Warchild

by Karin Lowachee

  “Joslyn,” he says, smiling in a way that has nothing to do with me. “I remember you so well.”

  I don’t reply.

  “Don’t you remember me?”

  He’s going to make me say it. So it’s begun. So I just say it. “Yeah, I remember you.”

  “I’m pleased. I really am. Because now I won’t have to tell you what can happen if you aren’t forthright with me.”

  His chair isn’t bolted or clamped to the deck. He drags it closer until his knees almost touch mine.

  “Let me get a good look at you.” He holds my jaw with callused fingers and tilts my head back, peering close at my face. I see every line and pore on his skin and the gradient browns and yellows of his hair. He smells like his cigrets and that sharp soap. It clouds my mind with memories. He smiles. “You turned out as well as I’d thought you would. So tell me where you’ve been.”

  “I’m a jet.”

  He frowns, vague disappointment. “Jos. Let’s not do that.”

  “You asked.”

  “You know what I mean. You forget how well I know you. I don’t think eight years changed you that much. You said you remember me, so you must know there are better methods than beating someone nearly to death to get what I want. So tell me where you’ve been.”

  He uses his voice like a hand. I say, quietly, because it doesn’t matter, “Austro.”

  “How did you get from Chaos to Austro?”

  It’s nearly impossible to keep my eyes on his face. I can feel his breath. “Woman took pity on me.”

  “Really? Then how is it that I saw a strit pick you up off the deck and behind their lines, after I shot you? How is it that I know you were taken to the strit world?”

  Ash must have told him everything. That brings up the anger. But I don’t say anything that will confirm his words.

  “I knew who took you from the start.” His voice grows steadily harder. “A lot of commotion then. Jets. Strits. I nearly got caught myself, except the strits were pretty efficient in blasting that dock. They must’ve had help from some symps.” He pauses just long enough to make me hear that word. “You don’t remember, do you?”

  “You shot me.”

  “Yes, that’s right.” His face takes on mock regret. Parody. Insult. “I hated doing it. You know how much I enjoyed you. You’re bright, beautiful. A beautiful child. Still a beautiful youth.”

  It comes out of his mouth like profanity.

  He touches my leg, above the knee. I can’t stop it, and flinch. He pretends not to notice. “So tell me what really happened after that strit took you.”

  “You shot me. I blacked out. I woke up and this woman took me to Austro. I don’t know about any strit.”

  His eyes darken. His fingers grip. “Is that what you told Azarcon?”

  “Ask him yourself.”

  “I might, after all. You’re mine again. This time I’ll make sure you don’t run away. And I hear he comes after his jets.”

  There’s something in his eyes like a challenge. And pride. Like before, this has nothing to do with emotion. Not his emotion.

  He looks like all common sense, like he’s giving me a chance, doing me a favor. “Jos, we don’t have to go this way if you stop lying to me.”

  “I’m not lying.”

  “You know, I really did miss you.” He starts undoing my belt.

  I struggle but the wires cut.

  “I saw that strit take you. The strit took you, didn’t he?” He pulls the belt from around my waist, slow. He stands over me and tosses the belt to the floor, then puts a hand on my shoulder.

  I spit in his face.

  I expect a backhand, just from reflex. Anything to get him to stop what he’s doing. But he’s restrained. Cold and deliberate. Nothing’s changed. He just wipes off the saliva and stares down at me.

  “You think about how I had you, Jos. Do you want me to take you again?”

  I’m not aware my eyes shut until the darkness starts to spark. If I open them he will ask another question. Or do things I don’t want to see. This isn’t what is supposed to happen. Niko trained me to focus. Macedon trained me to focus. I have to focus.

  It’s impossible to focus.

  His hands are on my shoulders. “Did that strit take you off Chaos?”

  “No.”

  His fingers tighten, then relax. They start to stroke my neck and along my jaw. His hand slides inside my collar and along my collarbone and a finger hooks around the ID chain with my parents’ faces on it. His other hand reaches down in front of me.

  There are words, then there are no words, for things such as this.

  “Did that strit take you off Chaos?”

  “No.”

  “Did that strit send you to Austro? Did you grow up in an orphanage?”

  “I grew up in an orphanage.”

  There’s silence. I make myself look up into his face, to let him see the hatred in mine.

  “You’re lying,” he says. “I know you’re lying.”

  “Then you don’t need to ask.”

  He hits me. My head snaps back. Blood bubbles in my nose and I cough, try to bend over, but he grabs my hair and yanks my head up.

  “Do you see how it can go?”

  I spit blood on his chest. He hits me again. And again. Then I lose count. That’s fine. Anything but what he wants to really do.

  The room tilts.

  He leaves me there alone. It is all tactics.

  The cold air and flickering lights surround me like a spirit adrift from its body.

  * * *

  XI.

  The drives hum, healthy. I memorize the deck beneath my feet. Scuff marks and where my blood dripped. He comes back with a glass of water and sets it on the floor near my chair, and sits back in his own seat.

  “Macedon can put up a fight,” he says. “I’ve always admired that about Cairo.”

  “Where is Mac?” I ask, for the hell of it. “Where are we going?”

  “Can’t you guess?” He smiles and leans back, lacing his fingers across his middle and stretching out his legs. His eyes settle on my face and stay. “I’m so curious about you, Jos. I have to admit. Look at you. Do you still avoid mirrors?”

  I tried getting in a meditative state when I was alone. But it didn’t work. Instead I am just numb.

  There is really nothing different, except the chronological fact of our ages.

  “You just spout the same old shit,” I tell him in the gap of silence he leaves for me. “And you still get off on helpless kids.”

  The smiling mask dies. “You’re no kid anymore, Joslyn. And you know getting off was never my motive, don’t you? I wonder, really, how much you do remember.”

  “Enough.”

  “I recognize Evan D’Silva. Serrano’s pick. Maybe you know how it could’ve been for you if I’d sold you to Shiva.”

  “Yeah, the same.”

  “No no, think back. Think back, Jos. Do you suppose I would set all that time training you just so you could be everybody’s whore? Or slave? Cleaning and running errands until the skin on your hands and feet is raw? What would be worse?”

  There are razors in my throat.

  “You were mine.” He leans close and touches the side of my hair, gripping when I try to dodge my head. “I took you in personally, and did anyone else ever touch you?”

  I give him my thoughts through my eyes.

  “None of my people touched you. Was D’Silva so lucky, was his captain so watchful?”

  He has another target, if I don’t cooperate.

  “If you hadn’t run, Jos…” He releases me but doesn’t lean back. “If you hadn’t run, you would’ve climbed high in my crew. You had that fight.”

  “I would’ve killed you sooner or later. If you think otherwise you’re more deluded than I thought.”

  “1 don’t think so.” That arrogant smile. “You’re attached to me now, even with eight years between us. Think of how much more attached you’d be if I’d had you
all those years.”

  “Untie my hands and I’ll show you how attached.”

  He laughs.

  “You fucking coward!”

  “Jos.” He picks up the glass of water and sips. “Jos, wouldn’t you rather be my whore than the whore of a symp?” He waits only a moment, but long enough that I hear the silence. “How is the Warboy, Jos?”

  “How should I know?”

  “I thought you would. All those years spent on Aaian with him. All those years in training with him. Is he good, Jos? As good as I am?”

  Ash-dan. In league with pirates. Falcone must have known all along where I was, who had me, and why.

  For two years I knew they were working together. But it doesn’t sink through me until now.

  He says, “Maybe I ought to remind you how good I am. And how loyal you should be to people on this side of the DMZ.”

  My own voice makes me cringe. It’s not my voice. “I’m not loyal to pirates, ’specially to ones who screw kids.”

  He leans over me, one move, toppling his chair in the process. He grabs the back of my hair.

  “But you’re not a kid anymore, are you. And this isn’t about training, what I would do to you. It wouldn’t be about making a bond between us far greater than if I beat you into submission. It wouldn’t be about that, would it.”

  They are not questions.

  “I would do it for knowledge, now. Think of that, Jos, while you consider what I want. I just want to know all about the Warboy, Jos. I want to know all about Macedon and Cairo Azarcon’s plans.”

  Artifice is completely stripped away. Now I see only what he wants, drilled deep into his face. I see what he will do to get it.

  My skull feels ripped from the hold on my hair. “I’m a private first class. The captain of Macedon doesn’t tell me his plans.”

  “Then maybe I’ll ask one of the jets. Maybe I’ll make you watch as I ask her. You should know by now not to be coy with me. The strits took you off Chaos. And took you to Aaian. And trained you to be one of them. Didn’t they?”

  Words will kill me. So I say nothing.

  “These are things I already know. You need only say yes.”

  He wants to hear it. He needs to hear it.

  I won’t say it.

  He starts to unbutton my uniform, one handed, while his fingers dig into my scalp.

  But I won’t say it.

  He yanks my shirt down my arms, between my back and the chair. He takes out the blade from his boot that I remember, that hasn’t changed, it’s so strange how much has not changed. All the reactions are there as if no time has passed.

  He grabs the front of my T-shirt and slices it from neck to bottom.

  I can’t say it. His questions flee my mind.

  So he reminds me. “I don’t think D’Silva would hold out very long. And jets, despite their bravado, are still flesh. I can let my people at them, one by one.” He fingers the ID chain. “Oh, and what’s this?”

  He rips it off. He looks at it. He smiles at my parents’ faces. Then he tosses it into a corner.

  The cold air claws against my chest. My heartbeat fills the room.

  “First, the Warboy. Tell me about him. Where is he?”

  If I just close my eyes, I can think that the cold comes from the mountain peaks on Aaian-na. The balconies and the rooftops in winter, when you lie on your back and just breathe.

  But Aaian-na doesn’t smell like Falcone. He’s all around. And Niko is absent. Niko’s been absent. Everything is absent.

  His hands rake down my skin and back up again, close around my jaw.

  Sometimes you don’t quite feel it.

  “Of course I’m going to start with you.” His voice is conversational. “Did you think I would bother beginning with a jet I’ve never seen? You can help them, Jos. Just answer my questions. You and I know each other. You know I reward obedience. This doesn’t have to be so unpleasant. It’s just information, information I will get one way or another. Through this. Through this and drugs, maybe. It’s up to you if I get it the hard or easy way. It’s up to you if it will hurt or… not hurt.”

  His hands speak the same as his voice. My skin is not my own.

  “You’re controlling how this goes, Jos.”

  Words will make him stop. It’s a lie. But they fall out of my mouth like baby teeth.

  “I don’t—know where he is. I don’t know.”

  “The Warboy?”

  “I don’t know where he is!”

  “When was your last contact?”

  Behind my eyelids I see black. Fire. And black.

  “When was your last contact with the Warboy?”

  “I’m not in contact with him.”

  “What is your code string to contact him?”

  He explores.

  “Go to hell!”

  He hits me. Three blows that dim the world. I reel, taste blood, then feel the deck against my cheek. My legs are free but I can’t move. I can’t think. I don’t want to see a thing.

  He familiarizes himself with what he lost eight years ago. All over again. All over and again.

  The room heats, and the noise is terrible. I think it’s me.

  “Give me your code string, strit-lover.”

  He kicks me over. His pupils are wide black holes in the center of flame blue. All the rest of him is violence. The lights flicker behind his head, far above like stars.

  My wrists bleed. Blood comes out of me and what else. What else. Words and salt and life he wants to own.

  He tries to buy it all with his hands.

  My body meets the cold when he releases me. It’s all raw and rotten. He grabs my face. His fingers are damp. Or maybe it’s my own skin.

  “You rethink about keeping quiet, Jos. I want those code strings.”

  But there’s only darkness. There has always been only darkness.

  * * *

  XII.

  The leaps come hard. I’m in black already and my memory doesn’t fade. When I open my eyes I see myself and there is evidence enough to make memory all the truth you never want. There’s no thinking that I’m older now. Time has no place on a ship that travels this deep.

  Wherever we’re going, we’re going there fast. While everything else in me spins backward.

  * * *

  XIII.

  I don’t know when, but sometime later the drives go silent. The low grating thrum of the air vents working somewhere in the arteries of the ship seeps into the room. Sometimes voices carry muffled through the hatch. Footsteps go back and forth, sometimes in a hurry. The lights keep flickering until one blows briefly and goes black. Shadows crawl up the walls.

  They don’t bring food or water or anything. He put me back in the chair and tied my ankles again. I sit forgotten, trying to remember myself. To prepare myself for when he comes back. I know he’s going to come back.

  But he doesn’t. Instead come two guards, big pirates who know how to handle jets. They each carry slung rifles, more for swinging than shooting at this close range. They unravel my ankle cuffs and haul me to my feet. It’s been so long unmoving that I can barely walk. Stiff muscles protest in fiery contractions as they drag me from the room, through the twisting corridors, my wrists still bound behind me. My clothes still undone and cut. They pull me by the arms and hold the waist of my dirty fatigues to keep me on my feet.

  They take me back to the brig. There are more people in the cells, more prisoners. From other outriders. Vaguely I see and hear the jets rush to the bars.

  “Jos,” Evan says.

  The pirates bang the cells, drive them back. Dorr swears at the pirates.

  They throw me into the third, empty cell, facedown on the bunk, and leave. At least they leave.

  I roll over, pain so acute up my arms and shoulders I want to scream. But screaming does no good, it just gets you hoarse and gives them satisfaction. At least the lights here don’t flicker, though they are stark white and hurt even when you don’t look up directly. I lie
on my side with my cheek against the rough, scratchy blanket on the bunk. Familiar smell. Familiar texture. Unpleasant.

  He’s going to want more. Bastards like him always want more, so much more they disembowel you to get it. They reach into places you never knew existed in yourself, and touch everything that is untouched, until there is nothing in you that hasn’t been stained by fingerprints.

  Body divers. That’s what they are.

  “Jos,” someone says.

  “Muse. Hey.”

  I’m in secondhand skin.

  I struggle to sit up, because he can’t find me on my face, waiting. I won’t let him.

  “Jos, just stay still.”

  The hatch opens. I hear footsteps. The lock on my cell buzzes. I look over, through the pain, through the vision that threatens to narrow into tiny points.

  Falcone comes in, ignoring the hurl of insults and profanity from the jets. He grabs me up and shoves me into the empty chair in the middle of the cell.

  In front of the jets. He’s going to do this in front of the jets.

  “Now we’re going to talk,” he says, impatient.

  I kick toward his groin. But he’s fast and knocks my head back. Explosions go off behind my eyes. His fingers dig into my scalp. He hits me again. Voices shout, but not my own. He moves my feet and ankles. I feel the bite of wire cuffs. I try to kick him again but he slugs my stomach and my face. I wheeze and tilt. He binds my feet to the chair. My arms are still behind me and I can’t move.

  He grabs my face in his hand.

  “Do you hear your fellow jets? Here, look at them.”

  He turns my head. I blink, sweating, bleeding. Sight blurs but I see their faces from the other cells, staring, watching. Mad. For me.

  He takes out his gun.

  “If you don’t answer my questions, I’ll shoot one of them.”

  “Don’t tell him nothin’,” Dorr says. “Don’t worry ’bout us.”

  “I can do worse than shoot them,” Falcone says. “I’ll begin with D’Silva.”

  Evan’s face, bruised, all of his hair cut off. Adalia crying. Four-year-old Adalia. They fill my sight.

  It can’t happen again.

  Not to them. Not like this. Not again.