Cypher (The Dragon's Bidding Book 2) (14 page)

One of the boxes in
front of the opening moved, shifted to one side.

Fitz held her breath,
grounding her spies on the walls, one behind, the remaining two on either side,
giving her a three-sixty view. In the darkness of the alcove, she saw movement.

“Kitty?” The voice
sounded rusty, hoarse, and almost unrecognizable without its usual cultured
accent. Almost, but not quite. Fitz’s heart pounded against her ribcage. A
crazy mixture of fear and elation stormed through her mind as her fingers slid
into her pocket and closed around the module.

A hand extended from
the darkness, a small dark mound on its palm. Playing his part well, the cat
edged forward, nose wrinkling. He snatched the morsel and withdrew to bolt it
down. A chuckle sounded in the darkness, then the man unfolded his lanky form
from his cramped refuge.

He leaned down to
scratch the cat under the chin. “Sorry, Kitty, but that’s all the food I have.”

Slow, sweet shivers
climbed Fitz’s back at the view from behind him. She could never mistake the
finest butt she’d ever seen, ever caressed. As he stood, she noticed how thin
he’d become, but his shoulders were still broad. One of the side bots fed her
the image of his profile. The nose was long, aristocratic; the cleft in his
chin shallow. His hair was…gone. Except for a short tail at the base of his
neck to hide his spike’s socket, only a dark fuzz stubbled his head. He’d cut
off all his hair. That made sense. A man on the run, hiding in the squalor of
the Warren, wouldn’t have time for the extravagance of long hair.

Her body remembered the
sweet sensation of all that golden hair sliding across her bare skin; the
exquisite torment of it tickling her thighs as his tongue and lips drove
ripples of pleasure through her. She groaned, her head thudding back against
the wall.

She cursed, suddenly remembering
to scan the inhead windows. The squalid alley was now empty; even the cat was gone.
She’d lost focus, let her emotions waste her best chance of catching him. Fitz
pushed off from the wall.

Weight slammed into
her, driving her back against the rough blocks. She still held the module,
tried to engage it, but he moved faster. The specifications said he’d be
quicker, stronger. The logical side of her brain accepted the facts, but she
hadn’t believed he’d be
this
fast. Even her augmented senses could barely
follow his movements as he pinned her wrist and pounded her hand against the
wall. The module dropped from her fingers, bounced at her feet, and his boot
came down on it, crushing it into useless bits of plexisteel and composites.

He leaned close, his
nose brushing hers. “Sorry, Gray Eyes. Was that something important?”

The eyes boring into
hers were a familiar blue, but with no warmth, no sense of recognition in their
depths. His lips twisted in a cruel parody of the smile she knew so well.

“Well, if it isn’t
Ransahov’s little augie attack dog. I thought maybe I’d killed you.”

“Sorry to disappoint,
but you missed.”

“Gray Eyes, I don’t
miss.”

The familiar phrase,
delivered in his voice but without his accent, twisted a lance of pain in her
gut.

“Maybe you’re not as
good as you think.”

He shook his head, nose
brushing the tip of hers. “Nope. I hit you. Right here.” His fingers stroked
the front of her shirt, above her right breast.

“I had body armor on.”

“Not in that dress you
wore. It left little to the imagination, and I have a
very
active
imagination when it comes to a beautiful woman.” He slipped his fingers inside
her shirt, his brows crinkling as he ran his hand across her smooth unblemished
flesh.

“I don’t understand. I
know I shot you. Right here. I saw the bolt hit; I saw the blood.”

Fitz tried for an
enigmatic smile, despite the tremors rolling through her. “It’s a mystery,
isn’t it, Wolf?

He cocked his head at
her. “Who’s this Wolf guy?”

“You are. You’re
Wolfgang…”

“No.” The strength of
his denial belied the confusion in his eyes. “I’m…”

“Who? Who are you
then?”

The elegant features
twisted. “I don’t know. All I remember…”

“Do you remember
anything before you woke up in the medical bay?”

“I, ah… You. I remember
you, Gray Eyes. You were there, bending over me when I opened my eyes. I wanted
to crawl inside those silver orbs and stay with you forever.”

“But nothing before
that?”

“No.” The word seemed
to hurt him.

“That’s because you
didn’t exist before that second. You’re a scrap of programming DeWitt slipped
into Wolf’s computer while they were doing the augmentation upgrades. It
overwrote your personality. Tritico paid the cyber-tech to hijack your body. He
figured you were the only person strong enough, with the right access, to kill
Ari, and he wants her out of the way so he can go on doing business the way he
always has. He programmed you to kill her.”

She stroked her hand
down the side of his face, felt the rough scratch of whiskers. “Come back with
me, Wolf. We can pull the program out. Stop it now before anyone else gets
hurt.”

He flinched back from
her touch. “Don’t call me that. I’m not your Wolf. And I’m not a piece of bad
code. I
exist
, damn it. I’m human, and I want to stay alive.”

“We’ll figure something
out. I promise. We won’t just delete you like a random cypher…”

“Cypher…” He trailed
his fingertip down her throat. “I like the sound of that. No more Wolf. Call me
Cypher.”

His mouth claimed hers,
hard and hungry. His tongue forced past her lips, demanding her response. All
the anger, fear and frustration of the past few days ignited a laser bright
heat inside her, fusing her mouth to his. He ground his body against her,
pinning her to the wall. She wrapped one leg around his hip, needing to be
closer, needing the encumbering clothes gone. His hand slipped beneath her
shirt and cupped her breast.

When the need to
breathe drove him to lift his mouth from hers, he searched her face, his eyes
hooded and dark with passion. “You don’t seem like the type to seek hard
anonymous sex in Warren back alleys. Who is this Wolf to you? At first I
thought you were his bodyguard, just an augie charged with protecting him, but
it goes a lot deeper, doesn’t it?”

“You…Wolf is my bonded
partner. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do to get him back.” She lifted her hand,
displaying the thin platinum ring circling one finger. Her index finger held a
second, larger band. “These are our bonding rings. I’d never heard of the
custom before, but you—Wolf—said it was common on his homeworld, Willcommin. I
kept yours…his, while he underwent the implantation surgeries.”

“Bond-partner, huh?
Lucky man.” He kissed her again, softer this time. It ended too soon for Fitz.

She placed her
fingertips against his lips. “You told me once you would be at my side for as
long as I needed you, for all eternity. Keep your promise now.”

Cypher shook his head.
“Sorry, Gray Eyes, but I can’t do that. Although, I’ll admit your kiss almost
made me change my mind. The truth is, I’ve grown accustomed to this body. It’s
quick, and strong, and smart. I’m going to need all those attributes if I go
after Ransahov again.”

Fitz raised her chin
and put as much frost into her gaze as her aching soul would allow. “If you do,
I’ll be forced to stop you. Don’t make me do that.”

“You might try, but I
don’t think you’ll succeed. My advice would be to stay out of my way. I’ve
already stolen your Wolf’s body, and after the Emperor is dead, maybe I’ll come
back to claim his woman.”

Cypher stepped back,
crouched. Organic muscles and cybernetic assists uncoiled, hurling him upward.
He somersaulted, caught a projecting ledge, then scrambled the rest of the way
up the wall like a four-legged insect. His augmentations allowed him to use
every crevice, every crack, to pull his body upward. By the time Fitz started
to move, he’d rolled onto the roof.

Without the full use of
one hand, she picked her way more slowly, looking for ledges and larger
projections. When she reached the rooftop, she spied him four buildings away,
hurtling across the gaps between them in great arching leaps. He skidded to a
stop, turned and bowed to her, then leapt into empty space.

Fitz watched for long
minutes, but he didn’t reappear on the next rooftop. She sunk to her knees, and
the tears came.

The sounds of
celebration flowed through the streets and alleys of the Warren as night
settled over the city. From the corner, singing erupted from a tavern,
enthusiastic but discordant. Weapons fire echoed in the distance, either in joy
or violence. In the Warren, it was sometimes hard to know the difference.

Seventh Night of
Founder’s Day week was a time to gather with friends and family, to sing and
exchange gifts, to celebrate and reflect on memories of holidays past. He had
no past, no memories, but he had been given a gift today, perhaps the most
precious gift he’d ever received in a lifetime measured in days, not years.
Gray Eyes had given it to him. A name. Cypher. A puzzle, a mystery, a zero. It
fit him like a hand-made, five thousand credit suit.

“Cypher.” He savored
the word on his tongue as he lifted the bottle of homebrew in a toast to his
beautiful adversary. The rotgut seared his throat and sent him into a fit of
coughing. The aftertaste was part solvent, part aircar fuel, and all heat. This
stuff could kill a man, eat out his stomach and his brain. It seemed to have
done a good job on the two stumbling derelicts he’d kicked out when he
confiscated their burned-out hovel. And their stash of homebrew. He didn’t care
what it tasted like; all he wanted tonight was to get drunk, blotto, shit-faced,
and forget that he had no past to remember.

Images stirred in the
back of his mind. A boy singing in a high clear voice. One note faltered, and a
hand swung from the darkness, driving him to the floor. Words growled. “Can’t
you get anything right?”

Cypher’s head snapped
back with the memory of the blow, striking the edge of the window. The Other
whispered inside his mind,
You see? Perhaps it’s better to have no memories
rather than the ones I have of this holiday.

A second, longer swig
from the bottle went down more smoothly, or perhaps the first had deadened the
nerves in his throat. He licked his lips and found the sweetness within that
fire, much like the taste of Gray Eyes’ mouth. He twitched at the bolt of lust
coursing through his body.

Making love to her
would be like mating with a quolla—deadly, terrifying, but exhilarating. While
he thrust into her, she’d probably be driving a knife under his ribs, but to
feel her moving beneath him was well worth the risk.

Cypher chuckled at The
Other’s sharp flare of anger building in the depths of his brain.

Across the narrow
street lay the store front where he was to meet Smiley tonight. In the waning
light, he could see that the building, like the entire row of its neighbors,
backed up to a sprawling warehouse. A blaze had swept through the northern end
of the structures, leaving only skeletal beams jutting out of the wreckage. In
the Warren, with its sub-standard construction and ramshackle tenements, fire
was an ever present danger. Even the public urinal odor of the previous
squatters couldn’t overcome the wet ash stench of this room.

He’d wanted to run away,
not crawl back to Smiley, but that damned compulsion had taken control of him
again, robbing him of free will and driving him here. He drained the bottle and
hurled it against the far wall, the sound of its shattering brittle to his
enhanced hearing. The hooch was worthless; he’d guzzled the entire bottle and
hadn’t felt the slightest buzz.

Cypher slid down the
wall beside the window, from where he could watch the comings and goings at
Smiley’s den. Even during the end of year holidays, nights this far south were
mild, but he wished he could have retrieved his jacket. He pulled his knees
close and wrapped his arms around them for warmth.

After the confrontation
with Gray Eyes, he’d fled his hidey-hole with nothing but the clothes he’d
worn. The thin tee-shirt did little to keep him warm. He’d been forced to
abandon not only his coat, but also his pistol and what little money he had
left. By now that area would be crawling with enforcers, probably wireheads
too. There was no going back. But more than the loss of those things, he missed
the cat.

He had no illusions as
to why the feline sought him out. It was for the food he gave it. For a back alley
denizen, the black cat was surprisingly overweight. It must know the location
of every soft touch, fat gerbat, and trash dump in the Warren. Even after it
had scarfed down the remainder of his greasy meat pie, it had elected to hang
with him. The comfort of having another warm living being next to him—one that
wasn’t trying to kill him—was an unexpected pleasure.

His hasty retreat from
his hiding spot had left him with no resources and few options. As a stranger
in the Warren, it would take days to make the connections to earn enough
credits to buy a ticket up to one of the orbital stations. Days of hunger and
cold; of sleeping in cardboard boxes and stewing in his own stink.

He hated the thought of
crawling back here, of begging Smiley for the rest of the payment that should
have been his to begin with. He’d upheld his end of the bargain, hadn’t he?
Risked his neck to try to kill an Emperor? Didn’t he deserve at least part of
his money for that?

He realized he’d
dropped off to sleep only when the sound of music and off-key singing jerked
his head up from his knees. A quick scan of his inhead chrono showed he still
had several hours before they were due to meet.

A line of musicians in
motley costumes snaked through the street, a crowd of drunken revelers
following, doing their best to drown out the band. The march, played out on a
homemade celesta, pipes and drums, slipped inside Cypher’s head and began to
repeat until long after the merrymakers had passed.

One man remained,
standing in front of the building across the street, trying to appear casual,
looking nowhere in particular. Cypher’s combat systems went hot, zooming in on
the lone figure in multiple spectrums. No weapons, no body armor, and yet his
threat assessment program highlighted him as a danger. His face had the bland
openness of an accountant, but that was the beauty of the augie program. You
could hide a killing machine behind the face of an angel.

He might be a Black
Jacket or an enforcer, but neither of those would be foolish enough to track an
assassin down without a weapon or backup.

The man jerked at the
sound of fireworks exploding overhead, their multicolored glow reflecting on
his bald scalp. With one last glance around, the watcher climbed the building’s
stairs and knocked on the same door Cypher had a few nights ago. Light spilled
out, then disappeared as he entered.

So, I’m not the only
person visiting Smiley tonight.

One hour passed, and
most of another, before the bald man reappeared, descended the stairs and
hurried away. It might be nothing more than a visit from Smiley’s tax
accountant, but Cypher’s gut said different. And trusting his gut had kept him
alive for a long time. No, that was not his memory, but The Other’s. Still, it
was advice worth heeding. Time to get this mess over with, to explain what went
wrong.

It hadn’t been as
simple as the op-plan. Security had been far heavier than he’d anticipated. Not
that an Emperor’s security would be toilet paper-thin, but this level of
paranoia had been insane. Praetorian guards had lined the wall and prowled at
every exit. Only his advanced planning, and a healthy dose of luck, had allowed
him to get out alive. It was as if they had known what he planned—
she
had known what he planned. He scrubbed his hands against his pant legs as he
stood and exited the shabby room.

Once again, Ian
Chorickus answered the door. “You’re early,” the red haired augie said.

“I was late last time;
just trying to even things out.” Cypher pushed past the big man. The room was
empty. “What, Smiley couldn’t make it?”

“I thought the Director
said you were a hotshot. Looks to me like you screwed up, boy.”

Cypher unclenched his
teeth before he answered. “Yeah, well, it turned out to be more complicated
than your crappy intelligence led me to believe. But then, if it had been
simple, he could have just sent you.”

“Don’t be a dick.”
Chorickus gestured for him to follow.

They traversed a long
hallway, then up a flight of echoing metal stairs until they reached a thick
armored door. The augie punched in an access code quickly, but not so fast
Cypher couldn’t capture the sequence and store it in memory.

This had to be the
warehouse he’d noticed behind the row of stores. Before the door clanked shut
and plunged them into darkness, he had the impression of an enormous, echoing
space with such oppressive heat and humidity that sweat ran down his cheeks
before he managed half a dozen steps. Even with night vision, he could discern
little more than shrouded shapes and rows of shelves on the floor below. Cranes
and gantries hung from the overhead, and the stench of dust, cockroaches and
old oil fouled the air. As he followed Red, he counted his own footsteps so
he’d know how far back to the exit in case he had to leave in a hurry.

“You better not screw
up this time, boy.” Chorickus pulled open a door and the flare of light from
within sent a spike of pain through Cypher’s dark-adapted eyes. Afterimages
floated in his vision as he stepped into an office that could have been the
setting for a historical drama.

A row of ancient metal
desks lined one wall, but they were covered with what appeared to be military
grade comm equipment and computers linked together with a rat’s nest of cables
and data links. A pair of techs, cocooned inside their cyber-yokes, were
oblivious to his presence.

Chorickus grabbed his
shoulder and pushed him into an adjoining office. The thin man at the room’s
wall cabinet turned, an ornate bottle of liqueur in his hand. His face furrowed
in that toothy grin Cypher had come to hate.

“Care to join me in a
couple of glasses of vilaprim, Old Friend?” The smiling man held up two shot
glasses.

Cypher dropped into the
chair facing the antique desk, aware that the augie had remained behind,
leaning against the door and blocking any escape. His threat assessment computer
marked the man’s position with a flashing red icon, feeding him proximity and
tracking.

“Sure. I could use a
drink about now. It’s Cypher, by the way. My name is Cypher, and I’m not your
old friend.”

“Interesting choice of
names, and quite descriptive, don’t you think?” Smiley poured three fingers of
the syrupy green liqueur into each glass, and slid one across the desktop.

“A toast. To our
continuing enterprise.” He held his drink up and tossed it back.

More cautious, Cypher
sniffed the liqueur, catching only notes of fruit and spices that he couldn’t
name. His empty memory supplied him little about the drink beyond a faint
recollection of pleasure. He took a sip. His tongue went numb and his breathing
locked up.

Chug it. Just chug it.

He took the disembodied
voice’s advice and downed the drink in one gulp, feeling its heat surge all the
way to his stomach.

“Perhaps you’d join me
in a round of Interstellar Campaign?” Smiley extracted a pair of VR headsets
from the desk’s side drawer.

“You want to play a
frickin’ game?” Cypher asked.

“Interstellar Campaign
is far more than a game. It’s a test of reasoning and logic, of courage and
performance under pressure. It’s been quite some time since I had a challenging
opponent.”

“Can’t you get Red to
play with you?” Cypher nodded his head over one shoulder at the augie lurking
behind him.

“I’m afraid Ian isn’t
well versed in the intricacies of stellar fleet strategies. Please, indulge
me.” He passed the helmet across the desk.

“You’ll have to explain
it to me. I’ve never played this before.” Cypher slipped the VR unit over his
head, and the shabby office dissolved into an immense interstellar vista filled
with stars, nebulas, and vast formations of starships that appeared no larger
than insects. At the center of the field of play, midway between the ranks of
the two opposing fleets, hung a golden pavilion. On a throne at its heart
rested a jeweled crown and scepter.

“The goal is to claim
the crown. I think you’ll pick up the rest as we go along. As my guest, the opening
move is to you.”

Unsure of what to do,
Cypher sent the central element of his fleet forward toward the pavilion.

Wrong bloody move.

Within a few moves, his
ships were broken and burning. Every move he’d made had been countered; every
stratagem led to disaster. His only consolation was that they’d taken a large
portion of his opponent’s forces with them when they died.

Before, when he’d
needed a skill, the memory had been there, inside of him, as if it were his
muscles, his body remembering how to fight, how to plan, and not his mind.
Would that work now?

He licked dry lips.
“Now that I know the rules, what about a rematch?”

Smiley nodded,
resetting the board. His hated grin broadened.

Cypher took a deep
breath, letting his mind empty of all thoughts of self. The Other uncoiled
inside his head. Without his volition, his fleet moved, skittering across space
in odd disjointed patterns, a feint here, a smashing blow there, one that
caught his adversary in a pincer. His ships seemed to appear from nowhere,
popping out of hyperspace to spring an ambush and then disappearing again. He
watched it all as a spectator until Smiley’s fleet lay smashed and scattered as
he closed on the enemy’s remaining flagship.