Zero's Return (73 page)

“Sure it is, Sammy,” she
growled at him.

He narrowed his weird,
electric-blue eyes at her.  “Slade.”

“You said Sam.”

“It was a slip of the
tongue.”

“Yeah, right.”  She
scoffed and went back to mentally locating and cataloguing his weapons.  She
couldn’t see any.  None.  Not even a knife. 
Damn.

Sam reached out and took
her by the chin and turned her head to face him.  “Slade,” he warned.

She gave him a vicious
smile.  “You bet, Sammy.”

The big man blinked down
at her, looking caught between perplexed and pissed.  “I’m in charge of the
food supply, Kitten.”  He put the gum away pointedly.  “You call me Slade.”

“You got it, Sam,” she
said sweetly.

He opened his mouth to
retort, then closed it and glared.

“So what now, Sammy?” Rat
demanded.  “I hope you had some grand plan for all this, ‘cause the moment I
get free, you’re dead.” 

He narrowed his eyes a
little further.  “You just became my personal servant, bedwarmer, and
entertainment system.  How does it feel?”

Rat laughed at him. 
Then, when she ran out of air, she took a deep breath and laughed at him some
more.  Finally, when she could find the control to speak, she said, “I’m going
to rip off your balls and feed them to you.”  She glanced at his crotch to
judge how difficult it would be to tear off the little raisins.  Then she
frowned when she saw the bulge and jerked her eyes to his face.  “Thought you
said you couldn’t get it up, sootwad,” she snapped.

Sam actually flushed and
twisted so that his groin was out of sight.  “You hungry?  I have food.”  When
she didn’t respond, he cleared his throat uncomfortably.  His face was so red
it looked about to catch fire.  “Chicken and mashed potatoes.  We came across
an abandoned farmstead awhile back.  Good scavenging.  Have been hatching
chicks in this solar-powered incubator I built ever since.”   He wouldn’t meet
her eyes.

“You can take your food
and shove it up your ass,” Rat said, still disgruntled that he had used it to
trap her like a wild burning animal.  She started eying the knots on her
ankles.  He’d fused those ropes together, too.  Ashy Jreet hells.  She needed a
blade.

“You don’t need to be
afraid, Kitten,” Sam said, following her gaze to her bound limbs.  He sounded
almost…gentle.  “I’m not going to hurt you.”

“Oh come on,” Rat
snorted.  “Why not?  I’m going to hurt
you
.”  She smiled at him
pleasantly.  “’Specially if you keep calling me Kitten.”

He blinked at her again,
obviously not the response he had been looking for.  “You’re tied up.”

“Yes, and?” she cocked
her head at him, waiting.

He looked startled.  “And
I’m not.”

Rat cocked her head at
him.  “You didn’t really think this through real well, did you?”

She
watched
it
cross his jenfurgling brain that she had annihilated eight of his men after
they’d tied her up, then let the survivor run back to camp so she could follow
him and kill his friends, too.  She continued to smile sweetly.  “What, did you
start thinking with your dick, there, jungle-man?  Bribe a pretty girl with
some gum, knock her over the head, drag her home by the hair to warm your bed? 
Kinda forgot the fact she’s trained in about ten thousand different types of
murder, and the moment you let down your guard, she’s gonna cut off your sooty
head?  That it’s just a matter of time ‘til you’re dead?”

Sam just stared at her,
his crimson becoming a near purple that made his screwed-up irises stand out an
eerie white
in his skull.  He looked…scared.  “No.”

Rat laughed.  “Ticktock.”

CHAPTER 25 – Stragedy

This was not going
according to plan.

No, scratch that, this
was the worst idea Slade had ever had.  Even worse than hacking that damn
government file and dosing himself with gene-altering nanos.  This was simply
brainless.

The Congie had somehow
wriggled her feet free and escaped twice already, had
almost
escaped
four more, and if she hadn’t been so damned weak from starvation, she probably
would’ve kicked his ass all six times he’d run her down.  As it was, he had a
bruise on his temple—where the towel had cushioned a full-on kick to the head
that would’ve crushed his skull—and his nuts still ached from their last
scuffle.

He’d invented a word for
times like this, when the best laid plans were doomed to fail.  ‘Stragedy.’  A
combination of strategy and tragedy.  That’s what had happened four days ago,
when he’d been standing at gunpoint, thinking with his dick.  He’d been forming
a stragedy.  Already, Slade wished the annoying thing would go back to sleep,
but what had seemed like a blessing at first had become a distraction that was
making him stupid.  And Slade wasn’t stupid.

It hadn’t even been a
plan.  Just a crazy obsession to nab this girl and make her his before she
could starve to death.  And, now that he had her—the execution of which he was
still particularly proud of—she made it clear with every breath, every look,
every
smile
, that she was going to eviscerate him the moment he slept. 
Hell, she’d already grabbed a sharp rock and tried.

So now he sat with his
back against a boulder, the Congie mummified to an opposite tree, leering at
him in the dull light of the fire as Slade tried not to nod off.

“You’re scared,” the
woman said.  “I can see it in your face.”

“You can’t see my face,”
Slade said.  “Shut up.”

She still hadn’t given
him her name, but Slade had a photographic memory, and her face had been all
over the news after Neskfaat and her purported attack on Mekkval.  He had been
hoping all the cat references would tip her off, but she seemed as dense as an
ingot of ruvmestin.  Typical Congie.

“They augmented our
eyes,” Rat said.  “I can see your face.”  The smugness in her voice left
absolutely no doubt in his mind that she was telling the truth.

Wasn’t that just
splendid
. 
Not only did he have to worry about her breaking out of her bonds and running
away, but he also had to worry about her, oh, say, escaping at night, when he
couldn’t find her, then coming back to hunt him in the dark with an automatic
energy weapon.

“You’re sweating,” she
noted.

“Silence, Congie,” Slade
said. 
God
he was tired.

There was a long pause,
then, “I’m not going anywhere.  You can go to sleep, you sooter.”

Slade snorted.  “Right. 
Because that worked so well the
last
six times.”

In the dimness, he could
barely make out Rat’s frown.  “You can.”

“Just shut up and let me
think,” Slade replied.  He couldn’t kill her.  He
still
had a rock-hard
boner, sweet-Jesus-praise-the-Lord, and as much as it annoyed him that the loss
of blood was sapping his intellect, he wasn’t about to give it up.  He knew
there had to be some sort of weird Congie chemical or unique pheromone involved
because his little buddy seemed to jump to attention the moment he got within a
few feet of her.  And, with that thought, he had the sickening knowledge that
if he killed her before he figured out what the chemical was, he was going to
miss out on his chance to have an honest-to-God, self-induced, not-in-your-sleep
orgasm for the first time in thirty-two years.  He’d been itching to pound one
out in his glee, but he was pretty sure that would give her the wrong
impression.

And he
really
didn’t want the pretty Congie with the penchant for eviscerating people and
surviving ten-million-to-one odds in all-out deathmatches against Dhasha to get
the wrong impression.  Especially since her foot seemed to be able to reach his
head without any effort at all on her part.

“I need to go to the
bathroom,” Rat said for the eighth time that night.

Slade frowned at her. 
“No.  Stop asking.”

“I’m stating a fact,” she
growled.  “You leave me here much longer and I’m gonna piss myself.”  She
hefted her bound wrists disgustedly underneath her mummified torso, then
plopped them back into her lap.

Giving her an irritated
look, Slade turned back to the fire, trying to figure out how to deal with this
particular problem without meeting an untimely end or killing the best
aphrodisiac to show up in over thirty years.  She was a badass.  A certifiable
badass.  And he had her tied to a tree and had refused her requested
potty-break.  Because it was dark outside.  And she was a badass.

He was so screwed.

When the Congie spoke
again, her voice was almost tentative.  “So, uh, why
did
you go through
all that effort to grab me?  It’s been two days and you haven’t so much as
tried to make a move on me.”

Slade felt his face
flush.  Because he couldn’t really come up with something better to say—and
because this woman made him stupid—he said, “I was out looking for slaves and
you struck my fancy.”

Not surprisingly, it was
the wrong thing to say.  He knew it was the wrong thing to say because her
pretty features twisted into a thunderhead.  “You aren’t very smart, are you?”

Slade laughed miserably
at that.  “Lady, you have
no
idea.”

When he said nothing
more, silence once more descended on the camp.  Then she muttered, “So what,
jungle-man, we’re just gonna sit here until one of us passes out?”

The idea that she had
taken him for a survivalist because he had made a cool snare he’d adapted from
a book made Slade laugh again.  She was obviously giving him
way
too
much credit.  Which meant, as soon as she figured out he was a computer geek,
he was dead.

“You gonna just leave my
rifle out by that creekbed to rot?” she finally demanded, as the night wore on.

“Why yes.  Yes I am,”
Slade said.  “Along with everything else you can kill me with.”  He’d made sure
to leave all the sharp, pointy objects behind before bringing her back with
him, too, thank God.  If he hadn’t, he would be dead already.  Simple as that. 
He’d dropped his knife beside Bubblegum Boulder on his way past and stowed his
pen under a rock in preparation.  Hell, he’d even left behind his nail
clippers.  Still, the constant throbbing in his temple where he was pretty sure
she had given him some sort of concussion made it hard to escape his notice
that she could still kill him with her foot.

Or her pinkie. 
Especially
her pinkie.

“Fuck,” Slade muttered,
tossing another stick on the fire.  The only real option was to take her back
to the Society so there were more eyes to keep watch on her, but Tyson would
likely blow her head off the moment she slipped her bonds the first time. 
He
wasn’t an idiot.

“You could let me go,”
she offered.  “Maybe give me some more of that chicken.”

Slade gave her a wary
look, then saw the calculation in her gaze.  “Nice try.”

Rat peered at him through
the darkness.  “So why don’t you want anyone to know your real name, Sammy?”

Just as he had every time
she’d used the name, Slade jerked in annoyance and intended to tell her to
screw off.  The words that came out of his mouth, however, were, “I have a very
famous brother and he screwed me over hardcore.”  Then, realizing he’d already
dug his hole, he decided to just get it out.  “I didn’t want to be associated
with the dick anymore.  I decided to use one of my aliases.  That was like
twenty turns ago.  Haven’t looked back.”

She was silent a moment. 
Then, “You gonna let me go?”

“No.  Stop asking.”

“I’m asking,” Rat said,
“because if
I
have to let myself go, you’re not gonna survive it.”  She
cocked her head at him.  “But you probably already know that.”

 “Hence my current
conundrum,” Slade said, “and why I’d like you to silence yourself while I
think, okay?”

She glanced at the bloody
towel wrapping his head and stayed there.  “Did I miss, then?”

Slade frowned.  “Miss?”

Rat pointed at the
crimson stain with her bound wrists.  “I was just trying to vaporize a little
hair.  I hadn’t realized I’d hit you.”  She almost sounded irritated with
herself.  For missing, not for shooting him.

“Nah,” Slade said.  “You
got the hair.  Mine’s just a little…unique.”

“What
is
wrong
with you?” she asked, like she were discussing the weather.  “You look like a
burning Huouyt.”

Slade snorted.  “Probably
am, a little.”  At her odd look, he took a deep breath, let it out in a sigh,
then decided to tell her his sad, sad story.  “I got bored one night and broke
into a top-secret government computer system, stole all the info on their
experiments, and, in between sipping martinis and getting laid, found this
really cool one about making people live longer, think better, and able to
change form.  Kind of wrote it off for a few weeks, but then I got drunk again
and decided to try it on myself.”  He grimaced, remembering.  “I don’t get
drunk anymore.  Kinda swore off the stuff when the normal ‘groan and get the
trash-can’ hangovers graduated to ‘blind and impotent, with a liberal
sprinkling of bone-crushing headaches.’” 

During his story, Rat had
gone utterly pale, staring at him like he’d suddenly grown mandibles.  Probably
because, for the last three days straight, he had had a boner so hard it was
painful.  And he knew she’d seen it.  She kept
looking
at it.  That was
another thing about Congies.  With them constantly having to bare everything to
put on their biosuits, they had very little modesty.

“You…some sort of super
genius or something?” she managed. 

Well, duh.  Wasn’t it
evident in his brilliant,
non-violent
methods of catching a Congie?

“The Tesla of the
Congressional Era, at your service,” Slade said, giving a little bow.