Range

by JA Huss

  Selia is more than beautiful, she's glowing. She's ravishing. And she's Ashur's girlfriend. Long-term girlfriend. Committed girlfriend, like if they were not involved in all this end-of-the-world shit they'd be picking out china patterns and writing each other love promises.

  I haven't see Ashur since I've been back, but I've heard how Selia talks to him on the comm. Makes me want to puke.

  And makes me a little jealous, too.

  Not that she's with Ashur, he and I have never quite recovered from the whole Deliverance/Kush thing back on Amelia. I'm jealous because I know Ashur tells Selia how he feels about her. I know because she's always ending her calls with that stupid love promise.

  Tier never did that with me when we had our little post-Deliverance holiday. He was affectionate and tender, but he never said sweet things to me.

  But I'm no Selia, so I guess I understand.

  And it should come as no surprise that Ashur fell in love with her while I was away being morphed. Selia looks happy.

  I have a permanent frown, I'm afraid to talk to anyone except Gid and Sel, and I feel like my brain has been forced inside a body I've never met before. Even when I came out of the tank with wings back on Amelia I never felt this detached from myself. My replaced fingers and missing scars just make it worse. When a nightdog eats two of your fingers and a psycho slices a SEAR knife down your jawline, you're supposed to have to live with the consequences of those things forever.

  And when you cut yourself in half to save the man you love, there should be evidence of that.

  But my scars have all been erased. Every bite from the mutants in the Stag, every prairie lion claw mark, every battle wound I've ever had inflicted on me is gone. Even the one I inflicted on myself.

  Just gone.

  On the outside anyway.

  The inside is another thing entirely. Memories of a brother I will never see again haunt me every fraction of a second—waking or asleep. I say his name in my head almost continuously. Every heartbeat says Isten. When I breathe in I say Isten. When I breathe out I say Isten. When I stop I say Isten. There is no rest from the pain, only a shallow reprieve that allows me to function for fractions at a time.

  But reprieves are only temporary. A postponement of the inevitable, and nothing else. My mind is tempered by the reprieve, but this strength will not last forever.

  Selia is suddenly in my face. "You're not wearing that tank top, Junco. I mean," she looks me up and down and her eyes stop on my chest, "you really gotta play up your assets." Her face brightens back up as she beams at me. "I'll find you another top. The jeans are OK, not great, but with the boots you almost look like a sexy cowgirl."

  Cowgirl? What the fuck kind of drugs is she on? These are surplus military boots for Christo's sake. "I'm not really going for sexy, Selia. Just comfort."

  She snorts in the closet but doesn't answer me.

  Her room is nothing like any room I've ever had. It's not girly like my princess room, or minimal and modern like my secret room or my rooms on Amelia.

  It's homey. Comfortable. Just a mess of this and that—nothing that matches or has any sort of style to it. In fact, most of her furniture is downright ugly—that rattan shit that makes me think of old people communities in the Texas peninsula.

  But somehow it fits her. She makes it beautiful. Selia makes everything more beautiful.

  Gideon kicked me out of his room, with the big luxurious bed covered in an Egyptian cotton duvet and piles of downy pillows, the first chance he got. So my current room is Gideon's guest room which has a sort of not-lived-in tropical-tourist thing going on. Not rattan, thank God, but more like regular summer camp for twelve-year-olds—two sets of bunk beds of all things. Two! Like he rents this place out as a holiday home when he's off killing people and needs stacked beds to accommodate large family reunions.

  I snort at that thought. As if. As if we ever had one of those.

  Nothing in that room is mine. Not one thing. Even the clothes were purchased with Gideon's credits in the gift shops downstairs and I had to have these boots overnighted to me because all they had in stock were flip-flops and strappy sandals.

  I don't mind flip-flops for the beach, but I don't do strappy anything.

  So to recap, Selia is beautiful, easy to talk to, and well-adjusted.

  Right. Got it.

  I'm a mish-mash of rural Farm girl and avian killing machine, afraid to talk to strangers, and well on my way to a severe psychological disorder that cannot be controlled.

  This night is starting to sound like fun already.

  Selia appears in front of me holding a brown leather bustier.

  "No. I'm not wearing that."

  She pouts. "Why not? You'll look great."

  I'm about to answer with several cognizant reasons when she whips the tank over my head and spins me around, flattens the bustier to my chest, places my hand over it, and proceeds to try and zip it up.

  The zipper sticks in the small of my back.

  "Shit, Junco. You put on some pounds. Suck it in for a second, will ya?"

  I do and she tugs on the sides of the leather and the zipper at the same time until it gets past the force of tension and slides up my spine.

  She spins me around again and smiles. "Sorry about the pounds remark. The weight looks really good on you actually. You were always nothing but muscle and bone, but now—" she looks me over a little and clicks her tongue. "You're all curvy and shit."

  I sigh as I wiggle and give the girls a little adjustment inside the bustier. I've noticed the extra bulk myself and I'm sure this will really fuck up all my defense moves, so it sorta pisses me off that Inanna made me downright pudgy compared to how I used to look. Soldiers don't need curves, just muscles.

  It's funny though, I don't weigh any more than I did before this morph. I guess the wings were replaced with fat and that accounts for the whole conservation of mass going on. It's like my body is a chemistry equation that must be balanced—an honest-to-God stoichiometry puzzle. The problem is, I'm never sure if the products are better or worse than the reactants.

  Selia pushes me to sit down on the bed, pulls the elastic tie out of my hair and starts to brush it with long even strokes. I hate brushing it. Strands come off and fly all over the place. They stick to my arms and clothes and drive me crazy.

  I just sit there and let her do her thing. She comes at me with some kind of flat-iron and drags it down my hair to make it even and straight. It hangs lower now but it's not as unruly, so that's good.

  I balk at the make-up but Selia slaps my hand away and orders me to sit still.

  I do.

  It's so much easier to let people do what they want than it is to fight them.

  When she's done I don't even bother looking in the mirror. Who cares?

  Not me.

  We walk out to the living area where the elevator doors are open and waiting for us but there's no one inside. Gideon's voice carries back into the house from the terrace and I spy him and Sho out there. Gid has no shirt on and his upper body is golden brown from the sun. He's got some mirrored sunglasses on even though the sun has set and a cigar dangles from his lips. They seem to be a permanent fixture in his mouth these days. The few times he's gotten close to me the smoke on him is all I can smell. It makes me think of us at home. I frown at that thought. Thinking of camp as home is wrong.

  Isn't it?

  Gid's Archer scars are pale marks that partition off his back, the large triangle coming to a point somewhere below the waistline of his cargo shorts.

  If he was Tier, I'd call that sexy. I might even have to see where that line eventually stops.

  But this is just Gideon. He's not sexy. He's just Gideon. In fact, he's sort of an asshole these days and I'm not really sure if that's left over from the tough-love act of the first few days where I refused to come out of the bedroom, or if he's really holding something against me.

  I've never even bothered to look at my own Archer scars, but both they
and the wing bumps are mostly hidden by my hair. Selia says it's not so unusual to have such marks. Apparently people do all sorts of weird things to their bodies, up to and including scarring themselves on purpose.

  I sigh.

  Life.

  It's hard for me these days.

  Nothing much makes sense. Especially since everyone I thought was close to me is now distant. They all have lives beyond me, life went on without me. And as stupid as it sounds, this shocks me.

  Sometimes I wish I'd never come back.

  I push down my thoughts of Tier and think of Lucan instead. How could he leave me standing there like that out on the terrace? After all that shit Tier said? After that bullshit promise to love me for millennia. It was the ultimate betrayal in the middle of an unimaginable shunning by the most important person in my life.

  I swallow down my pain and watch Selia go out on the terrace to tell Gid we're leaving.

  Sho comes back inside and stops when he sees me. "Shit, Junco. You clean up nice. Want me to follow you guys around tonight to keep the weirdos away?"

  I frown and turn away as Selia comes back inside with Gid and answers for me. "No, that's OK, Sho. We'll be fine."

  Sho laughs so I turn back to look at him a little closer and he winks. He's good-looking with his mixture of Asian and Western features. I probably insulted him with my reaction.

  "Hold on, I'll come with you guys." Gideon grabs his shirt and slips it on and we all walk towards the elevator together.

  I half expect Selia to tell him no but I've noticed that she takes orders from Gideon without question these days. Always. I've been wondering where that directive comes from but haven't had the desire to actually ask for a chain of command flow chart yet.

  The ride down is uneventful. It's a private elevator and only goes to our apartment, so that's how it's supposed to be. But the lobby is another thing altogether. When I came up it was empty but now it's bustling with people waiting near the canal for transport over to the other atolls.

  "Shit," Selia sighs, "I guess everyone's got the same idea tonight."

  I guess they do.

  "Oh!" she exclaims, jerking on my arm as we walk out into the marble-floored atrium. "Look, that's her! Cora! She's staying here. I bet that was her suborbital we heard earlier."

  Our atoll is pretty exclusive and from what I'm told, my dad and Gideon own the entire thing. It's well guarded, mostly for my sake these days, but also for famous people who want privacy. Gideon tugs on Selia and me, dragging us over towards the transport line.

  "I don't want to go to the concert, Selia. You and Gideon can go, I'll just stay—"

  "No. You're not going back upstairs. We don't have to go see her, but you're staying with us tonight, Junco. I've had enough of your moping bullshit." She stares down at me, her blue eyes flashing.

  "Fine." I watch the rock star talk on a comm across the atrium and dial up the scope sight I inherited from Isten so I can try and read her lips. I'm not real good at that but I've accessed the sphere on my vision screen several times using the machine parts of me, so I reach into some of the weird circuitry winding its way through my body and try for a connection to her comm.

  I almost smile at my success.

  "I just got here, goddammit! I have an entire year of tour dates ahead of me and he goes and pulls this bullshit—"

  Uh-oh. The rock star's not having a good night.

  "I will come back, after my show, and then you tell him my lawyer will ream him in the ass for this fucking shit—"

  Someone must cut her off because she stops mid-sentence, then continues. "I'll have the pilot ready the sub and be back in Texas later. And so help me God, if that bastard doesn't give him back tonight. Tonight!" She screams that last part and even Selia and Gideon turn to see what's going on. She catches her outburst and dials it back down. "I'll call you when I land."

  The comm disappears into a large bag hanging off her shoulder and she adjusts her hair and walks over towards our transport line. She stops right next to me and I have to elbow Selia to stop her staring.

  The boat comes and Gideon directs Sel and I to get in, but the rock star stops him with a hand on his shoulder.

  "Do you mind if I ride with you guys? I'm just going over to the main atoll."

  Gideon pushes up his sunglasses and looks her up and down like he's buying a horse or something, then waves her into the boat with a smoldering cigar.

  She sits across from Selia while Gid sits down on the other side of me. Selia starts flattering the strange woman and I just watch and soak her all up. Her hair is short and spiky, colored several shades of pink, and she's wearing dark sunglasses even though the sun's been gone for hours. Her outfit is not much different than mine really. Jeans and boots, although hers are the sexy kind with tall heels and not the practical kind made for marching. And a tank top. If Selia hadn't changed my shirt we'd almost look like we planned to wear the same thing. She's also got a lot of jewelry that clinks when she moves and her lips are bright red.

  Gid puts his arm around me and pulls me into him, trying to hide my face from her I think, but I can't stop watching Cora. She's one of those people who suck up all the energy in a room, or a boat, and then project it all out in front of them.

  She watches me watch her and then offers a hand. Something she did not do for Selia. "I'm Cora, and you are?"

  I just stare at her and she pulls her hand back.

  "She's mute," Selia barks, "can't talk." I turn my eyes away and bury my head into Gideon's chest so Cora can't see me smile. Selia is so strange. She makes up the weirdest shit when we go out in public. I don't look much like the old Junco these days. The hair, the curves, the lack of scars and the extra fingers.

  But some people look at me like they know. They know exactly who I am. It freaks Gid and Selia out so Selia comes up with these stupid lies. If the lie was always the same it would be one thing, but she pulls out different shit, like being mute, all the time.

  Cora doesn't let it go and I feel Gideon tense when she starts talking again. "Really? A mute, huh? I had no idea they still have mutes. I mean, didn't they invent the synthetic voice box like forty years ago?" I turn back to watch her and can't stop the smile. Cora slips her sunglasses down her nose to reveal large bloodshot gray eyes. "Does she at least have a name?"

  Gideon takes over. "Her name is Astrid. But she doesn't talk and that's the end of it."

  Cora ignores Gideon and stretches out her hand again. "Nice to meet you, Astrid."

  I reach out and shake her hand and she winks at me.

  Gideon tells the driver to stop at the next atoll and we leave the rock star sitting there in the boat, her mouth dangling a cigarette in a knowing smirk as we make our getaway.

  Chapter Seven

  We exit the canalwalk and enter the nearest hotel, walk straight through to the other side, and catch the next boat over to the main atoll. None of us speak but it is clear that both Gideon and Selia are troubled that the rock star recognized me so easily.

  We're floating down the main canal, getting ready to line up to debark, when I break the silence. "We should just go home if you're worried."

  Selia shakes her head and Gideon actually sneers at me. "We're already out, Junco. It's just weird how she picked up on you right away."

  "Maybe she recognized Selia? She's been on screens more than I have."

  Selia winces in my peripheral vision and I know they're lying to me about something. It doesn't matter though, I've suspected it since the second day back when they took out the screen in my room. They thought I was delusional that first time I woke up. But I wasn't. There was a screen on the wall and then it was gone. I figure the whole world's talking about me, but I'm not interested enough to find out what it is they're saying.

  Gideon puts his arm around me and pulls me in for a hug. "It's nothing, I'm sure. We're not gonna let it ruin your birthday, Junco. We're gonna have a nice time tonight, OK?" He leans down and kisses me on the head. "W
hen's the last time I got to see you for your birthday? It's been too long. I'm gonna make up for it tonight."

  God, I love him.

  I know Tier thinks I chose Gideon, but it wasn't the same kind of choice. Neither was Lucan. I don't want them or need them in the same way I need Tier.

  Gideon is just a very special friend and Lucan… Shit, I have no idea what Lucan is to me. I'm clearly not all that important to him if he finds it so easy to walk away from me. And I get it, Tier is like a son to him. Fine. He's allowed to choose Tier. But don't tell me you love me, will love me for thousands of years, and then walk away when I need you.

  I can get that from pretty much everyone else in my life. I don't need any more fucking part-time friends.

  This is what makes Gideon such an attractive choice as my eternal partner. He never wants more. And he never makes me choose. He's just there.

  And he loves me unconditionally. He's seen me do things that will condemn me to Hell, and still, he loves me. Would do anything for me. Would die for me.

  And I would definitely do the same for him and I do not regret my actions back in the Runout valley. How was I supposed to know Tier would save him? Tier wanted to kill him in the tunnels. I'm no mind-reader.

  Our boat finally reaches the dock and we get off and slip into the crowd. Gid holds my hand like he's my boyfriend and Selia sticks to my shoulder like a bodyguard.

  The crowd in the casino is not that thick but I can hear the cheering coming from the arena farther down the island and figure most people are probably going to the show.

  Gid lets go of my hand and walks off to the bar to get us some drinks. I'm twenty-two now. Totally legal. It feels weird because it seems like it was just a few days ago when I was getting ready to turn twenty. The morph stole the time in between and there is no way to get it back.

  Selia drags me outside to a table near the dance floor and we sit. The club is not crowded and the cheering from the arena tells me the rock star has arrived. I check my vision screen. An opera is about two and a half hours long. I raise my voice over the throbbing beat. "How long do you think that Cora show will last?"