Authors: Matthew S. Cox
Her skull bounced off the cheap furniture on the way to the floor. Her panicked screams paused long enough to shout.
“They’re coming! Plonk! Help! Let me outta these!”
Anna rolled around, trying to avoid the serpentine beams of red laser light sweeping the room from the creatures outside. The dangling chain at her neck seemed to be an enormous millipede trying to bite her on the throat, a creature she could not escape. Neon cobra-heads with glowing ruby eyes hissed at her as they wavered about. She fell once more into Plonk’s desk, sliding to the ground in a waterfall of drug paraphernalia, condom boxes, and holodisks. She rolled onto her back, scrambling and screaming as she tried to find her way standing.
Wild with panic, she ran down the hall to the main room. On the way, she tripped over boxes of old useless electronics, stacked junk, and empty synthbeer cans. Tiny VTOL craft melted through the window, becoming cat-sized wasps chasing her into the front room. She ran for the fire exit and the safety of a straight slide to the ground level. The little planes whizzed after her, backing her into the plastisteel door. She struggled to raise her hands high enough behind her to get a grip on the handle. Two fingers touched it when she froze, back against the cold metal, at the realization of whom she saw in the hallway.
Doctor Mardling had found her.
His stunned visage slapped the words right from her mouth and made the creatures disintegrate. The sight of her naked, handcuffed, leashed, bruises all over her legs, beaten bloody about the face and with trickles of crimson streaked dark against her pale breast discolored his face with rage as he glared at Plonk.
Mardling’s voice leaked cold, sinister. “You heard the lady; take them off of her this instant.”
Anna let go of the handle. Her wet skin squeaked over the door as her body sank to the floor. After landing on her ass, she tried to hide her nakedness behind her legs. She wrung her hands about, searching for the derm, wanting to get rid of it before James saw it. It was too late. She read his look: anger mixed with pity. He had seen it in her eyes, how high she was.
“Who the hell do you think you are givin’ me orders? It’s not what you think, mate. She likes it. Turns ‘er right on. Had ‘er spread eagled and―”
Plonk rose into the air, rocketed across the room and hit the wall upside down. Fragments of shelf and plaster dust burst out of the impact point, creating a white cloud in midair. He tried to shout, but something crushed his chest to the point he could not breathe.
“How about I do to your nose what you did to hers?”
Plonk separated from the wall for a second, flipped over so he faced it, and drilled once more into it.
“This is where you learn the discrete difference between an order and a request, you scratter.” Mardling’s words came slow and deliberate. “Code, now.”
“They’re not municipal… Sex toy,” rasped Plonk. “Keys…”
“Well then,” James’s eyebrows flared, the invisible force crushed the dealer into the wall harder for an instant; more lumps of plaster fell. “Get the bloody key.”
With a contemptuous sneer, Mardling turned away and let him fall. Plonk dragged himself along the floor to the bedroom, crimson-faced and gasping for air. Anna cowered as James approached, unable to look at him or cover herself. James took a knee in front of her, gently unbuckling the leather collar. She wanted to curl up and die as it peeled away from the line of bruise her panic had crushed into her throat. James must have been looking at her thoughts, as his angry scowl at Plonk faded to concern. He caressed her cheek for a moment, and stood, tracing his fingers away.
He looked shy of toward her, leaving his hand outstretched. “Come on then.”
“James!” she yelled, cowering into the wall.
Plonk, still in his robe, had emerged from the back with a combat rifle pointed at them. The shot made Anna scream and close her eyes. Plonk’s shuddering gasp made her look. One bullet hovered at a slow spin in midair, a few feet away from James. A bead of sweat trickled down the side of his head, a sign of exertion and perhaps a touch of fear. If he had been scared, his expression showed no sign of it.
Anna snarled, pointing her toes at Plonk. The lightning wasn’t listening; the zoom was too loud. “Plonk, you tosser!”
“Christ on a rubber crutch,” whispered Plonk.
Before he could gather his wits and fire another shot, the rifle flipped over in his grip and caught him across the forehead. Plonk went down, cradling his head in his arms as the weapon danced around and battered him.
“Okay! Okay!” He flailed. “You win.”
The rifle careened into the kitchen, falling into the sink among a rain of shattered tiles. Anna shivered against the wall, trying to scoot away from the single bullet smoking upon the carpet. The rug caught fire in a thin stream that raced at her. She screamed until James stepped in front of her, dispelling the hallucination.
Plonk crawled into the bedroom.
He helped her up, and she leaned into the soft warmth of tweed, coarse against her chest. He kissed her with gentle care upon the forehead. She rattled the cuffs, yearning to embrace him.
“I’m sorry, James. I… I’m such an idiot. Your buttons are talking to me.”
He traced a finger over the scratch marks. “What’s this?”
“Bad trip. I needed the pain to snap out of it.”
“Look at me.”
“I can’t.”
“Anna.” He sounded like an annoyed father.
She ventured a reluctant glance into the deep chocolate of his eyes, shivering from shame and cold. She wanted to cover herself, to hide this disgrace, to grab him and hold on so he could lift her out of this pit. Images slid to the forefront of her mind as he searched for what sent her over the edge. Bile rose into her throat at everything replaying itself: the video, Penny telling her to leave, the alley attack, and the message from Orange.
James closed his eyes in a pained grimace.
She pressed herself against him in an armless hug when the mental link ended. He removed his coat and wrapped it around her. His hand caressed her hair as he leaned past her to shout.
“Where’s that bloody key, you twit?”
Amid the sound of heavy things knocking about, Plonk shouted. “Lost guv’na. She must’a kicked it behind the bed when she lost her goddamned mind. You’d think she’d never been leashed to a bed before.”
“Mind your tone, cretin.”
Anna shot a fearful glance at the window, straining against the furry cuffs. “James, the CSB is still hunting me. A rogue agent named Gordon, if he gets me like this I’m―”
She stopped in mid word as he guided her to a seat on the couch and took a knee in front of her.
“Do not worry about that twat Gordon. He will regret the day he tangled with me.” James brushed a tear away with his thumb. “You were doing so well, Anna, it pains me to see you have run back to the chemicals. I do think the normal recovery process is going to take a bit more time than we have been allotted given recent developments. I cannot let you do this to yourself again.”
“I was doing well. I just… It was too much to handle.” She looked down. “They all hate me now. Ol’ Jack, Spawny… Penny…”
He smiled, as he propped her chin up. “Wanted you to move in with her at her new flat, she said leave Coventry, not leave her.”
“How do you know that?” She squirmed, wishing he would stop staring at her.
James smiled. “It did take me a bit of asking around to find you.”
Anna hung her head. The zoom scar on her arm burned with regret.
“Pity, I thought finding out that man you killed was not really your father would have made it easier on you.” James growled at the tardiness of Plonk.
“That made it worse, James.” She sniveled. “I’ve had so much guilt for so long. Finding out it was all bullshit…”
“But…” He lifted her chin. “Your own family did not turn against you. No real father could hate his own child. You might still have family out there, somewhere.”
Her mind raced. “I… never thought about it that way.”
Something crashed in the back.
James looked up again, yelling, “Will you hurry up, man?”
“You stopped a bloody bullet in mid-air. Can’t you break them off me?” Anna shifted and held her arms up.
“I could, but I would rather not break your arms or tear your hands off.” He flashed a cheesy grin.
She trembled. “I need to see Penny.”
“Alas, that is not a particularly good idea right now. For her sake, you should keep some distance for a while. At least until Gordon and any allies of his are no longer in the equation. Now, there is still the matter of your mental addiction. I will not let you turn to that little patch every time you need help.”
“I’m sorry.” She squirmed.
“Found it.” Plonk shouted from the back with a singsong tone.
He held her face in both hands, forcing her to make eye contact. “Do not be sorry, Anna. Be rid of it. I will help you.”
“Okay.” She let him stare into her eyes. “Why didn’t you do this before?”
He leaned in and kissed her on the top of the head. “Because, Anna. If you overcame it on your own, it is rather unlikely you would go back to it. This…” James gave her a sad look. “This could come undone and leave you craving it hard, beyond rational thought. For the time being, it will have to do. Once we get to the Colony, we can go back to a more natural cure. Although, given the medical detox, it is possible one dose will not have done so much damage.”
It did not matter she was as vulnerable and helpless, both mentally and physically, as she had ever been. With him there, she felt as safe as Faye in her parents’ house.
“I trust you, James.”
She surrendered to the eyes that pierced her mind. His face shimmered, lit by a faint aura as he held her. Adoration shone upon his face; she offered no resistance to his telepathy.
An angel, sent to carry me out of this dreadful place.
Scrap by painful scrap, her recollections of being high tore away from the canvas of her memory and spiraled into oblivion. Some scenes wound backwards as they were undone, others simply never existed. The zoom was gone; it could not comfort her any longer.
James would protect her.
The sensation of floating ended when he lifted her to her feet and the cold air embraced her as the coat fell off. The change in altitude churned her stomach, causing her to gasp in an effort to hold back the urge to vomit. He steadied her while Plonk unlocked the restraints. Once she was free, she threw her arms around him.
James stared death at Plonk. “Bugger off. Go teach yourself to fly or something.”
She convulsed in his embrace. The disconnect between what her brain thought and the state of her body brought cold sweat, trembling, and the need to retch.
Doctor Mardling held on with one arm while he collected his coat. “So good of Lauren to remind me to bring these.”
Anna held on to him, eyes closed, as he rifled through the pockets. She stood up on her toes as a mass of coolness spread through her from the autoinjector pressed into her back. While the scratches faded into the milky white of her chest, he pressed a second one into her leg. This one had a blue shell and didn’t feel like ice water under her skin. Thirty seconds later, the sweat stopped, the nausea departed, and the trembles came to an end.
He knew to bring an anti-pak for zoom; am I that predictable?
Plonk shambled off through the hallway, leaving them alone in the apartment. Anna looked down at her nakedness, a stark white shape against the dark grey rug. She blushed ever so faintly and flashed a mischievous smile.
“James, we really must stop meeting like this.” She leaned up and kissed him.
Aside from the pleased smile that followed, he didn’t move. “You are lovely, Anna, but this is neither the time nor the place. I told you already, you do not need to trade anything for my help.”
“But what if I want to?”
Her thumb traced over the spot on her wrist where the derm had been. There was no red mark. She remembered using a drug derm, but no matter how long she stared into space, could not remember what it felt like to be high. After a plaintive glance, she leaned in close and set her cheek against his chest, staring out the window.
“I wanted to dull my mind. It does what it wants when I get excited. I had to hide, they would have found me.”
Patting her back, he leaned his head against hers. “All of that is behind you now Anna. No more hiding from who you are. No more shame.”
She squeezed him.
James stepped back, leaving his hands on her shoulders. “You will need to use the loo once the shot has collected the trash from your system. Go have a seat and wait for it. Get cleaned up and your kit on, and let us be off. We have much to discuss.”
“James? Where’s Plonk going?”
“How should I know? I would imagine he is on his way to the roof to conduct a practical experiment in applied gravitational attraction.”
“Is that really necessary?”
He scoffed. “After the way he treated you?”
“James.” She put a hand on her chest. “I did it all to myself. Thank you for showing me that. Please, don’t kill him. In some odd way, he’s almost like a friend.”
Fullness spread through her nether regions. She let out an “eep!” and ran for the bathroom. When the most disturbingly uncomfortable event of her life finished, she sat there out of breath.
“Flush.”
The machine obeyed. She had no desire to open her eyes and see what nanobot-purged zoom looked like. Smelling it was horror enough. Too drained to move, she slumped with her elbows on her knees.
Not my real father.
Scenes of his cruelty flashed through her mind: yelling at first, followed by a tearful apology and hugs. When things continued breaking and she got older, yelling became spanking, then belting, then beating with a closed fist. The apologies faded to fear; he couldn’t stand being in the same room with her. Always, though, he had lingering sadness in his eyes.
That was a total stranger?
Anna rubbed her hands over her head and through her hair.
Why would he keep me around? Why didn’t he just ditch me in the street or murder me?
Legs numb from the toilet seat, she got up and stretched.
Was he some CSB agent forced to watch me?