by M M Buckner
Merida gnawed her red lips and glowered at me. Her eyes glittered with, anger, but she settled back and said nothing more. Suradon crossed his arms and tapped a finger impatiently. Jin waited with lowered head. So I told them everything. I repeated what Jin had said in the chamber, quoting him word for word as nearly as I could recall, even what he’d said about his father. It took some time, and when the telling was done, I felt drained.
“My nanobot worked! I win! You owe me, old man!” Merida danced around like a fire-flame, gloating with delight “You owe me! Upload those Net ads. We’ll air them tonight. I’ll set up a chain of clinic franchises around the globe. Everyone will want my Hyperthought!”
“Mystical crap,” Suradon said, working his fists. “This is not a scientific breakthrough. It’s a psychotic hallucination. I can’t take this to the Triad.”
“You know the truth when you hear it. My nanobot worked!”
“It’s bullshit. The boy was raving.”
“Jin goes with me now,” I reminded them. Jin had stepped backward out of the golden light. I saw him only in shadow.
“Suradon, she can’t have him!” Merida rose on tiptoes again and balled her fists. “I won our wager, and I demand justice. He’s mine!”
“Go now, Sauvage,” Suradon thundered at me.
“To hell with you!” Merida’s holographic image ballooned out larger than Suradon’s, and the whole holo-stage went topsy-turvy. “You think you can change the terms of our bargain, old man? We had a deal. I get Jin.”
“You get what I say,” Suradon boomed. Their projected images overlapped in a weird interference ripple. I struggled to keep my balance.
“And what’ll you do to stop me?” Merida’s image started strobing. “You’ll do nothing. Impotent old fraud. Jolie Sauvage called you for help. The poor child thinks you have power over me. That’s the real joke.”
The colors on the holo-stage marbled together like liquid paint. I lost all sense of balance. My pink chiffon kimono streamed into the golden light, and my body started melting into the floor. Out of nowhere, Merida filled my vision. She was breathing in my face.
“Sorry, pet. Lord Suradon has his own battles. He’ll forget you the minute you’re out of his sight.”
Far away, I saw Suradon arching one bushy eyebrow. “Judith, I’ve got a meeting. Are we done here?”
A rainbow rippled and exploded, and I barely caught Merida’s last words. “This isn’t over, pet.” Then solid white light expanded around me, and everything vanished. I fell into a velvet black whirlpool. Another holo-stage exit. I should be getting used to it.
20
I Realized It Was Me
“JOLIE.” SOMEONE SHOOK my shoulder. I knew that voice. Merida! Mes dieux, but she had caught us after all! I wanted to scream and grab Jin and run, but I couldn’t get my eyes open. They were glued shut. I tried clawing at them, but I couldn’t find my hands.
“Jolie,” the voice came again, and this time it wasn’t Merida but Luc. “What gear did you pack, chérie? Did you forget the waterproof matches?”
“Luc?” I whispered. But someone kept jogging my shoulder, and the whole world quaked up and down. Go away. Leave me alone. I couldn’t get enough breath in my lungs to speak.
I woke up coughing. Tan was leaning over me, holding a gauze bandage to my lips and looking concerned. “Lady? Can you see me?”
Yes, I could see a little better than before. Vincente’s meds must have reduced the swelling around my eyes. The electric lantern dangling from the tent pole no longer bristled with long sharp rays. My friends had wrapped me up in sheets like a mummy. I felt hot and constricted. I tried to loosen the winding sheets, but I didn’t have the strength.
“Aw, ma’am, now don’t mess with them sheets, okay? What happened with that Commie lord? You were gone a long time. He made us upload Jin’s signal, too. I rigged another holo-interface outta spare parts. I hope that was okay.”
I felt dizzy. The sheets were wrapped too tight around me.
Vincente smoothed my hair. “Chica, the bruja witch, she’s coming. She figured out how to disarm our explosives. Your amigo, the Asian lord, will he help us?”
Merida was still coming? She’d disarmed the mines? But Suradon had promised to let everyone go free. Surely he would do something to stop her. This cot felt so lumpy, and the sheets were making me hot. How clearly I remembered the feeling of being whole and healthy on that holo-stage. But that was a dream. This nightmare was real. I couldn’t wake up from this.
“We’re on wave with Luc Viollett,” Tan was saying. “The whole dern world knows where we are now. No point keepin’ silent.”
“Luc?” I managed to wheeze.
“Yes, ma’am, Luc and Trinni and Miguel. They’re comin’ as fast as they can. Got some kinda stolen military stealth jet. Plenty cool.”
Luc and Trinni and—Miguel. My heart sank.
“Chica, will the Com lord help us? Your friends will land soon, but they have many meters to descend before they reach us. The witch, she is very near.”
I swung my head back and forth. Instinct told me Merida had been right, that Suradon had already forgotten me. He was all bluff. About now, he’d be walking into that Triad meeting, grinning and spouting his bullshit. Oh yes, the mighty Lord Suradon would think of some way to save his precious Com. That was mega more important than one trifling son. Suradon be damned.
“She’s here!” Tan yelled. In that same moment, the tent’s inflatable airlock zipped open, and Merida stepped through—in the flesh.
“What an amusing party!” She removed her helmet and unzipped the collar of her glossy black surfsuit. “Vincente, you gutter cur. You teach me the value of trusting human servants. And who’s this? What an ugly face you have, boy. You look like a maggot.”
“Señorita Judith—” Vincente began.
“None of your fawning, dog! I see you’ve salvaged this tedious bag of bones. Jolie Blanche Sauvage, ha! Better toss her in the recycling bin. She’s putrid. Where is Jin?”
My ears pricked up. Jin was no longer on the other cot? I swung around to look, and the cot wasn’t even there.
“What about them meds for Ms. Sauvage?” Tan asked. “You said you’d bring ’em to trade.”
“The meds are just outside. Where is Jin? My instruments no longer pick up his signature.” Merida tromped around the tent, knocking things over. Then she grabbed Vincente’s throat. “How have you hidden him from me, you old mongrel?”
“El principe is dead,” Vincente replied, choking. He tried to pull her hand away from his windpipe.
“Dead!”
“As a dern doornail,” Tan seconded.
“Quiet, maggot! Vincente, explain this to me. Where is his body?”
I couldn’t find my breath. Had Jin died while I’d been capering around on that hold-stage? My chest heaved so violently, I sat straight up. Suddenly there was motion, and terrible pain. I guess I must have tumbled out of the cot. Tan knelt beside me on the floor and fumbled with the sheets that trapped me like a mummy. “Lady, you okay?”
“Forget that plague of a girl. Where is Jin!”
“Señorita—”
“Don’t señorita me!”
Sprawled on my side, I felt strangely heavy and awkward. Tan seemed to be nudging me under the cot, maybe to protect me. All I could see was his thigh. He was wearing bluejeans. Above me, Vincente kept talking.
“A very strange thing, Señorita Judith. When El Principe die, his body it turn to dust, and the wind carry it away.”
I heard a slap. Merida’s elegant black boots danced around Vincente’s scuffed workshoes. The old man was backing away from her. More slapping sounds and choking. Tan nudged me farther under the cot.
“Lie to me, you vulgar beast! Where is he? Tell me or I call my guards. Vincente, you know what they can do.”
Tan stood up slowly.
“Sí, sí,” Vincente was saying. Merida had him backed into a corner. “I tell you the truth. El
principe, he—”
Tan sprang forward. I heard Merida gasp, and then she started barking her ugly laughter. “A jet-spray? Stupid boy, you can’t poison me. My blood is full of antidotes. I’ve made myself immune to…”
Then a thump. Merida fell flat on the floor not ten centimeters away from me. Maybe you think it was rude, but I don’t care—I spat in her face. My mouth worked well enough for that
“Be quick, niño. Tie her. I go outside and look for the meds she brought.”
“Don’t you worry, Vince. I’ll truss ’er up like a dern bale of kelp.”
Tan grabbed fistfuls of my winding sheet and tugged me out from under the cot, but when I gasped in pain, he stopped and let me lie still. “Sony, ma’am. You can just rest on the floor for a while.”
“Where’s Jin?” I wheezed, but my voice came out a garbled cough.
“It’s a botanical sleep aid,” Tan said, as he wrapped duct tape around Merida’s arms and legs. “I synthesized the herbs myself. Archaic biochemistry I found on the Net. Kinda neat.” He wagged his head with unabashed pride. “Thing is, it’ll wear off soon.”
I barely focused on what Tan was saying. Infuriating boy! Why wouldn’t he speak about Jin? What had become of Jin?
Tan bent over and whispered in my ear, “That Commie actor guy, he was a spy for the rebels, wasn’t he? That’s why you was helpin’ him.”
When I tried to speak again, it turned to hectic coughing.
“That’s all right, ma’am. You just rest. Vince and me, we got the situation handled.” He grinned and whispered in my ear again. “What we did, we recorded Merida’s voice so we could fake an audio command. Heh-heh, we sicced her robots onto them Nome.Com troopers. That’ll teach ’em where to aim their neutrino beams.”
Finally, Vincente returned. He must have gone outside on reconnaissance because he was holding his helmet in one hand. “I’m sorry, chica. The bruja she brought no medicines for you. She always lies.” Gently, he lifted me in his arms and laid me down on my cot again. The pain was all gone now. I felt cold. I worked my mouth and felt froth drooling from my lips. Surely Vincente understood what I wanted to ask.
He put his lips to my ear. “Be still, chica. The prince lives. He’s in that sheet with you.”
Huh? Those lumps in the cot. At last I understood. Jin’s body was wrapped tightly against mine. That’s how they’d hidden his biological signature from Merida’s scan. They’d camouflaged it with my own. Oh mes dieux. I bet Tan thought of that.
“We leave him there a bit longer, sí? To fool the Nome.Com troopers? They are scanning us. We make them wonder, s{?” Vincente’s blue eyes shone with moisture. He looked disconsolate as he studied my ravaged face. “I’m sorry, niña. I’m so sorry.” He cradled me in his arms and rocked me. “Your friends come soon. I have prayed to Saint Einstein.”
“Thank you,” I rambled, though the sounds I made weren’t words.
When Vincente released me, I snuggled deeper into the sheet, imagining Jin was caressing me from behind. Merida said I had only a few minutes to live. An icy chill was spreading through my body, but I couldn’t die yet. I still had things to do. My mind felt like mush. Who would take care of Jin now? I was lying on top of him. My weight might be crushing him. Vincente and Tan were busy searching Merida’s pockets, so they didn’t notice what I was doing. Looking back, I think that rolling over in that narrow cot to get my weight off Jin was the most excruciating thing I ever did. But I felt a tremendous lightness afterward. Vincente’s words sounded in my ear like a blessing. The prince lives.
“Yaaaah!” Merida’s arm ripped free of the duct tape and struck Tan a savage blow. I heard a fleshy thud as the boy fell back against the gear cases. Before Vincente could react, Merida tore her other limbs free. For such a small woman, she showed astonishing strength. She must have been hopped up on adrenaline. In one quick move, she sprang to her feet and barked her ghastly laugh.
“The prince lives, does he? In the sheet?”
Duct tape trailed in shreds from her surf suit as she flew at Vincente. He leaped aside, but not quick enough. Merida landed a staggering kick-punch in his belly, and he sank to his knees. Tan rolled over and moaned. Merida turned when she heard him, and her glossy black curls shook as she started kicking him in the ribs and gut and head. He shook like a rag doll, and I knew he’d lost consciousness long before she stopped kicking.
Then she came at me. She raised her hand, and time seemed to stop when I saw the razor-sharp surgeon’s scalpel clutched in her fist. Then her blow fell, slicing through my sheet and grazing my crusted skin. In three strokes, she cut the sheet away and threw me aside like garbage.
“Jin, my beautiful Jin. Are you all right?” She held his head in both her hands and kissed his eyelids.
I tumbled to the floor next to Tan. The poor boy had been horribly battered. Blood oozed from cuts all over his body.
“Ah, what have they done to you?” Merida was checking Jin’s pulse, speaking in a voice as soft and soothing as Hamad’s. She opened one of his eyelids. “The fools. I’ll save you, Jin. Relax now. It’s me. Judith.”
The tent floor was gritty with sand and rock chips. I pushed myself up with my elbows and struggled into a position where I could see Vincente. He sagged motionless against the airlock. Merida’s blow had knocked him unconscious. Then I saw Merida flip open the cover of a sleek black Net node on the belt at her waist.
“Miguel. Go ahead as planned,” she said. “And don’t leave any evidence.”
Miguel. Merida’s agent. I imagined his fingers circling Luc’s throat. Maternal fury surged through me. I had to stop her! Her helmet had rolled into a corner near me, so I slithered over and grabbed it. Merida couldn’t leave the tent without her helmet. I would hide it somewhere. Maybe I could lie on top of it.
“You’re pathetic, Jolie.” I turned and saw her glaring at me with that wide ugly smile.
She stepped across Tan’s body, yanked the helmet from my hands, and dropped it over her head. The neck gasket sealed with a soft click. Then I heard her laughing inside the helmet. She must have activated her speaker. She raised the scalpel and punched a hole in the tent wall. Then another and another.
Sour atmosphere jetted through from outside, foul and toxic. As the gases seeped into the tent, it hit me that neither Vincente nor Tan was wearing a protective helmet. Merida had just exposed them to the same toxins that were liquefying my skin. Sacrée Loi! I grabbed the tent pole and pulled myself up.
Merida snorted. “You want to fight me, pet?” She casually put her scalpel away in her belt pouch, then thumped my chest with the back of her hand. I toppled backward. But I didn’t fall. I clung to a tent pole and coughed. Just then I happened to notice I was naked, but that was a truly trivial point.
Merida snorted again and turned her back to me. As she gathered Jin in her arms, my glance fell on a shiny little worktool lying on the floor under my cot. My stylus. Its sharp point gleamed in the lantern light. When I hobbled over to get it, Merida laughed.
“Give it up. You’re a rotting corpse.”
She shoved me with one hand, and I fell in a heap, but not before I’d swept up the little stylus. Now I gripped it in my fist and tried to push myself back up, but my hands and knees kept slipping out from under me on the gritty tent floor.
“You’re dead, Jolie.”
Merida lifted Jin like a child. She stepped over me and carried Jin to the airlock. She had to kick Vincente’s heavy body out of the way.
“And by the by, your friends above are dead, too. Nasty accident. Too bad about cher Luc.” Then the airlock zipper stuck, and she bent down to work it free.
Impotent fury overwhelmed me. I had no strength left. I kept pushing at the floor, but I couldn’t get traction. I was beyond caring about the pain.
Merida took her scalpel out and slashed the zipper open, snickering under her breath. “Jin chose me, not you. He came to me of his own free will. Others will come, too. You’ll see. People wi
ll want what I can give them. You could have been part of it, but you were too foolish to understand.”
Merida carried Jin into the airlock and started unzipping the outer door flap. “No,” I wheezed.
She turned to smile at me, that pretty Spank smile I used to think so charming. “He’s mine now.”
All at once, female hormones raged through my veins. Primordial instinct galvanized my muscles and filled my heart with savagery. I pushed myself up and hinged. I knew I’d have only one chance. Merida was caught in the small airlock with Jin in her arms. She couldn’t dodge me, but she raised her hand to fend me off, and I saw the flash of her scalpel. Still, I dove face-first against her, driving the little stylus home as hard as I could, praying my aim was true. When I collapsed at her feet, I saw its gleaming tip wedged behind her left eye. I’d buried it deep.
For a long time, I couldn’t take my eyes off the sight of Merida’s dead body. She had slumped to a sitting position, her hands spread open, the pale palms facing up. No scalpel. She must have dropped it. One bright thread of blood trickled down her soft cheek. Jin lay sprawled in her arms. Together, they reminded me of some ancient marble statue of a mother and son.
A moment ago, she’d been a living soul, and now she lay dead. By my hand. Without a thought, without hesitation, I had taken away her life. Once, she gloated that I lacked the will to commit murder. And there she lay. I crammed knuckles into my mouth and bit down hard. There was a sound of guttural moaning. I realized it was me.
Did the fever of sickness stir me to take that next step? On impulse, I reached out and grasped the end of the stylus. Merida’s face wasn’t all that far away. I barely had to shift forward to touch her. With an involuntary cry, I tugged, and the shiny little tool came loose in my hand. Why did I wipe it on the cloth of Jin’s filthy wrapper? As if that could clean it.
With leaden movements, I grasped Jin’s arm and laid his wrist bare. The needle-sharp stylus scratched his skin, severing one of the small veins just under the surface. Blood beaded up immediately from the scratch. Did those crimson drops carry the immune response that would save my life? Some primordial sense deep in my brain urged me to try it. I touched a drop with my finger and smeared red blood across my lips. Warm sweet saltiness. Yes, it had to be true. I knew in my heart that Jin’s blood would cure me. So I fell forward and sucked. Someone had to choose who would live and who would die. Me, I chose.