Fledge (13 page)

I leave the front shower door locked and go looking for the moderators near the cubbies. I spy another care package for me, but decide to take care of clean-up before grabbing it and going back to my bunk.

Chapter Twelve

It takes me several minutes to find someone who gives a shit about the three dead bodies I left in the showers. They want to make me wait in a small room off the office, but I refuse and go back to my bunk with my package. Not my problem anymore.

The entire dorm is awake now and I watch Isec's face as I approach the bunks. "They said they would kill you, Junco. I'm sorry I didn't stay awake to tell you, I thought you'd stay away with your friend."

"Don't worry about it, kid, they're dead now." I rummage down to the bottom of the bag and smile as I pull the note out.

"What's this one say, Junco?"

Poor Isec, he looks like a little baby standing there next to my bed. I read it and laugh. "He says,
Junco, you are a giant pain in the ass. Lucan
."

Isec screws up his face at me and even the coughing girl is looking down at me with interest. "Are you and Lucan friends?" He says it like it can't be possible, and if he would have asked me two days ago I would've agreed with him. But tonight, I just shrug.

"Maybe, but once he finds out what I just did, he might not be so friendly with me anymore."

It's the coughing girl who speaks next. "What did you do, Junco?"

I look up at her and notice that her eye is swollen shut. It wasn't like that earlier. "Did they hit you?"

She looks down and nods.

"Well, I'll tell you what I did then." I wait for her to look me in the eyes. "I chopped his fucking head off with a SEAR knife. Along with his buddy's. The third guy, Bann – well, he cracked his head open when I pulled his feet out from under him, so I can't really take credit for that one."

She lets out a deep breath and I know relief when I see it.

I spy a moderator walking down the middle of the room towards us. "Shit, here we go."

Isec looks panicked. "What will they do to you, Junco?"

"It was self-defense, Ise, they won't do anything to me. Be back in a little bit."

I get up and meet the mod halfway. He smiles. "Sorry, Junco – Lucan's on a com in the break room. Wants to talk to you."

"Course he does." I follow, a slight bit of panic rising up in my chest.

My knee bobs up and down as I wait for him to appear on the screen. In place of his face is an emblem, a seal actually, like diplomats have. It's hard to read, but I think the little letters around the perimeter say Capitol City of Amelia, or some shit like that. It's bona fide, let's just leave it at that.

My eyes begin to droop when his voice brings me back to attention.

"Explain."

I smile, then lose my bravado and look away. "What do you want me to say? I chopped their heads off. The other guy cracked his noggin open when I pulled his leg out from under him. It was self-defense, Lucan. They were gonna rape me."

He winces as the word leaves my lips, but fuck, it's true.

"Meet me outside immediately."

The screen goes blank and I get up and knock on the door so the moderator can let me out. His dark face peeks through a crack in the door, trying to see past me and over to the screen. "He wants me to go outside. Immediately."

He opens the door all the way and takes me by the arm, apparently I can't be trusted to walk outside without killing people.

We both see Lucan standing over by the train stop bench, so the mod lets go of my arm when we reach the door and I make the final distance alone. Lucan points to the bench when I get there, so I slump down and take out a cigar. His hand stops me and I put it away.

"Junco, you are taking up a lot of my time."

I wait it out because his statement doesn't require an answer.

"Did I or did I not forbid you from using that weapon?"

"You did, but–"

"There were no exceptions, Junco. If people find out what you are there will be a lot of – hostility. Do you understand this?"

"No, Lucan." I look up at him and shake my head a little. "I don't get it. You act like I'm a disease or something. I've had the SEAR my whole life and I never went off and started killing people like a lunatic. So, why? Why do you think I'm so wild?"

His head turns to look down the empty train tracks before he speaks. "How do I explain who and what you are, Junco? You are not human, you are not avian, yet you morph into one of us and have machines in your body. You may in fact be an authentic Seventh Sibling and you have a very dangerous weapon that we cannot remove from you or else–" He stops abruptly and I watch his jaw clench with tension. He straightens a bit and then continues. "We're not sure what you are, Junco." He turns back to me, finished.

"I'm not sure what
you
are, either. And you don't see
me
getting all freaked out about it."

He stays silent.

"Would the SEAR knife kill you?" His expression hardens and I have a feeling I've crossed a line.

"Not much can hurt me, Junco."

"You didn't answer the question."

He blows out a little bit of air in a half laugh. "Do you, or do you not, understand that I have forbidden you from using the weapon while you are here?"

"I do."

"Then why?"

"It was three against one, I needed to stack the deck. They weren't small guys, Lucan. Three against one." The night breeze sweeps my hair aside and I lift my chin up and breathe in.

Lucan is watching me when I look over to him. "Why didn't you use the ionsprays?"

I screw up my face. "I thought you wanted to yell at me for killing people?"

"It happened as you say, so it is excused this time."

"Then why come all the way over here in the middle of the night?"

"I am checking to see if you're OK, Junco. Is that so unusual? I would have called Ashur, but…"

I wait. "But?"

"I was in the neighborhood."

I laugh. "Oh, right."

He takes a seat on the bench next to me, his head eases into his hands and he pushes against his temples. I know the look, it means I'm giving someone a headache. Tier used it frequently.

"I wasn't hurt."

He looks up and then his eyes track down my body. "Yes, I can see that. I'm glad."

"No, I mean, I didn't use the ionsprays because I wasn't hurt."

"Oh." He straightens up again, then flattens out a wrinkle in the sleeve of his black suit. "Right, well, they're just glycogen analogs, Junco, not health sprays. It is forbidden to treat you with health sprays. Besides, you heal yourself anyway. These will help your new muscles acclimate."

"OK, well, I'll use one when I get back in. I learned to fly, ya know. I'll probably be sore tomorrow."

He smiles and I crack one as well, I can't help myself. He goes back to picking at his suit.

"Why are you always so overdressed?"

His laugh blurts out in the night silence. "What?"

"That suit, Lucan. It's so formal."

"How should I dress?"

I shrug. "I dunno, but hell, a suit in the middle of the night? Something a little less rigid would go a long way."

"You really don't know why I wear this suit, Junco?"

"No, I have no idea." I raise my eyebrows at him and he has a genuine look of surprise on his face.

"Well, that might explain some things about your behavior."

"Yeah, want to let me in on it?"

"Who do you think I am?"

I recycle back my memory to my morph day. "You said you were a commander. My commander, actually. In fact you said,
I'm Lucan, Junco. Your new commander
. Is that not true?"

He smiles. "It is technically accurate. I am your commander because I command all the Aves. They are my official military force and the 039 is my personal force."

"What's that mean? You're like the President or something? Commander-in-Chief?"

"Yes."

"Yes? You are the President? Of Amelia? Or of what?"

"Of the avian, Junco."

I grimace. "Oh. I'm sorry, then. I really didn't know. I wouldn't have said all those things to you if you told me that up front."

"It's OK, I find your honesty refreshing."

I snort at this. "Well, I've never been called
that
before."

"Which, honest or refreshing?"

"Ha ha, that's funny." I lean back on the bench and stare up at the fake sky. Windows. Scaffolding, whatever the hell it is. I stare up. "I miss the stars on Earth. I can't see anything here."

"I can take you to see them. If you want."

"How many trains will it take? I'll probably fall asleep."

He reaches out and taps my shoulder and I'm just about to look over at him when the sky changes and the stars shine down on me. I try and sit up before I realize I'm no longer sitting. We're standing in the middle of the night sky, nothing above and nothing below. "Holy shit, what is this? A simulation?"

He takes my hand as I get dizzy. "No, we are outside the habitat. Look behind you."

I do and I smile.

Amelia is beautiful. She's a torus, all right. But she's got four rings to her, not just one. She spins like a top, creating the gravity felt on the outer rim. The spaceports in the center are rather busy even at this time of night and I see several orbitals come and go in the span of just a few seconds.

"Wow." I look over at him and smile, laugh actually. "I'm officially impressed."

He lets out a fake sigh. "Finally, I have impressed Junco the Just One Small Girl."

I look sideways at him, trying to gauge his intentions with that comment, but his face is a blank. He sits down on the air and I follow. Our legs dangle over some invisible edge. "How are we breathing? How is there gravity?"

"We're in a bubble of sorts. I have a few special talents that I won't," he eyes me cautiously, "be sharing the details of with you."

"How did we get here?" He's about to answer when I spy Orion and point up. Everything in the sky for me starts and ends with Orion. He's the first constellation I ever learned. "It's a lot easier to see the stars from here than it was in that tube thing Ashur took me to."

Lucan smiles. "Ashur, I should have figured."

"What's that mean?"

"They are attached to you already, Junco." I am still thinking about this when he switches gears. "I want you to succeed, do you believe me?"

I shrug. "Well, I suppose you'd be a lot meaner if you wanted me to fail, so yeah. I can see that."

"But still, no matter what I do, this will not end well. It will be difficult."

I squint up at him now. "Why?"

"Things have been set in motion. Only going back to Earth would have changed it enough to shift the future."

My voice hardens. "He brought me a video of Moju's finger being cut off, Lucan. He was a plant."

"Yes, that's what you said. So, here we are." He puts his head in his hands and rubs his temples again.

"You know, for a guy who hates Tier so much, you two sure are a lot alike."

His head snaps up. "If you only knew how inappropriate that comment was." The silence between us drags on for a few seconds before he continues. "In which way are we similar?"

He looks over at me and I feel pressure to explain. "Well, he hates when I swear. He actually did mention it a few times back on Earth, and not in a nice way either." Lucan smiles, but does not reply. "And you both rub your head like that when I'm making life difficult."

He nods at this.

"I don't love him, Lucan. I'm not here to save him. Charlie was my love. Moju is part of me, but Tier was just a nice distraction when I really needed one. Someone who held me accountable when it made all the difference. A pretty cool guy, but it didn't get far, and it's going nowhere now. So–"

He tisks his tongue against his teeth. "You're wrong, Junco. All of this is tied up with the dynamics between the two of you."

I wait and the silence is heavy between us.

"Perhaps it is possible that you think you're here for something else, but…" He looks over at me. "I doubt it. We both know you're plotting."

I laugh. "Well, tell me what I can do about it, because to be honest, I'm out of ideas."

"There is nothing, Junco. Truly nothing you can do."

I nod and look down. It's my turn to be silent.

His hand touches my shoulder and we are back on the bench in front of the train stop. "It's late."

"Right, well." We stand up together. "Thanks for the talk."

He bows a little. "The pleasure was all mine, Miss Coot."