by Kal Spriggs
A thin, short man came in from the next room. “You caught me on a slow day, Jonna, and the tech they used to block their slave implants interests me... I’ll see your friends, now.” He had a surprisingly deep voice that seemed to resonate in the room.
“Thanks, Athan,” Jonna said. “Any luck on that search?”
“Not many viable candidates, I’m afraid. But I’ll keep looking.” The doctor answered. He was short, less than a meter and a half in height, with a pale, hairless head. His skin was stretched tight around his face and scalp, and so pale that I could see the veins through it. He wore glasses that glinted under the harsh white light and I couldn’t see his eyes.
“Thanks, Athan,” she gave him a warm smile. She nodded at the bodyguards, “Upgraded the security?”
“Eh, some of the Houses get rather upset about my neutrality. I had to deal with the last Black Cloaks they sent, myself. Hired help cuts down on these types of things.” He turned to look at me and I realized that he wasn’t wearing glasses, after all. His eyes had been replaced with some kind of mechanical lenses, and I could see the lenses shift as Athan seemed to look through me. “I’ll see you later Jonna, he waved. “You can pick up your friends tomorrow, assuming they survive.” He chuckled as he said that, but it wasn’t a reassuring chuckle, it was one that made my stomach twist.
“This way to my office,” he turned and waved at us to follow. For just a moment, I entertained the idea of turning and bolting for the door. A look at Ted showed he was equally nervous.
“Come on, don’t make me drag you back here,” the doctor called. “It’s ever-so-embarrassing when I have to do that to my customers.”
I swallowed and followed him back. His working area was just as sterile as the waiting room. There were white tiled walls, floor and ceiling along with two or three operating tables surfaced in cold stainless steel. It looked like something from some kind of horror sim, all that it was missing was splatters of blood and hooked knives. Even as I thought that, he went to a cabinet and opened it up, showing a variety of tools ranging from saws to knives... and yeah, there were hooked ones.
Ted saw those tools and his eyes rolled back in his head. I reached out to catch him as he fainted, but the doctor was quicker. Despite Ted’s size and the speed at which he fell, Athan was there. The lean, wiry man caught him with almost gentle ease and carried him over to drape him over one of his operating tables. “So much easier when they self-anesthetize,” he chuckled. He winked at me, “Your friend has had a bit of excitement, but that gives me an opportunity to study him first, while I question you.”
He rolled Ted over, then jabbed him with a needle in the left butt cheek. “That should keep him down, for the duration,” Athan turned to me. A display appeared in the air between us. It took me a moment to realize what I was looking at, but it seemed to be a spine. A metal tube or pill lay near the spine and a variety of thin wires led from it and into the spinal column. The display flickered and then next to it, appeared another spine, this one with a strange, almost-liquid mess that took up most of that space, covering the wires, going down into the spinal column, and even having tendrils that seemed to have spread outward, almost like a spider web. “That’s your friend’s slave implant, or at least, the first one is what it should look like. The second one, that’s what it does look like.”
His artificial eyes seemed to bore into me, “I assume you’re the one responsible for the... stuff there?”
I nodded, “It’s a...” I wasn’t sure how much I felt safe telling him.
“It’s a smart material, some kind of nano-fluidic metal, I’m assuming. Millions of tiny smart machines that can interlock and behave like a solid or flow around one another like a liquid.”
I nodded slowly. “We make use of a variety of such materials for medical implants.” He smiled at the look of shock on my face. “Definitely a fos, by your accent, you’re not from Guard Space, though. I’d guess...” He cocked his head, his mechanical eyes dilating as he studied me, “Not Erewhon or Wyvern. Definitely not Dalite.... Century or the MCA… Century, I’d guess.”
I nodded, “Century, how did you guess?”
“The tan, for one thing. You’ve been inside for months, but most people from Century get so much sun it takes years for their tan to fade. You’re dark enough naturally for the melanin to remain, but you clearly saw healthy amounts of sunlight for most of your life.” He shrugged, “MCA and Century both took colonists from the same regions of Old Earth, so they have similar accents. Mason and Corvalle don’t get as much sunlight as Century. Easy enough to deduce.” He waved a hand at Ted. “Is your excitable friend likewise from there?”
I nodded.
“Interesting. He’s clearly been captive for years, he doesn’t have the tan, anymore. You’ve been captured more recently... and there’s no mention of any raids on Century, at least, not by any of the slavers I do business with.”
“You do business with slavers?” I couldn’t help a tone of disgust.
He gave me a smile, “Child, if the Emperor of Drakkus came to me, I’d do business with him. It’s a harsh, cold world. I’ll not turn away anyone who seeks to do fair trade with me.” He waved at Ted. “But I digress. I find it interesting that you were both taken in relative secrecy. Most of the slavers avoid Century’s ships and Century itself, your homeworld’s militia is a bit too... retaliatory. They wouldn’t dare hit them here at Drakkus, mind, but there’s been a few pirates who’ve found Century Planetary Militia ships waiting for them after venturing out. That sort of thing tends to stick in the memory.”
I considered telling him what had happened, but I didn’t feel I could trust him. So I stayed quiet.
“Information has value,” he noted. “Jonna may have told you that I charge for my work?”
I nodded slowly. “Normally I’d make her pay, and she in turn would keep you and your friend in her debt. But you could get ahead, a bit. Tell me who went out of their way to attack Century’s assets, and I’ll call it even.” He gave me a hard smile, “I’m an information broker, you understand.”
“You won’t tell them where to find us?” I gestured at Ted and I.
Athan adopted an offended expression, “I would never give up my sources of information.”
I didn’t know about that, but I gave a slow nod. There was a chance that this doctor had connections and that the information could get back to Century, somehow. “A pirate, named Wessek. He has a base in the Century system and I think he might have some kind of arrangement with the Enforcers there.” I grimaced, “That’s what he told me, anyway.”
“How... very interesting,” Athan murmured, his deep voice thoughtful. His artificial eyes seemed to glow. “I’ll assume your kidnapping has to do with this smart material?”
“Quicksilver,” I answered, nodding. I didn’t want to tell him about the interest in the alien script or the control console.
“Fitting name,” he noted. “Very well, knowledge that Wessek and his master are involved is payment. In the right ears, that’s quite valuable information.” He gestured at the display, “you presumably have some method to control it? I need you to tell it to release the implant. I need to be able to see what I’m working on.”
I nodded and drew out my dad’s datapad. I hesitated, though, “If they’ve sent the kill command...”
“I’ve screened my entire lab against any external transmissions,” Athan answered. “If they sent it through the planetary network or any other means, for that matter, it won’t get to you or your friend.”
I tapped in a command on the datapad. On the display, the quicksilver retracted away from the implant, leaving it exposed. “Will you remove it, too?” I asked, pointing at the tendrils of quicksilver.
“I don’t know if I can,” He seemed to control the holographic displays through a neural implant, zooming in and highlighting a tendril. “This quicksilver stuff of yours, it’s finding its way into your friend’s neural system. Most of it gobbed onto
his implant, but he’s got tendrils of it going into his spinal column and up into his brain. It’s almost organic the way it’s nesting in, quite interesting, really.”
I swallowed, “Is it... going to hurt him?”
“No sign of tissue rejection. How long has this been in him?”
“A few days,” I answered, not really certain how much time had passed.
“Hmmm,” Athan considered that, his artificial eyes clicking back and forth, as if he were looking at something only he could see. Then again, with a neural implant and artificial eyes, he could be looking through all kinds of things. “No signs of tissue rejection. No secondary infection. This material, your quicksilver, seems remarkably sanitary for the conditions in which you probably injected it...” He shrugged, “I don’t think it will kill him. I’d like to take a sample, though.”
“Sure,” I answered.
“Now, let’s get you down, I don’t want you throwing up or fainting at the sight of blood,” he went on.
“I’m fine,” I started to protest. Only I didn’t finish. Sometime between me opening my mouth and words coming out, I felt a sharp pain in my leg. As I looked down, I caught sight of an injector that had seemingly materialized out of the air to inject me. Before I could finish the words, the world went black.
***
“And there we are,” Athan’s deep voice spoke from nearby. “Your two little fos’s are clean and ready to go.”
I sat up and the first thing that I noticed was that my ribs didn’t hurt. The next thing that I noticed was that my head and neck didn’t hurt
“I hit them with quick heal, too, so they’ll be able to work,” Athan noted.
“Normally that’s extra,” Jonna noted.
“It’s all paid for. The pair of them had some useful information,” Athan answered, his booming voice cheerful.
“Of course they did,” Jonna turned at looked at us. Ted was rubbing the back of his neck and looking confused. “In the future, how about you leave it to me to do the bargaining?” She nodded at a pile of clothing near the door. “That’s yours. Get dressed.”
I flushed and Ted yelped as we realized that we were totally naked. Jonna ignored that as she stepped out into the waiting room.
I scrambled over to the clothing, but I had to fumble with it. It wasn’t what I’d wore before, though my satchel and pick were set against the wall next to it. There were a pair of sturdy trousers and a warm patchwork shirt, along with a Ragabond cloak with the multitude of colors and scraps of metal worked into it. I felt more than a little self-conscious as I put those on, but they all seemed to fit much better than the clothing I’d had before.
“I gave her your measurements, of course,” Athan answered my unspoken question. He stared between Ted and I. “I wasn’t able to extract the quicksilver. It proved remarkably resistant. But it doesn’t seem to have any serious effects on your bodies, not that I could detect anyway. Of course, I’d like a further chance to study you both, if you’re alive in the next few weeks.”
That qualification didn’t make me feel all that good, but I gave him a nod.
“Excellent,” he smiled. I could see that all his teeth had been replaced with metal ones. “Is there anything else?” His booming voice had a slight note of impatience. I shook my head, taking that as a dismissal.
Ted was the one who spoke up, “Sir, we’ve heard the spaceport requires some kind of digital pass to get in, something that’s carried on an implant?”
Athan went still, “That’s correct. I’ll guess you both want to return home?” He cocked his head, with his artificial eyes he looked disturbingly owl-like.
“Yes,” we both nodded.
“It requires a special implant, one that can be very expensive for me to acquire. A clean implant, with full identity logged into the Imperial Database.” He gave a thin-lipped smile, “It’s rather expensive and takes some preparation. I can acquire two such implants… for the right price, of course.”
“How much?” Ted asked.
“A thousand Drakkus Imperial Marks,” Athan answered, “each.”
“A thousand each?” I asked in shock. From what Simon had said about money, the two hundred marks I carried was four years’ worth of wages for a laborer. That meant the cost of getting a pass to the spaceport alone cost as much as twenty years of work. I had no idea what I might earn working on the streets, but it wasn’t going to be even a dent against that.
“It’s very competitive. There’s some fixers who charge twelve-hundred to hack the network, then there’s the cost of an implant…” Athan shrugged. “Then there’s the risk that those dealings entail. None of the people I’ve assisted have ever been caught.” He made a face, “Well, at least not due to my implant.”
I swallowed, “We can’t afford that.”
“I thought not,” the doctor smiled. “But do keep me in mind.” His smile vanished. “You need to leave, I have other customers on the way and I’d prefer you and they not encounter one another. All my patient’s privacy is valued above all.”
Ted and I hurried out into the waiting room. Jonna was waiting, her foot tapping impatiently as we came out. From the way her lips were pressed in a hard, angry line, I could tell she wasn’t happy. “Let’s go,” she snapped.
One of the bodyguards stepped up to block her, though. He pointed to the side and a panel in the wall opened. “Other guests,” he noted.
“Right,” Jonna sighed. She led the way through the hidden door and into a corridor. “Athan probably took longer than necessary on you two.” She muttered, waving us ahead of her. The corridor beyond was narrow, but remarkably clean and lacking in the dilapidated appearance of the main entrance. We went down the corridor, then down a set of stairs. A well-oiled door opened on our approach and then we were in an alleyway. I squinted up at the gray sky, the light seemed brighter than usual, but it was still rainy and overcast.
Jonna looked around, taking her bearings and then led us off down the alley. “You gave him information on your former masters, I assume?” She didn’t look back at us as we walked.
“I did,” I answered. “He said otherwise you’d pay for our surgery and then we’d be in your debt.”
Jonna stopped and turned. Her eyes narrowed, “You’re already in my debt. In case you didn’t notice, I did save your lives back there at the market.”
I didn’t answer, but I didn’t really know what to say. “So here’s what likely happened,” she went on. “You told Athan something minor, something you thought was relatively harmless. Then he put you under for surgery. Then while you were nice and pliable and drugged, he asked you more questions, questions you wouldn’t normally answer, questions you won’t remember.”
My eyes went wide as I realized what that meant, “You mean…”
“I mean Athan probably got far more out of you than you’ll even realize. That's why he threw in the quick heal. It’s information that he’s going to use to enrich himself even further, and it was information that I could have sold on the street for much more than the cost of removing a couple of slave implants. So not only did you short yourselves, but you robbed the Ragabonds of potential income, and that really pisses me off.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“You’re sorry,” Jonna gave a harsh, cold laugh. “Tell you what, when we’re hungry in a few weeks, all of us short on food and getting by on rotting garbage, you tell the little ones that you’re sorry then, when Simon doesn’t have enough to get us through a cold spell.”
She turned away, “I give everyone three strikes, and you both just used one of them.”
“Ted didn’t…”
“He didn’t stop you, did he,” Jonna growled. “You have two more mistakes, both of you.”
The walk back to the Ragobond’s basement hideout was quiet and cold.
***
Chapter 12: I Learn To Live In The Barrens
“There’s three ways we can make it on the streets,” Simon told me as we sq
uatted on a street corner. “First one, begging, that’s what we’re doing now.” He nodded his head at the plastic bowls we both held out. “Thing is, you look too healthy and big to be a proper beggar. Maybe if the Black Cloaks or one of the other gangs get you and rough you up, cut off your nose or ears or something or put your eyes out, you could pull it off. But you look too well fed, so most of these sorts,” he waved at the general crowd, “they aren’t going to spare anything for you.”
He patted his stump, “Me, I got an advantage.” Both of us wore more muted clothing and no cloaks. I was shivering in the rain and wet and so was Simon. He’d said that added to the look. I just felt cold and miserable.
A passerby slowed her pace, looking at him and I. Simon adopted a whining tone that set my teeth on edge, “Please, miss, spare anything for a crippled boy?”
The woman adopted a pained expression and her eyes darted around. Then she gave a pained sigh and dropped her hand inside her coat. A moment later, she threw a couple small chip-coded bits of plastic in Simon’s bowl and hurried off.
“Tenth marks,” Simon noted and he scooped them out, leaving the dried bread crust he’d put in the bowl when we’d both started this process. He’d said the bread was to look as if we had some customers, it made others more likely to give.
“She just gave you two day’s wages?” I asked in a shocked voice.
“Well, close enough,” He nodded. “Though she had the look of a clerk, probably works in an office, so for her it was probably a couple hours work.”
I shook my head, still. “Why?”
“It was probably what she had on hand and once she made eye contact…” Simon shot me a grin, “well, the guilt sets in. Maybe she read something that made her feel bad this morning, maybe she feels guilty because she stabbed someone in the back at work and got them fired,” he shrugged, “giving to me makes her feel better, lets her tell herself she’s not so bad.”