by M. D. Cooper
She was on her feet, though she didn’t even remember standing. “Are you kidding me?”
Schramm rose, holding his hands in a placating gesture. “Hang on. Bear with me here.”
“Bear with you?” Reece repeated, not taking her eyes off the guy. Though she was taller than average, he topped her height by at least fifteen centimeters. He looked to be nearly three times her weight, too.
As much as she preferred to be taller than other people—so she could use her height to intimidate them—his superior size in and of itself was not her biggest objection.
No, the thing that made her want to wring Schramm’s neck was the obvious fact that the guy had been genetically—and probably prosthetically—modded. All of which was in direct violation of Machete’s charter with Orion. His size could be dismissed as an unusual genetic quirk, but the hue and unnatural uniformity of his eyes was a giveaway.
Schramm’s eyes had widened with alarm. A noteworthy expression, as the man’s demeanor was so typically low-key that it was sometimes frustrating. “He’s from outsystem. Born in the Perseus Arm, beyond the Expansion Districts. Entirely legal. No conflicts with our charter.”
Her outrage ebbed to mere animosity. “The Perseus Arm? That place is barely civilized. It might as well be outside the Orion Freedom Alliance. I won’t work with a genmod.”
“Why not?” The man spoke up, his voice a smooth baritone. It was a rather pleasant timbre, which only irritated her further.
“Why should I? Haven’t you been tweaked to be smarter, stronger, and faster than any natural human could ever hope to be?” Before he could respond, she stalked across the room, grabbed her suitcase, and yanked it toward the door.
“Don’t walk out,” Schramm intoned evenly. “Not if you want to keep working here.”
Reece didn’t respond well to threats. “Why would you even need me to, when you have that on your payroll?” She stabbed a finger at the genmodded man on her way out.
As she rode the elevator down, Reece leaned against the wall and closed her eyes. She’d handled that poorly.
No, that was an understatement. She’d handled that spectacularly badly. She needed her job with Rexcare. In one uncharacteristic fit of anger, she might have thrown away all of her years of faithful service, and careful contract negotiations.
Idiot!
It just wasn’t like her. She’d let her abhorrence for modding cloud her judgment.
She gently thumped her head against the wall and groaned.
Then she straightened. Right. Damage control. She needed a plan of action.
She couldn’t go straight back to Schramm’s office. She’d have to complete this epic flounce, then allow Schramm to placate her. She couldn’t give in too easily without losing face, but Schramm knew she would listen to reason.
He also knew that she needed this job.
But if she managed to get past this outburst to continue working for Rexcare, she’d be required to work with that big meat machine.
The thought sent a shiver up her spine. Just how modded out was he? Did he have one of those sentient AI’s in his brain, like a case of split personality disorder, or some bodysnatcher tale?
She didn’t know if she could be alone in a room with someone who was listening to some machine tell him what to do. What if it malfunctioned and he went mad?
She was living in a horror movie.
With barely a nod to Travin, she wheeled her suitcase through the lobby and out the grand entrance, feeling like a fool. Why had she even brought her damn luggage? She should have left it at home until she’d had the full picture of what this job entailed.
She’d just been so sure that whatever it was, she could handle it.
Funny how fast things could snowball out of control.
She didn’t even have a car waiting for her. Growling under her breath, she waved, hoping to attract an unoccupied taxi.
Not likely. She’d need to make a request at the taxi depot and wait.
Just as she activated her overlays to do so, a smooth baritone voice behind her said, “Need a ride?”
She drew a deep breath and steeled herself before turning around and meeting his eyes—his too-perfect, slightly glowing, obviously-synthetic eyes. She willed herself not to flinch. “I’ll call for one.”
“My car’s right over there.” He pointed. “I’m Trey, by the way. And I’m not what you think.”
“You mean you’re not a genetically modified abomination?”
“Genetically modified, yes. Abomination, no. At least, I don’t think so. I left the Harris System before it could come to that.”
She hesitated. He didn’t act like a machine. And she needed her job.
“Tell you what,” Trey said, “sit down with me, ask me all the questions you want, and if you aren’t satisfied at the end, I’ll tell Schramm that I’m the one who refuses to work with you.”
“Why would you do that?” She frowned at him. She didn’t trust a stranger’s generosity.
“Because I’m not a bounty hunter. This isn’t a job I can do without someone who is. And Schramm says you’re the best.”
The words gave her hope. Not because of the obvious attempt to flatter her, but if Schramm had said that, she might just still have a job.
“Fine. I’ll hear you out. Meet me at the Debtor’s Haven in thirty minutes.” As she said it, she put in her taxi request.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“A betting lounge.”
“Why don’t you let me drive you?” he offered again.
“Nope. I don’t ride with anyone who’s possessed by an AI.”
“I’m not. No AI up here.” Trey tapped his temple with a fingertip.
“We’ll see. Thirty minutes.” She stared at him.
He sighed. “All right, then. I’ll be there waiting for you.”
She watched him walk away. He had a confident, long-legged stride.
He didn’t walk like a machine. Simulacrums had ginger, careful steps, watching out for unevenness or other obstacles. Trey walked like a human.
But then again, a meat machine wasn’t like a straight-up robot. It had the advantage of an organic brain to work with its own body.
Thinking about it turned her stomach. When her taxi arrived a full five minutes after Trey’s departure, she sank into the back seat with a sense of relief to know he wouldn’t creep up on her and offer a ride once more.
* * * * *
On the way to Marky’s lounge, Reece pulled herself together, piece by piece. Yes, meeting a genmodded person had been a shock, but he was still some version of a human and not a boogeyman. She could handle this.
She could handle anything.
As she psyched herself up, she ran her thumbs over the handles of her 47 Specials. It soothed her until she noticed the driver’s anxious glances in the rearview mirror.
Right. Better stop touching my guns.
She folded her hands primly in her lap, and the driver’s shoulders relaxed.
Ten minutes later, they’d arrived at the Debtor’s Haven. The driver had put her bags on the sidewalk and scurried away with obvious relief.
Reece had never hated a suitcase so much. She felt like an idiot rolling it into the betting lounge, with her bag over her other shoulder as if she intended to stay there gambling for a very, very long time.
A few of the regulars noted the baggage and gave her a look of respect, which Reece decided was kind of cool.
By the time she reached the back of the lounge—the location of Marky’s personal table—she was grinning ear to ear. Until her eyes met Trey’s unnatural ones.
She couldn’t be sure what her face looked like to others at that moment, but if she had to guess, she’d bet it was somewhere in the neighborhood of ‘grim determination’.
Fortunately, Marky sat alongside Trey, looking unperturbed. That was a good sign. When Marky got angry, she didn’t hold back.
Reece had warned Marky of the incoming visitor, an
d her plans to meet with him.
“Your friend here says he’s never been to a betting lounge,” Marky said by way of greeting and gestured at the chair next to her for Reece to sit in.
“I wouldn’t call him a friend,” Reece said, shoving her luggage to the side and sitting.
“Well that’s a shame,” Marky drawled. “Why’s that?”
“I don’t make friends with hardware.” Reece looked at Trey while she said it.
“You’ll have to excuse her.” Marky addressed Trey with an insolent smirk, but her condescending tone didn’t offer the apology the words themselves seemed to. “She grew up on the wrong side of the tracks and has a chip on her shoulder about unfair advantages.”
“If that’s true,” Reece countered, “then I’m not the only one.”
Marky lifted a shoulder eloquently. “I lived on the wrong side of the wrong tracks, so I hardly count.” She looked up as a server came by, depositing drinks and napkins for the three of them.
“It’s busy today. What’s going on?” Reece asked trying to forestall the inevitable heart-to-heart with Trey. She usually only saw such a crowd when a big betting event was going down.
Reece counted no fewer than six servers, two bartenders, and four bouncers. Dozens of people stood at kiosks, watched wall-mounted monitors, or put their heads together over round tables.
“The market’s having a strange day. Unusual ups and downs. People are placing their bets and seeing what happens.”
“Isn’t that called investing?” Trey asked.
Marky’s red lips turned up in a smirk. “Maybe in other places. Here, we call it what it really is—gambling.”
Trey smiled, the expression making him look very human. “Makes sense to me. What’s the most popular game around here?”
Marky’s eyes lit. She loved to talk shop. Then her gaze tracked to Reece and she restrained herself. “We can talk about that later. I can even show you some games. For now, though, I think you and my girl Reece need to talk out whatever your issue is.”
“Right.” Trey looked to Reece, but when Marky didn’t budge, his gaze returned to her.
“Oh, I’m not leaving,” Marky told him. “This is my damn place, and this is my damn chair.” She followed that statement up with a sweet smile.
“Sure. Got it.” Trey nodded agreeably. He took a breath and looked at Reece. “I’m not what you think. I have cybernetic eyes, yes. My vision and my hearing are both far beyond normal human senses. I also have an enhanced metabolism and immune system. My bones have been strengthened. But I have no one else living in my head, and I am every bit as killable as you.”
Reece tried to keep her expression neutral, but she could feel her mouth pulling down into a frown.
Damn face.
“So you have no AI?” she asked.
“Nope. Never did. Frankly, the idea of sharing my mind with someone is creepy as hell.”
“At least we agree on that,” Reece muttered. “What about that shape-changing stuff people squirt out?”
She’d heard stories of people who could conjure armor out of thin air, or even shoot weapons out of their bodies. Those people outside the Orion Freedom Alliance could barely even be called human anymore. They were something else. Cyborgs, maybe.
From what Reece understood most of those not-people lived in the Transcend. Maybe in the Inner Stars too, though with humanity still struggling to recover after the FTL Wars, there wasn’t much left in the Inner Stars anymore.
“What, that shape-changing flowmetal stuff?” Trey asked. “I think those are just crazy old stories from before the FTL Wars. I do have some basic medical nano, though probably nothing more impressive than what you have.”
“OK, but how does that help?” Reece demanded. “You have cybernetic eyes, which gives you an advantage over the rest of us on Akon. Sure, you’re just one person. But if others wanted that same advantage, and got it, soon the rest of us would be forced to get them too, just to keep up. And then the next thing and the next, as people keep reaching for more advantages. And before you know it, people don’t much resemble people anymore.”
“You’re right,” he agreed.
Of all the things she’d expected him to say, that hadn’t been one of them. “What?”
“I agree. I actually liked my natural eyes. They were brown, like my mom’s when she was young. But where I come from, there’s no such thing as not getting modded. So I got my new eyes. And then the bone and endocrine tweaks too. That’s when I said enough.”
“Why?” Reece asked.
“I didn’t think I could change one more thing and still be me. And I like me. I think I’m a heck of a great guy. So I dropped everything and found a way out of the Perseus Arm to the Expansion Districts, where I don’t have to have all that just to keep up.”
“What do you mean ‘you dropped everything’?”
Trey shrugged. “What do you think it means? It means I freaked out and left my whole life behind. My job, my family, everything. And I came here, where now I’m the one with the advantage, and people seem to hate me. Sometimes I feel like I’m just kind of screwed, no matter what I do. Maybe there’s just no way to win in this universe. Anywhere.”
“It’s not about winning,” Reece said. “It’s about living.”
“Watch your mouth,” Marky butted in. “Around here, it’s all about winning.”
Reece rolled her eyes but didn’t argue. Not only was Marky’s philosophy not open to change, debating the topic was likely to piss her off. A pissed-off Marky was to be avoided at all costs.
Trey took advantage of Reece’s distraction. “Are my eyes and ear implants so different than yours? It’s a matter of scale, yes, but you have an advantage that not everyone here does, right?”
Reece bristled. “Most people do. Overlays and an auditory interface are just a convenience. They aren’t needed to succeed in life.”
“And yet you got them as soon as you could, right?” he pressed.
She hated that he was right. She didn’t want him to make sense. “Those small conveniences don’t make me a meat machine.”
His mouth tightened. “It doesn’t make me one, either. And where I come from, that’s a very offensive phrase.”
She wanted to double-down and say something even more offensive about where he was from, but better judgment prevailed. Somehow, he’d given her a situation that she might just be able to work with. She might be able to salvage her employment with Rexcare and find Dr. Fitzmiller after all.
She needed to go into damage control mode. Swallowing her opinions on where he came from—and her inclination to turn a fight into a brawl—she chose a wiser path.
Stupid wisdom. It would have been fun to see how she’d fare in a fight with this guy.
But she had Aunt Ruth and her tidy little home and her future to think about.
She had to try to make this work, but wasn’t sure how to back down while maintaining her dignity.
“This job seems to be important to you,” she said. “Why is that?”
“Same reason it matters to you, I’d bet,” he answered. “Rexcare is a big deal around here, and I can live a pleasant little life in Machete or a nearby system. And I can do it without sharing my brain with anyone, or wandering aimlessly in space for years. I’m not looking to change a whole star system or make a mark or anything like that. I just want to be comfortable and secure and live a simple life.”
“I guess we have that in common.” She eyed him for a long moment.
“Give me a chance,” he said. “Let’s do this one job. If it doesn’t work out, I’ll let you poke me in the eye.”
“How would that help me?” she asked. “It’s not even real.”
“No, but the nerves behind it are, and they’re highly sensitive due to the surgery. Believe me, it would be quite agonizing.”
“Well, there’s that, I guess,” she said grudgingly. She sighed. “Fine. We can give it a try. But I’m not used to working with
a partner. And I expect my orders to be obeyed.”
Trey grinned. “I don’t exactly do obeying. But I work great with others. We’ll make this work.”
He stuck out a big hand.
Grimly, Reece reached across the table and shook it.
“Now, how about you show me some of those games?” Trey asked Marky, whose face transformed into that of a predator that smells blood in the water.
Reece watched the pair as Marky showed him a few of the kiosks and betting tables. Now that Reece had resigned herself to working with him, it was her job to figure him out. To be able to predict him. He laughed with Marky and seemed like a purely engaging, disarming guy.
Which, of course, made Reece deeply suspicious.
THE JOB REDUX
DATE: 03.19.8948 (Adjusted Gregorian)
LOCATION: Ohiyo, Akonwara
REGION: Machete System, PED 4B, Orion Freedom Alliance
Reece returned her luggage to her house. Rather than unpacking them, she tucked the bags into her storage room. She’d be needing them soon. Just not yet.
She returned to Rexcare where her meeting with Schramm required Reece to display a mix of reluctance, dedication to the company, and grim understanding of reality. Though she truly felt all those things, she portrayed them carefully, to her best advantage.
Fortunately, Schramm was glad for her return, and didn’t grind his heel on her for having stalked out of his office.
They’d had some fraught negotiations in the past, and apparently to him, this was par for the course in dealing with her.
That realization unsettled her. As she once again left Rexcare headquarters, Reece decided she needed to vary her approach with Schramm. Being too predictable would work against her in the long term.
As she was walking through the lobby, a company driver greeted her and asked where she’d like to go. She liked it when Schramm had a car waiting for her. She was willing to bet that he’d be a little extra attentive with such niceties to ensure she felt properly appreciated.
Good. He did spring a genmod on her, after all.
She and Trey would leave Akon on a shuttle the following morning. The planet had no space elevator, due to the planetary crust’s massive expansion and contraction, and getting off-planet took a lot more effort than it did on most worlds. Rexcare could have gotten her to space in a private shuttle, but that attracted the wrong sort of attention. She and Trey would make their way into space on public transport.