“I got it, Mateo. You take care of that,” I ordered, my hand making a circular motion encompassing the trading stuff on the ground. At a dead run I headed back to the office.
Inside, I pressed the small button that allowed me to see the security screens and spotted the old truck as viewed from an ARVAC cam. It was loaded down with big bags and plastic bins and household stuff—a mattress, a recliner, pillows—all strapped down with old flex. It was also towing a fourteen-foot trailer. A shotgun barrel extended out on the driver’s side, meaning the driver was riding their own shotgun. There was too much glare to see faces, but I knew who this was and what had happened. As Wanda neared, I felt her desperation and her panic. I felt her awareness of another person in the vehicle. Was she under duress?
“Bloody damn,” I whispered. Keeping an eye on the screen, I wanded the sweat off me and dressed in cleaner clothes. Checked on the cats in the med-bay. Four were done. The rest were still being neutered.
Knowing this was going to suck no matter how it went down, I turned off some of the perimeter security measures along the drive so no one got killed by accident and grabbed my comms and my second-gen sunglasses just in case there were enemies along for the ride. I debated carrying weapons, but I knew that there was an appearance of strength to not carrying them, and also that I would be well protected by Mateo, who I could feel moving toward the drive. Weaponless, I walked out of the airlocks and into the hot sun. In the middle of the dirt drive, about twenty meters off the old rutted, pitted road, I stopped.
Cats gathered around my feet, and without looking I knew it was the clowder that had gone with Cupcake and me to Charleston.
The rest of my nest was all around me: Mateo at the juncture of Aisle Tango Three and Aisle Alpha Three now, watching on his suit screens; cats mostly in clowders with a few outliers all heading this way; Cupcake walking toward my flank; Amos taking up a firing position behind the AG grabber.
The old truck turned in, its electric engine silent. Wanda braked about six meters away and turned off the engine. She got out of the vehicle, leaving the door open as she approached. She was wearing a sweat-stained dress and old sneakers without laces. She hadn’t had a bath or a personal wanding in a long while. The stink of her body reached me before she did. Her skin was cracked and her hair dry as straw, signs of dehydration.
Behind her, in the windshield, a face pressed close to the old plaz-glass.
Bloody damn.
Wanda had her kid with her. Worse, I could feel the pull, the attraction, the knowledge that the kid was mine too, part of my nest.
What in all the flames of all the hells was I going to do with a kid? And how did this happen? Instantly, a possible explanation presented itself. When she got home from Morrison’s Foundry, Metals, and Scrap, Wanda had hugged her kid. Some of my nanobots had transferred during that hug. I should have made sure Wanda showered more thoroughly, washed her hair, changed clothes, changed shoes, before she left Morrison’s. I hadn’t pushed her to be scrupulously clean. I hadn’t done enough to protect her child.
My fault.I hadn’t thought.
Wanda stopped in front of me, her hands hidden in the folds of her full skirt. “I tried to stay away. But I lost my house when the new mayor decided to put up a housing unit.” Her hands bunched into the lank cloth and released it. Bunched and released. “I had no place to stay.” Tears gathered in her eyes, but they dried instantly. “I’m falling apart staying away from you. My kid and I were living on the street. So I tracked down Jagger, and he told me how to get here.”
I wasn’t a kind person by nature, but I knew responsibility. I knew honor, the kind I had learned at Pop’s knee and in WWIII fighting with the OMW. And I knew that when I made a mistake—like leaving Wanda alone in Charleston—I had to make it right.
Before I could speak she added, “Jagger said I should bring the most recent intel I uncovered. That it might make you willing to take me in. Takeusin. I can work. I’m good at secretarial things. Good with accounting of all kinds. I can clean and—”
I raised a hand to stop her. “You’re welcome here, Wanda. You and the kid.”
Wanda’s shoulders started shaking, and I realized she was crying arid, tearless sobs. She was broken inside. She was a thrall, and her queen had left her behind. I was coming to understand that, even with my own newly mutated nanobots, my thralls still wanted to be with me, and some of them would find it impossible to resist the need for a queen.
Bloody sodding damn.
“Pull your vehicle up to the office. Cupcake will find you a place to stay and some supplies.”
Wanda gagged and dropped to her knees as if my words had slammed her down. Or were lifesaving. Maybe both.
I’d been mostly a kid when I made my slow, dangerous way across the country to Smith’s Junkyard and Scrap. Along the way I had been close to dead more than once. Getting here, to safety, had been a huge relief. “Wanda, it’s okay,” I said gently. “I’m sorry I left you there so long.”
“Sugah,” Jolene said into my earbud, “Wanda gave us good intel while she was in Charleston. We got stuff on Marconi and all his young’uns. And she was searching for who’s on the take in the local law, which is prolly what she’s brought with her.”
“Wanda, you were . . . serving me in Charleston. In a big way,” I said, guided by Jolene’s words. I walked close and touched her shoulder with one fingertip. “All that information you sent was invaluable. And even if it had been crap, I’d still have welcomed you here.”
Wanda leaned into me and hugged my thighs, weeping.
Yet. What if . . . ? I was paranoid. Which might keep us alive.
I tried to figure out where to put my hands on Wanda and finally patted her head. She hugged my legs tighter.
At the truck, two little feet landed on the dirt, visible beneath the open door. Sneakers in a faded blue. Bare legs. A towheaded kid peeked around the door and met my eyes. Bright blue eyes in a very dirty face.
I sighed and held out my hand. The kid raced to me but threw himself—herself?—against their mother’s back. They—the kid—were wearing filthy clothes that might once have been shorts and a T-shirt. Gently he-she-they reached out a small grubby hand and held it two centimeters away from my leg. Sighing, I took the hand. The kid and Wanda both sighed with me, then slumped against my thighs.
I might be paranoid, but I checked for foreign nanobots, just in case Warhammer had found her, enthralled her again, and sent her. But the nanos on and in Wanda and the kid were all my old ones, the ones from before my recent PRC nanobot infection. I had hoped that my new transition had been enough to end my thralls’ dependence on me. I had been wrong. And now, my touching would infect them with my new improved nanos.Bloody damn.
“I gotcha, Wanda,” Cupcake said, sliding a hand under her elbow. “We’ve been saying how much we need another secretary to handle the front desk and the calls.”
