The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2016 Edition

by Rich Horton

  No fucking way I’m blacking out. Her bone-sickle grin hangs overhead, the last thing so many other unlucky motherfuckers have seen at the end of a fight. Rhye focuses on that sliver, wills the darkness back with clenched fists and a gas leak hiss. The thing with her smile is still laughing, but it’s not some kind of mad villain cackle. She sounds like she’s having the time of her life.

  “What the fuck are you laughin’ at, dumbshit? See something funny?” Not the wittiest thing to ever rasp its way out of her nicotine box, but whatever. Wit’s the first thing to go when you’ve just gotten pistolwhipped in the side of the head so hard your brain thinks it’s being skullfucked to death by a rhinoceros. The grip comes down again, misses her by an asshair, and judo-chops the pavement so that little bits of gravel spray up like buckshot.

  If the girl-slash-security-system-that-was-her is sharp and not a dumbfuck, she’ll use these precious seconds to turn her guns around and shoot Rhye in the face, like she’s wishing she had just done herself. But oh, glory of glories, blessed be the almighty fuckin’ cockiness of youth. This little asshole right here—with her two dead eyes and her don’t-need-nobody jock walk—curls her lip back in an are you fuckin’ serious sneer and swallows the bait deep.

  “Aw, come the fuck on, man!” she crows. “You can’t fuckin’ tell me the thought of actually going up against somebody who can give you a fair fight isn’t gettin’ you all tingly in your grandma-bloomers! Why the hell else would you come here? For him?Fuck’s sake, I’m you, aren’t I? You live for sweat running under your tits and blood splattering your face, not some soft-hearted fuckhead can’t tell which way a magazine loads.”

  Is that what he thinks I thought? Shit. There’s a nasty little spoonful of glass to chew on. No time for guilt, though.

  “You got one part of that right, sister,” she says, and jams her thumb into the girl’s left eyeball. It’s all executed in one smooth motion: jabtwistpull. And then she’s rolling across the wet ribbon of tarmac while her not-self flails and shrieks gurgling stray cat curses, rolling and back on her feet and bringing up her guns to make an end of this, but even in a considerable amount of pain the other her is fast in an unnatural, make-the-flesh-of-your-ears-crinkle sort of way, slither-snarling back beneath the rainy evening’s skirts before Rhye can give the triggers a good hard prom-night fingering. She starts to go after her, blood boiling.

  Y’know what? A little voice in her head, the one that sometimes says things like are you sure getting into that gimp’s windowless white van is a good idea? or maybe we should go get that festering bullet hole checked out, or, of late, don’t punch Rack in the face, the poor bastard hasn’t done anything to deserve it this time. In other words, her inner killjoy.

  What?

  Fuck pride, man.

  And just what is that supposed to mean, exactly?

  Pride is for jackoffs who aren’t being hunted from the fucking shadows.

  “Shut the hell up.” She says this aloud in a hissed whisper; hopefully the security system will laugh herself to death at Rhye having a conversation with her invisible friend and that’ll be that. “We’re fine. I can do this by myself. I don’t care what Rack says.”

  Pride is for people who don’t have other people depending on them . . .

  Rhye snaps to a halt like the bullet she’s been expecting just drilled her brain a peephole.

  . . . So why don’t you try trusting your partner for goddamned once and get over there like he asked? Remember what we’re here for.

  “Go fuck your own ass with a fish-hook dildo.” Her shoulders are slumping before she’s halfway through the word “fuck.” By the time she reaches “dildo” she’s made a u-turn and is vaulting the sagging picket fence that separates her from the back-alley leading to Rack, feet thwap–thwap-thwapping the blacktop. She listens for the echo of a pursuit, but all she can hear is Rack’s voice reeling her in and her own one-woman ticker-tape parade careening down the path.

  Warm. Warmer. Red-hot, veering back off the pavement, crashing through briars and dead weeds and old tires like she’s back in basic, up and over another splintered, gap-slatted privacy fence as weather-worn as a beer can in the ditch. It’s not a pretty postcard that greets her—more weeds, more broken glass, a swimming pool filled with water the color and consistency of baby shit. Rack is there, though, tied up on the patio, and that qualifies it for Garden of the Fucking Century, so far as Rhye’s concerned. She’s down and off her perch and across the yard before she can remember to lazily saunter in like she doesn’t give a fuck.

  His face is a bloodied bedsheet, haunted eyes staring out from behind the bruises and stubble. Rhye wipes the blood from his split lip and they exchange a quick you cool? glance before she sets to work on the knotted ropes. It’s not some romantic, lovey-dovey, kiss your boo-boos BS; it’s just the kind of thing good partners do for one another.

  “Been playing in Mommy’s bondage closet again, Rack-baby?” Tsk-tsk. “You got a lotta ’splaining to do if we get out of here alive, my friend.” She spares him another look from under her cocked brow, trying to keep it cool and even, wanting him to maybe twist in the wind a little. His expression is all thousand-yard stare and nervous bird herk-jerk, sheepishness and syrupy adoration. Portrait of The Nebbish As Grateful Penitent. He looks like he stuck his hand down a secretary’s panties at the office holiday party, got a handful of tentacles for his troubles, and wanted her all the more for it after that initial moment of cold water surprise. “For now, though,” she finishes, after re-locating her tongue and remembering how to use it, “we need to figure out a way to clean up this goddamned mess. No, sorry, my bad: Your goddamned mess, ’cause I sure as shit don’t remember giving you permission to turn my personality into a fucking security module. Can you see me? You’re lookin’ right at me, so I’m pretty sure you can see me.”

  “We synced up as soon as you stepped into the area,” he says. “The chip, you know?” Rhye finally snake-charms the ropes into giving way and he pulls his hands free, rubbing each wrist gingerly. You could take fingerprints with the tired smudges beneath his eyes. “I always wanted the interfaces to work together. Yours is one-of-a-kind, but I gave mine a tweak, so—OW! What the heck was that for?”

  “It’s lucky for you that we’re friends, asshole. Anybody else pulled some shit like this and I wouldn’t just sock ’em in the ear. How’s this gonna go down? Talk quick. She’s way too quiet right now and I have no idea how long that’s going to last.”

  “It’s . . . tricky.”

  “Tricky? What exactly do you mean by ‘tricky’? Did you or didn’t you say you could disable that fucking thing if I got you free?”

  “I did say that, yes.” Rack stretches the last word out until it wobbles, full of more quivering “but” than a strip club. “I can give you a kill switch. Implementing it may require a little footwork, though, and I’m not sure how that will play out, considering our . . . environment.” He waves a hand to take in the garden, runs the other through his hair, and ends up looking like an insomniac hedgehog.

  “Well, considering our only other option is getting bullet-fucked to death by a pissed-off, admittedly foxy-fine bit of code, I’m open to anything. What do I need to do?”

  “We’ll need to execute two operations at the same time, and even then it doesn’t have a 100% chance of working. I hadn’t allowed for this. I can be sort of an idiot sometimes, as you are probably aware.”

  Seeing him slumped there staring at his hands feels like defeat, and she’ll be fucked if she gives up that easily after coming this far. She punches him in the shoulder. “Hey, none of that sadsack shit. You fucked up. Everybody does. If you’re gonna wallow in it, I might as well’ve left you up there with your brains as pretty pink wallpaper. What the fuck will trying hurt, right?”

  And that gets a slow, crooked half-smile out of him, which is all she really wants right now. It’s like her heart just snorted a line. “You’re right, of course,” he says.

&
nbsp; “Goddamned right I am.” She offers him her hand. “C’mon. Let’s do this thing.”

  Their palms meet with an awesome partnerly slap.

  Now, this is where Rhye expects him to pull something cool out of his pockets—a couple of little red buttons, maybe, or a bundle of dynamite. Instead, he blanches. His hands fly up to his throat in the universal oh shit, I’m choking gesture. For a horrible fistful of seconds she thinks she’s going to have to do the Heimlich (and how the fuck does that work, anyway? Is that the move where you grab the other person from behind and give them a rough humping?) but thankfully he shakes whatever’s in his throat loose on his own. Something small and heavy bounces off the toe of Rhye’s boot. Another, like a fat brass raindrop.

  She reaches down and carefully picks up two 9mm bullets, bright as change in a gutter.

  Rack peers down at the lumps of lead and metal he just hairball-horked onto her boots. If he wore glasses she just knows he’d be adjusting the fucking things for a better look. “Huh. I guess it makes sense that they would take this form.”

  “So these are, what, special? Magic bullets?” They feel like normal rounds. They even smell like ’em, which is to say, metallic. She rolls them between her fingers, warm from the heat of her hand. “Kill switches, whatever the fuck you called ’em?”

  “Correct. Ideally you’ll discharge both simultaneously, shutting down the security system completely.”

  There are pros and cons to knowing somebody—really knowing somebody, how their face looks when they cry or come or drool in their sleep. Rhye understands what Rack means immediately: You’re the fighter, you’re strong, so of course you’ll take care of this on your own. She could say no. She could open up her chest with a scalpel and let him see the tender bits—I can’t do this alone, she’s too good and I care too much and quite frankly I’m scared shitless, for you and for me—or she could tell him, hey, clean up your own goddamned mess, I ain’t your fuckin’ nanny.

  But she knows how this has to go down, truthfully, and it doesn’t involve telling Rack to piss up a rope. She’ll save that for a later date. Instead, before she can second-guess her decision, she pulls one of her pistols, ejects the magazine, thumbs one of the kill switches inside, and shoves it into his hands. There. Done.

  Rack stares down at her sweet, lethal baby like she’s just handed him a dead cat.

  “She won’t be expecting you to have one of my guns,” she says, by way of explanation. Her voice is hoarse. Chopping off one of her hands would’ve been easier, if less useful. “I sure as hell wouldn’t, if I were her. Safety’s off and it’s ready to go; all you gotta do is point and pull. Careful your thumbs aren’t behind the slide, unless you wanna get bit.”

  Does he understand what this is costing her? In pride, in trust, in all of that stupid emotional stuff? He looks back up at her—stunned doesn’t begin to describe the expression on his face—and his eyes are wet and glassy.

  “Rhye . . . I can’t . . . ”

  Yeah. He knows.

  “Aw, hell. Don’t go getting all wet cereal on me, man,” she mutters. Making sure her remaining pistol is loaded and racked suddenly becomes very, very important. “Just make sure you’re close when you fire, alright? I don’t—”

  (Pop)

  Of course Miss Security doesn’t come over the fence; why would she bother? The only warning is that soft, sudden pop, like a blood bubble bursting on a dying man’s lips, and there she stands, herniated out of the nothing because oh right, she is the fucking nothing. Rhye has just enough time to grasp that they’ve been played and just enough time to push Rack down and back and no time at all to do anything else but brace for impact as Not-Rhye slams into her and they take a backwards trust exercise straight into the pool.

  It’s in her nose and her ears and her eye socket and it’s warm, which is somehow the worst part. A warm green slurry pressing against her skin, turning everything to frogs and fungus and body temperature pea soup. Fingers scratching at her throat and her one good eye, looking to throttle or blind or both. Spots wriggling tadpole trails across her vision. She pushes out in slow motion, catches her attacker in the chest, tries using the momentum to pull away. No dice; it’s like karate-kicking an amped-up octopus. They sink deeper, the light fading to darkness, seconds rubber-banding to grim, doubtful decades.

  And this is what I’ll get for trusting Rack with my back. Should’ve gone with my instincts. Trust fucks you. It fucks you every time and puts a knife in your windpipe while it’s at it. Lungs already beginning to ache. Can’t grab for her gun, ’cause both her hands are busy keeping Not-Rhye at bay. Nobody’ll come to save you, idiot. Or if he does, he’ll get here about ten seconds too late. Let this be your final lesson about going home with strangers.

  The security program’s good eye glitters in the gloom, black and triumphant. Gotcha, you fucker, it says, and it’s the language of sharks she’s speaking now, no mewling monkey noises needed. Don’t even have to waste a bullet. She leans closer (Rhye has a sudden nightmare flash of her opening her mouth to show double-rows of pointed teeth, all the way back to the place where her jaw hinges), eager to choke, to rub out, to self-destruct. Rhye would keep fighting but there’s seven feet of scummy water overhead and a tangle of grasping limbs dragging her further downward and god fucking damn she’s tired. She can’t even spit in her rival’s face.

  It is at this perfect moment of physical and emotional exhaustion, with her arms pulling the fire alarms and her legs turning to full clips of concrete, that Rack chooses to dive into their underwater cockfight, like a toaster hurled slots-down into a bathtub. He arrives with a muffled splash, churning up bubbles, froth, muck from the bottom, algae from the surface. Now it’s Not-Rhye’s turn to be surprised. She spins around to face this new threat

  (occupied she’s not paying attention to me my hands are free)

  lip curled, shoulders hunched, NOT a happy camper, she thought this was gonna be a one-on-one and turns out it’s a threesome. She’s all over his shit faster than you can say piranhas in the kiddie pool.

  (and now the grip’s solid in my hand it’ll fire it’ll kill if we’re close enough I believe in you baby air air AIR)

  The water’s a whirlpool of bodies and spume. Rhye is dying by inches now; another half minute and her lungs will burst. But not before she does what she came here to do. She pulls that heavy, heavy gun up, the weight of a lead cannon in her hands. She waits for visibility to clear. And when the bubbles finally part and Rack’s eyes meet hers

  (she’s got her hands around his throat but he’s letting her so calmly and she’ll never notice the pistol kissing the underside of her jaw until it’s too late)

  she shoves the muzzle of the 9mm snugly against Not-Rhye’s back and sends a prayer to Lady Luck, that goddess all gunslingers kneel to.

  Rack and Rhye squeeze the triggers as one, the way good partners do.

  They find the kid balled up in a basement jail cell, groaning and bitching about his head. It looks an awful lot like the one Rhye spent her formative years gracing, but Christ knows what the kid sees. Good looking, late teens, perfect teeth and hair and body model. There’s something wrong with the expression, though. Even confused and fucked up in the middle of a strange system he’s sneering an entitled sneer that makes Rhye’s fists curl like dead spiders beneath a radiator. I always get what I want, it says. Why wouldn’t the world bend over and give it to me?

  “Sorry about the wait,” Rack says. “Ran into a little trouble.” He fumbles in his pocket for a key. “Doing alright?”

  The kid’s eyes dart wildly. “A little trouble?” he says. “You call this a little trouble? I can’t fucking move and you think that’s a little trouble, fuckface? Suck both of my balls, man. Hey! Hel-lo? Are you still there? Are you listening to me?”

  Rack doesn’t look up, just calmly keeps on doing what he’s doing. Rhye can feel her molars grinding together. “Rack, can you hurry it the fuck along? I don’t know how much longer I can
put up with this shit, get what I’m saying?”

  “Absolutely.” A click and the door to the cell swings open. Rack steps back and nods at the kid, so irritatingly professional Rhye can hardly stand it. “Someone will be by to collect you shortly, I believe,” he says. “Your body is waiting outside.”

  “Goddamned right it is, you no-nuts bitch.”

  “Kid, you talk to him like that one more time and I’m going to blow both the balls you’re so proud of off in a place where they ain’t pretend and don’t grow back, fuckin’ got it? I don’t care who your daddy is.” Rhye can feel a headache gathering behind her eyes. Time to get the hell out of here and go the fuck home. Her mattress is calling. “C’mon Rack, let’s go. Compress your ass. My headspace isn’t what you’d call flying first class, but it’s better than the company in here.”

  There’s a sound like bacon hitting a skillet, loud enough that the kid’s bitching is blessedly drowned out. A glowing door pops up at the end of the row of cells. She’s gotta hand it to Rack, he’s nothing short of a goddamned wizard when he’s free inside a program. Rhye grabs his hand and gleefully sets off for the exit, feeling more cheerful than she has all day. A little nervous about letting Rack piggyback inside her melon, maybe—there’s shit in there she doesn’t want anyone poking at, even her partner—but mostly too relieved at having him back to care. He lets her pull him along. Doesn’t say a word, just smiles and follows, tie flapping like a pirate’s banner in the weird wind pushing from the entryway.

  The light from the door is the cold, flickering white of a fluorescent bulb burning in an abandoned department store. They stand there staring into the static for what seems like ages. She doesn’t let go of his hand. He doesn’t let go of hers. Rhye wonders if it’ll hurt, or feel weird, or if she’ll be the same once it’s done with. She sucks in a breath. Now or never, woman. Leave it to Rack to wait for a second fucking invitation.