“That’s a biker riding leather. A vest.”
He nodded, the motion jerky. His color was higher than before we ate, his temperature beginning to rise.
“My boss got in a pile of miscellaneous stuff not long ago.” I got up and brought the box of junk to the table. Placed it beside Jagger. “We can dicker—info, updates, and a little cash in return for your sensor—if it’s in here.”
Jagger frowned again, but he went on eating. Several bites later he said, “Good fish stew, considering we’re in the wilds of nowhere desert. What info do you want?” He hadn’t even looked into the box.
I said, “You can tell me what happened to Darson and his friend Buck Harlan.” Darson, the man who had been beating his girlfriend and her daughter—who was now me. Buck Harlan, the man whose body I left burning in the Tesla. Building upon things we had talked about and things I still needed to know. Replacing memories. Binding him to me through a shared chemical, hybrid nanobot signature.
Building my nest, just like the cats did.
Just like the bicolors did.
As we ate, Jagger told me about the Battle of Seattle, and the deaths of Darson, his girlfriend, and her daughter. I corrected his memory and said I, Heather, had gotten away. I made up a few details, enough for his own mind to build upon, unless he looked at it all too closely. We had seconds of the fish stew, finishing all but a half cup. I wouldn’t be making fish stew again in many months, unless I sold some valuable scrap, especially since this problem with Harlan meant I hadn’t gotten my black-market goods. My eyes felt raw at the thought of Harlan. Dead, protecting me. What did Asshole know about Harlan’s death?
My voice rough, I asked, “And Buck Harlan?”
“He went missing two weeks past.”
Jagger lounged back and stretched out his long legs on the bench, crossing his bootless feet, wearing Pops’ socks. It was strange to see a man in my father’s clothes. Jeans, double layers of t-shirts bulging with weapons in a harness. Those socks. Striped bright green, dark blue, and silver—Seattle Seahawks colors. Pops and Little Mama and I used to go to the games. I hadn’t seen a live football game in years. Pops used to keep a can of Skoal in his back pocket, apple blend or vanilla. I could almost smell the flavored tobacco. He used to sing to Aretha’s music. He had a terrible voice. Grief welled in me so fast that tears pooled in my eyes. I turned aside and blinked them away.
All sorts of things were simmering to the surface and making me feel weird.
Without cleaning my hands, I gave Jagger another beer, more of my sweat on the damp bottle. The man could really hold his alcohol—all that body mass meant it took a lot to get him drunk. He removed the top and took a long pull before setting it on the table, his hands smoothing the bottle around and around, his fingers brushing where I had touched it.Foolish, foolish man, that little voice whispered.
“Harlan was tracking down info about an influx of MS Angels back into Louisville.”
I went still.Mara Salvatrucha Angels. They had been the scourge of . . . well, of everything and everyone. MS13 had merged with the Hell’s Angels in a hostile takeover in 2030, creating a biker arm of the international criminal gang. The newly merged gang had swept through large swaths of territory, leaving a path of property destruction and dead bodies in its wake, an onslaught so violent that only the Outlaws had been equipped to counter it. The biker clubs went to war in 2032, in what had ended up a nasty, decade-long internecine conflict, led by a very young Pops and his predecessor. Pops had won and the scattered remnants of the MS Angels had not ended up as his best buddies.
And now Harlan was here, dead, at the hands of a traitor, probably working with the PRC—the enemies of the Gov. and of me. Had the MS Angels found Pops’ famous Little Girl? A sense of foreboding grew, one I tried to keep off my face as I asked, “OMW cleaned the Angels out in 2040, didn’t they?”
“Little known fact. The remnants of the MS Angels allied with the PRC late in the war. And after the war, when the Chinese departed, the Angels started to rebuild. They had Chinese tech and weapons caches. The post-war famine opened up territory. We heard rumors they were expanding again, this time without, or in front of, the People’s Republic of China, but with their own brand of ferocity and violence. Harlan went to check them out.”
Bugger. I didn’t know what to do now. If the MS Angels had taken down Harlan and sent his body to me, that meant they knew who I was and at least some of what I had on site—the post-war military weapons caches for starters. And if the Angels had PRC tech, then . . . might they also have sent the Crawler?
Bugger damn. . .
Panic pattered up and down my spine. On the screen, I watched as the junkyard cats tore into another Puffer. My thoughts still turned inward, I asked slowly, “Do you have a pic of Harlan? A recent one?”
“Why?” Jagger asked, as he peeled a Morphon off his wrist. The chameleon capabilities of the narrow wrist band had matched his skin so perfectly I hadn’t even noticed it until he twisted it off, snapped it flat, and unfolded it. I hadn’t seen a Morphon in ages; I still used an old model Hand-Held. No one had Morphons except the military, the Gov., and a few filthy rich citizens with the proper sat-dishes. The Morphon, like the bike Jagger rode and all the tech on it, was an indication of the deep relationship between the military and the OMW.
Holy freaking bugger. The MS Angels, the OMW, the military, and the Gov. all probably knew where I was. I was so screwed.
Jagger swiped through pics and handed me the Morphon. It felt silky in my palm and instantly matched my much darker tanned skin. On the face of the Morphon was a pic of Harlan and Jagger, their bikes in the background.
I pushed the Morphon back and pulled my Hand-Held. I found the stills of the Tesla and the body of the OMW in the back, then handed it to Jagger.
“This came today, packaged and shipped inside a piece of scrap the owner bought. It’s Harlan, isn’t it?” Harlan, who had been my go-between for the OMW, the black-market network, and the real world. Harlan, who had been hunting for traitors.
Jagger flipped though the stills several times, his face giving nothing away.
But he had already entered the transition. I could feel the way his heartrate sped and his adrenaline spiked.
“I recognized the tats as OMW,” I said. “When you showed up, I thought you might have sent him. Some kind of message to my boss. Then the Crawler situation happened and you were in as much danger as I was, so, I’m now assuming the reason you came had to be for something else, maybe even the kutte sensor you talked about.”
Jagger transferred accusing, angry eyes to me. Any confusion or acceptance or transition uncertainty was gone in the adrenaline rush. He was back to himself for a moment.
“You let me into your inner sanctum? Yourshelter?” It was an accusation and also the dawn of the protective instincts created by the transition. “A stranger who showed up on your doorstep the same day a dead man came calling?”
