Range

by JA Huss

  The wailing starts immediately and I slap her.

  She shuts up.

  Sort of. There are noises still coming out of her mouth, but they are not screams and they are not words. She's trembling, almost convulsing, really, and the tears are streaming down her face.

  I lean into her face and whisper, "Listen very carefully, OK?"

  She nods emphatically, her eyes darting behind me for a moment. I turn my head slightly and see Tier's boots standing next to me, then take my attention back to my victim.

  "Was there a baby in that pink nursery?"

  She nods.

  "Whose baby was it?"

  She looks around frantically. "I don't kn—"

  I stand up and kick her hard in the stomach before Tier grabs my arm and tugs me back. "That's enough, Junco." He reaches down and pulls the woman to her feet, standing her up between the two of us. "Tell her where the baby came from. I won't save you again. And next time, it'll be my warrior's boot in your face, so think hard before you answer."

  She gulps so much air I'm afraid she's gonna start hyperventilating and we'll have to move on. But she nods at Tier and gets herself under some semblance of control.

  "It came out of the Stag labs."

  "You fucking lying bitch!" I punch her close-fisted in the face and the anger overtakes me as I knock her ass to the ground. Both Tier and Annun are pulling me off now, and Arel is dragging the woman back to the other side of the room. "That baby was human!" I scream. "Whose baby is it?"

  She's hysterical now and can't or won't answer.

  My hands are vibrating with the rage that is pouring through my blood. My fingers begin to itch and I scratch at them while my mouth is running off about torture and mutilation. Tier picks me up, throws me over his shoulder and physically removes me from the room as I scream my threats back at her.

  He dumps me on the hard floor and every eyeball is suddenly watching us.

  They are staring at my hands with a look of revulsion. Utter disgust.

  I look down and there they are. The knives are assembling real-time, just like the Pillars do when they climb up into the sky, and I watch with horror as the nanotech inside me creates my new body parts.

  "Out!" Tier barks. Avians everywhere are on the move and within a few seconds the room has been cleared. "Junco, don't panic. I'll explain."

  My chest is heaving in and out so hard I might have a heart attack. "Oh God. I'm like him! Oh, fu—" I stop the curse mid-word and Tier laughs at me.

  "Yer fine, OK? So you have knives as claws. It's kinda cool, right?"

  I shake my head. "I'm gonna grow fangs and rip things apart with my mouth? Because that's what it looked like he was doing in that picture!"

  "I told ya, Juncs. The anger sets it off. It's like Lucan that night when he took ya to the clutch cages. You have to control yourself, or yes. You'll become like him."

  I look down at my hands and the tech has stopped growing. They are thin and they look like they can cut paper, that's how tight the edge of the blades look. "Well, there goes my piano career."

  Tier's uncharacteristically upbeat mood continues as he takes my hands. "Here, let me show ya. You can make them go away if you just massage the palms of yer hands." His fingertips rub across my left palm and then he moves up each individual finger, being careful not to cut himself, but not entirely succeeding. The blade on my new pinky finger grazes his skin and blood spurts out. He wipes it on his pants and continues until the razors start to un-assemble.

  "It feels good."

  "Does it now?" he asks as he drops that hand and starts on the other one. "I'll remember that."

  I turn back to the interrogation room door. "What about them? She never really explained anything, Tier. She—"

  "Junco, the baby in that room was human. Yer records say you were never pregnant. Do you have memories of yer morph that contradict this?"

  A sigh escapes as I give in. "No. And I was awake almost the whole time, I think. I don't know for sure, but it felt like a long time before they put me to sleep. And I don't remember my belly getting big, but maybe they took it out and grew it in a tank or something?"

  "Maybe," he admits. "Maybe she went to all this trouble of planting human DNA into that room to confuse us. Make us think there was no baby and give up searching. It could've happened that way, I suppose. But it's more likely that she was setting you up the way I said, Juncs. To make you think there was a baby when there wasn't. To get you to comply."

  "Yeah," I concede. "And there's no way that baby came from Stag Camp, right? I mean, you blew it up, I killed them all once, we got Dale's lab…"

  I wait for his answer but it takes a little too long to draw any comfort out of it. "We got them all, Junco."

  He stops the massage and when I look back at my hands they are normal again. No blades. "What makes the fangs grow, Tier?"

  "Anger. You have to let us take care of this stuff now. No more killing, no torturing," he says with a slight nod towards the closed interrogation room door, "and no more swearing."

  I scowl up at him. "Swearing? That's not a trigger, you're lying."

  He shrugs out a grin. "Better not chance it though, huh? And one more thing, just so ya know. I'm not saying this to scare you into compliance or anything, I promise. But once you turn it's very hard to not turn. Does that makes sense?"

  It does. "It has programmed memory or something? Like those little self-assembling toys I had as a kid?"

  He looks at me funny. "I never had toys, so—"

  Oh, that's kinda sad. I wonder if it's because his human family were such assholes or if avians don't play with toys? I don't ask, I just explain. "You have this little dot of metal and you stick it out in the sun and it grows into a toy. It takes hours to make it assemble the very first time, but if you take away the heat, it collapses back into the dot of metal and the next time you put it in the sun, it grows in seconds."

  Tier just stares at me. "That sounds like a pretty cool toy. Yeah, I guess that describes it. The first time ya start to turn, it comes in stages. A claw here, a fang there. Then there's the primary trigger event, that's what they call it. Where all of the different parts emerge at once, making you into the final being."

  "Is that the vampire guy?"

  "No, Junco. That's a pretty tame version of him, actually. There's more than wings and fangs and claws. They get horns…" He shrugs. "Lots of stuff."

  I stop hearing him at horns but my mind continues and it adds hooves against my will. Oh my fucking God! I'm the Devil! I'm totally gonna turn into the Devil!

  "Junco." Tier is shaking me. "Just don't let it happen and you'll never have to worry about those later stages. OK?"

  The door to the interrogation room opens and Annun and Arel emerge. I lean a little to get a look inside before they close the door but I only see one thing.

  Blood pooling up on the floor.

  "All done?" Tier asks.

  Both warriors grunt out a yes and continue onto another part of the lab.

  "OK, ya satisfied now, Junco? They're all dead. Can we go see Irin? And get the sixth Pillar up today?"

  I look around, not quite ready to let all this go. "I've been waiting for my chance to confront people. Any people, ya know? Just someone to ask, what the fuck? Why? And all that now seems out of reach once again. I'm right back where I started, Tier."

  He groans. "How the hell do ya figure that, Junco? Yer nothing like the girl I found out on the hill. What more do you possibly need?"

  The Enki nargala comes back to me as I process his words. When Inanna was bitching to her uncle that he never gave her what she wanted, he replied with a laundry list of things, and yet she was still not satisfied. She wanted more. "Does it seem unreasonable to you," I ask him, "that I require some sort of closure? Do you think I'm selfish and wild? That I'm… what was it that you said on my birthday? I'm preoccupied with death or something?" I look up and he cringes and turns away as his words come back to haunt him. "And I am, I
guess. It consumes me, this drive I have for something. Something to make it all OK. To make me feel like everything happened for a reason that will be good for me somehow, and not just good for everyone else."

  I pause to see if he has anything to add, but he doesn't.

  "I'm not really looking for death, Tier. I'm looking for answers. Why? Why did they do this to me? Why did that clone kill that baby? And Charlie? Why me? Why is this my life? How did they make me? For what purpose? Just—why me? How was it that Glory Sheffield down the street from us in the RR was born to a normal family, purely human, went to school—regular school—like all the other kids. Never had to kill anyone, or learn to shoot and throw knives so she could pass tests every summer. Why did she get that life and I got this one?"

  He grabs my shoulder and pulls my head into his chest. "Because, Junco, your soul has a destiny. And besides, I'm pretty sure Gloria Stepfield from down the street is dead right now. Blown up in a nuclear explosion."

  I sigh a little because he's right as usual. "Sheffield, Glory Sheffield."

  "Whoever. My point is, you can't waste time on that kind of stuff. You can't change who you are and I don't know what they did to ya, all growing up. So I can't help ya there. You never tell me anything, you keep me guessing. I know the little bit Isten decided to share with us, and I'll be honest and tell ya that he pissed Lucan off with how tight-lipped he became after the twine. He clammed up fast, so I can only imagine that what he saw inside you scared him pretty bad."

  A long drawn-out breath escapes my lips as I pull away and slump down into a station chair. I let me face fall into my hands and drag them across my cheeks.

  "Why don't you just ask your father, Junco? I don't get it. He's the one with the answers, just call him up and ask him."

  "I don't want to ask him," I mumble between my fingers. "I love him. I want him to be my dad forever. If I ask him," I say, looking up at Tier now, "then I might not love him anymore. I need him, Tier. I need these people from my past. Gideon, and HOUSE, and my dad. Because everyone else is gone. They made me kill James, did you know that? He was the one person at camp that I could trust and—"

  I shake my head and get up to walk away, but Tier reaches out and taps me on the shoulder.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  When we come out of the timeshift we're on a large red rock that overlooks the entire Front Range. The sun is rising behind us, just like that day we sat out here and I learned that I was the one who killed my dad's clone. Back before I knew he was a clone, of course, so I really thought I'd killed my father.

  Tier drags me over to the edge of the rock and sits down, then scoots back and pulls me into his lap and almost crushes me with his embrace. Our feet swing over the edge and I relax and lean back into him. "What's all this for?"

  "We've got time, Junco. I don't know anything about a guy named James, not a thing. I barely know anything about you at all, so tell me something, Junco. Tell me anything, just make it about you, OK?"

  I pause for a while. Tier just sits there, letting me think until I finally know where to start the trainwreck of a story that is me. "Do you know what OCD is?"

  I feel him shake his head behind me, but he stays silent.

  "It's a disorder that makes you do things compulsively. Things like count, or rock, or tap." I look over my shoulder and find his green eyes glowing. "I count and rock and tap. That's what I do." The last few words come out between my trembling lips and I feel the tears because I have never said those words out loud before. "Lucan once asked me why my dad gave me a sport and taught me piano. Well, that's why. I count and rock and tap because I have OCD. So when I was very small they gave me a piano to stop the tapping. And it worked, too, because one day I figured out that if I tap the keys in just the right way, it makes a song. So I stopped tapping and started playing songs."

  "I've never heard ya play the piano, Junco. Not for real anyway. I heard the music coming from the house before, but never got to watch you."

  I am stunned. "How is that possible?"

  "Because, Junco, you've been running from me since the moment I met ya. You haven't shared much of anything with me."

  The sadness washes over me as I realize what he's been going through for all this time. I've treated him like total shit—he knows less about me than just about everyone, how is he even still hanging around?

  "Keep going, Junco. Please."

  My fingers slide across my face to wipe away my tears as I try to explain myself. "The rocking was taken care of with the horses. I learned to ride and they figured out that the rhythm calmed me. That I was a lot more manageable if I was riding and downright normal when they started teaching me to do that acrobatic crap. So the horses took care of the rocking."

  I can't quite get myself to address the last one, but Tier can only wait so long before he gets impatient and asks. "And the counting, how did ya stop that one, Junco?"

  I shake my head. "I never stopped counting." Before I even know what's happening I'm sobbing. "I never stopped counting, Tier."

  He hugs me close. "Is it bad? To count, Junco?"

  I nod as I try to control my runny nose. "It's very bad. Because once I start it's very hard to stop. And that's why I first started looking up at the stars. The light and the stories about heroes and swans and hunting bulls, those all came later. It's the sheer number of them that draws me up."

  He squeezes me as I calm myself. "What happens when ya count?"

  I sniffle and wipe my face once again. "When I start the count it all goes away. My insanity, my life—everything is all wiped clean. And it draws me, ya know? Like that count is calling my name. But it's dangerous because once I start on the stars, I won't be able to stop. I'll be lost. And deep down, I want to be lost, Tier."

  I stare out at the new city between the blur of tears. It has migrated north of the old city, where the mountaintop still dominates the horizon. But New Peak City is in the shadow of Mount Evans, near the old Red Rocks Amphitheatre, not Pikes Peak. It takes a little getting used to, trying to think of this new place as Peaks. The Old Peak City down south by the Springs is still nothing but concrete. They're not even working on it yet.

  "Continue, Junco. Please don't stop talking."

  I nod into his chest. He's been so patient with me these past few years. Why didn't I see it before now? He's practically been an angel with all the shit I've pulled.

  "At first I would count steps, like the number of steps it takes to get to the shooting range, or the number of steps from my bed to Gid's after a nightmare. He was across the hall from me. Or when I was at home I counted the stalls in the barn or the tiles on the floor or the light fixtures in church. But I had been learning about the constellations for a while already when I looked up to find Perseus and noticed I could count the stars. The only problem is that the stars go on for infinity. And I had a very hard time stopping. I went insane actually. That was the first time I remember them talking about my mental issues. They didn't erase me, I was only like five, I think. But they had to lock me in a sensory deprivation tank for a while. It felt like a really long time to me, but I have no idea how long it took to pull me back from that little episode."

  "I'm sorry, darlin'. I'm sorry they did all those things to you."

  I shrug. "It hurts a little when I have to talk about it because I was so scared, so that's why I'm crying. I was scared a lot as a little kid, but now that I look back I realize something that scares me even more than what they did back then."

  "What's that?"

  "That my life was not so bad, Tier. I mean, in the early days. It was not so bad when my dad was there. Even Matthew—he was my handler when I was little, when I was at camp and before Gideon took over. But even Matthew wasn't that bad back then. Not like the stuff Gid says they did to Irin. But those years with the clone father, they might as well have been Hell. They were the stuff of nightmares. And when they found out I was going down to Texas to see John Hando, and traced it all back to my weapons tra
iner James, they made me kill him. With my SEAR. The same way I killed Kush. The slightest snap of the plasma grazed lightly across his top layer of skin."

  I stop and remember the screams. From both of them.

  "If you're going to die of a SEAR knife wound, the best way to go is fast because the pain involved in the slow version of SEAR death is almost unimaginable. And that's why I did it slow for that clone who killed Charlie and the baby. But that spring when I had to kill James was probably the worst time of my life. There are still things I push down from that time."

  "What year was that, Junco?"

  "That year before sniper school. Right before you guys showed up to start watching me. James came to Texas to pull me from that job I mentioned—we were doing all sorts of secret jobs that year. John Hando and I were becoming close, we started thinking about getting closer. He wanted me to stay with him and never go back, and he took me up to the top of the Sagitta building in Dallas because the Hando Family owns the whole top floors of that place. Did you know it's not just a building, but a transmitter too?"

  Tier shakes his head at me.

  "And it's got a duality AI. The only male AI on Earth. I met them that night that John took me to the top to look at the stars. But James showed up in the middle of that job and said my dad was asking for me. He was the clone of course and it turns out that the reason they wanted me back in the Stag was because Gideon was dying. They did some procedure on him, something I now think has to do with all that Archer stuff. And he was dying."

  I let out a deep breath of air. "I knew my dad wasn't right, that he couldn't possibly be the same guy who loved me so fiercely as a child and then all of a sudden couldn't even spare the time to acknowledge me on my birthdays anymore. So when everyone left me there to say goodbye to Gideon, I healed him using the connection we had, don't ask me to explain, because I can't. But giving him whatever it was I gave him nearly killed me in the process. To make a long story short, while I was recovering in that place I found a lab full of mutant offspring of Gid and I, and killed them all. I was erased twice in the span of a few weeks because I just refused to forget. And that was the end of Junco. Whoever that child was, that piano-playing, horseback-riding child who lived in a sentient house and was loved by Johann Coot through her fifteenth year of life? She left with those memories."