolate as a bottomless pit. “This was a nothing mission, overseeing a delivery from bubble-farmers and keeping the no-goods under control. Our unit has performed this and countless other mundane tasks without mishap—the transfer of patients to medical facilities, acting as extra security for government dignitaries, rounding up psionics under the PAI Law—”

  “You mean you’ve kidnapped innocents who didn’t ask to be born, much less born all jacked up.” Steeling herself, she dug the point of the knife at the tiny bump under the skin and bore down when she spied a glimmer of metal embedded in the bloody subcutaneous flesh. “Tell me, do you have any idea what happens to those people after you hand them over?”

  The faintest grunt of pain escaped him as she dug. “That’s above my paygrade.”

  “What a convenient answer. FYI, soldier-boy, those innocents you’ve kidnapped get stripped of all clothing, then of all dignity, then of all sense of self, thanks to a deprogramming system involving high-powered psychotropic drugs and cerebral electrodes. Then, once these poor things no longer know who they are, they’re plugged into pods and exposed to so much information feeding in from global satellites, they usually die within a year—but not before they go insane. That’s why the government needs a constant influx of new psionics—they break them faster than they can use them.”

  “You don’t know that. That’s just the Lady Pirate’s propaganda—”

  “I do know it, because I’ve seen it.”

  “How?”

  “The same way I saw you get blown to pieces.” With a jerk, she ripped the tiny mechanized piece out of its resting place and quickly lasered the wound. Then she handed him both the knife and the chip, so disgusted and horrified she couldn’t stand the thought of touching him a moment longer. “To know you’ve delivered psionics to this fate when they did nothing more than be born… I’m just sorry I went to the trouble of saving the life of a monster.”

  Shaking from head to toe and wanting only to get away from him, Via turned and walked back to the bike, leaving silence in her wake.

  A monster.

  Huddled at the base of a jagged needle of a tower that overlooked the ruins of Old Las Vegas, Locke scanned the area with the rifle cradled in his lap. He wouldn’t sleep tonight. Though they were miles from where he had left the microchip stuffed down the gullet of a rat he’d managed to catch, he knew too well the colonel wouldn’t be fooled by that little trick for long. Sooner or later, the militia would pour troops into the older sectors and not stop until he was found.

  But that wasn’t why he couldn’t sleep.

  Curled up in a tight ball in the dubious shelter of the bike, Via shivered in the cold desert night. Though her agridome khakis were long-sleeved and covered just about every inch of her, they were no match for the bone-jarring chill of the nighttime desert. Even in sleep she looked miserable, and though Locke told himself that only her survival, and not her misery, was his problem, the signs of strain about her eyes and the way her arms wrapped about her body for warmth and comfort bugged the crap out of him
.

  Saving the life of a monster.

  If he were honest about it, Locke had to admit there had always been a bad taste that lingered whenever his unit had been ordered to sweep for psionics. At the time he’d told himself he was helping these special citizens do their duty for their country, that they should feel grateful they had a unique opportunity to use their highly prized gifts to make UNAS stronger.

  Now, all he could remember were their screams.

  Maybe Via was right. Maybe he was a monster.

  A small sound from Via brought his attention bouncing back to where she slept. On automatic he blinked into night vision, moving into Threat-Assessment mode, but it was unnecessary. Even if he couldn’t see her R.E.M and the twitching of her hands, the tense frown puckering her brow told him she was dreaming some seriously unhappy dreams.

  No surprise there.

  Another sound whispered from her, a whimper of fear, of pain. Locke was on his feet and crossing to her before he was conscious of moving. Keeping the pulse rifle within easy reach, he hunkered down behind her and curled his body against hers, spoon-fashion, and the delicious heat of her body soaked in through his fatigues like a longed-for dream.

  Then she jerked to full wakefulness, and in a nanosecond he had a wildcat on his hands.

  “Easy.” The heels of her boots kicked back against his shins so hard he suspected she would have broken bone had he not had his legs meched-out after losing one in battle at the beginning of his Lifer career. “Easy, Via Brede. It’s me, it’s Locke.”

  “I know!” She threw an elbow that just clipped his jaw. “Let…go!”

  “I’m not going to hurt you, you little hellion!” Holding on now because if he let go he was dead certain she’d run off into the night and get herself killed, Locke tangled his booted feet in hers and wrapped his arms around her fragile frame like a straitjacket. “You were having a bad dream and shivering, so I was trying to make you more comfortable, you read me?”

  “I don’t like being touched!”

  Especially if the one doing the touching was a monster. The words trembled on his lips, but since he couldn’t tell if the anger behind them was directed at her or himself, Locke remained silent, holding onto her until at last her struggles ran out of fuel. She lay in his arms as her hair tumbled over her face, exhausted and breathing hard as if they’d just had screaming, sweaty, scratches-down-the-back sex.

  Locke slammed down hard on the wayward thought. If it had been any other woman, that probably would have been appropriate, but this was Via Brede, the woman he’d kidnapped and the psionic who was sorry he still breathed. He’d be a stone-cold bastard to think this could turn into anything remotely intimate.

  But still…

  There really was something pleasurable about spooning with this resistant bundle of stubborn femininity. Maybe he did have a glitch in his system, but as her shoulder blades pressed into his chest, he discovered just wrapping himself around her was hotter than any overtly sensual delight he’d ever experienced at Madame Cedrine’s Pleasure Palace. If that made him a monster, then so be it. He’d cope with that reality, as long as he could go on holding Via in a way that fanned the flame igniting in his loins.

  Nearly a minute of silence stretched between them before she huffed out a short breath. “I’m fine now, soldier-boy. You can go.”

  He wasn’t fine. Much to his shock he found the longer he held her, the more addicted to the feel of her he became, though he made sure her little bottom didn’t come into contact with the hardening evidence of his desire. No need to let her know what a complete bastard he was. “I’m not going anywhere. Go to sleep, Via.”

  “I can’t sleep like this.”

  “Why not?”

  She wriggled against him, and he had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from groaning out loud. “You’re touching me.”

  “I’m staving off hypothermia.” And torturing himself with the most erotic delight a man could have while still fully clothed, but she didn’t need to know that. “Sleep, Via. Now.”

  “I will if you’ll stop touching me.”

  “If you’re worried I’m going to rape you, don’t. You’re too skinny and mean for my taste.” First a monster, now a liar. Dayum. Apparently there was no level to which he wouldn’t stoop.

  Her spine stiffened. “Gee, so sorry I’m not the vapid piece of silicon-enhanced meat you’re obviously used to,” she snipped, saccharine sweet. “But that wasn’t what I meant. I mean I don’t like being touched, by anyone. Get it?”

  Because he was so fixated on the heaviness in his lower region, he honestly didn’t for a couple of seconds. Then the light went on. “Your powers work through touch?”

  “My curse, you mean. And yes, it only works through touch. It’s called psychometry; look it up when you have the time. But for right now, do us both a favor and get the hell off me.”

  “I’m not on you.” But he could imagine what it would be like to be on her, those long legs of hers bunched up, maybe over his shoulders as he plunged like a wild man into her in a mindless pursuit of a shattering release, and her cries would mingle with his as at last an explosion of pleasure rocked between them… Closing his eyes for a moment, Locke bit down on another moan. “I’m seriously not on you. Trust me.”

  She pulled at the unmoving arm clamped over her waist. “I just know I can’t sleep this way. I don’t want to…to get anything from you.”

  That made him feel vaguely dirty. “Excuse me?”

  “Just the merest brush of your commander’s hand through the rip in my glove showed me the vision of you going boom.” She held up her left hand, which was encased in the glove that was now well-ventilated with a V-shaped tear. “When I touch things or people, I never know what I’m going to get—the past, present or future. I just know I don’t like it.”

  Locke stared at the glove and suspected she must always wear them, along with the baggy khakis. Even the curtain of her long hair shrouded all but the delicate oval of her face. “Have you always been so sensitive?”

  She nodded. “When I was younger, my parents tried wrapping me in bandages and telling everyone I had a skin condition, which I suppose is true. Anything that touches my skin has a profound effect on me.”

  Locke tried to wrap his gray matter around going through a lifetime of not being able to touch anything, or anyone. He couldn’t do it. “How is it possible you’ve managed to stay hidden all these years?”

  “I have a lot of loving people who were willing to help keep my curse on the down-low, while at the same time training me to protect myself should I ever have the need to.”

  “Aha,” he said, at last getting the answer to a nagging mystery. “I knew you’d been trained. Hand-to-hand combat?”

  “I’m not too bad at it,” was the vague reply, which made him think she was one bubble-farmer he wouldn’t want to mess with. “My parents are smart people, Locke. Long before the PAI Law was enacted, they believed the continental government had plans to use its psionic citizens for its own purposes. Thanks to the foresight of my parents, I was taught how to take care of myself.”

  “You’re right. They were smart to do that.”

  “They couldn’t outmaneuver teen hormones, though,” she added with a sigh. “Everything almost came to an end the year I turned fifteen. That was the year the PAI Law was enacted, and the year I had my one and only crush.”

  He lifted a brow. “Fifteen, huh? Were you a late bloomer?”

  “No, just well-insulated from the world. His name was Ricardo, he lived two flights down from our penthouse apartment, and I thought there had never been a more beautiful human being to ever walk this planet.” A small laugh escaped her. “Stupid, huh?”

  “No. Normal.” By the age of fifteen, he’d been forced to get his first pair of cyberoptics. “Did Ricardo like you? He must have.” Unless, of course, Ricardo was a blithering idiot.

  Her shoulders moved in a little shrug. “I think so. We weren’t able to
see a lot of each other, as my parents watched me like a hawk. But one day I managed to get free just long enough to get my very first kiss—and discover a terrible twist to my curse.”

  “What?”

  “You know better than anyone what it is,” came the flat reply. “For some reason, I can transfer what I see or feel to another person through a kiss. I’m sure you can imagine Ricardo’s shock, and my parents’ desperation in getting me hidden, double-quick. That’s how I wound up in Agridome #4, and that’s where I’ve lived with my curse ever since.”

  “Until today.” All too clearly, Locke remembered how his inner vision had been filled with his own death the instant Via’s mouth clamped over his. But just as easily he remembered how every other sense he possessed had been filled with the most exquisite sensation of shared pleasure he had ever known, almost as though the delight they’d both found in the kiss tangled together to become a well of ever-deepening pleasure. “You’re very gifted, Via.”

  “I’m cursed, and I swear I’ll find a way to kill myself before I allow you or any other militia dog to catch me. I’d rather die than be erased and made gaga-crazy.”

  “I won’t turn you in,” Locke said, and was surprised at the vehemence in his tone. But when it came right down to it, the prospect of Via Brede becoming a mindless, pitiable thing was something he flat-out refused to even think about. He was a soldier trained to protect those who couldn’t protect themselves, he thought, grim-faced. That was why he needed to protect her now. “I don’t want you to worry about that. The one thing you do have to worry about is that you’re out of your bubble now.”

  She shivered. “Roger that.”

  “Whether you like it or not, you are gifted,” he went on, pulling her closer to his chest so her shivering would stop. “And I need you to use your gifts to help uncover what the damage is with Colonel Fynn. You help me get him, and I’ll be sure you’re protected for the rest of your life.”