I Am Not Junco Omnibus: Books Four - Six (48 page)

She squirms in my embrace and I loosen my grip and allow her to slide down. "Wow! Where are we?" She runs to the edge of the terrace, climbs the bottom railing, and leans over. Far over.

My heart thumps a little as I watch her begin to step up on the second railing. "Hey, get the hell off that thing! Put yer feet on the ground, right now!"

She makes no move to obey and I'm crossing the terrace to yank her down when she turns, smiling. "It's far, isn't it? Wow, is this where you live?"

"Very far," I say, grabbing her arm and pulling her off the railing. "And no, this isn't my house, it's Gideon's. I'm looking for him."

She's already run off, squealing her way into the living room yelling something about automated shopping and bathing suits.

It's my turn to lean over the railing. I look down at the black rocks Junco was sitting on when I came here the night of her birthday. I turn my gaze down the beach looking for people, but it's empty. Totally evacuated. They weren't sure what I had planned and since Sargassum is nothing but a floating man-made archipelago, they took the conservative approach and got everyone off the resort before I had a chance to wipe it out with tsunami waves.

I walk back towards the terrace doors and when I reach them, I turn and pace back the other way. I continue this for a while. Just pacing. Thinking. Part of me wants Annun to come back and tell me how Junco's always got a plan. How together she is on the inside. How sneaky she is. That she can pull it off just because she's Junco and she finds a way to pull everything off.

But the rational part sees nothing but the dissipation particles shooting up into the sky like those fountains they have in Vegas.

She's not coming back from this one, Tier. Face it. She's not coming back.

But I've had that thought so often it's becoming cliché. How many times have we sat around and discussed rumors of Junco's demise?

Pretty much once a week since we located her more than four years ago.

She's been dead and gone and then revived and reborn in my mind so many times, I'm not sure what her actual life status is any more.

I look up.

But there's no Halo circling the earth. There's no defense system to protect us. I have no Junco, I have no future that I can see. I have no hope.

There's no hope.

We are fucked.

Chapter Three

"Stop! There!" I bark at Ashur. "See that?" My finger points to the scattered particles of dust that are being ejected from the pillar on screen. "That's it, right there."

Ashur squints his eyes a little, a habit I've despised since we were boys. "Tier, man, I sure hope that's not her. I mean, she's done if it is. She's so fucking screwed up, there's no way she'll pull herself back together. It's never gonna happen. And forget the fact that Inanna can't complete the Halo without Junco,
we
can't complete the Halo without Junco. We gotta move on to Plan B already. The ships are beyond capacity, and after three weeks in space people are getting restless."

"No. Not yet."

Lucan appears and leans in. "What are we looking at?"

"Junco," Ashur snorts.

My fist crashes against his face and we go down brawling. "I'm sorry, shit!" he laughs.

Lucan pulls us apart like we're kids again. "Enough."

"Ashur, I swear—"

"Sorry. It's a bad joke, I get it."

"I'm hun-gry!"

Ash and I wince together as we help each other up off the floor.

"Who is
that
?" Lucan asks.

"Junco's HOUSE."

"Hmmm. She does not look like a house, Ashur."

"I'm a girl!" she squeals. That little voice—incessantly asking for things like food, and drinks, and trips to the beach—is really grating on my nerves.

"What are you doing with her, Raubtier?"

"Babysitting for Junco," Ashur answers.

"Would you shut the fuck up? I've had enough of you. I made a promise to get her out of Peaks before the earthquakes."

"What earthquakes?"

"Exactly," Ash answers.

"I'm hun-gry!"

Lucan walks over to her and bends down. "You are
not
hungry, you're an AI. I'm quite versed in AI engineering and maintenance, and they do not require food. So, why don't you keep quiet over here and watch something stupid on the screen so we don't have to listen to your mouth as it flaps up and down and spews things we do not care about?"

Ash smiles at me. "He's got a way with kids, right? Brings back all those awesome memories of being little in Lucan's house."

"Was he an asshole?" the little voice says.

I turn on my heel, fuming and pointing. "I already warned ya once, girl!"

"Junco never cared if I said asshole."

"Say it again," I growl down at her. "I dare ya."

She thinks about this and makes a face just as Lucan walks back over to us. "If there's nothing new here I'll be leaving. When you ditch the child let me know, I'll come back."

And then he's gone.

"Yeah, well, I'm gonna take off, too," Ash says. "I heard Annun say he heard some warrior in South America say someone saw Gideon on a beach in Australia. I'm gonna go check it out later."

"And Sera?"

He shakes out a no. "Nothing on Sera. She's been missing for, shit… since Junco ported out of your room, I think."

"Yeah. I might've been wrong about that, which means I fed Junco some bunk intel and never got to make it right."

He just shrugs. "Ya said she didn't believe you anyway, so fuck it. She's the most powerful thing in this system, Tier, she can handle herself."

I change the subject because that might be true from our perspective, but not from Junco’s. She was damaged and desperate when she walked into that Pillar. "Where ya going now?"

"Selia." He says it with some hesitation, like he's trying not to hurt my feelings—his girlfriend is hurt, but recovering. While my—whatever she is—is simply gone.

"She better?"

"Yeah, pretty much. She's not allowed out of medical yet, Layla's orders. But I can visit now and she's walking."

I let out a breath. "That's great, Ash. I'm happy for ya." I ask the obvious, since Caleb was the one who brought her in, mostly healed already. "Has she been… marked?"

He nods. "Yeah, but I don't care, really. It just confirms that she's a good person, ya know? She deserves it. It would be beyond selfish to be angry about something like that."

"Yer a good guy, Ashur. Truly, I'm sorry she got hurt."

"I know. And—" He claps me on the back and then pulls me into a hug. "I take it all back, brother. Junco's diabolical, not crazy. She's got to have a plan, so I'm fine with waiting it out, OK?"

I don't even have a chance to nod before he's gone.

"I'm hun—"

"OK!" I bark, cutting off her annoying whine. "I heard ya the first time, girl. What do ya eat, then?"

"I have a name."

I walk over to her and stand there, towering above her. "HOUSE is not a name, it's a thing. So I'm going to call you girl, because that's a thing too, but at least it describes what ya look like right now."

"It is so a name!" The girl actually stomps a foot in defiance.

"Don't." I poke my finger on her forehead several times as I talk. "I'm in a bad mood. What do ya eat, girl?"

She takes her time to consider this and I'm about to lose any extra patience I might have for Junco's stupid HOUSE when she finally answers. "Peanut butter and jelly. That's what I eat."

"That's disgusting."

She shrugs. "We ate it all the time growing up. Peanut butter was always on the list of allowed foods and—"

That's right. Lucan mentioned that Junco had some weird food rules as a child. No wonder her eating habits are so screwed up.

I look back to the child and HOUSE is still talking. "—oat bread. Is there oat bread in there? Not
wheat
bread," she makes a face, "
oat
bread."

I go to the kitchen and she follows me, her little pink flipflops smacking her heel as she walks. My finger goes down the list on the side of Gideon's excessively stocked autocook and sure enough, there's a number for peanut butter and jelly with oat bread. I enter it into the machine and push start.

"Gideon knows what Junco likes."

I look over the list and I figure she's right. Gideon does know because his menu is mostly filled with crap. Cookies, mac and cheese, some fish, rice, chicken. Like every kind of chicken recipe on Earth. Orange juice, cheeseburgers, French fries, and blueberry pancakes.

I hate Gideon.

The cooker dings and I open it and hand the girl her sandwich, then watch to see if she actually eats it. I think she's pretending to be Junco so that food will sit on the plate and not be touched, but I'm wrong. She scarfs it down like she's starving. I raise my eyebrows at her.

"Told ya," she says, spitting out a small piece of bread as she speaks.

"Don't talk with yer mouth full, didn't Junco teach ya manners?"

"She did," she continues, again with her mouth full. "But you're rude, so you don't count."

"Is that right?"

She only nods this time, her mouth is too full to even spit. I watch her chew for what seems like eternity and then she finally swallows. "Milk," she croaks.

I punch in milk, wait for the beep, and hand it to her.

She guzzles the entire cup and hands it back for a refill.

We stand there like that, her alternating between chewing and drinking. Me watching. Her sending me dirty looks. Me sending her confused ones. Until she's finished and she lets out a big burp.

"Excuse me."

A laugh bursts out unexpectedly and I feel a little bit of the sadness leave for a few moments. I can only imagine what kind of little shit Junco was as a child when I look at this little copy. "You're excused, girl. Go take a nap or something. Don't Earth kids take naps? I want ta look at this footage again."

She yawns. "I am tired."

I point to the bedrooms down the hall. "Find one ya like."

"No, I'll sleep here by you, if that's OK. You might leave without me if I go back there."

"Where would I go?"

She shrugs. "I dunno. But everyone was always leaving Junco behind, and that was never fun. I don't want to be left behind like Junco."

She makes a little crack in my stone heart. "I won't leave, I promise. But you can sleep out here if ya want."

She does want. I settle on the coffee table, my legs stretched out and the touchscreen within easy reach so I can pause the satellite feed frame by frame. HOUSE curls up on the couch, her breath going in and out quickly, and we settle into Evening One of My World Minus Junco—Round Three.

Chapter Four

I watch the footage of dissipation particles above Pillar Seven several dozen times back to back, stopping only briefly when Ryse makes an appearance, yelling and screaming about Esta and how Junco went and fucked it all up again. I have to push him outside and take him down on the cement to make him shut up.