And that was how Jagger found me, two-stepping with Enrico who was confused by modern dancing and kept trying to get me to learn some formal dance from the middle-ages.
Jagger cut in and took both of my hands, pulled them behind my back, and held me against him as gently as if I had been a baby. He led me into a slow two-step, his chin nuzzling my forehead.
The party—my party—started for real.
I danced the night away and left the bar at four a.m. for Jolene to close up, not feeling the least bit evil for dumping cleaning on her. I took my man back to my bed. Jagger admitted he could only stay two days before he had to go clean up a mess in DC. I figured it was Dark Rider / Dragon Fist mess, but he didn’t say and I didn’t ask.
“I’ll be back soon,” he said, his mouth and rough five-o’clock beard against my face. “Not yet. But soon. And then forever.”
“Words mean jack shit, Asshole,” I said. “And besides, the world might end tomorrow. Or the Bugs might come back,” I added thinking about the wet ceiling below deck. “All we really have is now.” I pulled him to me and tried to forget about the shit show Earth was these days.
Two days later, Jagger left without a word. I was washing a load of dishes, my hands in warm sudsy water, when I heard his bike start up. I knew he was leaving; I could have run out front to see him off. But if he had wanted to kiss me goodbye he could have come into the kitchen too. He hadn’t.Asshole.
As his bike pulled out, I walked slowly to the open front door, listening to his One Rider Harley until it was only a soft putter on the morning breeze. “Asshole,” I said.
Overhead, on the roadhouse speakers, an alarm went off. I jerked, my stomach hurling itself into my throat.
“Code Red, Urgent Care. Code Red Urgent Care. Code Red Urgent Care—”
“Shut that thing off,” I yelled to Jolene, as I sprinted through the roadhouse, the kitchen, and out back. And into the UC.
Chaos hit my eyes. Cats everywhere, leaping, screaming, fighting. Jumping onto the medbays and clawing the impregnable surfaces. Inside the medbays, the humans werewaking up. So were the cats that had been inside with them. There was activity, motion, beneath the clear medbay surfaces. I was headed to Mina’s medbay but my attention was caught at the trespasser’s when his lid opened. At a glance, I saw a human body with a metal—
My feet skidded to a stop. The trespasser was cleanly shaven from his toes to the metal that encased, or maybe replaced, his skull. It was the same lustrous black metal Jolen’s avatar bot-body was made of. To the side of the crown of his head was a bump. An input port. With a small black line that disengaged as I watched. Jolene had experimented on a human. Or CAIT had.
The cat who had been curled around his head rolled, stretched, and climbed to the man’s chest where it stretched more, as if it hadn’t moved in days. Jethro. The black cat yawned, making biscuits on the man’s tattooed chest.
I ignored the cat because the man opened his eyes.
I waited. He didn’t look my way. Didn’t move except to breathe and blink, his gaze unfocused and empty.
Mina’s medbay began to open. I skidded to it, trying to find my balance, body and feet out of position. I rotated, still moving, just as she woke. She focused on me, bared her fangs, and leaped at me, faster than human. Cat fast. Fighting mad. Claws extended.
My nanos reacted. Using my coiled body position as a spring, I balled a fist and unleased my energy and momentum. I hit her. Broke her fangs. Knocked her out. She slumped.
The ruddy cat leaped on me, furious. I’d have clocked her too, but Spy intercepted the jump. The two cats went down in a wild tangle of claws and fangs and yowling. Scrappy raced away. Spy hissed victory, her back high and tail hair spread. The medbay closed and Spy leaped to my shoulders.
“CAIT,” Jolene said over the speakers. “What the ever lovin’ hell have you done, girl?”
CAIT said. “This system has now fulfilled part one of its secondary protocol.”
“CAIT— Can you . . .” I stopped, trying to figure out how to get the information I needed. “CAIT, tell me the name, the title, of this protocol.”
“That falls within my non-classified parameters. My orders are: Enemy Reeducation and Reconstruction.”
“Who . . .” I stopped. I wanted to know who had assigned CAIT this order. And how turning Mina into a half-human, half-cat fit into the US wartime protocols. “Jolene,” I said instead. “Is it possible that CAIT has a . . . glitch?”
As the last syllable left my mouth, the medbays went dark. The lights went out. The entire electronics went black, as if offline. From a single speaker overhead, Jolene said, “I’m on it, Shining Sugah. Gimme a few.”
A few what, I didn’t know. I shook my head. Spy on my shoulder, I walked through the dark and opened the UC door to let the cats out. Not knowing what else to do, I trudged back to the kitchen and took my usual seat at the bar. I held my head in my hands.
Spy stepped from my shoulders to the counter and I didn’t bother correcting her.
Overhead, the lights flickered. Music came on, some kind of military march. As quickly as it came on, it stopped, and Jolene’s signature song came on. It too stopped, leaving me sitting in the dim light and silence.
“What the sodding . . .” I stopped. Sitting there. Head in hands, eyes closed. Thinking. Mina was part cat. CAIT might be insane. Jolene and she were fighting for control and Jolene might lose. Nice girls often did.
If Jolene died, I’d have to kill CAIT. If I even could, before she initiated some pre-programmed self-destruct sequence. The roadhouse could just blow the hell up. A crater in the ground.
