He looked at Laia. “I’m ok. Really. And I’m not an angel. Just another company asset.”
Sadie snorted. “He finally speaks the truth.”
“There are gaps,” said Mason. “What happened?”
Sadie was shifting her weight a little from foot to foot. Nervous — about what? She pulled out the Tenko-Senshin, handing it to him, and as she did he saw the red peeking out from under a sleeve. “I… I borrowed this.”
“Ok,” said Mason, reaching a hand up. He didn’t take the weapon, pushing her sleeve back, the burns livid and angry. “Did you fire it?”
Her eyes flicked out through the hole in the wall, into the rain and the dark outside. “Yes.”
Mason lowered his hand. “You’ve got questions.”
“Yes,” she said. “Before I… Before I picked it up, one of the… things, those monsters—”
“People,” said Mason. His voice was quiet. “They used to be people.”
He watched as she took the thought, trying it on for size. “One of those people tried to use it.”
“Yes,” said Mason. “I remember.”
“It died.”
“Yes.” He watched her eyes, not moving.
She bit her lip, then said, “Why?”
“Because it was an enemy.” Mason shrugged. “Tenko-Senshin make things that aren’t really weapons. They’re sort of…” He paused, then shrugged. “I don’t know. They’re works of art, really.”
“Art?”
“Sort of,” said Mason. “He only made twelve of them that I know of. And that’s a guess, because of the number on this one. There are records of another nine. Tenko was crazy.”
“I couldn’t not do something,” said Sadie, swallowing. “I could have died.”
“Yes,” said Mason. “That’s probably why you didn’t.”
“Probably?”
“I don’t really know how it works,” he said. “It didn’t come with a book. I think it found me, if we’re trading truth.” He reached for the weapon, taking it from her. It beeped, the hard link coming through his glove, and he turned it over in his hand. He looked down at Laia. “You ok?”
“They were people?” she said.
He crouched down. “Yeah,” he said. “They were.”
“They didn’t… I didn’t mean to…” He could see the tears in her eyes.
“Laia,” said Mason.
“I reached out,” she said, a sob catching in her throat. “I felt inside it, and pushed. It… I didn’t know my gift could do that. I’ve never—”
“Laia,” said Mason. “Stop.”
She looked up at him, eyes wide. “I felt it die. I did that.”
He sighed, the breath coming out of him. “Yeah, I guess so,” he said.
“What?” said Sadie. “That’s all you’ve got?”
“No,” said Mason. “Look. Wait here a second.” He looked at the three of them, huddled in a dirty room around a fire that tried to push the night away then, still favoring his leg — damn bone growth was still catching up — stepped out into the night.
The rain had stopped, the air quiet and still. He walked up the road a block or so until he found the store he’d seen earlier. He put a shoulder against the front door until the lock slipped with a grinding noise. Mason walked inside, grabbing what he needed, then headed back down the street.
As he walked back, his feet slowed. He looked around at the night, breathing it in. It was quiet, the calm sitting in the air, and he drank it up.
You’re alive.
And then —
A young girl saved your life today.
He sighed. Voices were coming from the room, the firelight flickering out through the cracks and gaps in the wall. He let the sound walk around him, not really listening to the words, leaning back against an ancient post in the ground.
A young girl. Isn’t it your mission to look after her?
He looked at the drink he held, turning it over in his hand. It’d been what worked in the past. When he had doubts, questions he couldn’t answer. When the voices of the dead wouldn’t be still.
She saved your life.
The mission was to recover the asset, protect it at all costs. He thought back to the room in the nuclear facility, dead men’s bodies dried and preserved by the radiation threading through them. He thought about the Apsel logo, and the cavern full of radiation where a sphere from somewhere else had punched the rock walls aside like soft clay.
He wondered where the reactor had gone, and why Apsel Federate had sent a team in at all. Why there was a dirty bomb in a nuclear facility, why a whole town had been left to die. How the survivors had twisted, bodies turned into something less than human.
Radiation didn’t do that. That was a deliberate act from a different arm of science. Something viral, shifting people into animals. For what? To stand guard over a dead city?
A girl saved your life today, and you owe her, Mason Floyd.
He started walking again, stepping in through the crack in the wall. Three pairs of eyes looked at him, and he smiled. “I’ve got just the thing. It answers all questions.” He held up the bottle, the whisky warm and dark against the light from the fire.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” said Sadie.
“You got a better idea?” he said.
“No,” she said. “I meant, you didn’t get any glasses.”
“I’m not proud,” said Mason, twisting the top off. He took a pull from the bottle, the liquid burning down his throat, then handed it to Laia. “Here. Drink this.”
“Will it make me forget?” she looked at the bottle. “Will it take it back?”
“Yes,” said Mason. “For a little while.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
“What I don’t get,” said Harry, “is why the big man was so convinced that Mason would be in contact.”
“With you,” said Lace. “That he’d be in contact with you.”
“Yeah,” said Harry, “that.” He clanked across the street, the sound of horns coming loud and fast to his right. His torso swiveled, raising a metal middle finger to the driver of the combi van.
“He’s right,” said Lace. “Gairovald, I mean.”
“You would say that,” said Harry. “Carter been in touch?” He continued to walk across the street, heading towards the small townhouse, fence painted something bright and green years ago. The front gate was gone, lost somewhere over the last five years. It’d been a while since he’d been here.
He hadn’t been invited in five years. Yeah, so — time to change that.
“She said that she’d lost Mason,” said Lace. “Can you believe that?”
“No, I don’t believe that,” said Harry. “Not for a minute.”
“You don’t think she said that?”
“I don’t think she’s lost Mason,” he said. “Not Carter.”
“I—”
“It’s ok, Lace. I know they’re watching you.”
The link hissed for a moment, then Lace said, “Yeah. They watch all the time. They’re assholes.”
“I bet,” said Harry. “We used to do that job.”
“Be an asshole?”
“Sort of. When someone goes off the rails, you need a team that can… pull the pieces back together.” Harry stood beside where the gate used to be, reaching out a mechanical hand with a hiss of hydraulics to touch at the fence. A piece of metal gave way, falling down into the dead flower bed behind it. “That was us. We were that team.”
They used to be such beautiful flowers. Harry remembered seeing a bee, a real live bee here at the edge of the city once. He’d been sipping a mojito, the sun making him sweat. Harry looked down at his metal hand, turning it in front of his face. The overlay mapped it out, told him it was in perfect working order.
Perfect working order. He hadn’t had a mojito or broken a sweat in five years either.
Harry swiveled back to the street, looking at the trailer he’d been dragging with him. It was piled with eq
uipment, metal and plastic dull under the clouded sky.
“Pieces,” said Lace, after a minute.
“Yeah.” He reached out a hand, tearing the fence the rest of the way down. A man from up the block noticed, jogged down towards him. Harry waited for him.
“Uh,” said the man.
“Hi,” said Harry. The PA amplified his voice too much, and he turned it down. “Sorry.”
“It’s fine,” said the man. “Uh.”
“What is it?” Harry relaxed as much as the chassis would let him, crouching low, trying to look smaller. This guy had cojones the size of melons to come up to him, and Harry liked that in a neighbor.
“We don’t…” The man pulled at his shirt, the muggy weather making it stick. It was some sort of off-the-rack affair, maybe used by someone else before it got to its current owner. “We don’t get a lot of your kind here.”
“Sure,” said Harry. He paused, swiveling his torso to look at the crowd forming. “What’s your point, exactly?”
“Uh,” said the man. “See, she’s not home, and I kind of try to—” His eyes flicked to the Apsel falcon on Harry’s chassis, then said, “I… I have to ask. I’m really sorry about this.”
“It’s ok,” said Harry. “I’m just here to… I’m here to make it right.”
“Make it right?” said the man. Then he laughed, but there wasn’t humor in the sound. “How can you do that, man? There’s not much left.”
“I know,” said Harry. He looked at his metal hand again, twisting it. “These… They’re strong, you know. Stronger than anything I ever used to have. I can put them to work.” Harry looked down at him, then held his metal hand out. “I’m Harry. Harry Fuentes. We used to… I work for the Federate.”
The other man reached a hand out, tentative, trying to work out how to shake Harry’s metal hand. He settled for wrapping his palm around a couple of Harry’s fingers. “Julio. And… Man, I’m pleased to meet you. She’ll be pleased to see you. No one from the Federate comes down here anymore.”
“Julio,” said Harry, “you’re one brave motherfucker. Brave, or dumb as a box of rocks.”
“Yeah,” said Julio, a smile working its way onto his face. It looked like it belonged there, like Julio had been wanting an excuse to smile all week. “That’s what my old lady says too.”
“Great,” said Harry. “I understand. Look, I’m going to…”
“Sure,” said Julio. He smiled again. “You need anything, you ask.”
Harry watched as he walked away, the crowd drifting and breaking apart as he left. No fight, nothing to see. The overlay picked out people’s faces, doing quick ID scans, mapping the place against the information from the link.
He turned it off. He didn’t need that here.
“What are you doing,” said Lace, “and why have you shut me out of your link? I’m only getting audio from you. It’s like you’ve fallen off the edge of the world.”
Edge of the world. “Something like that,” said Harry. “Just a little personal business.”
“You don’t have personal business.” The link hissed and popped for a second, then she said, “I’m getting some interference.”
“I’m not shopping, if that’s what you’re asking.” He walked into the yard, scanning the dead grass, the blasted plants. A small lemon tree clung to life near the front door where a ramp had been laid over the steps.
“You still do that job, don’t you?” said Lace.
“Which job?”
“Being an asshole,” she said.
“Look,” said Harry. “What is it about personal business that interests you so much?”
“No, it’s ok,” she said. “I don’t mean to pry. But really. What could you possibly need?”
“Something,” said Harry, “that I’m not going to tell you about.”
“People here are getting nervous,” said Lace.
“No they’re not,” said Harry. “And if they are, you can tell them to fuck off.”
“How do you know they’re not getting nervous?”
“Because I’m online, and haven’t left the city. Edge markers would have shown that. I’m not anywhere near Mason. If there was any kind of risk that I’d bump into Mason here, city CCTV would have mapped him out. We’d know what underwear he had on today. The Federate has bigger things to worry about than my personal business.”
“If it’s not shopping, what is it?”
Harry sighed, shutting down the link. It’d taken him a little while to find the right tools, ones that he could hold and use like the man he used to be. It’d taken him longer to do that without Lace working out what he was up to.
She wasn’t stupid.
He pulled the trailer into the yard, hooking a piece of digging equipment up to his chassis. Finding farming equipment with the same mounts as Apsel combat hardware hadn’t been as hard as he’d thought. Some bean counter in Finance had embarked on a standardization program years back, making “industrial” the same thing as “military.” It was a mistake that had cost millions, but there were still a few pieces of industrial equipment in warehouses. It’d just been a matter of getting them delivered without anyone knowing.
Carter probably knew where he was. Harry was pretty sure she knew a lot more than she let on. She hadn’t said anything to Lace though.
The reactor on his back hummed as he started to work, turning the cracked earth over. The fans in the chassis kicked in, venting heat out the back, as he lifted and shifted the dirt of the yard. He started to build a pile of dead foliage, flowers that used to be red or blue now a uniform brown, dry, brittle.
There weren’t any bees. Not anymore.
Harry returned to the trailer, looking at the plants in the back. They were the best he could find, but at least they were alive. He looked back down at his metal hands, then at the plants.
Shit. It’s not like he was built for delicacy.
“So,” said Julio. “How’s it going?”
Harry swiveled to face the man. “So-so. What do you think?”
“Very… flat,” said Julio. The man was holding a beer, a generic brown bottle. Home brewed, illegal — there weren’t any yeasts left that weren’t under patent. “You… You want a hand?”
“I couldn’t ask that of you,” said Harry. “It’s my problem.”
Julio set his beer down at the edge of the crumbling fence line. “Hey, company man. I’m not a charity. I’m hoping I help you here, you help me out too.” He reached into the trailer, pulling a plant out, then looking at Harry’s hands. “Didn’t think it through, did you?”
“Not this part,” said Harry. “The rain’s stopped, so I figured it might be safe to try planting something again. I…”
“It’s ok,” said Julio. “You get started on the fence.”
“Thanks,” said Harry. He moved over to the fence, tearing the metal from the ground, crumbled concrete base giving way. He lifted a posthole digger from the trailer, then worked his way around the edge of the property. Each point where the overlay mapped out a place to dig, he hunched over, the chassis bracing, then the pneumatic rams in his arms firing. Each hole was perfectly carved, cut instantly into the dirt.
Sometimes being less than a man made things easier. But only sometimes.
The light had dropped from the sky by the time the two of them were finished. Harry started laying equipment back into the trailer, then turned to Julio. “Thanks.”
The other man shrugged. “Think nothing of it. She deserves it.”
“Yeah,” said Harry, “she does. Thanks anyway.”
“Doesn’t look done yet,” said Julio.
“No. She’s on the clock, double shifts. Won’t be home for a while.”
Julio nodded. “You still got time to fix the steps then.”
“Yes,” said Harry. “What about you?”
“I got everything I need,” said Julio. He looked up at Harry, then sighed. “I’m pretty sure—”
“You said I could help you out
,” said Harry. “You probably weren’t thinking about me keeping quiet.”
“Quiet?”
“The illegal beer.”
“There’ll be another time, Harry.” Julio laughed. “But you did help me.”
“I did?”
“Yeah,” said Julio, picking up his bottle as he walked out of the yard. “Because you helped her. That’s how it works.”
“Around here?”
“No,” said Julio. “It’s how it works everywhere. You company people? You’ve just forgotten that.”
Harry watched him go, then looked around at the garden in the dusk. It wasn’t much, it wasn’t what she had had before, but it…
He fired up the chassis’ lamps and got to work on the steps, old concrete tearing away in his hands.
It was a start.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
“I don’t get why we’re out here,” Haraway said, kicking at a stone on the ground. “It’s late. There are zombies out here.”
“They’re not zombies,” said Sadie. She pulled a couple of harnesses with lights out of the back of the van. “I’m going with mutants.”
“Zombies, mutants, whatever,” said Haraway. “I don’t read much fiction.”
“Didn’t look like fiction to me,” said Sadie, handing the other woman a harness. It was black, the nylon straps rough against against her shirt as Sadie pulled her own on over her head.
“No,” said Haraway, holding the harness in one hand. “What am I doing with this?”
“Putting it on.”
“I—”
“Don’t tell me,” said Sadie. “You don’t do field work? This was your idea, remember.”
Haraway tossed her a crooked smile. “Something like that. All this?” She lifted a hand to the dead town around them. “It’s a bit new to me.”
“That’s no problem. Put the harness on.”
“What…” Haraway ran a hand through hair that was starting to look like it needed to spend more time in the company salon. “Why aren’t we inside with them?”
“You wanted power.”
“Power can wait until tomorrow,” said Haraway. “We don’t need to start turning power on at midnight.”
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