“So you shag Lukacs too,” I slur at her.
“I’m helping you, Terisov.” She pulls my legs off the table so they dangle. Blood runs down my limbs, from the inside this time, swirling circulation and pain through my nerve endings. She yanks me to my feet anyway, holds me up. Her grip around my chest finds the hard grooves of my ribs, sinking through the bandage. She can touch my guts and giblets, just dip her fingers into my sides and poke all the wet life around.
The shadows sway.
“Up,” she says. “Up.” Struggling with my near deadweight. “Turn around. Lean here.” She plants my hands on the table and I feel the cold metal edge slide up against my pelvis. I shake but stay standing even though I can’t much sense my legs. I look at the table and think of Finch and his big dark eyes and what he looked like facedown in his bunk. Right before I warmed myself against him. He was so warm.
“Finch…” Was he the one yelling for the doctor? It had to be, nobody else would.
She wraps one of my arms around her shoulders, helping me into a thick, nondescript coverall. One leg and the other. Loose, at least. My balls chafe against the fabric. It still hurts. I put my hand there.
Jorgasson says, “What?” Preoccupied with dressing me. With moving my hand as if I’m going to jerk off right in front of her.
“Finch…”
“He’s not your worry now,” she says.
He’s my deal. My mistake. I’m going to space, and if I don’t want him killed, like this, if I don’t want to trust Lukacs that far…
The tendrils of my thoughts disintegrate.
But Finch’s voice echoes in my head. A false memory or a brutal truth. The panicked sound of desperation, calling for help.
Just now or when he first arrived at the prison? It all muddles in my mind. I remember his face when the guard deposited him in my cell, announced him as my podmate, then slapped him on the ass. Finch stood there with all of his anger wrapped up inside his chest, but it pounded in the pulse beneath his jaw. And I knew he was going to get himself killed within the week.
Unless I did something. Unless I claimed him and cut anyone who came close. Wex got to him first in the mess hall. Flipped his tray. Tried to start something. Bloodied Finch’s nose. Then I bloodied Wex. And at that point I was committed. Like a fool.
I can leave him and then. Then. Wex will kill him now just out of spite, before Lukacs gets Wex sprung for “murdering” me, and I don’t see Lukacs caring or even telling me until I am done with his work.
“I can’t leave him here.” I knock Jorgasson’s hands away, lean my ass against the table to zip myself up. These rough coveralls that burn my chilled skin.
She leaves me to it and digs into a lower cupboard for a pair of stashed, heat-adjusting boots. “The deal is you alone,” she says. “We don’t have time to worry about him, and neither do you. Morry’ll be here in five minutes to take you out.”
“I’m not going without him.”
She stares at me, then shoves the boots into my arms. “Put these on.”
I let them drop.
“Terisov, I have specific instructions. And so do you.”
“Then put me back in my pod.”
Middle management is easiest to confound. She gives a frustrated growl. Likely she sees her promised cred floating away with my stubborn words.
“It won’t take much.” If she doesn’t cooperate, I’ll have to hurt her. “Just comm Morry to pick Finch up on the way here.”
“There’s the tower guard to get past in the Hangout and one section gate. Not to mention he’s in here for a reason. He deserves to be here.”
I sit back on the table. It feels good to be off my feet even though my ass gets goose bumps on that metal. I press an arm to my gut. I think the pain is making me crazy or at least too determined about the wrong things. But her judgment gets under my skin. Where did you grow up? What pretty life did you lead? “You know they’ll kill him tomorrow. Or worse.”
“Why do you care?”
Why don’t you.
I stare into her shadowed face. She’s a small woman with calloused hands, but she keeps us patched up in here, stitched and stuffed no matter how many times our seams rip apart and our insides fall out. But compassion doesn’t pay well, and she is scared of what Lukacs will do if she deviates from the deal. She must know him well. Maybe, probably, she’s helped him in the past. Ops could have assets from the papacy to a prison.
“Just get him here,” I tell her. “Get him here!” I kick at her thigh, even though it hurts. Breathing hurts. She doesn’t expect it, nearly crumples where she stands, so I grip the table edge, stretch, and kick her again before she can recover. She falls down. And that makes my vision cloud. But I slide off, standing. Show her that if it comes down to it, you can get her. Corners dig into my palms, and she must’ve picked herself off the floor because her hands grip my arms. If her nails were claws I would be bleeding.
Don’t want to be touched, especially by an Ops pigeon. Snarl and a shove, one-handed, then a supporting lean again, right hip to the edge. She backs off, lifting her hands.
I look over my shoulder at her, still holding to the table. I’ll hurt you. You know I’ll hurt you if I have to.
We stare at each other. I’m not so faded that I’m not determined. Probably she has orders not to exacerbate my injuries. So she goes to the comm. I sit again and breathe. She argues with Morry in a hushed voice. I hear him say, “Just cuff and gag the bastard, and I’ll be there. Forget the other one.”
Cred makes him care less too.
I lift my hand at her when she looks at me. I let her know from my face and the gesture that she’ll have to tranq me to get me to obey, and with this much drugs already in my system that might annoy Lukacs when he wants me thinking.
She says, “Get Stefano Finch, Morry. Tell them I need to examine him because Terisov had an STD.”
It’s the last bit of absurd perfection to this plan, and it makes me laugh.
Jorgasson paces while I sit on the table tucked in and dangling feet. Everywhere hurts but my face. Everywhere itches from those damn bot-knitters until I bully Jorgasson to injet me with more fade. Just a bit. Something to numb all the parts of me that can feel. Even for a little while. Soon I’m just an etherized spider on that table, thick with lack of sensation.
Eventually the door opens again. Two shadows fill the rectangle of white light that crawls in from the corridor. Then the door shuts, cutting it off, and Morry says, “Here’s your baby doll.”
Finch yanks from the guard’s grip and trips up to me, stopping against the short edge of the drainage table. His hands are cuffed behind him but nothing restrains the expression on his face. The rage of shock.
You’re alive, his eyes say. They don’t move from mine.
“He needs to dress,” Jorgasson says, “or he’ll freeze.”
He looks at her, then back at me. He wears nothing but a T-shirt and fleecy black pants, and now a confused and wary glaze in his eyes.
And something in my chest tightens and twists.
“What’s happening?” Finch nearly shouts into my face.
“Shut up,” Morry says, even though this room is as thick as a tomb.
“I told you.” They’re going to make me hurt. They made me hurt. I see him remembering our conversation. Patching it all together. My provocation of Wex, not entirely on his behalf.
The silence falls over his body language like a sudden muteness.
Jorgasson motions Morry to uncuff Finch, holding out the same winter coveralls. Except now that I’m more awake I see they aren’t winter coveralls. They’re designer body bags for those dead prisoners who don’t have relatives to bury them proper.
“No bloody way,” Finch says, looking at them, eyes wide. Looking all around at exactly where we are. “What in bloody hell is going on?”
“We’re out,” I tell him, pathetic optimism.
“This isn’t out.” Uncuffed, he points to the grid of meta
l drawers in the wall, sized to fit prone bodies.
Well, it’s true. It’s kind of morbid.
“Put these on.” Jorgasson shakes the clothing at him. “Or we’ll leave you in here with the rest of the dead.”
I massage my arm. “Do it.”
He stands motionless. Staring at me. As if I’m speaking, still asleep.
And maybe I am.
“Let’s go.” Morry yanks me off the table, and my knees buckle.
Finch comes to life, pushes himself toe-to-toe with the guard.
Jorgasson pulls him back and sets the clothes in his arms, even though he still looks at Morry. Suspicious. Unyielding.
This little bird that I thought needed protection. His jaw sets in stubborn menace.
“Get dressed,” I tell him, as Morry propels me to the door. And to Morry: “We’re walking out of here? And I’m supposed to be dead?”
“Don’t concern yourself with the details,” Morry says. “Just move.”
“We fixed the camfeed,” Jorgasson says from behind us, shoving Finch along as he zips up the dead man’s clothes.
“Ops is gonna be poor by the time we’re done. I’m almost flattered.” I’m the only one who seems to find it funny. Finch stares at me like I’m one spark short of a blast.
Still, all of these elaborate details for me. All the connections Mr. Black Ops called in. Just more information for me to pad a proper mental jacket on our boy Andreas.
He’ll have his turn. I think of all the different ways and can’t stop giggling. I can barely walk. The floor seems to undulate like it’s made of water. I think the drugs have latent effects, and Finch’s voice floats forward.
“Are you all right?”
“Just a little stiff, don’t worry.” I am the funniest piece of shit in the universe.
Nobody laughs.
The four of us creep through the corridor like revenants. Not a long walk, just around the corner to a couple of interlocked doors that lead out to a small retrieval bay. Where the bodies get picked up for shipment elsewhere. Jorgasson passes her nanobranded wrist over the verification pad and punches in the code to open the doors. They slide apart with a deep belch. Biting Arctic breath blasts us in the face. Wakes me up. A watery yellow light on the outer wall beams a piss puddle to the trodden snow on the ground. A black truck waits with the engine humming and a glow of blue from the chassis, floating it a foot off the packed snow. The back end of it aims toward us. So this is the way they transport the dead, Charon’s vessel. A man in a white skinsuit lowers himself from the right side of the cab, leaving the door open. The furred hood and dark shades obscure his face. He comes toward us at a clip.
“What’s that?” Cold smoke curls from his nostrils. A gloved finger points to Finch.
Lukacs’s voice. Mad.
“My bonus.” I tilt forward, grab the front of his skinsuit. My fingers slip on the sensitive fabric, but I dig in. His hands clamp around my wrists to shove me back. “Thanks for saving my face, mano, I knew you’d still want me pretty.”
I can barely breathe in this cold. All my insides seem to crystallize.
“Get him in the back,” Lukacs says, pushing me at Morry.
“What about him?” Morry jerks a chin at Finch, whose teeth chatter, eyes squinting against the wind. Fixed on Lukacs.
Lukacs looks back at him. A long time. Then at me, just a tilt of his chin. I can’t see his eyes.
“Put him in,” Lukacs says. “Both of them.”
“We can’t explain his absence,” Jorgasson says, apologetic and not a little scared.
Lukacs says, “He was so traumatized by Terisov’s death he committed suicide. Now do what I said.”
I don’t feel the cold. Not anymore. Just something deep and dark, like the water beneath a floe. Fine grains of snow whip against my skin like sand. Morry yanks open the back of the truck and tumbles me into its steel emptiness. At least it’s empty. One cage to the next, this one barely tall enough to stand in. So I sit, and my legs burn with gratitude.
Lukacs peers in at me. He’s eyeless behind the shades. It’s way past sundown and he still wears them. Maybe they’re scopes. “You and I will talk.”
I lean back on my hands, plant my feet, and spread my legs. “Anytime, sweetness.”
Finch clambers in beside me and shoves my knees together. “The hell is this?” My attitude, this man, this deal. Why. It’s in the curve of his back as he sits. The question mark. His breath clouds in my sight like smoke, but it smells like snow.
The truck doors slam in. Black now, and nothing else. The wind howls outside in muted complaint. In a second the vehicle jerks forward and the hum rises by a few pitches. We bob up and down, subjected to the repulse of the terrain. All my bones jar and quake, but I stifle any sound of pain until I taste blood on my lips.
I think of Lukacs.
In the darkness our voices seem more intimate than we are, and he sounds closer than he is. But he isn’t close at all, he’s across the space where we can’t accidentally touch in the tilt and rumble of the drive. The corrugated sides of the truck dig into my bruised back, but I don’t care. I don’t know how long we’re going to be on this ride, so I tuck into the corner with my arms against my chest and my knees up, conserving warmth.
“Who is that wank?” Finch says, a ragged question that sounds more like an accusation.
“Our ticket out. Be grateful.”
Silence and the sound of shifting. Then he says, “He’s going to kill me.”
“No he won’t. If he wanted to he woulda done it already.” My throat burns with every breath. Pain shoves a heated stick into my chest and wiggles it around. “If anything he’s going to use you.”
“Use me?”
Or not. He’ll decide. And when he sees Finch serves no purpose, my chivalry will be Finch’s death sentence.
This is what you learn.
“I thought you were dead,” Finch says finally, against my silence. His voice is raw from the cold. Close in the darkness.
It echoes in this hollow cage. I let it.
Impossible to know how much time passes, but it feels like hours. Most of it slips away in silence, nothing but our breaths and the grating thrum of movement over a barren scape. I doze despite myself and succumb to the invitation of the floor. Eventually the engine whines down to a low, steady hum, and movement stops. My aching body twitches in the dark, more when the sound of doors opening and shutting crack through the walls. I push myself to sit.
The injetted fade has long gone, and the pain is back with a vengeance. Soon the rear door opens and Andreas Lukacs stands there, hood lowered this time, hair dusted with specks of blowing snow. The sky bleeds lighter behind him. His shades are still on. Beside him is another man in a similar hooded skinny, aiming a rifle at us. The prom date. I can’t see the lower half of his face from the high tight collar, but his eyes are that flint blue.
“Move,” Lukacs says, one hand in his pocket.
Finch glances at me and eases out. I grit my teeth against the pain and hold the back of the truck for balance as my feet touch the ice-crusted ground. All around us is nothing but vast mountainous landscape, swept white with snow and illuminated like a comp console from the barely awake sun. At least the sun rises in this late February season, on this latitude. The cold air forces itself into my lungs, but it’s clean. It reminds me of Colonial Grace in the winter. It all would be beautiful if not for the existence of Lukacs.
He grabs me by the right arm and pushes up my sleeve.
“Hey!” I yank back, but his grip is a vise, my skin already bruised.
Finch takes a step but the other man shoves him with the nose of his rifle. Finch slips and falls on the ground, ass first. It’s just enough distraction for Lukacs to wrench my arm straight out and injet me just below the inside of my elbow, right on my Genghis Khan tattoo.
“What the fuck?”
“Just a nanotag,” he says, letting me go. “So we can track you.”
&nbs
p; “That wasn’t in the deal.” I know it’s useless to say as soon as I hear it. “If anybody scans my tat, they’ll see it.”
He smiles. “No. To standard scans this one reads like the ship ID code.”
Ops technology.
I hear scientists do the same thing to endangered animals.
Which means he plans on being in fairly close proximity to me at all times. Or someone he knows will be in my orbit. That’s not such a problem on a planet. Good tech can be tracked anywhere with a satellite pickup mate. But how that will work when I’m on a moving ship, I don’t know.
Unless someone on Kublai Khan works for him. Someone who gave him my journal files.
The thought burns, but I still feel the slap of the cold.
“I don’t need to tell you what will happen if you try to remove it,” he says.
No, you don’t. And this is real, he will put me back in the stars. The prison was rotten, but among the pirates and their long memories there might be no appeal. To them I got caught, I couldn’t kill Azarcon’s son after Falcone’s death, I couldn’t finish the job or hold the network together. And you don’t fill an empty seat by warming a prison cell. Six months EHSD since Azarcon put me on a ship and sent me insystem. I’m going back to a different landscape with an out-of-date map.
I could sit in the snow with my pain pooling at my feet and refuse to move. I could make Lukacs kill me, and maybe it’s the right sort of fate for piled-upon months of mistakes. I should, I could, why didn’t I a year go. Instead of nurturing a conscience, I should’ve poured flames on my courage and burned it to the ground. The ashes pile up, and I can choke instead of facing Finch’s dark eyes and the black above me in the sky.
Lukacs says, “I didn’t plan for your lily.”
And out of me doesn’t come a denial. I’m protective still, when maybe I should be self-protective alone. “I didn’t plan to be tagged.”
He smiles. I know his thoughts. They would be mine if I was in his position. You let some things play out. You’re nothing if not adaptable. You have to be adaptable.
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