Synthetic Dreams

by Kim Knox

  “And you talk too much.” In a blurred move, Paul’s arm shot out. There was a flash, a sharp crack and Liam slumped. His body hit the carpet. Blood leaked. “Far too much.”

  For a long second, Paul’s body tensed until he let out a long, slow breath. He scrubbed a hand over his face and his fingers dug into his jaw. “Fuck.”

  “He’ll have a transponder.” Vyn wriggled forward. She stared at the dead man, the small scorched hole in his forehead leaking blood. She didn’t feel anything. Not revulsion, not anger or guilt. Her thoughts were clear and quick. It was probably a symptom of shock.

  She frowned. Liam’s wound was…unusual. Her attention jumped back to Paul, to the silver gleam of the small weapon in his hand. It wasn’t a shock-weapon. It was a projectile one. The fired bullet would’ve shredded Liam’s brain. “Even with a bullet, there’s a possibility the gear imbedded in his skull is still transmitting.”

  “Yes.” Paul’s gaze pinned her. “Here.” He picked up her fallen clothes and tossed them to her. “Get dressed.”

  She tugged the long-sleeved T-shirt over her head. “Was this in your plan?”

  “It’s moved it forward.” Paul eyed her and she couldn’t read his thoughts. He glanced back to the body. “He was close. Much closer than I thought.”

  His sudden movement towards the row of cupboards caught her by surprise. She tracked him across the room, not wanting to admire the sleek perfection of his body, the way the light licked his skin. He’d just shot a man, killed him, and she was enjoying an illicit stare. She wet her lips, nervous, disturbed, and tasted him on them.

  “What’s really going on here, Paul?”

  Her question spurred her into moving. She swung her legs over the edge of the bed and pulled on the loose trousers. Standing, she found that her legs wobbled under her. Her hand gripped the wooden headboard and she refused to let the shock take her.

  Breath swelled in her chest until it hurt to hold it. Her emotions ricocheted. Much like the bullet inside Liam’s skull. She winced and bile rose, the sour burn of it filling her mouth. Her knuckles whitened against the wood and she willed herself to find focus on the quick pain, to fight off the sudden heat, the buzzing in her ears and the dark speckles threatening her vision. She was not going to faint.

  “Lie down.”

  “Trying to get me naked again?”

  Paul’s hand covered hers, warm, strong, and eased her fingers from the headboard. Her knees buckled and she flopped onto the bed. “Lie back. The dizziness will stop.” He straightened and Vyn wanted to follow him around the room, but turning her head only thickened the spinning.

  She let out a tight breath. Damn it, she wasn’t this weak. The heels of her hands dug into her eyes and she willed away the low buzzing. “Should I ask where you had that gun stashed?”

  A snort came from the bathroom. “Not where you think.”

  Vyn rolled onto her side. Over the edge of the bed, she stared into Liam’s fixed eyes. Her brain kicked in. She could buy them time. A short slice of it anyway. And she thought her brain had been quick and clear. “My bag. Give me it.” She forced herself to sit, grateful to not feel woozy. “Please?”

  Paul dropped his pack on the floor. “What for?”

  This was her area of expertise and it put strength in her spine. She pointed to various points in the room, the signs of modification obvious to her trained eye. “You have dampers. Sophisticated ones, so his handlers are aware that his transponder will become…irregular in here. I think we still have time. I can tweak his device, twist it to make it appear he’s still alive.”

  “How long to fix him?”

  “A few minutes?”

  He grabbed her bag from the bathroom and threw it to her feet. “Do it.”

  Vyn opened it and dumped the contents on the carpet. “I’ll also need a new pack. This—” she tossed the stinking, slime-covered bag away from her, “—is ruined.”

  She sorted through her array of gear, her gaze flicking up to Liam. She’d never worked on a corpse before and it was…unnerving. Her fingers curled into her palms, short nails digging into her flesh. If it bought them a few extra minutes, she had to overcome her squeamishness. She could practically hear Ossian’s voice in her head. Do you really want him to see you freaking out? Again?

  She didn’t.

  The gloved fingers that touched Liam’s cool hair weren’t hers. She dissociated herself, made the quick, practical turn of his head a job done by someone else. Not her. His scalp was still warm and a quick shiver ran up her arm.

  She refocused and pressed pads to his skin. The monitors blipped, locating the transponder. She pulled in a quick breath. They were lucky. It was still in one piece. She scanned, points of information flickering. It was cold. She pressed her lips together. Yes, that had been the probability, but she’d hoped there’d be some spark, something that made her next move unnecessary.

  Vyn winced and flipped on the low-level shocker. Liam kicked and jerked—they’d have to tie him down—as she bound the electrical signal into the transponder. The device jumped with as much life as the man did.

  “Here.” Paul kicked the brake tabs on the corner wheels of the bed and pulled it around to trap the body between the floor and the low bed. Liam’s limbs thumped against the slats, his heels cracking the wood. “Enough?”

  Vyn forced out a thank-you and untensed her shoulders. Watching him push a bed over a twitching corpse was…disturbing. Probably more than her working on one. The calm way he solved her problem… She didn’t usually mix with people like him.

  He gave her a short nod and dropped a small black backpack down beside her. He threw her jacket onto the bed. “You have three more minutes.”

  “All right.”

  She had enough information to replicate his broadcasting signal. It wouldn’t fool them for long, but maybe it would give them time to get to wherever the hell they were going. Her fingers tapped out magic, the crackle of the feed, the pulse of his reanimated thought patterns fire under her fingertips.

  The transponder stabilised. Vyn bit her bottom lip and pushed herself up. The bed thumped with each spasm of Liam’s body, and the air filled with the uncomfortable stink of warm meat and singed hair. The signal wouldn’t last. “I’ve done what I can.”

  She put the remaining gear into the new bag and rifled through her jacket for the money and simulacrum case. They joined the other equipment. She stripped off her gloves and wrapped them into a tight ball. She’d only touched him through thin anti-static gauze but still she wanted to scrub her hands.

  “You’re done?” Paul handed her a black fleece jacket. He stared down at the twitching corpse, Liam’s face jerking into the carpet. A thin smile touched his mouth. “Let’s go.”

  “Where?”

  “The Box.”

  “It’s cold-world?”

  “In a way.”

  “Nothing but honest.” Vyn bit out the words and his eyes narrowed on her. “So…” She waved her hand at the narrow staircase leading down to the garage. “After you.”

  Chapter Seven

  The cold, damp air chilled the sweat against her forehead and she drew it into her lungs, the fresh wetness of the surrounding greenery a pleasure. Nothing seemed to grow in S-District, where everything was grime and waste and decay.

  “This way.” Paul pulled the back door shut and took her arm. He led the way down the woodchip path, the lights from the surrounding houses casting a weak shine over the wild thicket of plants, bushes and trees.

  The distant hum of vehicles and the underlying itch of the Mind pushed against her skin. She’d forgotten how close and thick every breath felt here, especially as the hill loomed over them, the Corporation tower a stretch of light into the darkness.

  She stared up and willed her vision not to spin. Her thoughts still whirled. How could they get into the tower? Its security was reputed to be incredible, every hack impossible. Rumours swept through the Fomorians, of course. Everything from armies
of synthetic robots to secret alien technology. The men who had butchered her skin had designed it. Maybe it really was guarded by a power from the bottomless pit. She could break into the upper tier of the Mind—the virtual space—but she had no hope in hell of getting past the tower’s impenetrable physical walls. Her gut twisted. “It’s in there?”

  “Not exactly.”

  Vyn blinked. “It’s not?”

  “We have an in.” Paul flexed his grip around her arm and increased his speed, his boots silent on the uneven ground.

  “You’re certain?”

  “I’m certain.”

  She stared at him, a sliver of light etching his profile. Was that a flicker of…something? He was obviously only completely honest with pneumatic blondes.

  “I need to know what I’m doing, Paul.” She glanced back to the darkness of his house. Her voice dropped and the rush of nervous heat through her flesh made her chest tight. “I’m complicit in the murder of a senior Corporation employee. I’m trusting you to get me out of here in one piece, but to do that I have to have a clue about something.”

  A brief smile pulled at his mouth. “There’s a perimeter fence beyond this stretch of land. We get through that and there’s an access through the hill. The whole thing is a warren.”

  “We simply ‘get through’?”

  Paul pulled her through the thick line of a box hedge. The sharp prick of thin branches and the brush of small glossy leaves itched her skin. Its acrid stink sharpened—it stank like piss. The proximity of the fence warmed the cold night air, and the hum of security walls throbbed against her eardrums.

  A shimmer of air just beyond the hedge was another sign of the encircling walls. One touch and they were fried. A split second of agonised pain and she’d be a brief human cinder. She’d seen it more than once. Vyn pulled in a nervous breath. This wasn’t her area of expertise. Ossian was the one with the talent for physical structures. He’d got both of them in and out of more places than she wanted to remember.

  “You have the key?” She stared up at Paul as he ran his gaze over the seemingly endless and lethal wall.

  “Yes.” His fingers loosened their grip, but he didn’t let her go. They slid down over her elbow, along her forearm to her wrist. A hard thumb jerked up the heel of her palm and he yanked her forward. “It’s you.”

  “Fuck—no!”

  Her palm hit the invisible wall, the sudden force of the impact shocking her skin…but not frying her. It flared hot against her hand, the quick stab of blunt pins forcing out a sharp breath. But she wasn’t dead.

  “What the fuck is this?” She grated out the words, staring at her hand, her stiffened fingers, as flares of light darted around her skin. Beads of energy teased over the scars drawn on the back of her hand to edge their way under the cuff of her jacket.

  Vyn stopped breathing. It was as if the energy sought her out, as if it drew her into itself. Knowing her. Accepting her. Slots dropped into place in her mind, and anger twisted hard in her stomach. “Those bastards made me into a key. More than that. Destroyed my life so I’d be a part of their security system?”

  “Open a doorway.”

  Vyn thinned her mouth and focused. She felt her gaze narrow, the hard pinch of a line forming between and around her eyes. She imagined a hole, making it high and wide enough to fit them both through. For a long second, the quick flare of silver scales caught in a circle burned against her retinas. She blinked. It vanished and the air cleared, a cold ripple of simple night air sweeping over her hot skin.

  She took a step forward. Paul did the same and they passed under to the other side of the fence. The ripple of security dropped down behind them again.

  Vyn pushed out a hard breath and yanked her hand free from his. “You could have told me.”

  He grabbed her arm again and pulled her through the breaks in the low bushes. “It’s instinctive. I tell you how you’re the key? You block it.”

  Vyn struggled in his grip but couldn’t break free. “Not necessarily.”

  Paul shrugged. “Believe that.”

  They tramped over the undulating ground, the hum of security wrapping around her. She wanted to argue, to say that he was an idiot, but she was too aware of how the mind worked. She played with perception every day. And she hated to admit it, but he could know more about her skin being an organic circuit than she did. For now.

  She pressed her lips together. “How far?”

  “Just beyond that copse.”

  Vyn winced and glanced back to the security wall. Copse was too close to corpse. The lights of Paul’s house flickered beyond the sheen of air and she had to wonder if the other Liam’s body was still trying to mash his face into the carpet, or if the signal had failed.

  Running in the cold-world had its limitations. She hated it. She wanted the link to the tiers, to the open and immediate knowledge of other minds. Her whole body itched for it. Was that also a part of what she was?

  Paul moved into the shadow of the trees and she followed, her boots squelching into sodden leaf litter. Rainwater dripped from bare branches and found the back of her neck. Through the silence, the sudden low whine of an engine surged up the hill. She jerked her head at the sound. More than one engine. Liam had stopped signalling.

  Paul increased his pace, the raised tension in his hand sudden and hard. “We have ten minutes.” He stopped. “And it’s here.”

  “How do you know…?” Her words trailed away. There. The same pull on her flesh as the fence, awakening something in her, crawling over the scars on her skin. It was becoming easier, more malleable. She swept her hand through the air and metal groaned, too loud, far too loud in the quiet of the night.

  The ground shifted and a hole opened up in the earth. Warm, metal-tasting air gushed up in a cloud of grey vapour. A rim of light edged the circular hole, gleaming against the rung of a narrow ladder disappearing down. She leaned forward and the tunnel dropped away about fifteen metres.

  Paul let go of her arm, glanced around and swung his body onto the ladder. “You need to follow me right now.”

  Vyn stared behind her. The bushes down the curve of the hill, the ones beyond the rippling wall in his garden, shifted, moved against the light winds. Her heart twisted, the quick burst of fear rushing heat through her flesh. Agents had found Liam and were tracking them. She doubted the security wall would hold the agents much longer than it had—unexpectedly—held them.

  “Now, Vyn.”

  Paul’s voice echoed and she jerked her attention back to the deep hole in the ground. She clambered in after him, her boots clumping against the metal rungs.

  A heavy plate clanged above her head and Vyn crushed her eyes against the sudden rush of panic that swept through her. She willed her fingers to unlock from the rungs and continued her quick scramble down the ladder.

  “How far now?” Her voice echoed in the metal-lined tunnel and the over-warm air tasted sickly in her mouth.

  “My times aren’t accurate.”

  That was helpful.

  Paul hit the floor with a dull thump. He straightened and pinched the bridge of his nose. She glanced down and winced at the two-metre drop. It would hurt. And somehow it was making her mind spin, flashing a quick pain over her skin. If the Goodman brothers hadn’t been dead three years, she’d happily kill them herself. She closed her eyes for a moment, letting the darkness take her.

  “I’ve got you.” He stretched up his arms, hands spread to catch her. His gaze sparked and there was that look again, the dark hunger that dried her mouth and made her think about anything other than technology. “Trust me?”

  Vyn drew in a steadying breath. She didn’t reply, closing her eyes as Paul’s fingers wrapped around her ankles and began a quick, hot slide over her calves, her thighs. They were on the run, most likely dead very soon, and her stupid body only thought about him, his touch and mostly definitely Paul Cross naked.

  His fingers dug into her hips and he supported her against his body, his face
pressed to her thigh. Heat bloomed low in her belly. Really, it wasn’t the time. “Let go, Vyn.”

  And that didn’t help either as her thoughts went to a warm, dark place with the promise of all of his bare skin against hers, his mouth, his breath, the slick heat of his muscles…

  Abruptly, she dropped away from the ladder and, though Paul caught her, it didn’t allow for the slow, agonising press of her body against his. He held her ribs, his thumbs a delicious tease to the underside of her breasts. “Paul…”

  His hand slipped down her ribs to play across her backside. He squeezed and she yelped, pushing against him. She couldn’t deny the hard press of his erection into her belly.

  “Later,” he murmured, and his mouth brushed hers with a brisk kiss, something hot and completely unsatisfying. “I promise you.”

  “Why?” The question was out and she cursed it. How to look stupid and insecure. She felt a blush cut across her cheeks. Perhaps she could blame it on the dense heat of the air shrouding them.

  Paul stepped back and took her hand. His gaze bored into her. “Because I want you.”

  Vyn blinked, too surprised by his reply to say anything.

  He didn’t seem to need a response as he stared around the narrow tunnel they’d landed in, one that stretched into the distance on either side. She followed his gaze. Unbroken, smooth metal walls with running lights set a metre, maybe more, above the floor. Technology hummed, and the rub of it was harsh against her exposed skin, tracing out the living lines of her scarring.

  Metal clanked, a series of quick, hard thuds high above them. Corporation agents were only minutes behind.

  Paul shot a frowning glance upwards and broke into a run. Vyn stumbled behind him, her breath short, her heart pounding. The tunnel diverged into a myriad of other passages, each looking the same, each breaking out into another network of tunnels. Yet he didn’t slow, didn’t hesitate over which tunnel to charge down, and she could feel that he was right. Somehow. The rush over her face, the exposed skin of her neck and hands rioted with the now-familiar burn of security technology.