Man on machine on man.
Red Cell, Book 1
Ex-Green Beret Victor “Cyke” Kellermann is on the run for a crime he
didn’t—well, okay, did commit, but he didn’t realize it at the time. He’s a good
guy, a “white hat” hacker for hire. He’s also more teched out than the Bionic
Man, though his ailing ’ware creates as many problems as it solves.
His latest series of break-ins are proving…difficult. Sentinel Tech’s security is
cutting-edge, and the cops are hounding his ass. He sees only one reason why his
employer hasn’t called off the dogs: someone inside is stealing data for real and
setting him up to take the fall.
Paramedic-cum-tech-phreak Bear keeps scooping an increasingly battered
Cyke off the sidewalk, and each time, his fascination for the fugitive and his
mysterious ’ware grows. So does the attraction that makes him reluctant to turn
Cyke in. Every time they touch, barriers fall. Before long, they're both laid bare.
Cyke can handle losing blood, even losing consciousness. What he can’t
afford is to lose his heart. Distractions like that get people killed—and if he
succeeds in unlocking Sentinel Tech’s ugly secrets, he won’t be the only one in
the line of fire.
Warning: This book contains mechanical eyeballs, multimillion-dollar hand
warmers, pushy mind probes, a man too stubborn to quit when he’s bleeding, an
underpaid paramedic whose services are needed entirely too often, and circuit-
scorching cybersex…without a computer.
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This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s
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living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.
Samhain Publishing, Ltd.
577 Mulberry Street, Suite 1520
Macon GA 31201
Break and Enter
Copyright © 2011 by Rachel Haimowitz and Aleksander Voinov
ISBN: 978-1-60928-558-6
Edited by Sasha Knight
Cover by Kanaxa
All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever
without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
First
electronic publication: December 2011
Break and Enter
Rachel Haimowitz and Aleksandr Voinov
Dedication
To the Hoboken Volunteer Ambulance Corps, and all the emergency crews
and white hats who make the world a safer place.
Acknowledgments
A very special thanks to Andrew Waite of
, a real-life
white hat who provided us with invaluable feedback on the technical aspects of
this book. Thanks also to our loving betas Ronnie, Tal and Kate.
Aleks would thank a data center provider he visited as a journalist that is the
model for SenTech. Of course, their CTO was much nicer, and Aleks signed a
draconian nondisclosure agreement, so he doesn’t thank them by name.
And lastly, thanks to the old ’90s crew at the Hoboken Volunteer Ambulance
Corps, who inadvertently laid the foundation for Bear in the back of that tiny old
rig two-twelve.
Chapter One
Bear had been in bed a whole ten seconds when the familiar, two-tone alarm
bleated from the speakers in the bunkroom. He sat up, groped for the light
switch above his cot, snagged the radio and hit the talk button.
“This is two-twelve,” he said, squinting at the clock on the opposite wall.
Third damn call on shift, and it was only 1:46 a.m. Some nights it just didn’t pay
to take your boots off. “What’s up?”
The next bunk over, Noah was waiting, boots already tied and call tablet in
hand. Bear shoved the radio at him and reached down to tie his own shoes.
“Thirty-something male found unconscious at the bus stop on 5th and
Main,” said dispatch. “Caller reports no obvious injury. Guy’s breathing, but
that’s all they could tell us.”
“On our way,” Noah said, already heading toward the door. Bear grabbed
his gear belt and followed him out to the bay.
Two-twelve was warm already, kicking out diesel fumes. Roy was waiting in
the driver’s seat, tapping his thumbs against the wheel. Noah climbed into the
passenger seat, Bear into the back. He’d barely touched his ass to a bench seat
before Roy pulled out the bay and rocketed down Clinton Street, bathing the
passing townhomes in flashing red lights. The siren stayed mostly silent in
deference to the late hour, blasting only briefly at stop signs and traffic lights.
They beat the cops to the scene. No surprise there, short-staffed as the police
were these days. Like they’d bother speeding out for a drunk, anyway.
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8
As the rig pulled up to the bus shelter, a bum backed away from a body
slumped across the metal bench. Stealing his wallet, Bear assumed. Jackass.
He jumped out of the rig, paying no mind to the fleeing bum. He’d have
liked to smack the little pickpocket down, but the patient had to come first.
The guy was breathing—always a good sign. No visible trauma, though
most of him was hidden behind black chinos, sturdy outdoor boots, a too-tight
concrete gray T-shirt and a dark gray windbreaker.
The outfit and his short-shorn blond hair made him look like a club bouncer.
Harsh fluorescent overhead lights gave his lean face a brutal cast. Not, mind you,
that anyone looked particularly brutal while slumped over unconscious.
Noah jogged up with the jump bag and the O
2
. Roy grabbed the stretcher.
Familiar roles, all of it. Bear should probably stop staring and do his own job.
He inched closer, reached out carefully. Even unconscious, something about
this man screamed danger, and it seemed unwise to startle him. He was still
breathing steady, chest rising and falling beneath layers of clothes. Bear spotted
some bloodstains on said clothes, but no serious leaks. After a quick C-spine
check, he deemed it safe to roll the guy. “Sir?” he called, just as wary of startling
him as before. “Sir?”
No answer. Bear took him by the shoulders—and just what the fuck was that
he felt beneath the man’s coat sleeves?—and sat him up.
Bear wasn’t easily surprised these days, but life still had its moments, and
this was definitely one of them. “Noah,” he said, slow and careful as Noah
dropped the jump bag at his feet. He couldn’t pull his eyes from the man’s
hands, which were bleeding sluggishly around a good two mil’s worth of carbon
steel and neurotech. “Get the tech bag.”
Bear peeled off a glove and put his hand to the man’s face, sensor implants to
bare skin. The man wasn’t drunk, that was for damn sure. Pulse fast but strong,
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9
BP low, respirations shallow. O
2
sats 91%, blood sugar tanked. He put the
oxygen on ten liters and slapped a non-rebreather mask over the guy’s mouth,
fished a bag of dextrose from his gear and went in search of a vein.
After palpating for broken bones, Bear stripped the man’s coat off, then
unbuttoned his shirt and pushed that off too. And sure, the first thing Bear
noticed was the patient bleeding between the gaps in exoskeleton all the way up
his right arm, but the second thing was the guy’s sleekly muscled torso. He was
only human, after all.
Focus, Bear.
It seemed the damn bum had been trying to steal the gloves, not a wallet.
Too drunk or too impatient to find the release switch first, and whether that
made the patient lucky or unlucky, well, Bear supposed that depended on who
owned the gloves. Worth the pain to keep them if he’d paid for them. Less so if
they belonged to the military. And really, who else would have a reason—or the
means—to buy something like that?
Speaking of the switch…where the fuck was it? Noah handed him the tech
bag and shone his Maglite on the pincers so Bear could see what he was doing.
These things were supposed to come off easy in case a soldier needed medical
care. Bear called up the specs on his cheat chip, images playing across the contact
lens on his left eye, while his right eye remained focused on his patient. Four
models in the database, none quite matching the arrangement of carbon plating
on the man’s wrist and arm, the steel bands running up his hand and fingers in a
near-perfect mimic of the underlying connective tissue. The switch had to be here
somewhere. But nothing.
Bear turned to Noah and growled with frustration. “This is gonna take a
while. Arm’s a mess anyway. Get his pants off. Start a line in his ankle.”
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10
He bent back over the glove, examined the arm farther up. The glove went
all the way to the patient’s shoulder and connected to the other glove via straps
across his back and chest. There were no switches there, either. The bum must
have used a knife to dig between the armor plates shielding the elbow. Lots of
potential soft tissue damage. Strange, he’d expected more blood. No rhythmic
spurting. No big pool of it, either. Maybe the armor plates were sealing the
worst. Maybe he should leave them on.
He touched a gloved finger to the joint, feeling for injury. It came back wet
with blood, but the patient hadn’t stirred. “Not responding to pain,” he said.
“Line’s in,” Noah replied. “We should probably scoop and run.”
“Gimme a sec.” Bear took the call tablet from Noah, flicked it on and tapped
his code in. The tablet immediately scanned for machines in the area, bringing up
five cars, two order interfaces for fast-food outlets, his crew’s cheat chips, Noah’s
cell, his own sensor implants, and one “closed” system with a long string of ID
numbers and letters. That must have been the patient’s. And while most ’ware
recognized medical systems and opened up for them, especially when a cross-
check of the owner’s vitals brought up problems, this system remained
stubbornly locked. If anything, it seemed to slam down further shutters, because
the ID number suddenly began to change, rolling through dozens of
permutations a second.
Right, this was getting too weird for his taste.
“Come on, Bear. You can play with your toys on the way to the hospital.”
Bear nodded, folded his patient’s arms across his chest and slid his hands
under and through them to grab the guy’s wrists. Noah took his feet, and they
hauled him onto the stretcher. The oxygen bag went between his legs, and Roy
stowed the rest of the gear away while Noah and Bear stowed their patient.
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11
Once in the back, Bear checked the guy’s vitals again. Pulse settled a little,
pressure and blood sugar up. Seemed to be stabilizing. Noah fished in the guy’s
pockets as Bear rubbed knuckles across his chest. The patient groaned, swatted
Bear’s hand away.
Bear smiled.
“No ID,” Noah said. “No wallet at all.” Not so surprising, that. The bum had
probably taken it. “And,” Noah added, waving a scanner over the patient, then
waving it again, “no ident chip.”
Bear studied the scanner, not quite believing what he was seeing. Not quite
believing any of this. He looked up at Noah and voiced the question they were
both surely thinking: “Who is this guy?”
And from between them came an unexpected answer: “Cyke.”
“Cyke,” Cyke said before he was fully awake.
He blinked the world back to clarity, felt movement, the cramped conditions
of a…a medical transport. A warning flashed across his brain that explained the
burning in his arm. Soft tissue injury. He glanced at it, noted the blood—flow not
critical, nothing the clot-bots couldn’t deal with. Also noted the strap pinning it
down—maybe critical, threat level undetermined.
“Cyke.” A voice from above him, commanding attention. “You’re in an
ambulance. Can you tell us what happened?”
Cyke glanced up at the medic. Solidly built, reddish-brown hair, clear green
eyes in a kind face. Freckles on nightshift-pale skin. Uniform and badge. A quick
cross-check of the badge’s RF transmission against county records showed photo
and occupation matches. The medic was legit.
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12
“I must have passed out.” Cyke noted the pincers were still active. The
likelihood of needing them was extremely low, but it made him feel better just
the same.
The medic peppered him with questions, so familiar Cyke barely had to
think before answering: name, age, day, place, president. Have you passed out
before? What were you doing before it happened? On any drugs? Have any
medical conditions? And oh, also, where did you get those gloves?
Lies, lies and goddamned lies. Cyke calmed his mind as he spoke, but only
because he couldn’t get the gloves off otherwise. The medics would be much less
likely to call the cops if he weren’t armed. He breathed evenly, concentrated on
his internal responses, the small tensions, the way his brain was clenched around
the pincers. He pried it open, bleeding right arm first, and with a series of small
clicks and a pneumatic hiss, the glove disengaged.
He tried to reach over to pull it off, and was rather unpleasantly reminded
that he was secured to a stretcher. Chest, hips, shins and arms. Thorough. He’d
been stripped first, too, it seemed. “Unstrap me.”
“No can do,” the medic said, then pressed a hand to Cyke’s forehead. Cyke
tried to wriggle out from beneath it until he felt the activation of the sensors in
the man’s hand and realized the medic was just taking vitals, not holding him
down. “ETA ten minutes. You can get up at the hospital.”
“No.” Last place on earth he wanted to end up. Well, second-to-last. “Look,
I’m fine. Help me with this.” He nodded toward his right arm, the pincer glove
no longer locked but still curled snug around him. “It’s halfway off already.”
Give them the small wound to play with and be done with it.
The medic leaned over his arm, peered at the glove, touched it with his
teched-up hand. Cyke knew that look, that hungry mix of fascination and
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13
longing. Just his luck, to be picked up by a medigeek. Maybe unlocking the
gloves wasn’t such a good idea after all.
Too late, though. The medic was already prying the right one free, needles
slipping from his skin and trailing fire in their wake. Some had broken off
somehow. They were sticking up like quills from his skin.
He couldn’t help the grunt as the glove came off. The disconnect was always
unpleasant. Like losing a tooth—a little blood, a little pain. But even worse, from
one moment to the next a part of him ceased to be, became cold and inert and
other.
He already wanted it back. Certainly didn’t want to be stuck in this damn
transport anymore. And where the fuck were his clothes?
“Stop the ambulance,” he said as the medic examined the wounds in his arm.
“Take me back where you found me.” Wherever that was. Did he remember
stumbling off the bus? Changing lines? Something like that. He’d watched a lot
of night-lit city and his fellow passengers in the reflection of the bus window.
The medic ignored him, studying the mess someone had made of his right
arm. Cyke tried to pretend it didn’t hurt. “I said I’m good. Just a cut on my arm.”
The medic threw him the stink eye. “Unless you have the constitution of a
six-year-old girl, just a cut on your arm did not send you halfway into a coma.
You were down so deep we couldn’t wake you. You need to be looked at.”
The radio in the medic’s pocket squawked. “Shit.” He turned to his partner.
“I forgot to cancel the cops.”
Cops. He better come up with something fast.
“What’s your twenty?” the radio asked.
Presumably, the man naming a street Cyke didn’t recognize was the driver.
Cyke closed his eyes, searched the public database. A map popped into his head.
He scanned radio frequencies as he studied it, searching for the cop channel.
Rachel Haimowitz and Aleksandr Voinov
14
There. Shit, they knew they were looking for an individual with fried ’ware. First
place they’d search would be hospitals, and then every body shop and techie in
the city who was capable of soldering more than an old TV set back together.
“I’m diabetic.” It was the best explanation for sudden blackouts, right?
“Took my insulin, forgot to eat.”
Another stink eye. The medic clearly didn’t believe him, but at least he
wasn’t calling him on it. He stood instead, stooped slightly in the confines of the
ambulance, reached over Cyke to pull something from a supply cabinet and
pressed it to Cyke’s lips. “Eat this.”
Glucose paste, cloyingly sweet. Fuck it, he was starving. Might as well.
The medic popped his head through the narrow space between the front and
back of the ambulance. “Yo, Roy,” he said, presumably to the driver. “Turn it
around. Back to the bus. Our patient’s RMA. Wants to go home.”
Cyke thought about thanking him, but he was still strapped down.
The medic sat beside him again, took his right arm in gentle hands and
washed the blood away, plucked all the broken little needles out—shit, he’d need
to get that fixed and fast—smeared his arm with cream and wrapped it in gauze.
Then he pried the left glove off—no broken needles on this one, thank fuck—and
laid it carefully across Cyke’s stomach.
“Can we take you somewhere?” the medic asked. “I mean, other than the bus
stop? I’d feel better if I knew you were home.”
Me too, buddy. Well, in case the medic put two and two together when he
listened to the cop talk show, he figured he’d better cover his ass. He pulled up a
city map, just to cross-check the location of his favorite safehouse. “520 South
Dearborn.” Massive block of apartment buildings with their backs to a huge
storage facility. Not exactly the best part of town, but at least he probably
wouldn’t be mugged if he wandered around at night without Kevlar and riot
Break and Enter
15
gear. It made the medic feel better, it was less than a hundred yards to home, and
if the cops followed him there, they’d have to search a hundred apartments and
three hundred storage boxes. On the current police budget? Forget it.
He moved his fingers on the right hand, just to make sure he could. It hurt
like a motherfucker—the whole arm was throbbing—but the tendons hadn’t
been severed. It eased some tension to know he’d be as good as new in a few
days. He spotted his missing clothes in a pile on the bench seat and relaxed a
little more, listening in to the chatter of the cops.
It was surprisingly hard to focus right now, but he caught enough of it to
understand what the cops were looking for and how they were proceeding.
Hospitals next. Surveillance cameras on-site. Find genetic traces. ID the ’ware.
Hand out whatever they could find to every airport, train station and two-bit
traffic cop. Their best bet was the ’ware, but his specific units couldn’t be traced
back to some lab or manufacturer. Best they could do was to work out he had a
unique set. Still, he should lay low for a week or two.
No protest there—he was a wreck. Fortunately, there’d been no permanent
damage. Well, not to the meat, anyway. His fingers were itching to run
diagnostics on the gloves. Not his first priority right now, but a close second.
Now, the biggest challenge was to accept he was trapped, helpless, until the
fucking ambulance stopped moving.
When at last it did stop moving, the medic released the straps, and Cyke sat
up with a grunt. Okay, dancing lights in his eyes, and it wasn’t a screensaver.
Great. The medic handed him his clothes, helped dress him like a fucking doll.
He tolerated it only because he knew he couldn’t do it himself right now, but still
it burned. When that particular humiliation ended, he pulled his boots closer
with his left hand and slipped them on, not bothering with his socks. Too eager
to get out of here to bother with shit like that.
Rachel Haimowitz and Aleksandr Voinov
16
He snatched up his pincer gloves and stood. Made it one step before his
knees buckled and he went down in a clatter of kit. Fuck.
The medic gave him another of those glances, this time with a little I told you
so thrown in for good measure.
Fuck that. Cyke pulled himself up on whatever he could reach: the stretcher,
the bench seat, the straphanger bars on both sides of the ceiling. If his legs
wouldn’t work, he’d go with his arms. Arm. Whatever. Ten minutes and he’d be
home, even if he had to drag himself by his fingernails.
The medic apparently got tired of watching said fingernail-dragging and
stepped forward, scooped him up, levered him onto the back step of the
ambulance and then down to the pavement. Aside from the hand sensor, Cyke
didn’t detect any enhancements on the guy. He didn’t think it should have been
that easy for the medic to lift him. But then, he supposed if all you did all day
was carry fat people down four-story walk-ups, you probably packed on some
muscle.
Somehow, the medic was beside him, close enough to share body heat. When
had that happened?
“Sign this,” the medic said, holding out a tablet and stylus. The words
Refused Medical Attention stood out in large print across the top of the screen.
Cyke knew what it said. He signed it without reading—his alias was
untraceable—but no way was he leaving a thumbprint.
“If you feel faint again—”
“Don’t hesitate to call 911, I know.”
Sirens blaring in the distance, closing in fast. Cyke glanced around the old
familiar space. Dark alley to the side of the apartments. The motion sensors that
triggered the floodlights were broken. If he could make it there, the shadows
would hide him until he reached the storage facility.
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17
Something lit up in the medic’s eyes. Wary interest? Suspicion?
No time. He moved as fast as possible. No hope to look casual or even
healthy, but he really only had to cross the street, then walk five yards and
vanish in the dark. From there, he could take his time getting to the storage box.
The medic took two steps, closing half the distance between them. “At least
let me help you inside.”
Cyke felt his heart hammer, blood in all places but where he needed it.
Neurons misfiring, legs jerking. Fuck it. “Thank you,” he called over his
shoulder. “I’m okay.”
Lies, lies and goddamned lies.
Chapter Two
Cyke lost some time there for a while. Fortunately, his body had never much
needed his mind to get done what needed doing, and had taken him back to his
storage unit all by itself. His door was closed and locked, the security system set,
the bare lightbulbs on. He was sprawled across his cot, more or less—one leg
was slung over the side, his foot still on the floor. His injured arm was resting
across his chest, and he could feel the clotting nanites at work, the unpleasant tug
of bots knitting broken flesh back together.
Interesting that the counterattack from Sentinel Tech’s defense system hadn’t
managed to short out the bots. At least he didn’t think so. He held his arm up to
his face—God, what a fucking mess someone had made of it, no wonder it hurt so
fucking much—and saw the metallic shimmer of the clot-bots filling the rents in
his skin. Yup, still working.
Or maybe not. He tried to call up a diagnostic, but the clot-bots weren’t
talking to his brain anymore. On the other hand, he wasn’t bleeding anymore
either, so he didn’t think the problem was the bots. Which meant it was the
interface.
Fuck.
Things were bad when the meat and the metal were both fucked up. But
compared to some messes he’d survived while still ungainfully employed, he
was doing all right.
So get up, bitch.
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19
He pushed himself up with a groan. Wounded arm cradled to his chest, he
pulled one of the metal crates close, pressed a thumb to the lock and rummaged
through his spares.
Fuel low.
You don’t say. Alas, his internal diagnostics system lacked the sense of humor
to give him any interesting comebacks. It was an insistent fucker, though. Only
way to shut it up was to eat.
He pulled another crate close, this one full of MREs, snagged one at
random—Chili con tofu? Lovely—and activated the heating cell.
He returned to his spares and found the hand-sized metal box he’d been
looking for. He opened it, checked that the nutrient liquid was still good—or at
least didn’t smell rank—then flipped the magnifier in his mech eye to examine
the chip and its million microfilaments. Like a high-tech spider with nanosilk.
Alive, yet not quite. Ironically, it was smaller, lighter, and easier to maintain than
the one nestled in his own brain. Fucking Japanese.
He connected a wire to the sleeping platform chip and thought he saw it
wake up and flex its little tentacles in anticipation.
He really needed to eat if he was fantasizing like that.
Cyke huffed, then connected the other end of the wire to the port in the nape
of his neck. Immediately, Japanese characters flooded his vision. It made no
sense to him, even with Japanese on his cheat chip. Encoding, he figured. He
hadn’t asked the soldier he’d cut this from how to use it, but the principles were
public domain. As long as his own system remained dominant, he could run the
other chip as a slave drive and use it for diagnostics.
He opened the menu, found the translated characters, and set it to “slave”,
then switched menus, drag-and-dropping the diagnostics routines into the
slave’s open execution cache. He set it to “background” and put the chip down
Rachel Haimowitz and Aleksandr Voinov
20
on the cot while he opened and devoured the MRE, right down to the seasoning
packet and a tasteless chocolate bar that had turned gray with age.
The food helped, calmed the gnawing in his belly and washed his ’ware in
the sugar-bath it needed to function. The low fuel indicator went out. His
thoughts sharpened, but he still couldn’t hear the clot-bots. Hopefully the
problem was the interface. Because if the platform chip was damaged to the
point the clot-bots were working without supervision, well then he had a serious
problem—like growing body parts he didn’t need.
And fuck, wasn’t that just a lovely thought.
So hopefully it was the interface. Which also spoke to the gloves, but they
weren’t vital at the moment. The eye, however, was. He pulled a mirror closer
and looked at himself. This time, he could easily tell which eye was which. The
natural one was bloodshot like he’d been on a three-day bender.
Ah, the fun we had.
The mech eye’s pupil constricted with the additional light, just like it should.
He flicked through the various visual modes. They responded slowly, and with
rather more pain than he cared for, but better that than a broken eye. As he
played back over what he’d seen, however, there was an image overlying the
recording. Like double exposure, if that weren’t impossible on a digital system.
He stopped the recording at random, examined the scrambled data, and realized
what was in the background. The medic. Lips pursed, shoulders tensed, the
slightest hint of red-brown stubble on his chin and cheeks. This, at least, was
easy enough to fix. Reformat the memory and reinstall the software. His depth of
field narrowed when the mech eye stopped feeding data.
That was all he could do right now, so he leaned back against the wall while
his eye restarted and the slave drive ran diagnostics he didn’t trust the master
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21
drive with. Might as well sleep while it did its thing. He’d learned long ago to
take his rest where he could find it.
Chapter Three
“Come to bed, Bear.”
Bear looked up from the computer array in the squad house rec room and
smiled at Noah. “No thanks, honey, I have a headache.”
He gave Noah credit for not rolling his eyes.
“It’s five a.m. Even Roy is sleeping.”
“I know. Come look at this.” He pointed to the monitor in front of him, and
Noah leaned in with a sigh, one hand on the back of Bear’s chair, the other
braced on the twenty-dollar folding table supporting their multi-thousand-dollar
system.
“Our John Doe?” Noah asked after studying the readouts.
Bear nodded.
“He was kind of hot.”
Kind of? “Hot mess, more like. Look at the EEG.” A moment of silence, while
Noah was no doubt accessing his cheat chip, trying to interpret what he was
seeing.
“It’s like REM sleep.”
“Yeah, except he was talking to us. Had to be tech. I’ve just never seen
anything like it. And, look at this.” He pointed to a second screen, the one
hooked up to the scanning scope. A microscopic cockroach was floating amongst
a sea of platelets and white blood cells, waving its sensors at every passing
object.
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23
“Clot-bots,” Noah said. Bear wasn’t facing Noah, but he could hear Noah’s
eyebrows climbing toward his hairline. “Maybe you should drop this, Bear.
Guy’s not our problem anymore, yeah?”
Bear kind of thought he was someone’s problem, that maybe the guy had
bigger problems than the lacerations on his arm. The police scanner droned in
the background, as it always did. Someone had broken into Sentinel Tech
tonight. Coincidentally not long before they found their John Doe, down from
what he could only figure was a cyberattack, some kind of high-tech
countermeasure. He should probably tell the cops where they’d dropped the guy
off. Could be a terrorist, for all he knew. Or maybe a spy. They didn’t pass out
clot-bots to just anyone, after all, not even the squad could afford to carry those.
And those pincer gloves…where the hell had he gotten those?
Nah, surely he was just being paranoid. Still… He grabbed the slide from the
scanning scope and put it in his pocket. When his shift ended, he’d head on
down to HQ and pass it to the cops along with the address where they’d
dropped the guy.
Just in case.
“Bear?”
Bear turned to look at Noah and nodded. “Yeah, you’re right,” he said. “Not
our problem.”
Chapter Four
Cyke felt considerably better after, oh, twenty-six solid hours of sleep. Even
the ever-present pain behind the mech eye was dulled. The download of his
“found” data from Sentinel Tech was complete too. If not for the slave drive’s
insistent Diagnostics complete, access log file (y/n)? and the rumbling in his belly, he
thought he could have slept another twenty-six hours.
He dragged himself out of bed, took a stingy piss—fucking dehydration—and
inhaled an MRE. It was vile enough to tell him he wasn’t starving anymore,
though he still ripped apart the foil packs to lick out the last bits of food.
Bodily needs more or less sated, he took the chip with SenTech’s
downloaded data and hid it away—sloppy of him to have fallen asleep without
taking care of that first, no matter how badly injured—then fished a bottle of
water from a crate. He drank it all down with two packets of electrolytes, his
muscles nearly groaning with pleasure at that. He did groan. He felt almost alive.
Even the throbbing in his arm had dulled to a taut ache.
He heated a second MRE and accessed his log file. The interfaces were
working, so he had a good chance of connecting properly to the gloves again.
Once they were fixed.
The slave drive told him what was wrong. Some of his software had been
scrambled, and the backup too. Thankfully, the actual coding was pretty much
universal. It was the hardware design and composition people used these days to
get an edge.
Break and Enter
25
The software company that had written the code for his platform chip had
also written the code for the Jap chip. So he put both on the screen, ran a
program over it and cut and pasted the missing bits over those that made no
sense anymore. He could have done a wholesale reinstall, but he didn’t like
taking that risk. There were subroutines he didn’t know and the handbook was
in Japanese. Even through the army’s state-of-the-art Babel Fish software—well,
state-of-the-art three years ago—it made about as much sense as robot anime.
What a pleasant way to spend another eight hours. He had to eat again,
urgently. Drink a lot more water. The rate at which his body was going through
fuel and hydration told him more than anything that there were some big repairs
going on inside him.
Once he was satisfied the program worked, he installed it while eating and
drinking again. Then he restarted the system. Immediately, the bots reported for
duty, telling him of soft tissue damage and electric discharge through his body. It
must have been pretty big to scramble the shielded systems so badly, and pretty
targeted not to have stopped his heart along the way. Also, the taste of ozone on
his teeth made sense now.
He got to his feet and gathered up the gloves, placed them on the work
surface and hooked them up to the Jap chip, encouraging it with a squirt of fresh
nutrients. He might be mistaken, but it seemed the little guy was more eager
when he fed it well.
While the slave drive ran diagnostics, Cyke examined the gloves. On visual
spectrum, he saw no damage to the left one, but at least a dozen broken pins on
the right. He had a vague recollection of the medic plucking needles from his
arm with deft fingers. Well, they were easy enough to replace, and he had plenty
of spares. Just needed to make sure he got the placements right.
Rachel Haimowitz and Aleksandr Voinov
26
On the EM spectrum, he saw damage not so easy to repair. The gloves were
meant to withstand a pulse, but something had blown the circuitry right out.
He’d have to check whether that meant the secondaries were dead, too, but he
didn’t want to put on gloves that might not respond to controls. No wonder it
had been hard to take them off. He was lucky he’d managed at all.
The slave drive’s diagnostics would be able to tell him more than inspection
with the mech eye could. Nothing to do but wait. His body demanded he pass
the time sleeping, but he had to solder the new pins on first. He couldn’t afford
broken gloves if he suddenly had to rabbit.
Fuel low.
Fuck, again? He couldn’t stomach the idea of another MRE, so he rummaged
through the crate until he came up with a fistful of protein bars. He bit off half a
bar in one go and set to soldering, blinking sleep from his eyes and ruthlessly
ignoring the growing pain in his right optic nerve.
Another hour gone by. Two. At last he soldered on the final pin and hooked
them to the leads on the scanner, test-firing while the slave diagnostic ran in the
background. Two pins shorted. Fuck. He grabbed the pliers, clipped them off
and started again. God, he needed sleep.
Fuck that. The bark of his old drill sergeant echoed in his head. Get up, bitch.
You can sleep when you’re dead.
Chapter Five
Bear slid into the booth beside Roy and Noah, plunked his radio on the
plastic checkered tablecloth and grabbed a slice of pizza. The food wasn’t great,
but at least the place was open in the middle of the night, and the owner would
keep it warm for them if they had to scram halfway through their meal. And
really, with their luck, when did they ever not?
Speak of the devil…
Bear growled his annoyance at the two-tone shriek and tossed his slice of
pizza back onto his plate.
“Come on, princess,” Noah said, standing and holding out a hand as if to
dance. “They’re playing our song again.”
Bear cast a long-suffering look at his plate and let Noah pull him from the
booth.
Fuck it, he was taking the pizza with him.
“Where are we going?” Bear called from the back of the rig.
“520 South Dearborn,” Roy said.
Dearborn… Why did that sound so familiar?
“Low-rent apartment complex by the—”
“Storage units,” Bear said. Yes, he knew exactly where that was. And no, that
flutter in his chest wasn’t anything but the ol’ familiar adrenaline rush that came
every time the tones rang. “What’d dispatch say?”
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28
“Man found unconscious in the alley between the buildings. Some lady
tripped over him taking out the trash. No apparent injury, but she couldn’t wake
him.”
“Be sure you grab the tech bag.” He almost added, Make sure you call the cops
too, but instead found himself saying, “I think we’ve got ourselves a frequent
flier.”
Same old routine. Roy got the stretcher. Noah grabbed their gear. Bear found
their patient. His heart kicked up speed at the sight of the handsome John Doe
lying in the alley. Worried? Sure, yeah. But also the tech…a chance to see it again,
see its owner again, maybe find out what he’d really been doing on the night of
the SenTech break-in. Bear had thought of little else for the last three weeks.
What had the guy called himself? Psych?
Bear popped his Maglite in his mouth and squatted beside the guy, passed
eyes over him from head to toe. Shaking like a kicked dog, though Bear didn’t
think it was a seizure. No blood this time, thank God. Familiar glints of metal on
his hands and fingers. The pincer gloves.
Sensor readings like last time: tachycardic, hypoglycemic, hypotensive.
Crazy fucked-up brain activity that might explain the trembling. Heart seemed
okay, but O
2
sats were low. Blood was pumping, just not carrying much of
anything with it. Bear didn’t even try to get the gloves off this time. He pushed a
bag of D5 into the guy’s ankle while Noah hooked up the oxygen.
“Can you wake him?” Bear asked.
Noah shook his head. “But check this out.” He had an eyelid peeled back, a
penlight in one hand. Bear leaned in and watched as Noah tested both pupils.
One was reactive. The other didn’t move at all.
Break and Enter
29
“Shit.” Bear palpated the patient’s head, felt no indication of trauma. Took
another reading. Something strange at the right optic nerve. He did a flash search
of the MedEmerg database, but the results scrolling across his contact lens didn’t
match. This was way over his head. They needed to get him to a hospital, and
fast.
Except…
Bear turned to Noah and Roy. “Get him packaged. I don’t see signs of
trauma, but watch his C-spine anyway—that pupil has me worried. I’ll be right
back.”
Bear jogged back to the rig as Roy and Noah collared and boarded the
patient, hopped in the front seat and flipped on the police scanner. Yes, another
break-in at Sentinel Tech. Ten to one the cops were looking for their John Doe.
He picked up his radio, depressed the talk button, took a breath, and…
…And put the radio back in his pocket.
Because really, so what if their John Doe had broken into SenTech? Those
guys weren’t exactly angels, either. They fucked the little guy in every possible
hole, every single day, without even buying dinner first. And if their security
was responsible for fucking up Bear’s John Doe this badly—and twice, at that—
well, they probably deserved whatever Mr. Doe had been trying to do.
Anyway, Bear could always call the cops later, after he’d had a chance to talk
to the guy.
Assuming, of course, that the man woke up in time to RMA before they had
to transport him.
Bear picked up his radio again and called in to dispatch. “This is two-twelve.
Simple scoop-and-run here, don’t waste the cops’ time. ETA twenty minutes to
St. Marys.” That was perhaps five minutes more than they needed. Hopefully it
would buy their guy some time.
Rachel Haimowitz and Aleksandr Voinov
30
Their guy? Listen to you, Bear.
He jogged back to the alley, wondering how big a mistake he’d just made.
But really, if the guy had planned to harm them, he’d have done it last time,
right? And something about him just seemed…well, Bear didn’t know what, but
guilty was definitely not it.
His partners lifted their backboarded patient onto the stretcher and strapped
him down. Bear ran his fingers along the armor plates on the elbow of a pincer
glove. The patient wouldn’t be wearing them now if he’d sustained permanent
damage. RMA or not, he’d healed up all right on his own. Enough at least to butt
his head against the brick wall that was SenTech…again. Whatever was driving
the man, he didn’t take pain for an answer.
Before Roy and Noah could wheel the guy back to the rig, Bear fished an
ammonia capsule from his belt and cracked it under the patient’s nose. Ah, good,
his nose wrinkled. He coughed, turned his head away. Bear followed with the
capsule, and the man coughed again, scrunched his whole face up. Then opened
his eyes.
One eye, Bear noted with dismay, was still shot to hell, the pupil blown so
wide he could barely see the rim of blue at its edges.
“Get that outta my face,” the man said, coughing again halfway through.
Bear smiled and withdrew the capsule. He didn’t think the patient would be
so coherent if he were bleeding into his brain. Besides, Bear had detected no
increase in intracranial pressure. Whatever was wrong with the eye, it wasn’t
subdural hematoma.
“Fuck. Again?” The man growled and flexed the pincer gloves hard enough
to make the straps across his forearms creak. Bear couldn’t even begin to
calculate how strong those gloves or their wearer were. All he knew was the
stretcher was rated to seven hundred pounds, the nylon straps to nearly ten
Break and Enter
31
times that, and it was impossible to gain any leverage while strapped to a
backboard and a stretcher.
Predictably, the patient locked eyes with Bear and said, “Let me go.” Despite
the shakes, he radiated anger. Or maybe he just didn’t like being strapped
down—a good guess judging by all the struggling. “Take this shit off me.”
Bear laid his hand atop his patient’s, felt the glove flex in warning and pulled
away. Got it, no comforting. “Do you know where you are, sir?”
“I’m outside my apartment, it’s Tuesday, Mitchell Soames is still president,
my name is Cyke, and you’re the same medigeek who picked me up last time.”
Bear raised an eyebrow. Medigeek, eh?
“I was fine then, I’m fine now. Let me up before I break your stretcher.”
“I know the backboard’s uncomfortable, but your pupils are uneven, and
you were found unconscious, again. Both are indicators of head injury or cord
trauma, and—”
“The eye’s not mine. It’s just a blown circuit. Get me the fuck off this thing.”
Bear hesitated, but then shrugged and laid his hand atop the nearest strap
buckle. “You’re RMA?” he asked.
“Sure, yeah, whatever, just let me up.”
“Do you understand the—?”
“Yes! I’m refusing transport against medical advice. Now let me up!”
Bear began to unstrap him. Truth be told, he didn’t know why he was
arguing with the guy anyway. If they took Cyke to the hospital, the man would
only leave it in handcuffs, or maybe not at all if SenTech got to him first.
“Get the head blocks, would you, Noah?”
Noah threw him a questioning glance, but Bear was the crew chief, and he
knew Noah trusted him. Besides, the patient had RMA’d. They couldn’t very
well hold the guy against his will. So though Noah still looked doubtful, he
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32
unbuckled the strap across Cyke’s forehead and removed the stabilizing blocks
and C-collar as Bear unhooked Cyke from the backboard.
Cyke sat up the instant he was free, then promptly fell over again—surprise,
surprise—clutching at his right eye. Bear caught him just in time to keep him
from spilling to the pavement, and only because he was expecting it.
The eye thing was new, though.
“What’s wrong?” Bear took Cyke’s wrist in his hand and tugged gently. “Let
me see.”
“Fuck off,” Cyke growled, palm still digging into his eye.
“I could declare you mentally unsound,” Bear said. But he had a feeling
Cyke already knew that.
“Fine. Just…not here.” Cyke stood, one hand on a trash can for balance, the
other on the locked stretcher. His knees buckled, and Bear caught him around
the waist before he could collapse again.
“Fuck this,” Cyke spat, more to himself than Bear, it seemed. He pushed Bear
away, supported himself on straining arms and turned his head toward the end
of the alley. Toward the storage facility. “I’ll make it.” The tone said I have to.
Bear meant to see to that, if only because he wouldn’t be able to live with
himself if he left Cyke alone—criminal or no—and the man collapsed again in
the alley. “Where to?” he asked. When Cyke glared at him as if to say, Fuck off, he
added, “I’m not leaving you here to die.”
A snort. “Who said anything about dying?” Voice strained, legs shaking too
hard to support much weight. It wasn’t an answer, but it also wasn’t the fuck off
he’d been expecting. Maybe his patient was playing nice.
Bear turned to Noah, who threw him an odd, worried look. “I got this,
guys,” Bear said. “Just wait.” They did this sometimes with RMAs. Get them
home, sit with them, try to get them to see reason. Not that he’d be doing that
Break and Enter
33
last part, not this time, although maybe, once he’d heard Cyke’s story, he’d try to
convince the guy to turn himself in.
Bear hoisted the tech bag up over his shoulder, stepped close to Cyke again
and slid his arm back around Cyke’s waist. (His very, very firm waist.) All calm,
gentle movements, and not the least because those pincer gloves could crush
him.
Cyke allowed it, teeth grinding audibly.
“Where to?” Bear asked. He walked Cyke a few steps away from the trash
cans, feeling the shakes of that solidly muscled, sweat-damp frame all the way
down into his own bones.
“Down…there.” Cyke pointed, groaned, tried to walk of his own accord, but
in the end he was forced to rely on Bear as Bear navigated them through a hole
cut into the chain-link fence at the end of the alley. They crossed a vacant lot
dotted with badly mangled shrubs and heaps of trash, from baby formula cans to
used condoms. Who on earth had sex in a place like this?
“Back door,” Cyke said.
They made it across the yard, and Cyke disentangled himself for a moment
to gaze into a lock plate that scanned his organic pupil. The heavy metal door
opened with a faint click.
Storage facilities were probably the most forlorn places on earth. This time of
night, lights on the long concrete ceilings switched on only when the motion
sensors detected an approach, and only lit the part of the hall they were standing
in. Cheap bastards.
The doors lining both sides of the corridor bore large numbers and nothing
else. Thankfully, Cyke’s was fairly close, just four down from the back entrance.
Another scanner, and the door swung open.
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34
Behind it was…almost nothing. A workbench with a backless chair that
looked scrounged off a trash heap, foam spilling from the ripped cushion like the
entrails of a misshapen animal. The bench was covered in random tech bits, tools
and two state-of-the-art computers, shockingly out of place amidst the rest of this
barren junkyard. A D-cell Maglite mounted on a tripod provided light for
delicate work.
To the side stood a military-style cot made with military precision and
surrounded by closed metal crates, neatly stacked. Of course there were no
windows. The whole place was lit by a dreary string of bare overheads tacked up
to the ceiling with what looked like packing staples. Thick ropes of wiring from
the computers on the workbench were tacked down to the walls in similar
fashion. The whole place had the legroom and charm of a prison cell.
Bear couldn’t help himself—he asked, “You live here?”
Cyke ignored him. “Are you gonna help me to the bed or not?”
Rather…unprofessional thoughts rose to Bear’s mind at the mention of taking
Cyke to bed. He shook them away—He’s a criminal, Bear, and even if he’s not, he’s
your patient—and dragged Cyke to the cot, put him down as gently as he could.
He was itching to get his hands on the tech—yeah, just the tech—but the patient
had to come first.
And really, said patient must have been in a bad way, for he let Bear
manhandle him—lay him back against the mattress, lift his legs onto the bed,
remove his boots and unbutton his pants.
“I need to eat,” Cyke said—well, slurred, really, waving with a shaking hand
in the general direction of the stacked crates. “Top one on the left.”
Bear went as directed, resisting the urge to rifle through the other crates.
Probably some very interesting things in there, but he also suspected Cyke
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35
could—and maybe even would—kill him in a second flat, even in his current
state.
And Jesus, what a pathetic state that was. There was nothing in the food
crate but MREs, protein bars, a few bottles of water and some electrolyte packs.
Bear grabbed one of each, dumped them on the bed and helped Cyke sit up, then
sat next to him. He wanted to be close in case Cyke pitched over again.
Cyke broke the seal on the MRE, activated the chemical heater and set it to
the side. Fascinating to watch the armored fingers do something as delicate as
open a wrapper. It took a few attempts—the flesh beneath was shaking so badly
the ’ware couldn’t quite compensate—but Bear made no move to assist. It was
pretty clear Cyke wouldn’t accept help unless absolutely necessary.
Cyke ripped open his protein bar wrapper with his teeth while he reached
for the water. It seemed like he might not be able to unscrew the bottle, but then
his gloves did something Bear couldn’t quite make out, and the cap, along with
the top of the bottle, fell down between Cyke’s legs. Taken clean off with a blade.
More help from his teeth to rip open the electrolyte pack, dump it into the
bottle and swirl it around. He chugged nearly all of it one go, then leaned back
and closed his eyes. Not content, just no longer critical.
“Better,” Cyke said, perhaps for Bear’s benefit, or maybe to reassure himself.
He sat up again, a little wobbly—Bear leaned forward, ready to catch him if he
fell—but regained his balance enough to attack the MRE. Literally attack. The
blade from a pincer glove flashed out again to rip open a foil pack of brownish
pasta—spaghetti?—which Cyke ate with no apparent pleasure or revulsion.
Then he finished the electrolyte water and started in on another foil pack that
might have been garlic bread.
Rachel Haimowitz and Aleksandr Voinov
36
Finally, he seemed to…well, not relax, exactly, but maybe unclench a little. He
finished the bread, moved on to some kind of dark lumpy mush. Cobbler,
maybe? “You should leave,” he said between bites.
Bear thought it less a suggestion than an order, but something about the man
drew him to argue, to stay. Sure, he wanted to examine the tech, try to figure out
where it’d come from, where Cyke had come from. And yeah, the guy was hot,
but Bear met lots of hot guys. That by itself wouldn’t compel him to linger. What
might, though, was the mystery of why Cyke kept butting heads with Sentinel
Tech—assuming, of course, that he had been. Bear knew it was possible he was
imagining things, seeing connections in coincidence. He always had been a bit of
an adrenaline junkie. Maybe he was just romanticizing the man, seeing danger
and excitement where there was none.
Was that why he hadn’t turned Cyke in yet?
No matter the case, he had to help Cyke if he could. The man was clearly
hurting, and not just physically. Thief or no, who the hell subjected themselves to
a life like this?
He nodded toward Cyke’s still-dilated eye and said, “I’m pretty handy.
Maybe I can help.”
“I don’t need help.”
Ah, back to being belligerent again, were we?
“You know…” He dared a touch, laid a hand on Cyke’s knee. “It’s not
always about need. Sometimes it’s okay just to want.”
And, yeah, wow, he hadn’t really meant that to sound as much like a come-
on as it did.
Curious, though, that Cyke didn’t seem to mind.
Break and Enter
37
But then the hardness was back in his eyes, and he glared at Bear’s hand
where it rested on his knee and said, “Yeah, well I don’t want help, either. The
door will lock behind you on its own.”
Bear sighed and stood. He could take a hint as well as the next guy. The only
question now was where he’d go from here.
The squad house, or the precinct?
Chapter Six
Cyke seemed to be doing a lot of running these days. He’d hardly gotten
over his second escape from SenTech, and now he was bungling up his third.
Damn break-in tonight had been a disaster. He hadn’t planned on all the
upgraded security measures, nor on the guards rounding him up and kicking the
shit out of him while his muscles were locked from a Taser. He’d always been
able to elude them before.
And fuck-all, but that wasn’t even the worst of his problems. No, that honor
went to the bullet in his back. The one he’d earned from the cops when SenTech’s
guards had tried to hand him over. He’d seen the opening and fought, fairly
confident his Kevlar vest would protect him from the worst of what might come.
But some lucky cop had gotten off a clean shot at too-close range with a gun that
no doubt compensated for a tiny dick, and it punched right through the armor.
Well, at least the vest had kept him alive long enough to trigger a self-defense
pulse, which knocked everyone—Tiny Dick Man included—flat with 50,000 volts
and more amps than was strictly safe.
He’d have to recharge his system. Overloading like that had bought him
time to escape, but it was a desperate last-ditch method, agonizing even to him
and draining his reserves. Even worse, the clot-bots had been shocked into
dormancy, so his bullet wound—just the one; no exit, damn it, and for that he
could blame the vest—was bleeding all the fuck over everything.
Still, he ran. The radio chatter in his head kept him a step ahead of the police,
let him know what to avoid. His pincer gloves helped him pull up onto roofs and
Break and Enter
39
climb walls like Spider-Man, if with less grace and more power, and a massive
adrenaline spike left him feeling like he could run right through the fences and
walls.
He tracked his progress on his internal map, checking against the location of
his safehouses. Unfortunately, he was moving in the wrong direction. The patrol
cars, sirens and God-knew-what surveillance drones were herding him toward
the better part of town, where there’d be more security, more police and maybe a
helpful citizen or two with a shotgun. Worse, now they knew exactly who he was
and what he looked like.
Cyke ducked into an alley to catch his breath and his bearings. Fuck, his back
hurt. He leaned his shoulder against the alley wall, panting hard, tightened the
impromptu bandage he’d made from his shirt and barely managed to swallow
his scream. The world was starting to gray, and breathing was much harder than
it should have been. He didn’t have a lot of time left.
At least he had plenty of data at his fingertips. Even the civil-service system,
which was exactly what he needed right now. Was his access code still good?
He’d bought it off some national guardsman months ago. Their network security
guys were bound to figure it out eventu—
In! Yes!
Welcome page. Spam ad. Come on, come on, where were the fucking duty
rosters? Fucking load times were worse than the patchy service. He was gonna
bleed out in the fucking alley if he didn’t—
The rosters loaded. EMS reports from two and six weeks past. Why hadn’t he
logged them when he’d had the chance? Ah, there, crew 212. Roy? No, not him.
Noah? Not him, either. He flicked so fast through the data his head spun. There.
Last name. Crew chief.
Rachel Haimowitz and Aleksandr Voinov
40
Cross-reference with tenant agreements. He delegated the search to a
background thread and staggered out of the alley, forced his feet to move in
what he hoped was the right direction. According to the radio chatter in his
head, the cops had lost him, at least for now, so as long as he kept up evasive
maneuvers and didn’t go anywhere too obvious or brightly lit, he should be
okay.
But God, he needed help and fast.
Sometimes it’s not about needing.
It’s about wanting.
A man who’d follow him home, who’d make that kind of offer, wouldn’t
turn him down now…would he?
Well, didn’t matter anyway. Cyke was out of options. Worse came to worst,
he’d knock the guy out and steal his medical kit.
Address, address…where was it? There: 459 Jefferson Street. Cyke mapped
the best route in seconds—a compromise between speed and safety—then kept
to alleys and shadows. Approached the house from the back. Perfect. Close trees
provided cover from above.
A blaring police car rushed past.
Cyke stumbled toward the door, knocked, staying close to the wall just in
case. Heard footsteps, read a single heat signature in the house, insanely grateful
the mech eye hadn’t shorted this time.
Tumblers turned, a chain rattled. The door opened. He heard his name,
softly exclaimed. A startled curse, supporting hands around his waist.
Unsuspecting fingers brushed the bullet wound and pain flared as hot and red as
the IR feed from his mech eye. Another short circuit in a blinding flash, and the
world went black.
Chapter Seven
Cyke woke to screaming pain. He didn’t know where he was or what had
happened, so he stayed perfectly still, opening all his senses. Soft bed beneath his
naked body, blanket pulled up to his hips, his back bared to the cool air—and ah,
yeah, that’s where all the screaming was coming from. Small discomfort at his
ankle: an IV. Keyboard clacking rapidly, a pause every now and then, the dull
clink of a mug against a hard surface, the smell of coffee. Real coffee, not the shit
he drank from the MREs. Someone had jacked into his skull port, but no data
was feeding. And there was an ice pick stabbing into his right eye, but that was
nothing new, and not nearly as bad as its dozen cousins gouging into his back.
He kept his eye closed and tried not to clench it.
“How you feeling?”
Male voice. Gentle. A hand touching his back, right above the worst of the
pain. Peeling back a bandage, tape.
Medic.
What’d his crew call him, again? “Bear?”
“Yeah, it’s me. It’s okay, you’re safe.”
For now, maybe.
“I took the bullet out and got the clot-bots working again. Best I could do,
I’m afraid. Your system’s locked down tighter than Sentinel Tech.”
Well, that was subtle, wasn’t it.
“Kind of the point.” Wouldn’t do to have an enemy hack his system and
switch him on and off on some third-world asshole’s orders. But if Bear knew
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42
he’d been behind the break-ins, why hadn’t Cyke woken to blocker cables slung
around his wrists, or in handcuffs at the hospital? It told him two things: that
Bear had some moral flexibility, and that he was smart. The two tended to go
hand in hand. Smart people usually knew that things weren’t as black and white
as the newscasts and corporate propaganda made them appear.
Cyke turned his head, eyes falling on a pair of jean-clad thighs. “Can you get
the rest going again?” As close to a plea for help as he’d ever come. “If I open the
system?” And that was as close to trusting as he’d come in fucking forever.
When Bear said nothing, Cyke added, “I can pay you.”
“Keep your money. I was just wondering if you could still control the system
enough to open it.”
“Yeah.” At least he thought so. He tried to relax into the mattress, to ease up
enough to let go of the one thing he’d been holding tighter than a pincer grip for
the last five years. Everything in him protested the idea of giving anybody access
to his platform chip. No one ever had but the men who’d put it there, and most
of them hadn’t exactly inspired confidence. Doing this…this was sharing his
deepest secrets with a stranger, putting his beating heart into the man’s hands.
And okay, so he didn’t trust. Hadn’t in years. He knew that, didn’t really
need all those VA shrinks to tell him so. But right now, this felt like the end of his
tether. His only two choices were to fall or to take Bear’s hand.
One by one, like toggling a row of switches rusted stuck with disuse, he
lowered his defenses. The gloves unlocked with their hisses and clicks. The other
unlocking, the more dangerous one, the potentially deadly one, occurred in total
silence.
“There,” he said, and even though it felt like being naked and alone before a
leering enemy unit, his voice did not crack. “Access granted.”
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43
Bear thanked him like he’d done something special instead of self-serving,
like he hadn’t shown up half-dead on the man’s doorstep and manipulated him
into harboring a fugitive by bleeding all over him. Fuck, who knew, maybe
getting a chance to study this tech was something special for Bear. Maybe he
really didn’t feel taken advantage of.
More keys clacking. Cyke felt the ping as Bear’s computer shook hands with
his platform chip. Not a cold, impersonal ping, either. Maybe his chip liked Bear.
And why the fuck not? Smart and good-looking.
Fuck, he was slipping again. Maybe the surroundings. The bed. This was
where Bear slept. He recognized the scent. Long time since he’d smelled
anybody, let alone slept in a real bed.
Another ping. He sensed data flowing, bit back the instinct to clench down,
protect at all costs. Bear swore softly, eyes glued to his screens, a low,
appreciative whistle spilling from pursed lips.
“Beautiful,” Bear whispered.
Cyke rather agreed, but he suspected they weren’t talking about the same
thing.
Fuck. This was getting ridiculous. Maybe he just needed to eat. Or maybe—
“Did you drug me?”
Engrossed as Bear was in the scrolling data on his screens, it took him a
moment to register the question. “Huh? Oh, no, I’m sorry, I couldn’t risk it
without knowing what’d happened. Just a local at the incision site, but if the pain
is too bad, I could—”
“No.” The pain was bad, but he’d known worse. “Um, thanks, though.”
“Sure.” Bear turned back to his screens, running simultaneous analyses on
Cyke’s systems. “So,” he said, eyes still on the monitors, “Why do you keep
breaking into Sentinel Tech?”
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44
Cyke froze, tensed on the bed. He felt his chip go into full protection mode,
shutting down the data flow instinctively.
Bear didn’t seem to mind. “Just like getting your ass kicked, then?”
Cyke inched his hand toward a pincer glove lying limp on the bed by the
pillow. “Are you going to call the cops?”
Bear turned to face him, stared him dead in the eye. “Don’t you think if I’d
intended to, I’d have done it before performing impromptu surgery for which I’m
not actually trained?”
Cyke supposed he had a point.
“Leave the glove alone, for God’s sake. If I’d wanted to hurt you, I would
have done it while you were out. And if you put the glove back on, you might
not be able to get it off again. Just…” Bear flapped a hand at him, half irritated,
half dismissive. But he was kind of smiling, or at least not frowning. “Just go
back to sleep. Let the clot-bots do their thing, and I’ll do mine, and hopefully we
can have you back on your feet and breaking the law again soon enough.”
Chapter Eight
As houseguests went, Cyke was fairly low maintenance. Kind of ironic,
because even though the man himself was happy being left alone to sleep all day
(barring brief interludes for eating everything in sight), his tech needed more
attention than a newly toddling baby.
Every time Bear returned from work he expected Cyke to be gone, but
instead he kept finding the man stretched out on his bed. Strange, how appealing
that’d so quickly become, how thoroughly he’d abandoned all thoughts of
turning Cyke over to the cops…and how tempting it was to crawl in beside him,
press up against that perfect body and kiss away his pain.
He hadn’t seen Cyke get up yet while he was home, but sometimes he found
signs of activity—a steamed-up bathroom, an empty fridge. Bear didn’t
begrudge him that. It seemed all Cyke had eaten in ages was MREs and protein
bars.
Today, he noted his dumbbells were stacked differently. Cyke was definitely
recovering and fast. Clot-bots were worth every one of the gazillion pennies they
cost.
Cyke had to be military, or maybe corporate. His system was incredibly
advanced, perhaps a decade ahead of its time even now, despite the fact that—
judging from the micro-wear on the exposed elements—he’d probably had it for
years already. The whole kit was run with sleek, efficient code that was beautiful
in itself—a metaphor, Bear liked to think, for the man who possessed it. An artist
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46
had programmed those systems, and barring a virus, an overload or a physical
attack, Bear suspected they’d run without a hitch for many years to come.
The only problem piece was the mech eye. Too many functions, too many
signals to send back to the brain through the fragile optic nerve. Not to mention
how hard it must be to see something different with the right eye than the left,
what kind of coding must have been required to make such processing possible.
The physical connection to the optic nerve seemed leaky, small electric pulses
discharging with random but rapid frequency. And the low-level irritation
around the implant didn’t look good, either. Bear wished he knew how to
replace it, or at least how to fix it, because this one seemed to be causing more
problems than it solved.
Since that wasn’t an option, the best he could do was try to make Cyke’s
’ware as reliable and maintenance-free as possible. Not just the eye, either. All of
it. And Cyke let him. He’d lie on his belly on Bear’s bed, sometimes sleeping,
sometimes resting on his elbows, cable connecting from his skull jack to Bear’s
terminal. Most times, Bear would clean up lines of scrambled code, but some
parts of Cyke’s system were so far above his head he could only explore them,
try to figure out what they did and how they did it.
Tonight he was tinkering with the clot-bots, a familiar if deeply complex bit
of ’ware made even more complex by their interaction with Cyke’s platform
chip. These clot-bots—if Bear was reading the code right—actually seemed
capable of regenerating body parts, given enough time and fuel.
Bear repaired the last scrambled line of communication code between the
bots and Cyke’s platform chip, and then, satisfied with his progress for the night,
decided to indulge his curiosity. He pulled up a mystery function he’d been
wondering about for a while.
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“Shit,” Cyke muttered from the bed, and let his head hang, breathing harshly
through his nose.
“You okay?” They’d agreed Cyke would warn him if he did something
painful or obviously wrong, but he wasn’t sure he could trust the mule-headed
bastard to remember or admit it.
“…yeah.”
That groan wasn’t pain, not with that expression on his face. Bear sent in
another ping, and this time Cyke gasped.
Okay. This was interesting.
Bear tried approaching it from another angle, but the result was the same.
Cyke gasped again, fisted his hands and gritted out, “Stop.”
“Am I hurting you?” Bear smiled, knowing damn well he wasn’t.
So yeah, okay, sometimes he could be a real first-class bastard.
Cyke glared at him over his shoulder. “Just leave it alone.” Bear swore he
heard a hint of question, a hint of pleading in those words. And maybe
something else too.
“Only if you tell me why they’d do this to you.”
Cyke was silent a long moment, cheeks flushing with embarrassment, or
perhaps anger.
Finally, he said, “Focus.”
It took Bear a second to realize that wasn’t an order, but the answer to his
question.
“No room for urges on the battlefield,” Cyke added with clear disdain. And
damn if that wasn’t the most Cyke had said about himself in the whole five days
he’d been here.
Bear looked at him. Looked at the code block, simple, so easy to excise. Back
to Cyke again. Said, “You’re not on the battlefield anymore.”
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48
He deleted the code.
Not that this is any less of a battlefield, Cyke thought. He shook his head, but
didn’t protest. Suddenly it was all back, an onslaught of images, sensations,
emotions. That it felt good to be hard. To fuck. To be fucked. The subtler memory
of a man’s smell, the curve of a strong shoulder. That touches could be more
electric than a malfunction.
“God, fuck.” He had no idea what he was saying. Not a curse, at least. He
glanced over his shoulder at Bear, felt much like a tiger suddenly aware of prey
in his territory, felt the urge to pounce, to ravage—
No. Restraint.
Somehow.
He didn’t know how. Was so hard it hurt. Nearly two thousand nights of
denial, of nothingness stored in the sense-memory of his skin. Too much… He
couldn’t drag himself away.
He closed his eyes, held captive by sensation. Orgasm loomed close—a vast,
pent-up need, so tense he’d shatter at a single touch. He’d have begged if he
knew what for. For the code to keep this under control? Or a man to satisfy the
hunger?
He felt a body close, fingers touching. Not to harm, not to study—first time
in…how long? Stroking. His face, his hair. Weight moving the mattress. If all
Bear did was ask if he was okay, he’d rip the man’s throat out. He pushed
against that hot, solid body as sure fingers skimmed under his shirt, along his
flank.
He needed more.
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49
No. Restraint. He didn’t trust his control. At all. A thumb across his nipple,
moist lips on his jaw. More intense than sanity. Every nerve, every brain cell
remembering how it could be. Sweaty nights. Bone-grinding need.
Lips on his, a body pressed to his own. He fell back beneath the weight,
pinned but not trapped. Anchored, steadied. “It’s all right,” Bear murmured in
his ear. “I’ve got you.”
And he did, hand snaking past the waist of Cyke’s pants and underwear,
strong fingers wrapping round his cock, the warmth of flesh and the slick cool of
sensor pads, the rush of blood, the old tingling tightness he remembered. The
hunger.
He groped at Bear’s shirt, frantic in his desire for skin to skin, hard flesh to
hard flesh. As clumsy with need as he was with fried circuits, brought just as
surely to his knees by Bear’s keen lips and hands as he’d been by SenTech’s
defenses.
Bear, helpful as ever, sat up and pulled his shirt over his head, then tugged
off Cyke’s own. Pants next, underwear, teeth scraping across his thigh, his hip,
latching on to a nipple and sending synapses into overloaded fits. Cyke buried
his hands in Bear’s hair, arched beneath him, panting harsh and grinding his
aching cock into the hard curve of Bear’s hip.
“That’s it.” Bear sucked at Cyke’s collarbone, the corded tendon of Cyke’s
neck. “It’s okay to want. You can have it.”
Not want. Need.
“G-gone…beyond that,” Cyke groaned, thoughts rising too easy to his lips.
Drugged, high, flying on endorphins and Bear’s touch, Bear’s scent, Bear’s
everything.
But no. Too selfish. Too needy. Wanted to give something back. Might be
possible. He opened his legs, arched his back just so, felt Bear’s cock rub past his
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50
balls. More. The weight atop him stopped him from spinning away, losing his
mind.
“Gimme…” That. You promised. Made no sense, even to himself. Didn’t care.
He needed this and needed it now. Fingers digging into Bear’s lower back, into his
strong ass, pulling him close. Jack in, Bear. God, please. Now.
Bear got the message, licked at Cyke’s hips, a smile of promise curving his
lips. He rubbed his cock down Cyke’s crack, Cyke’s cock chafing through the
curly red nest of hair between Bear’s legs, the softer line up his lower belly.
Even that was almost too much—fuck almost, was too much, and he clutched
at Bear’s shoulders and wrapped legs around slim hips and pressed in tight as
sensation slammed through him like another fucking overload, left him shouting
and writhing and panting with the sheer mindblowing power of it, and next he
knew he was splayed beneath Bear, loose-limbed and pliant, body buzzing like a
live wire, current curling round his spent cock and balls, spreading out to his
belly and thighs, down to his toes and all the way up to his short-shorn hair.
It was bliss, all of it. Even his eye had stopped hurting.
He opened his eyes—when had he closed them?—and turned them on Bear’s
smiling face, pure satisfaction in those pale green eyes. They were still pressed
hip to hip, Bear’s legs splayed atop Cyke’s, his weight supported on locked arms,
the tip of his tongue resting on his bottom lip, eager, as if waiting for permission
to taste.
Cyke couldn’t resist; he let his eye record the image. He wanted it for later,
for when the time came that he was alone again.
But he wasn’t alone now. And he still needed. “More,” he breathed, letting his
legs fall open.
That was all the permission Bear needed.
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Strange, no post-orgasmic sensitivity. Still hard somehow. Still so much need
in the fibers of his flesh, in his touch-starved brain. He reached out a hand,
groped for the oil he used on the pincer gloves. Actual lube, mechanical.
Considering all his ’ware, that didn’t feel odd in the slightest.
He slathered it on his hands, watched it spill through his shaking fingers,
onto his belly and the sheets and Bear’s cock. A strong scent, evocative: guns and
force and power.
Fuck, yes please.
Stroking Bear with his oiled fist, root to tip and back, squeezing heavy balls
in his palm. He imagined pulling them between his teeth, sucking them, Bear on
all fours, legs spread…
Yes. Later.
Bear growled, bucked once into his fist and then knocked his hand away.
Too close already? Cyke wiped the remaining oil in his own crack. Businesslike.
No call for teasing or shame. Bear stared, every bit the predator as his namesake,
then pushed Cyke’s knees farther up and apart. No more gentleness. No healing
hands. Cyke’s eyes locked on Bear’s cock. Beautiful. Large and thick, though he
thought nearly anything might blow his mind right now.
And oh, how this did. Cyke groaned when Bear breached him, a slow but
insistent first thrust, his body struggling a moment with a feeling long forgotten,
a pain amongst the pleasure. But he pulled Bear closer, urged him on. Fuck this.
He wasn’t a virgin, would crawl up the fucking walls waiting on the tongue-
finger-fingers routine. Arched his back, encouraging, wanting more. Sore and
sensitive, but that would fade. There. That electric touch, right there. Everything
he remembered.
“Yeah,” he panted. “Like that. Harder.”
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52
Bear happily complied. He kept the pace up long enough to make Cyke sore,
but fuck it, he was rock hard again, and sometimes a little pain made things
interesting. Bear hiked Cyke’s legs up, pushed his knees down to the bed by his
ears, sat up straight and started ramming down into him full-bore, faster than a
man at it this long had any right to be. His teched-up hand wrapped around
Cyke’s cock, and he looked down at Cyke with a wicked grin, as if he held some
secret and not just Cyke’s erection in the palm of his hand.
Fuck, maybe he did, because whatever Bear was doing to him now was off
the fucking charts, too big even to process, to separate one sensation from the
next, full ass and slick tight fist and sweat and sex and flesh slapping flesh.
He came again with a shout that bounced off the fucking walls. Bear never
stopped, never even slowed, and Cyke found himself pleading, encouraging,
until he felt Bear come too, thrusts so deep it couldn’t possibly get farther or
better. He tightened against the invasion, shuddering with the remnants of his
own orgasm and reveling in Bear’s.
Fuck, what a few missing lines of code could do.
Cyke unfolded when Bear let his legs go, realigned his spine and pulled Bear
close. He felt balanced again, sluggish but deeply sated, no more jitters, no more
razor-sharp edges. Much better.
Sweat mingled, then taste as Cyke licked Bear’s ear. “Next time my turn,” he
whispered, because fuck, he was sore already—in the best possible way,
though—and just the thought of burying his cock in Bear’s firm ass made it stir to
life again. Or try to, anyway. So much time to make up for. He remembered
other lovers, faintly, but that was before the ’ware. Before the army had made
him something not quite human…and something so much more.
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“I suppose that’s only fair.” Bear followed his words with a teasing swipe of
tongue against Cyke’s neck. “After all, I have been jacking into you all week
now.”
Cyke snorted out a laugh. Fuck, when was the last time he’d done that? Lots
of streaks being broken today, it seemed. Maybe too many. There was a reason
soldiers weren’t supposed to get comfortable. He had work to do.
Fuel low.
Speaking of… He heaved himself out of bed with a sigh, stood on rubbery
legs and went in search of his underwear. There, tossed in the corner by the
dresser.
“Cyke?”
Bear sat up in bed, looking confused, maybe even hurt.
“I have to eat.”
Bear seemed to take that at face value, and didn’t that make Cyke feel like
more of an asshole than he already was. Because, sure, it might have been true,
but it wasn’t the real reason.
Not by a fucking long shot.
Chapter Nine
Bear fixed Cyke a nice meal, his specialty—lasagna and garlic bread. Cyke
was only eating like two grown men now instead of three. His healing was
mostly done, the clot-bots no longer sucking up every calorie he could pack in.
Cyke did the dishes. All so very domestic. They showered together, and Cyke
fucked him right up against the stall wall.
They were exhausted then, the both of them, but he wasn’t too tired to see
how antsy Cyke was getting, to remember that Cyke was a wanted man. Strange,
how that thought didn’t bother him anymore. More bothersome was the thought
Cyke might not be here the next time he came home from shift. Better finish what
work he could with Cyke’s tech, just in case.
Cyke lay on the bed, and Bear jacked into his port again…sadly in the not-at-
all fun way. Well, maybe a little fun. Certainly fascinating, at least. Though it
didn’t sit too well with him, the thought he was studying Cyke like a lab rat.
Judging from the botch-job connecting the cyber eye to the optic nerve—and holy
hell, how was that not agony all the time?—he rather strongly suspected
someone had used Cyke like a lab rat. Was that why he’d left the service?
Cyke lifted his head from the pillow of his folded arms and asked, “Why do
they call you Bear?”
What a strange thing to break the silence with. Still, nice. Personal. It made
Bear smile. “’Cause I sleep so deep they joke I must be hibernating. I can sleep
right through the tones some nights. Plus, you know, crew chief. I’m protective
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55
of my boys. Like a momma bear. Don’t get between me and them and expect to
walk away.”
Cyke pursed his lips, raised his eyebrows. Bear didn’t think he’d surprised
the man at all.
“And you? Why Cyke?”
“Cyclops. One eye.”
Heh, well, at least he had a sense of humor about it. Bear thought to ask his
real name, but decided it didn’t matter.
Another long silence. Cyke rested, eyes closed. From the slight furrowing
there, Bear suspected his head hurt. His optic nerve. Whatever. He wished he
knew how to fix that, but such work was far beyond him. Probably even beyond
the neurosurgeons and nanite techs who’d installed the eye.
Best just to fix what he could instead. It seemed like Cyke hadn’t had a tune-
up in years, like he’d jury-rigged his own systems the same way he’d jury-rigged
that shitty little storage unit into a living space.
Again, Cyke broke the long silence. “I’m not a thief, you know.” Mild, no
accusation, no fervor. Did you know the sky is blue?
Bear’s fingers froze on the keyboard. “Oh?”
He’d been trying awfully hard not to care one way or the other, but an
opening like that was tough to let lie. He realized he didn’t know a damn thing
about Cyke.
“Yeah, oh.”
More silence. Bear was afraid to let himself break it. He went back to work
instead.
“Well aren’t you gonna ask me what I was doing at Sentinel Tech?”
Bear shrugged. “If you want me to.”
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56
“Hah.” Cyke snorted with little amusement but no real venom. “What have
you taught me about want and need, Bear?”
“Do you need me to?”
“Okay, could’ve seen that coming.” Cyke covered his eyes with his forearm,
pressing down on the right one, Bear assumed. “I’m a white hat.” At Bear’s
questioning hum, he added, “A penetration tester. A good guy. Or maybe just a
mercenary who does what he’s paid for. Lines blur sometimes, you know?”
Bear nodded but allowed himself no more reaction than that. He didn’t want
to hurt Cyke by letting his relief show on his face. Or his shock—at realizing that
it didn’t matter, that he’d been prepared to hear a much darker truth than
hacker-for-hire and it wouldn’t have changed a thing.
“Sentinel Tech paid me to break into their systems, find all their weaknesses.
But it’s not a dry run. Nothing to compromise the security test. Because
somebody always talks, and then the results are worth shit.”
“That’s why you went in again and again?”
“First time worked fine, except for that little jolt that caught up to me at the
bus stop. Second time I got in, but getting out was harder. Still nabbed the data,
though, so they changed protocols and had me try again. They wanted different
data that time, too, files stored on the central server rather than the network. By
then they’d significantly upgraded security and neglected to mention the
specifics. That was shit.”
Only falling half-dead at his door could be classified as “shit”?
“I need the download I’ve got at my place. There’s a chip. I have to go back.”
Was he crazy?
Well, crazier? “In case you hadn’t noticed, there’s a full-blown manhunt out
there.”
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“I know. I listen to them.” Cyke tapped his temple, and it struck Bear all over
again how amazing his ’ware really was. A cheat chip that eschewed the
projector lens and fed data straight to the brain? An internal radio tuner that did
the same? No, he was not jealous. Not. At. All.
“I need to report to the board of directors. Something’s fucked with the
CTO.”
Oh, they were still talking? Jesus, everything about this man was distracting.
Everything. “What do you mean?”
“Usually companies don’t let it get outside.” Cyke sighed, sat up, met Bear’s
eyes. Cyke’s were so blue, the mech eye a perfect match, right down to the iris
striations. Blond eyelashes, too long to be anything but pretty. Strange in that
hard, lean face.
Cyke flashed him a smile, as if he knew what Bear was thinking, then said,
quite deliberately, “Bad for the share price, admitting somebody broke into your
systems and stole data so carefully you don’t even know what they took. When a
test goes south, they try to keep it under wraps. The top brass’ll call the local
police chief, maybe explain the situation over a round of golf. No one on the
outside is ever the wiser. But this case here…” he gestured, encompassing
everything, “…is not like that. It’s like it’s real.”
“But someone did hire you, right?”
Cyke glared at him. “Yeah. Chief Technology Officer signed the contract
himself. Best I can figure, he conveniently neglected to mention it to anyone else.
Probably planned to sell what I stole. Or add it to his portfolio when he moves
on to a bigger corporation with a bigger year-end bonus. Shit hit the fan, and he’s
letting me take the fall. Which is why I need to get back to my place. The eye sees
all, you see”—he winked, smiled grimly—“and often records all. Add that to the
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58
contract and I have rock-solid proof he hired me as a white hat, not as a common
thief.”
Bear rather suspected that Cyke wasn’t a common anything, but that hardly
seemed appropriate to mention just now. “All right,” he said. If Cyke was going
to run off half-cocked into a nest of waiting SenTech stooges, he’d need some
help. “I’m coming with you.”
“Fuck that. No you’re not.”
“Cyke…”
“You’ll slow me down. I’ll have to worry about you.”
“I’m not the one wanted by the authorities.”
“True.” Cyke pulled the jack from the back of his neck and stretched
experimentally. From the looks of it, he felt no pain. “But you will be if you’re
seen with me. Now stop arguing and give me my damn gloves. I’ll be back in a
couple hours.”
Bear hesitated, but in the end he handed over the pincer gloves—and his car
keys, goddamn it—and let Cyke walk out alone. After all, the guy could
probably kill him eight different ways with just his pinkie. And besides, Cyke
was right. Bear would just slow him down.
Funny, though, how that didn’t make it any easier to watch him walk away.
Cyke knew this was a bad idea, but he wasn’t exactly a man with options
these days. Nothing for it. He just had to go and hope they weren’t waiting for
him.
At least he was fairly certain they didn’t know where he lived. The storage
unit was rented under a fake name, relayed through sufficient levels of bullshit
to stymie even an FBI traceback. The cops hadn’t tied him to the John Doe
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ambulance pickups yet, either. He might have left forensics at the scene—in
particular he seemed to recall Sentinel Tech’s anti-theft system making imprints
of his ’ware’s emissions and physical structure. That would have given them a
clue if he’d been carrying civilian tech, which was all registered in databases for
law enforcement use. They might be able to match forensics to his military
records, depending on the level of clearance they could buy, but he wasn’t even
sure if SenTech’s system had taken a full imprint with which to search. After all,
it was shocking him stupid at the time. Even if they could make a match, they
still wouldn’t know where to find him. No, all they’d know was he was
dangerous and alone.
Still, he approached the storage facility with extreme caution, parking Bear’s
car a good half-mile away in the back lot of a 24/7 convenience store. From there,
he hiked through the scraggly tree buffer between the crumbling strip malls that
lined the highway and the residential units built out behind them. The city’s arc
lights reflected dull and orange off a low cover of cumulus clouds, but the night
was still dark enough to switch to image-enhancement mode. Barely even hurt
this time, thanks to Bear’s tune-up. The tree stand and everything in it took on a
glowing green cast, sharp and detailed as daylight.
As he neared the industrial park and the storage facility beyond it, he
switched to thermal IR, checking for heat signatures in or around the buildings.
Dozens of bodies in the apartment complex in front of the storage unit, mostly
horizontal and unmoving—sleeping. One body in a gatehouse in the industrial
complex parking lot. Three more inside the building, two clearly cleaning, one
likely patrolling the halls, none carrying guns. The storage facility was empty.
Tech scan next. No new signatures, nothing out of the ordinary. He darted
back behind the industrial complex, ducked low and close to the wall and ran,
keeping his head below the first-floor windows. Paused at the corner, ran
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another thermal IR scan, another tech scan. No chatter on the cop radios. None
on the security guards’ either.
Visual inspection last. Nobody up and about. He left the safety of his cover,
sprinting hard and keeping to the shadows. Pressed his eye to the retinal scanner
on the storage facility’s back door, slipped inside and shut it quietly behind him.
The lights came on and his night vision snapped off in response, leaving him
blinking in an empty hallway. His door was locked, appeared undisturbed. Even
though he knew it was empty—he’d just scanned the place from outside, after
all—he couldn’t quite deny the urge to check one more time before opening the
door. Could have been shielded, maybe. Of course, if it was, then scanning again
wouldn’t—
The bolt plate wasn’t the same composition as the door handle. Someone had
been here. Someone had replaced it, and recently.
Times like these, he wished they still let him carry a gun. A little range
wouldn’t hurt.
But no matter, he was a weapon.
He pressed his thumb to the scanner, stood to the side as the lock snicked
open, then pushed against his door with the tip of a foot-long carbon steel blade.
He hadn’t even asked the pincer gloves to weapon up. They just had. They
hadn’t worked this well since he’d left—left, hah!—the service. Fuck, did he ever
owe Bear a blowjob or ten.
Nobody was waiting to pounce on him. In fact, his unit looked undisturbed.
But he knew better, knew even as he used a pincer blade to pry back the
wallboard behind the cot that the chip was gone. In fact, all his chips were gone.
The thumbprint-coded lockbox in the wall was still bolted to the steel studs, but
it was empty—not just of his data chips, but of his go bag, two handguns and his
wad of emergency cash too. And if they’d found this, they’d likely also found the
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backups he’d stashed in the other safehouses and deposit boxes around the city.
He’d check, of course, but…
“Fuck,” he growled, slamming the safe shut and replacing the wall panel—
though that seemed stupid now, didn’t it, closing the barn door years after the
horse had left? “Fuck.”
And yet, he felt none of the anger he knew he should have, and no surprise
either. He’d seen this coming, after all. All he felt now was tired.
And fuck all, but he missed Bear.
Chapter Ten
It was rounding on four a.m. when Bear heard knocking on his door. He
wasn’t sleeping; of course he wasn’t. He’d even called out sick from work. And
right now he felt sick, terrified of a repeat performance, of finding Cyke half-dead
on his doorstep.
Still, he rushed to answer it. It was Cyke, all right, and though he looked
pissed and weary, he didn’t look hurt.
Bear grabbed him by two fistfuls of jacket and pulled him into a kiss.
Demanding tongue and clacking teeth, groping steel-banded hands and hard
body pressing into his. A foot kicking the door closed hard enough to rattle it, a
body-slam into the wall hard enough to rattle him. This was not the kiss of an
injured man.
Yet it was over nearly before it started. Cyke pulled back, licked wet lips,
dropped his gloved arms to his sides. Whatever fervor had overcome him, it was
gone already.
“I need food,” Cyke said.
Bear huffed—when did Cyke ever not? He followed Cyke into the kitchen,
not bothering to ask how things had gone. If Cyke had found the data chip, he’d
have said so. Which, shit, where did that leave them?
Them, Bear?
Shit again. He had it bad.
For a fugitive.
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A fugitive who sat down at his kitchen table with the leftover lasagna,
cutting it into slices with his hand blades and eating it cold with carbon-clad
fingers. The rate at which he was wolfing it down, there was no point to offering
him cutlery. Besides, it was too fascinating to watch the blades come out, cut,
withdraw, fingers shoveling food to mouth, then blades again. He wasn’t sure
how Cyke coordinated that, but he felt reluctant to interrupt him lest the man
skewer his mouth with a blade.
“Yeah, so I’m fucked,” Cyke said when the food was gone, seemingly in
good humor, wiping off the blades on a napkin. “Then again, less fucked than I
was. The software feels good. Right.”
Was that his way of flirting? It was certainly terribly endearing.
Cyke sat back, a roguish smile spreading across his lips. His version of come
hither?
Bear, you’re oversexed. Anything the guy did went right to his groin.
“I hear fourth time’s the charm.”
“What?”
“I’m going back in. Sentinel Tech won’t stop turning stones if I can’t stop
them first, and I’m not running away. The CTO’s fucking with the wrong guy.”
“I don’t doubt that, but what good would it do you breaking back in there?
You’re not…” Bear paused, feeling stupid just suggesting it, and at the same time
not. “You’re going to—”
“Kill him?” Cyke’s smile at that was not at all reassuring. “No. I’m going
back to get their internal security logs. SenTech has eyes on every square inch of
their building, even the fucking toilets. And they save it all long enough to
outlast the statute of limitations on whatever fuck-all laws they’re no doubt
breaking over there. I get the recording of the CTO hiring me, I clear my name.”
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64
Oh sure, because it’s that easy. “What even makes you think that file’s still
there? The CTO doesn’t sound like a stupid man. He’d have covered his tracks.”
“Yes and no. If he could have broken into the server on his own, he wouldn’t
have needed me in the first place. He has no access to files at this level, so he
can’t have purged it. I can get it.”
“You’re crazy.” Not an accusation, just a simple observation.
Cyke tilted his chair back on two legs, nodded once. “Probably.”
“They shot you.”
“No.” His chair thudded back to the floor. “The cops shot me. And they
won’t be feeling any less shooty now they know I’m ex-Special Forces.”
Special Forces? Well, Bear supposed that explained an awful lot. He’d never
dated a soldier before—
Dating? Getting a little ahead of yourself there, Bear.
Still, Special Forces or no, this sounded like a better way to get Cyke killed
than clear his name. “They’ve hurt you, Cyke. What if you’re not so lucky this
time? What if you don’t get out of there?”
“Ah,” Cyke said, and this time there was nothing roguish about his smile at
all. It was cold, confident and frankly a little disturbing. “That’s where you come
in. Now get off that scrawny ass of yours and help me. We’ve got a lot of work to
do.”
Chapter Eleven
Five a.m. was the best time for a break-in. It worked in asymmetrical
warfare. American Indians had attacked during the gray early hours, and just
about any guerrilla force in the world knew to attack when the enemy was at
their groggiest. Five o’clock was two hours from the end of Sentinel Tech’s night
shift. Two hours before the morning shift arrived. Some would be bleary-eyed,
fresh from a night of too little sleep and keyed up on too much caffeine. Others
would be trying to stay awake until the end of a long and sunless shift. Either
way, Cyke knew from guard duty out in the field that it was really hard to give a
fuck at five in the morning.
Getting in was easy, at least for the likes of him. Their perimeter security was
suspiciously hackable. It almost made him think they wanted breakers to get
inside. Especially since he knew how hard getting out would be.
Inside the building, security was tighter. They’d locked down the ventilation
shafts he’d used to reach the server room on his last wet run, but they still
counted too much on mechanical surveillance at floor and eye level in the
hallways. Which meant their biggest weakness now was the massive trays of
data cables crisscrossing their high ceilings and interstitials. They didn’t expect
anyone to walk on cables suspended four yards high, so nobody ever looked up.
In fairness, nobody expected a tightrope walker, either, or someone who could
see the IR tripwires snaking around them.
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He supposed it also didn’t hurt that he could generate a dynamic distortion
field. Most thieves just disabled the cameras. He also scattered his body heat and
EM field.
A long, slow series of cable crawls and climbs at last brought him to the
server room door. Breaking this one was easy; he pulled up hacked employee
records on his cheat chip, snagged the retinal pattern for the senior IT analyst
whose computer he’d tapped last night and fed the data to his mech eye. A sub-
audible whir, a flash of pain, and he was pressing his newly imprinted eye to the
retinal scanner. The door opened like magic.
To the server cage next. He plugged a cable into his skull port and clipped
the leads on the other end to the cage lock. They’d changed the encryption,
which he’d recommended, and added a couple layers of complexity. Still doable,
though. He had the door open in forty-seven seconds, and even programmed it
not to report itself as open along the way.
He slid into the cage and leaned against one of the black server racks, which
were bristling with more wires and cables than an ICU patient. Despite the
industrial chillers blasting through the room, he could feel the heat pouring off
the machinery.
He cut a hole into his shirt above his biceps, freed the thin fiber-optic cable
from the low-tech Band-Aid sticking to his skin, and pulled it through the cut in
the fabric. That cable he connected to the thicker main cable jacked into his
platform chip. Then he plugged the main cable into the server.
He jerked when the much bigger machine connected to him. All manner of
strange association. With all that voltage running through the servers, his
systems felt fragile and small. An ant climbing an elephant, feeling it breathe.
The first barrier was easy enough. Techs had to check the servers, after all.
He walked into the equivalent of the system’s cantina: insiders welcome,
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67
outsiders tolerated if they came with an insider. Cyke shook hands with the
system, told it he was a friend, an insider, the same IT analyst whose retinal
pattern had opened the outer door. Served the moron right for leaving his home
computer on and unsecured while heading out for pizza. This code was good
until four p.m. By then, Cyke expected to be somewhere else. In prison, or dead,
or in bed with Bear.
While he ran a subroutine like the one an IT guy would run—just general log
files, system resource files, checking everything was running as it should—he
snuck in a second subroutine that scurried through the deeper layers of the
server. Pieces of noise code that slipped through the barriers and assembled
behind enemy lines into more complex structures. The system didn’t seem to
notice when the library program began to look for the security files.
Cyke closed his eyes to focus better on the lines of code racing through his
system. Doing two things at once was a recipe for a headache.
There, matching date stamp. Now location stamp. Finding the file was
pathetically easy. Getting it out would be less so.
Cyke recognized the CTO immediately, with his gelled-back hair and flashy
million-dollar suit. Then himself. He set a marker but didn’t start to copy. The
file was huge—not just audio and video, but also all manner of biometrics and
tech signatures—and it was pretty high security for a surveillance video. Just a
level below SenTech’s research files. He figured that might be required by law.
Also to keep the files inaccessible to nosy SenTech staff.
Shame he didn’t have the FBI’s White Collar Crime clearance, or a prebuilt
code to bypass this mess. Without it, things would get interesting. It’d be difficult
to grab the file in one go and disconnect before the server zapped him. And he
really, really didn’t want to get zapped again. Hard not to imagine a malicious
intelligence just lurking there, waiting for him to finger the crown jewels.
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Two options: gentle surgery or a smash and grab. Last time he’d smashed
and grabbed, and the server had smashed him back ten times harder. Surgery
would take longer, but it would probably hurt less.
First step was to copy the file into an internal cache, then encode and re-label
it. That should prevent a flag to the main system. Speaking of preventing flags…
He started shutting doors, nice and soft, everywhere he could. Letting the main
system talk to the server, but not letting the server talk to the system. If he was
careful and set up the right feedback loops, it wouldn’t notice. If he wasn’t…well,
he had a right to be a little nervous. He remembered too well staggering back,
feeling like his fingers and toes should be smoking.
Shit, wrong door. He noticed the system tense, for want of a better word. He
froze his data flow, the equivalent of looking elsewhere while whistling, but he
could feel the system cycle up to an elevated readiness level. He didn’t have time
for this, couldn’t maintain his focus on the camera systems and his dynamic
distortion field and try to soothe the nervous fucking virgin of a server too afraid
to be breached.
Smash and grab after all, then.
He dumped the cache into his own internal storage, leg jiggling as the
milliseconds ticked by, the data flow restricted by the speed of the stupidly
narrow cable he was forced to use. Two seconds. Three.
Come on, come on…
Four.
And then the virgin server kicked him in the nuts. He couldn’t help it, he
screamed. The pain was huge, flooding through his platform chip into his skull,
his jaw, down his neck and spine and, Jesus fuck, through the wire in his arm,
muscle seizing so hard he heard the bone snap.
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But he couldn’t pull out yet, not until he had what he needed. Thank God
he’d had the foresight to shut all those doors. The system could hurt him, but it
couldn’t stop the data flow. It couldn’t tattle on him, either, not after he’d taken
such pains to lock down its tongue.
Download complete.
Cyke tried to disengage, realized he was clutching at the server tray hard
enough to dent it. Somehow he pried a hand free and swiped at the cables,
severing the connection. Ending that fucking assault.
He fell on his ass, muscles twitching, chest heaving, forgetting for a second
where he was and what he was doing, knowing only that he hurt, and it wasn’t
safe here, and he needed to get up. His arm was on fire. Wait, no, just felt like it.
He clutched at it, saw the noodle-sized fiber-optic cable dangling singed and
bloody from the flesh of his upper arm, grabbed it and yanked.
Son of a bitch! Fucking thing hurt more coming out than it had going in, and
how that was even possible he had no idea.
The cable dropped to the floor. He picked it up with shaking fingers and
tossed it behind the server rack. The pincers helped. He was lucky he could still
talk to them. Lucky he had them on; they were surely the only thing keeping his
arm working, holding the broken bone together.
Time?
5:32 a.m.
Shit, and shit again.
Get up, bitch.
He turned on legs that felt like cooked spaghetti. Jumping up to reach the
cable trays overhead would be like jumping to the moon in his state.
Sign me up when they make pincer pants, he thought through the fog in his
head. Jesus fuck. This was the part that always went wrong. Security systems
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that let breakers in but not out worked—if you had a way of dealing with the
bodies, which SenTech clearly did. Buying off half the police force and the
government that controlled it made shit like that easy, after all. Part of him
applauded their calm cold-bloodedness. He could respect a pro, even one who
fucked him.
“Bye, bye, darling,” he slurred, mock-saluting the server rack, hoping to fuck
he’d never have to connect his fragile systems with that bitch again.
Focus.
Bear. Get back to Bear.
Focus.
Cyke forced himself to take stock, evaluate his position. Hell, zapped like
that, knowing which continent he was on was impressive.
He managed, on the second try, to haul himself up onto the cable trays near
the ceiling, but it was painfully slow going. His balance could have been better,
what with his ears ringing like that. And moving with a broken arm was…not
fun. Well, something to consider for next time.
Bear would not appreciate a next time. He’d appreciate it even less if Cyke
didn’t return.
Cyke kept breathing, moving, slow but steady. He’d just turned from the
server wing to the admin wing when a door opened several feet ahead of him.
“Hello?”
Security guard, righting his belt with the Taser and nightstick-sized Maglite.
Cyke froze, crouched low along the cable trays.
The guard clicked his radio. “Thirty-two to central. Check D Zone. I know it
sounds weird, but I coulda sworn I heard somebody scream. Roger.”
Scream? Fuck. All the care he’d taken to stay hidden, all the high-tech
gadgets and advanced hacking, and he’d been undone by that? If he’d pulled that
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shit in the field, his commander would have sent him back to SERE camp until
he learned to shut up while they beat him.
Cyke gritted his teeth, watched the guard activate a scanner and sweep the
area under him. Amusing that they never, ever, looked up. No way even
SenTech’s cutting-edge handheld could crack his scatter field, but if the guard
would just look up, he might see Cyke with his own two low-tech eyes.
“All negative. What the hell is this?”
Cyke pondered more aggressive countermeasures, but those wouldn’t buy
him enough time. And killing a security guard wouldn’t exactly help him prove
his innocence. Murder was still worse than data theft, even if corporations
disagreed. Plus, if the guard’s buddies showed up, they’d see the corpse. Not
exactly subtle. And he didn’t have the strength just now to lift the body up onto
the cable trays.
The guard’s radio crackled. “Central to thirty-two. Negative. Accessing
security logs. Stand by.”
Move, asshole. Move. Go into the server room. Leave.
But the guard stayed right where he was, almost close enough to hear Cyke
breathe.
“Thirty-two, all cameras negative.” Damn well better be. Cyke had them set
to a self-referential loop, complete with matching biometric data and random but
expected artifacts like guards and cleaning crew. “Thermal scans negative. EM
scans negative. Only one recent access in sector D…”
Oh shit, this could get messy.
“Senior IT tech. Entered the central server room, but not the cage. Wait a
second…” Here it comes. “There is no visual, thirty-two. Repeat, no visual. Camera
logs do not match the access logs.”
The security guard unholstered his Taser. Of course he did.
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Fuck this. He’d been discovered. They might not know where he was yet, but
they knew he was somewhere. And yeah, they probably even knew it was him,
because he’d pulled the same camera trick last time. Which meant there’d soon
be countermeasures to his countermeasures. They’d scramble his scrambler, and
then he was toast.
He felt the blades extend on his pincers, had to muscle them back in. Fuck
yeah, he’d fight, but he didn’t plan to kill anybody.
At least not today.
The guard was still pacing the hallway, one eye darting from door to door,
the other intent on his as-yet-useless scanner. Cyke waited, waited. Five more
steps. Two more steps.
Now.
He let go and landed right on the guard’s head with a reinforced elbow. Not
fatal, but enough to knock him cold and keep him that way a while. Cyke still
had to hustle. Central would see soon enough that the guard was no longer
moving, and they’d want to know why.
Better delay that as long as he could. He grabbed the guard and dragged him
to the door at the end of the corridor, hauled him up to the retinal scanner. The
pincers made lifting with a broken arm possible, but it sure as fuck wasn’t
pleasant; he almost dropped Mr. Coffee and Donuts. Fuck, almost blacked out.
He managed to avoid that, but couldn’t avoid heaving what was left of his last
meal onto the security guard’s shirt.
Lovely.
It took another solid minute of juggling to prop the guy between his hip and
the wall, balance the guard’s head against the scanner and peel an eyelid back.
He had to use his broken arm for that. If he’d had anything left in his stomach,
he’d have puked again.
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Fuel low.
Lovelier.
Well, that gave him two or three minutes before his scrambler sputtered out.
It was first-gen ’ware, not able to run on fat reserves. The glucose tubes in his
pocket would solve that problem, but he didn’t bother with them. He’d just puke
them up anyway, and they wouldn’t solve the other, much bigger problem of the
bully boys in riot gear barreling closer every second. He gave them thirty
seconds, maybe a minute.
No matter what he did now, this wouldn’t end well.
Not, mind you, that he’d ever really thought it would. Bear was gonna have
a shitload of bruises to kiss better.
At least if everything went according to plan.
He dropped the unconscious guard and broke the lock to the next room—no
point in finesse anymore—unwilling to face the bully stampede out in the wide
corridor where they could flank him.
Offices. Cubicles.
Just weaving through the sea of bland beige carbon-copy desks was enough
to rekindle his revulsion to 9-to-5 jobs. If your biggest joy was a coffee mug with
an unfunny joke, he’d prefer a rope. Or getting zapped by a frigid server.
He cleared the cubicle field and shouldered through the next door—ow,
fuck!—pulling up the building plans as he went. The CTO’s office was close.
More importantly, it had windows. With his luck, they were armored six ways to
Sunday plus Christmas, as his old colonel would say. But at least he had the
satisfaction of jumping on the guy’s desk and kicking a hole through his pricey
holo-projector. In the absence of the man’s face, his tech would have to do.
Cyke grabbed the leather-backed chair—fuck again—and smashed it into the
window.
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The blinds rattled.
The chair bounced off.
Not a crack.
Behind him, the stampede arrived in a clatter of boots and jingling metal.
Cyke turned around and regarded the brigade with outward disdain, though
inside he was nearly pissing himself. He felt fear just like everyone else, after all,
even if he did push through it more than most.
The guards were holding position, well across the room. Cyke realized why
only when he went to raise his hands—the pincer blades were out again. He
forced them back—and that was much, much harder than it should have been—
and put his arms up.
“I surrender?”
The goon on point replied with a Taser to his groin.
It all went downhill from there.
Chapter Twelve
Fuel critical.
Cyke woke to the internal alarm. And to blocker cables around his wrists
and ankles, tying him to a chair. The pincers were limp, the clot-bots inactive.
Leaving him alone with the pain and damage. Not that he had anything to feed
them with anyway. Even the ’ware that could run off fat stores couldn’t fuel up
around the blocker cables.
Someone was tapping on a keyboard. He felt a cable in his jack. My idea of
foreplay, he thought wryly. The man at the keyboard looked up.
Oh hi there, Mr. CTO.
Cyke managed to pry both eyes open wide enough to answer the fucker’s
glare.
“Nice system you’ve got there,” the man said. “Very impressive.”
“Same.” Cyke coughed. Lungs worked. He couldn’t vouch for every rib
though.
Fuel critical.
Insistent bastard.
Shutting down.
The eye went out first. Cyke jerked, grateful the meat eye still worked, even
though it was swelling shut fast.
“You’re running low.” Smugness oozed all over the walls and floor.
“Got a burger?”
“How about a car battery?”
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Cyke could almost feel his platform chip cringe and wrap its tiny tentacles
around the main chip in self-defense. Installing it was delicate, a hundred hours
of work for a million nanobots merging mech pathways with his brain. A car
battery?
Asshole.
“Is that after you saw through my skull to access the circuits?”
The man tsked. Tsked! The pretentious fucker. “Why so unpleasant, Mr.
Kellermann?”
“Prefer a blowjob? Would that be pleasant?” Okay, fuck, not helpful,
considering there was precious little he could do if the guy liked the idea. Or if
he were disgusted enough by it to lash out.
“That’s a no, then,” Cyke said to the CTO’s arched eyebrow. Crappy save.
“I know you’re not the type, Mr. Kellermann, but you could make this easy.”
Yeah, right. “I already offered a blowjob. How much easier do you want?”
Mr. CTO smirked, shook his head and tapped a single key.
Pain shattered Cyke’s world into a million pieces.
“FUCK! You FUCKER!”
And yet the mech eye, when he managed to pry it open, was working again.
Car battery, my ass. More like precision torture tool.
“I know you took it, Mr. Kellermann.”
“Took what?”
This time he was ready for the jolt, but that didn’t make it any more bearable.
When it ended, the world filtered back a little slower than before. For a good
several seconds, he was aware of nothing but the molten sickness in his broken
arm.
“If you give it to me, I’ll let you go.”
Cyke snorted. “No you won’t.”
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Mr. CTO seemed to take that in stride. He nodded, expression never
faltering. “You’re right. But I’ll turn you over to the police.”
Another snort, even though that was exactly what Cyke wanted. “You need
to work on your incentives there, Chief.”
And ah, yes, here was the real incentive, the one that made a jail cell seem
downright desirable. Cyke hated to give the guy the pleasure, but there was no
holding back the scream.
He was panting, nauseous when it ended. Thought he might black out.
Thought that’d be just fine, in fact.
“You’ll have to turn me over anyway,” he said when at last he trusted his
voice enough for the task. “I know the cops are here, and they know I’m here. I
can hear them.”
“Ah, of course.” God, this guy must leave trails of slime wherever he
walked. “The tuner in your head.” Okay, so he knew. So what. Lots of grunts
had tuners in their heads. “You may find this hard to believe, Mr. Kellermann,
but I take no pleasure from this. I only want what’s mine.”
What’s his? Some chutzpah from the man stealing from his employer.
“I handed over all the files after the wet runs.”
“And the chip in your…well, one can’t really call that a home, I don’t
suppose.”
“You got that too.”
“It shouldn’t have existed, Mr. Kellermann. I shouldn’t have had to go get it.
And you shouldn’t be here.” Mr. CTO stroked down his expensive red silk tie.
“So tell me, where’s the file? I can get into your head, you know. Scramble
everything I find. I can turn you into a vegetable.”
Better than a slug, you fucker.
“Big talk there for a script kiddie.”
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That earned him another jolt. Jesus fuck… Time to break a little.
“God! Stop!” He didn’t have to pretend much at all, really. This was worse
than that bullet to the back had been. Jacked right into his nervous system. “I
don’t have it, all right?”
“I don’t believe you.” Finger hovering over the key again, closing in.
“Wait! Please!”
And yeah, okay, that might have hurt more than the fucking jolt. But it
seemed to work. Mr. CTO’s finger stilled, and his lips curled up. Corner-office
desk jockeys like him always did enjoy their smug superiority.
“Look, you jacked me while I was out, yeah?”
CTO said nothing, but he didn’t have to. He might think himself a clever
bastard, but his face was naked. He lacked guile.
“And you didn’t find anything, right?”
Oh, this one was interesting. He knew damn well Mr. CTO hadn’t found
anything, and Mr. CTO knew he knew, but the man was clearly incapable of
admitting he’d been stymied by some blue-collar trash like Cyke.
Finally, grudgingly, Mr. CTO said, “Doesn’t mean it’s not there.”
“Your bitch zapped me before I could download anything.”
“That’s your version of events.”
Events. What a word to use in polite conversation. Cyke groaned with
frustration, shook his head. “Sounds like a…” he searched for a word the CTO
would like, “…an impasse.”
The corporate ass lifted one plucked eyebrow. “I had a look at the security
logs.”
Hope you had fun with the Swiss cheese I made of them, mister.
Cyke lifted his head in what he hoped was a cringing kicked-puppy fashion.
I’ll be good, please don’t hurt me again. “I found the file, but I didn’t manage to
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download it before the zap. And then I had other priorities, okay? Your stuff’s
safe.”
“I would very much like to believe you, Mr. Kellermann. But you could have
downloaded the file to a chip independent of your platform. And those get
smaller every year.”
Like your dick.
Cyke let his head hang. “Search me, then.”
“Not with those weapons still engaged.”
Oh fuck it. CTO asshole liked that idea way too much. Cyke had agreed too
readily, or maybe Mr. Bigshot was just getting a kick out of the humiliation. At
least the electric charges had given him enough juice to run his systems for a
while. He was starving and cold and sweaty, but he’d last.
“Disengage the prosthetics.”
He’d have preferred the blowjob. But he’d planned for this, knew it was the
only way he’d make it out of here alive.
The blocker cables allowed exactly one command: “Off.” Cyke sent it. Some
clicks, the hiss, and the pincers cracked open. The pain of the broken arm losing
its splint was immediate and enormous. He clenched his eyes and jaw against
another scream.
When he opened them again, there were two more people in the room. Both
in security uniforms. One had the beginnings of a serious black eye, courtesy of
Cyke’s fist during their earlier scuffle.
Mr. CTO nodded at Black Eye and said, “Captain, if you would?”
The guard stepped close and jerked the pincer gloves off, taking no heed of
the delicate neural pins buried in Cyke’s flesh and even less heed of his broken
arm. Cyke’s stomach heaved again. Worse, he was vulnerable with his arm so
visibly broken. Too easy to use it against him.
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To think he’d thought civilian contracting would be nicer than war.
Eventually he managed to calm his breathing and his churning stomach,
corral his wandering thoughts and control his fear. The blocker cables were gone.
Fuck, he hadn’t even noticed being untied.
“Strip.”
Strange, he hadn’t thought this day could get any worse.
“Time for that…blowjob?” he asked, wishing he felt even half the bravado
from earlier. This was wearing him down and fast.
The look Mr. CTO threw him made it clear he hadn’t appreciated Cyke’s
joke. And that he wasn’t kidding around. Cyke figured he’d better undress
before the SenTech goons did it for him. Alas, there were just some things he
couldn’t do with one arm broken and the other trembling beyond his control.
Like unbutton his fly.
The guards quickly lost their patience with his fumbling. For a moment it
was all grabbing hands and motion and pain, and then he was stretched out on
the desk, his arms pinned out to the sides. Not even exhaustion prevented that
scream. He focused on not falling unconscious as they stripped him. If he passed
out now, he’d never get out of here.
When the guards were finished, Mr. CTO regarded Cyke’s naked body with
all the emotion of a butcher. “Defenses down, if you would, Mr. Kellermann.”
His head was his last defensible bastion. Passing out naked was one thing.
But being spread open, hurt, out of options and brain-raped was a different
ballgame.
Asshole. Could have at least bought him dinner first.
“Can we agree you won’t scramble me, please?”
Entirely too real now, if still unlikely. Mr. CTO would have a lot of
explaining to do if he turned over a brain-dead robber. Guy was slick, though.
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Maybe he had a ready excuse. Fuck, Cyke didn’t even want to think about what
it’d be like…for him or for Bear.
“That depends on what I find.”
The threat was clear. If he found the file, he wouldn’t be happy having been
lied to. Cyke could only hope he hadn’t underestimated his enemy.
“Last chance to change your mind, Mr. Kellermann.”
“I’m telling the truth.”
Mr. CTO nodded, sat down by his keyboard and typed an entry command. It
was more a battering ram than a handshake, and Cyke flinched, jerked beneath
the guards’ restraining grips. Fucker. There was no call for this kind of force.
What followed was not a conversation, not even a cataloging. It was a
trashing, upending every box, every bit of furniture, knifing holes in the couch
cushions and shattering the lamps. Tearing down wallpaper and ripping up
floorboards. Some C4 on the vault door, despite it standing wide open already.
Fucker!
The invader found many things, but not what it was looking for. Fuck only
knew how long it looked, and looked, and looked some more. At last Cyke felt it
withdraw, gasped in a desperate breath and blinked tears from his eyes.
“Happy?” A croak, barely audible. Had he been screaming again?
Mr. CTO didn’t answer. “Scan him.”
Fuck, what now?
Cyke hadn’t realized how much he’d tensed at those words until he saw a
guard approach with a handheld x-ray and untensed. No pain, no damage. Just a
tissue scanner. Just like they’d planned.
The guard ran it over him, head to toe and back again. “No foreign objects,
sir,” he said.
“Check again.”
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Angry, disbelieving. Maybe even desperate? Fuck, he was probably just
imagining that last bit. Better than worrying that the broken bone would reveal
his secret.
Another scan, and another. Blessedly painless. “Still nothing, sir.”
“His clothes.”
Nothing, again. Cyke didn’t dare follow this with too much interest. Gently,
carefully, he examined the damage in his own head. Yeah, a reboot would be
good. Plus ten thousand calories and three days of sleep.
And some Lysol. Could you shower out the inside of your head?
Mr. CTO jerked the cable free of Cyke’s skull. Even that act, the act of release,
was performed with excessive force. It was one pain too many on top of all the
others. Cyke kicked and clawed and fought to stay conscious, but he lost.
Chapter Thirteen
Waiting was the worst.
No, scratch that. Not knowing was the worst. He’d heard the dispatch on the
radio, knew the cops had been sent to SenTech on a break-in. That was thirty-
seven minutes ago. Why didn’t they have Cyke safe in their custody yet? What
was taking so fucking long?
Bear paced the length of his living room, spun around and paced back. At
least no one had called for an ambulance yet.
Or the coroner.
No. Cyke was one tough son of a bitch. He’d be okay.
But just in case he wasn’t…
Bear plunked down on the couch, fingered the jump bag there he’d lifted
from the squad house, scrubbed both hands through his hair. God, he felt like a
fucking cop’s wife. He’d only known the man two months. Less, even. How had
he crawled so fast under Bear’s skin?
You always were a sucker for mangy strays, Bear.
Hot mangy strays.
Bear picked up his radio again, channel-surfed from dispatch to police to
ambulance and back. Still nothing. Well, at least nothing that concerned him.
Of rather large concern, however, was the sudden beeping of the perimeter
alarm.
Perimeter alarm. Listen to you.
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No time for scoffing at himself, though. This might be Cyke. He snatched up
his jump bag and ran to the security monitor Cyke had hooked up when he’d
laid the array around Bear’s block.
The neighborhood was shrouded in predawn. He saw nothing on visual but
shadows. But a switch to infrared revealed four bodies skulking down the street,
staying close under cover, arms raised to their chests. And there, contrasted clear
as day against the Predator-like vision of red man-shaped blobs, were little lines
and curves of coldness—guns in their hands.
Fuck. And to think he’d called Cyke paranoid for setting all this up.
For a moment Bear just stood there staring at the screen, at the men drawing
nearer to his house. He thought he should be afraid, but all he felt was that same
strange cloak of coolness he lived for, the charged calm that descended at
accident scenes, heart attacks, life or death left to his reflexes and quick thinking.
He was a professional. He knew what to do. Now was no different.
He pulled up the map Cyke had loaded to his cheat chip, the one that
marked Cyke’s safehouses all across the city. Four of them, the paranoid bastard.
A route blinked on the lens on his left eye, the path to their first-choice safehouse
on the north-northeast corner of town. If this one was compromised, he’d try the
second one.
But first he had to get out of here.
A glance at the monitor. The men were drawing in. Seventy-five yards,
maybe fifty. They were creeping as if hoping not to startle or warn him, which
meant they hadn’t detected Cyke’s sensors.
Bear grabbed the gear pack he and Cyke had assembled earlier, full of cash
and tools and jury-rigged sensors made more of duct tape and soldering than
spare parts. But they worked, more or less, and since he didn’t have Cyke’s mech
eye, these would have to do. He switched on the dynamic distortion field they’d
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rigged up and slung the pack on his back. Took one last look at his jump bag and
decided to bring it along. Cyke might be seriously injured. He didn’t want to be
caught without the tools to help him, no matter how awkward it was to haul
around.
Up the stairs, to the attic. No lights—they’d give him away. Pull out the vent
fan, climb through the hole. Tight fit with the backpack. He dragged the jump
bag out after him, balanced precariously on the sloping roof. Crawled. Steady,
steady. Eyes adjusting to the semidark. Now the hardest part: transfer to the
poplar tree out the back. He slung the jump bag over one shoulder, freed both
hands. Had to do this without making noise or he’d give himself away to the
approaching hit squad. Fuck Cyke anyway; it clearly hadn’t occurred to him
when he’d planned this route that most people didn’t have pincer gloves. If he
fell, he was a dead man, in more ways than one.
Three-foot leap. The branches were sturdy, nearly horizontal. Plenty to grab
onto to keep his balance. The tree would rustle, but so what. The neighborhood
was full of squirrels and cats, and if the distortion field worked like Cyke said it
would, like Bear thought it would, then the hit squad wouldn’t read him
anyway.
Smooth transfer. He kept in shape, and his hands were deft. Heart
thundering, but that was to be expected. Jesus, what he was doing for this man…
Slowly, slowly, he inched around the tree, stepping from one branch to the
next. Heard soft footfalls of the hit squad nearing his house. Inched to the next
tree, and the next, to the maple over the fence, into his neighbor’s yard. He heard
his door open. Not kicked in. They must have overridden the locks.
He was out of trees. Climbed down, careful. Lowest branch was stupidly
high off the ground, so he hugged to the trunk, half-shimmied half-fell. Hit the
ground softly, running.
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Cyke had taken his car. A taxi would be too dangerous—drivers could be
bribed to turn him in. He checked the map. 6.3 miles.
Fuck it, he was running.
Chapter Fourteen
Cyke woke to his clot-bots buzzing and his mind floating on an artificial
high. Sure, he couldn’t really feel the clot-bots swim through his veins any more
than he could feel individual blood cells, but he sensed a sort of pleasant, low-
frequency hum. Fuck, everything was kind of a pleasant hum right now. There
was pain, but it was happening to someone else. He couldn’t bring himself to
care about it. He flexed, tried to roll onto his side, and heard a metallic chink.
Handcuffed to the bed.
And not even the fun kind of handcuffed, with silk blindfolds and a super-
hot medigeek clad in leather.
Bear.
Oh, shit. Bear!
That thought was all it took to send him plummeting from his chemical high.
Bear was supposed to be here. Cyke was supposed to be free, exonerated, not
lying chained to a hospital bed. Fuck fuck fuck. What had gone wrong? Was Bear
okay?
Oh no. No no no. He hadn’t…had he?
Cyke probed back, cautiously, wincing at the memory of the mind-rape. So
many doors forced open, so many boxes overturned. Had they found Bear in
there?
Fuck.
And fuck again—he realized he was hooked up to monitors reporting on his
vitals. Forced himself still, settling into that sniper headspace where breath and
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heart and hands were all calm as breezeless night. I’m not awake. Don’t come
checking on me.
He had to get out of here. Right fucking now. Had to find Bear.
Thank God they’d contingency planned ahead of time, because between the
drugs and the pain and panic fighting to break free, he doubted he could have
kept his head straight.
Still, he needed to take stock. Analyze.
His broken arm had been set. Not healed—yet—and thankfully not casted
yet either. Swelling must have been too bad. Just an air splint, and a sling
holding the arm immobile to his chest. He flexed a little, braced for pain that
never hit. Strong drugs, yes, but that wasn’t all. The break must have been clean
enough for an injection of bone glue. No grating ends. Hopefully the glue hadn’t
caught the chip—that shit would never come off. And he didn’t think he’d
survive a fifth trip into the stinking bowels of Sentinel Tech.
Next came a diagnosis on his ’ware. While the filaments felt taut and a little
crisped from the unsophisticated application of Mr. CTO’s “car battery”, at least
the electricity flow had been steady. Passed through a modulator. The fucker
knew how delicate Cyke’s systems were, how best to power them directly, how
much pain he could inflict without frying them. Which meant he knew about the
army’s shielding techniques too. Though in fairness, Cyke’s systems were five
years old. The whole world might know about them by now.
He spent the next few minutes rebooting his systems, mostly to watch it all
come back alive and see what subroutines booted in the process. Mr. CTO could
have planted almost anything during the unprotected brain reaming Cyke had
endured. A virus. A sleeper worm. A power sink.
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Nothing. At least nothing he could find. Most systems green, if sluggish.
Some communications were down. Interfaces fried from the server zap. But the
eye worked, and he could still access his database, so it was good enough.
Where were his gloves? Not the sort of thing the cops would leave lying
around, but hopefully they had them. He hated to think of his babies wrapping
round Mr. CTO’s clumsy fucking ape arms.
Odd, how that thought made him giggle. Fucking drugs. And ow, fucking
cracked ribs.
Shit. Heartbeat. Calm.
Fuck calm. Easier just to jack the hospital monitor and slave it to his platform
chip. There. Piece of cake. Took less than a minute to assemble a repeater code
with 3% +/- random variance on the readouts. Now he could unplug and no one
would be the wiser.
Okay, now talk to the handcuffs, baby.
Two pairs. Boy, they must not trust him at all. One was electronic, and he
hacked that in, oh, five minutes. Sloppy, sloppy. Cops should know better.
The other cuff was mechanical. Easy enough to strip the wires from his
discarded monitor pads, twist them into two stiff pins. Barely even had to move
his broken arm for it. Less easy, however, to pick the lock one-handed, especially
when the one hand was gimped. Five more minutes of sweating, nauseous
struggle.
No good, couldn’t do it. Could, however, unscrew the bed rail. Pincers
would have helped. The bolts were small, screwed down tight. His finger slipped
and the nail ripped off. The world wavered, grayed.
Keep moving, bitch! Stop being such a fucking girl!
“You know, Sarge, guys cry too,” he muttered tonelessly.
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There. Done. He pried the unscrewed corner of the rail away from the
bedframe with his good hand, slid the cuff out.
Cyke rubbed his wrist, clutched at his arm, swung his legs over the bed and
waited for the world to stop swimming. Damn long wait. Hurry the fuck up, clot-
bots. Whoa, naked beneath the gown. Where were his pants? More importantly,
his boots? Ah, there, cabinet beside the bed. The disaster of getting dressed
would have been comic if it hadn’t been happening to him.
Still, so far so good. He tiptoed up to the closed door, peered out through the
viewing window. His room was right opposite the nurses’ station. And a cop
catching up on coffee and a trashy magazine. He hadn’t realized cops were so
into cheap-ass celebrity sob stories.
Okay, so, no getting out of here while still a fugitive. Fuck, he needed to get
to Bear, but the colder, more rational part of him knew he’d be no good to the
man in his current state and even less good with half the cops in the city on his
ass. He had to retrieve the chip first, clear his name.
But he didn’t dare ask the cop or the doctors. They might be on SenTech’s
unofficial payroll. They’d want to put him under to get the chip out. If they stole
it, he was fucked. He had to get it out, now, himself, and make the surveillance
record as public as fucking possible before anyone could take it, erase it, or just
up and kill him.
He eyed the cabinets lining the far wall. Everything neatly labeled, how
convenient. These locks were easy to pick now that his good hand was free.
Forceps, gauze, tape, tourniquet, betadine, disposable scalpels, a suture kit.
Lidocaine would’ve been nice, but he hadn’t really expected it.
He settled instead for a little ACE bandage, which he shoved between his
teeth. Tied the rubber tourniquet around his upper arm to constrict blood flow,
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swabbed the area with antiseptic. Brought up a schematic of the human arm on
his cheat chip, noted the big veins and nerves.
Now he only had to miss them on the way in. It would have been easier with
the pincer gloves. They’d have steadied the shaking caused by pain and strain.
And Jesus fuck, was there ever pain. He’d been cut before, but this… Digging to
the bone, scraping off the glue with a scalpel and pushing inside with forceps…
He hated to admit it, but in a way, SenTech’s frigid server had done him a
favor. Cyke appreciated not having to break the bone himself without a laser
scalpel, and they didn’t leave those lying around in patients’ rooms.
His clot-bots started pinging, louder and louder, as if with indignation that
he’d fuck himself up so bad. His eyes were streaming too. Good thing he didn’t
need to see anymore. But he damn well needed to stay conscious, and that was
starting to look shaky.
Come on, come on, where are you, you little fucker?
His arm was a mess. He made the mistake of looking at it through the film of
tears, saw the forceps buried in his bleeding arm, felt the spongy give of bone
marrow beneath the tool, and his gorge rose in his throat. He pushed against the
ACE bandage mashed between his teeth with his tongue, growled into the cloth,
paused to wipe his forehead on his bare shoulder.
And…there! Yes. Thank fuck.
He sat down heavily—fuck sat, asshole, you collapsed—on the floor, back
pressed to a cabinet, shaking and sweating and trying not to puke.
But it was all worth it when he had the tiny cylinder in his blood-smeared
fingers.
His eyes had closed. Fuck. No. He didn’t have time for this. Patch up.
Upload. Save Bear.
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He took one look at the suture kit and let his head thunk back against the
cabinet. Fuck, what he’d gone through to shield this chip from scanners, hide this
data…
Three seconds of self-pity, bitch. No more.
Once, in a grammar school home-ec class, he’d accidentally sewn a sampler
pillow to his pants. Despite the standard SF field medical training, he’d never
really gotten any better with a needle and thread. He was doing a botch job now,
but who the fuck cared. Like you could even tell amidst the other botch-job of
getting the chip out. At least it sealed the wound enough to help the clot-bots. He
could already feel them mobilizing, see the moving metallic shimmer building at
the edges of the wound. He bound his arm tight, stood on wobbly legs and used
his good hand and his teeth to get the air-splint back on.
Once he was no longer leaking all over the floor, he examined his loot.
Looked intact. No bone glue plugging up its port. It was the wrong size to jack
directly into the hospital computer system, so he jacked it into his own first, then
jacked himself into the chart tablet hanging off the end of his bed.
The file was complete, uncorrupted. It downloaded to the hospital network
in seconds. The surveillance record sat somewhat oddly between the welcome
pack for new arrivals and the public well-wishing forum, but that couldn’t be
helped.
He watched with satisfaction as the hospital system crawler found the new
file—conveniently tagged “general access” and “important, please distribute”—
and began to multiply it over all ninety-five hospitals in the network, the very
best in worldwide post-traumatic care.
Fuel low.
Speaking of post-trauma, he needed food.
And then he needed to find Bear.
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A quick check of the supply cabinets unearthed some tubes of glucose paste.
The cloying empty sweetness was worse than eating a tub of frosting, but he was
used to it after all these years, and it fueled him in seconds. He put two tubes in
his pockets for later.
Though it killed him to sit still and do nothing while Bear was out there
somewhere in danger, he knew he had no choice. He couldn’t risk approaching a
SenTech stooge, and of those there were many on the police force. Time to put
the stupid hospital gown back on, get back into bed—and oh, the relief he felt at
that, much as he hated himself for it—relock the handcuffs, reattach the monitor
wires and wait for someone to notice the file. Several someones at once, if he
were lucky.
Someones who wouldn’t kill Bear, just out of spite, when they realized the
game was up.
Chapter Fifteen
Somehow, Cyke slept. He’d soldiered long enough to know you took your
rest when you could find it…but you also took it with one eye open. When the
door to his hospital room opened, he was wide awake, borrowed scalpel blade
clenched between his fingers, just in case.
Police. Two officers with that swaggering gait. Both looked around, then one
stepped up to the bed. His partner wandered toward the TV screen mounted by
the cabinets. Had he smelled the blood and pieced the story together?
The policeman near the bed studied him. “Major Victor Kellermann?”
No. Santa Claus, asshole. If he weren’t, he’d hardly give his game away like
that. The rank made him pause though. No need for courtesies, surely, if they
thought him a breaker piece of trash.
The cop stepped close, hands out and open. Unthreatening, like he thought
Cyke might bite, even though Cyke’s scalpel was hidden beneath the blankets.
Cyke watched, wary but not openly hostile, as the cop released the electronic
cuff. Then the mechanical one. Task done, the man stepped back immediately.
Two steps. Cyke kept the scalpel between his fingers and sat up.
“You’re free to leave, Major.” A slight quirk of the lips, a crack in the serious
facade. “Though your doctor recommends against it.”
Cyke noticed the other cop playing with the TV remote. “Why’s that? Not
the second part.”
The other cop turned around as the TV behind him came to life. Stock market
news? What the…?
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Share price of Sentinel Tech Inc. down fifteen percent. Ouch. That was just a
few billion out of pocket. In a bright red box above the running share prices was
Sentinel CTO Arrested on Undisclosed Charges. Above that, looping footage of the
fucker’s arrest outside the SenTech building. Head down, hands cuffed, flanked
by police and reporters.
Very hard to not give the asshole a salutary middle finger.
“Ah,” Cyke said. “And they dropped the charges?”
“Your charges, yes. As for their CTO, there’s an internal investigation
pending. They’ll want to speak with you. We will too, when you’re feeling up to
it.”
Cyke felt a grim smile spreading across his lips. “I’ll be sure to bill the board
at my usual rate.” Times four. And maybe some hazard pay. How exactly did one
invoice for torture? He’d have to get creative on the line items.
Not exactly his first priority right now, though. Focus.
“What about Bear?”
Not, mind you, that he thought the cops would even know who Bear was. Or
maybe they did, but that might be worse. After all, they’d have no call to know
unless something bad had happened.
“Bear?” the cop by the TV asked.
“Not the medic?” said his partner.
“Yes. You know him?” A flash of jealousy before he could suppress it. An
even bigger flash of fear. Beneath the blanket, his fingers tightened around the
scalpel.
“Sure, yeah. Run into his crew all the time.”
Cyke shot out of bed and started throwing his clothes back on. Still kind of a
comedy act with one arm screaming and no balance—and worse, he had to drop
the scalpel—but he couldn’t afford to baby himself now. “Check on him.”
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The cop gave him a stare, but clicked his radio. A moment later, Cyke heard
the request in stereo: in his ears and in his head. A quick confirmation. A patrol
car in the area would check. Well, that saved maybe five minutes. Cyke stepped
into his boots and nearly fell over when he bent down to tie the laces. God
fucking damn it. He didn’t have time for this shit.
“I’ve dispatched a patrol,” the cop said, eyeing Cyke like he was out of his
fucking mind. Who knew, maybe he was.
I know, growled the part of him not fully occupied with his laces. Velcro from
now on. Hadn’t been able to use it in the desert, but it’d work here just fine.
“Well, send me a text when you have news,” Cyke said. He finished fighting
with the laces, headed for the door. Stopped. “My gloves?”
“Evidence, I’m afraid.”
“Don’t break them,” Cyke said with a snarl. “I’ll come pick them up.”
The cop took another half step back. “Where are you going?”
“None of your business. And yes, I feel fine. Go do something useful.” He
didn’t mean to be that angry, but worry gnawed at him. And he was definitely
not fine. He was injured and weaponless but for a scalpel he could barely muster
the coordination to hold, let alone use. Biggest issue would be to find something
more effective on the way.
And not pass out in the elevator. That would be just too ironic.
The receptionist called him a taxi, whose driver was happy to part with his
Taser for a credit transfer of unreasonable proportions.
Still, problem solved.
Cyke gave the driver the location to his nearest safehouse. Better to stop half
a mile out, beyond the carrying distance of the engine noise, but he was in no
shape to walk that far now. He settled for a rundown shoe store around the
block, stumble-climbed out of the cab—ignoring the cabbie’s “Hey, you okay,
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buddy?”—and set off at a lope about as stealthy as toddlers at hide-n-seek. But
hey, at least he looked like a drunk-ass vagrant. Maybe they’d mistake him for
one if he were spotted.
In the alley now between the shoe store and a used furniture outlet, twenty
yards from the Stor-it-All. Get an “e”, fuckers, you’re not clever. Whatever, he
hardly ever came here anyway.
His mech eye was working again, even if he did have to wrestle it from
mode to mode. Fuck it hurt, and he’d damn well had enough of his body’s
bitching today. If not for Bear, he’d have fallen right down in the alley and slept
it off for the next three days.
You can sleep when you’re dead, soldier.
No EM. No radiation. No heat signature. He sent an IR handshake to his
security system and got no response. The place was empty now, but someone
had been here long enough to disable his defenses.
The CTO’s hit squad, obviously.
Nerves jingling with exhaustion, he stalked toward the storage unit, found
the door jimmied open. No finesse. Didn’t people take pride in their work
anymore?
Cyke found himself pausing outside the opened door. Couldn’t look. What if
Bear was in there, just…dead, throat cut, lying in a puddle of his own cooled
blood—
No. Move it, bitch.
Cyke pushed the door open, sucked in and then blew out a breath so big it
made him dizzy. Bear wasn’t here. If he’d ever been, he’d left no trace. Hopefully
he’d realized it was compromised and vanished before anyone was the wiser.
Cyke gritted his teeth and trudged back to the shoe store to hail another cab
to safehouse number two.
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Same routine as before. This time, his defense system returned the
handshake, confirming what his thermal scan had already revealed—one warm,
healthy, Bear-shaped body inside the building. For the dozenth time today, Cyke
feared he might pass out, but at least this time it was from relief.
He opened the door. The familiar smell of chili con tofu made him smile.
Lukewarm, no doubt. Bear was sitting on the cot, fork halfway to his mouth,
Taser pointed toward the door.
“Don’t shoot,” Cyke said. “And for God’s sake, don’t eat that. I’m buying
dinner.”
Lofty words for an unconscious man. The moment of joy at seeing Cyke was
quickly overridden by the man collapsing in the doorway. Jesus Christ, what had
he gotten himself into now?
Bear hoisted Cyke onto the bed, ran a hand scan. Vitals were all over the
place, three ribs cracked, his arm clearly broken, and holy fuck, had he tried to
dig that chip out with his bare fingers? What a fucking mess.
Bear reached for his jump bag, glad he’d gone through the effort to drag it
along on this merry chase, when Cyke reached out and grabbed his wrist.
“Leave it,” Cyke said. “I’m fine.”
Yeah, right. Macho asshole. Stupid, stubborn—
“It’s been a rough day. The bots can patch me up, but only you can take care
of this, so get your ass over here and kiss me.”
Bear followed Cyke’s pointing finger and noted the impressive bulge in his
pants. The urge to wrap his mouth around it, right through the fabric, was nearly
overwhelming. But… “You’re crazy.”
“Probably.” Cyke’s lips quirked. “And shit hot. You gonna stand there
staring or put that down your throat?”
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Good luck. He’d certainly try. The deadpan tone just begged to be broken
into moans and breathless begging. But… “I don’t want to hurt you.”
“Covered by my health insurance. It’s part of the contract.”
“Complimentary blowjobs from the nursing staff?”
“Full service. Yeah.” Cyke grinned at him. He was enjoying that medical
kink way too much, Bear thought, but he could work with it. Cyke seemed to be
a bit of a pain junkie, but he could work with that too. Or maybe this was just
Cyke’s way of dealing with enforced passivity, since his body wasn’t exactly up
for taking the lead right now. Clearly, Cyke didn’t do passive very well—unless
he needed so badly he couldn’t even think.
“Well,” Bear said, leaning in close and running his hand scanner from Cyke’s
toes to his waist—and no, he wasn’t teasing, not at all. “From the waist down, I
see no medical issues.”
“Yeah, just ignore my head.” Cyke laughed, but stilled almost immediately
with a wince. “And the ribs. And the arm. Get to it.”
Bear bent down and rubbed his face against the bulge in Cyke’s pants,
grinning at the twitch that caused, at the audible inhale. “You’re still high on
adrenaline.”
Cyke nodded. “And narcotics too. But I’m a consenting adult.”
“Demanding adult, more like.” Bear traced the outline of Cyke’s cock with
his lips, watching Cyke’s stomach tense. “It will hurt.”
“Not compared to the rest of my day, it won’t.”
That removed the last of Bear’s hesitation. Wild thoughts of what Cyke must
have endured today crowded his head. How could he deny the man a chance to
wash it all away with sensation, affection, orgasm? If Cyke said the tradeoff was
worth it, then it was worth it.
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Bear unbuttoned Cyke’s fly and pulled the man’s pants down, strong legs
taut beneath the sliding fabric. Boots and socks too. Cyke tensed, hips shifting up
off the mattress. Asking without asking. Wanting to be touched. Wanting him.
Bear opened Cyke’s legs a little, bent one knee and kissed his way up the
thigh. Cyke smelled of sweat, exertion, adrenaline, fear. Could have used a
shower, but whatever—Bear found the rawness of it all a surprisingly huge turn-
on.
Cyke gasped as Bear reached his balls, licked them, sucked them into his
mouth, his face brushing the inside of Cyke’s thigh and groin with every small
motion. Cyke hissed with pleasure—Bear hoped—his good arm touching Bear’s
shoulder, neck, face, fingers exploring everything they could reach.
Bear felt Cyke’s arousal in his own body, held carefully still for fear of
hurting the man more—though admittedly, the urge to strangle him for getting
hurt in the first place was strong. He pulled back, letting Cyke’s balls slip from
his mouth through his teeth. Cyke jumped a little, but stilled again when Bear
licked up the length of his cock.
Cyke’s blissed-out expression made it awfully hard to remember how angry
Bear was supposed to be. He kissed the head of Cyke’s cock, flicked his tongue
around and across it, taking his time to push Cyke from squirming to writhing.
Control breached, he swallowed down more, drawing out the gasps and moans
he’d wanted, remembered.
He’d craved that. Worried he’d never have it again. That Cyke would get
himself killed or just up and walk away. Hard to say which would have been
worse.
“That…that sexual healing…thing…totally works,” Cyke panted. “Keep
going.”
Bear snorted. “Don’t kid yourself.” Or flatter me. “Just endorphins.”
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“’s fine, just… Come on, Bear…”
Wow, getting Cyke to babble was fun. Getting him beyond words would be
even more fun. Bear took hold of Cyke’s hips—didn’t want him moving so much
he’d hurt himself, after all—and unleashed every trick he knew.
Slow and deep, a swipe of the tongue along the underside of the head, a little
dip into the slit, thumb pressed between his balls, fingers plying them with
gentle pressure. Mouth back down, all the way, a hum, a swallow, throat muscles
working around the shaft. Then faster again, meeting Cyke’s eyes, blown pupils
with a rim of blue, full of lust and want and pure raw need. Cyke was all his now,
open and vulnerable, and Bear understood what that meant for this particular
man, how much it meant.
Gear lube in his tech bag. He groped for it with one hand while the other
played at Cyke’s balls and ass, while his lips and teeth and tongue kept up their
work on Cyke’s cock. Yes, there. Handles. Zipper. Side compartment. He fished
out the oil and coated his fingers without letting up on Cyke.
When he sucked down Cyke’s cock again, he pushed two fingers inside him.
Cyke cursed, arched up against the restraining arm Bear had slung across his
hips. Bear held perfectly still until Cyke calmed, grinning around the erection
straining past his lips. At last the tension flowed from Cyke’s back, and his legs
fell open.
The tight heat around Bear’s fingers demanded more attention than the
blowjob had, muscles clenching and flexing, hips jerking in tiny, self-restrained
motion. Cyke seemed too close already, so Bear pulled off his cock and
concentrated on fucking him with his fingers. Just two, no more, dragging across
his prostate with every second or third thrust. Cyke moaned, but wasn’t
begging—yet. He took everything in stride—madness, pain, need—and just kept
going. Bear meant to change that.
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He pushed Cyke’s legs open wider, and Cyke’s eyes opened, glittering with
intent, his face flushed and bare. His good hand came down again, brushed
across Bear’s cheek. Bear turned his head, captured those wandering fingers in
his mouth and Cyke’s wrist in his free hand.
Cyke winced, and Bear let go, wondering what he’d done. Ah, Cyke’s wrist.
Red, chafed, swollen.
Bear tried very, very hard not to imagine what had caused that.
Cyke sideswiped Bear’s descent into anger by taking Bear’s chin in his hand.
“Next time,” he said, “you can tie me down.” He grinned—a downright impish
little quirk of the lips—and wiggled his ass against the fingers Bear still had
buried there.
And if that didn’t take Bear’s mind right off of— What the hell had he been
thinking of again? He grinned back, gave Cyke two hard thrusts right across the
prostate, and said over Cyke’s gasp, “Maybe I will.”
“Hah. You would.” Cyke lifted his one good arm over his head and wrapped
his fingers around the frame of the cot. Didn’t look like he planned on letting go
anytime soon, either, not even as Bear turned his focus back to fucking Cyke.
And it was fucking, not preparation. Nothing slow or gentle about it. Cyke’s
moans came louder and louder, his hips and legs thrashing even as his good arm
remained where it was, clutching at the bedframe. He was grinning like a wolf,
clearly enjoying his self-imposed restraint, and Bear couldn’t help but imagine
some real restraints as he worked his fingers faster.
Maybe he’d “borrow” a set of four-points from the hospital, or
maybe…maybe he’d strap Cyke to a backboard. The man had hated that, and
wow, did that ever hold ten new kinds of promise. That beautiful body bound
naked and helpless, a set of steel rings around that swollen cock and balls…
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103
“Bear,” Cyke gritted out, hips straining against the arm still slung across
them, every muscle and tendon in his good arm standing stark beneath the skin.
“Bear, fuck, mercy.”
“Which of those?”
“I haven’t…killed anyone today. Please…don’t make me break…that
streak.”
Today? It hit Bear that Cyke wasn’t entirely joking. Bear saved lives, while
Cyke…
But, no. Cyke had surely killed, but he wasn’t a killer. He was a soldier.
White hat. Different. Cyke lacked malice, was absent cruelty. He was…what had
Cyke said about himself? A good guy.
Bear stood just long enough to shove his pants off, then lay down behind
Cyke, who rolled on his good side and almost over onto his stomach. Bear held
him back with an arm around his waist and nudged one of Cyke’s legs out of the
way with one of his own.
When he pushed into Cyke’s oily heat, Cyke shuddered and pressed back,
moaning low and broken. Bear held him tight, rocked into him gently, a
desperate tenderness building in his chest with every motion, every breath. He
kissed the side of Cyke’s neck, and Cyke grinned wide, elated, relaxed despite
the tension in his body.
Cyke moaned when Bear reached around with a still-slick hand to jerk him
off, barked a grunt of surprise when Bear kissed his neck and touched lips to the
metallic port just past the hairline. Bear gave it a lick. A little acrid tingle, like
touching your tongue to a 9-volt battery, but Cyke went ramrod tense in his
arms, muscles spasming almost painfully tight around Bear’s cock as Bear
probed his new discovery with his tongue.
Rachel Haimowitz and Aleksandr Voinov
104
Maybe he should slow down, hold back, but he was far too intrigued by
what he’d found, enjoyed taking control of this man far too much, and his own
climax was looming close as Cyke pressed back against him, increasingly frantic,
trying to match rhythm for rhythm.
Bear made that easy—he stopped moving.
“Bastard,” Cyke growled.
“You do it,” Bear whispered, flicking his tongue across Cyke’s jack again,
offering Cyke his tight fist to fuck while he fucked Cyke’s ass slow and steady,
forcing the man to push for his own orgasm. Cyke would hate him for it, but
right now the endorphins were masking it all. The man was desperate but not in
pain, and oh good God could it be any hotter to feel Cyke grinding against him,
thrusting back onto his cock and forward into his hand with ever-growing speed
and hunger as he pursued his climax with the same single-minded intensity that
had made him so damn sexy in the first place?
Cyke came just moments before Bear did, very nearly shouting, and Bear
held him tight and close until, some minutes after the buzz had faded and their
breathing had calmed, Cyke said, “Ribs, Bear.”
Cyke groaned as Bear let go, rolled over onto his back, head turned toward
Bear. He looked utterly calm, sated, maybe even happy. So very different from
the pinched or haunted expressions he usually wore. It was possible, suddenly,
to imagine a normal Cyke, one who didn’t live in a storage unit, one who didn’t
cloister himself away like a monk or distrust every person who crossed his path.
Bear rested on his elbow, watching that new face, so beautiful in its peace,
studying its smoothed lines and planes until sleep drew him gently down.
Chapter Sixteen
Cyke woke early in the evening, Bear still asleep beside him, their limbs
pressed tight and tangled. He was sore, and he kind of had to piss, and his left
foot, wedged between both of Bear’s, was dead asleep, but not even wild horses
could have dragged him from this bed right now.
He rubbed his cheek against the arm pillowing his head, reveling for a
moment in Bear’s smooth skin, firm muscle, in the scent of him, in the taste of
clean dried sweat. Bear made a happy little sighing sound in his sleep, and Cyke
grinned against the man’s arm.
Fuck, I could really get used to this.
But…responsibilities first. He flipped his internal tuner to the police band,
listening briefly. Force of habit more than anything, though he was still
understandably on edge from this morning’s events. He hated the idea that Mr.
CTO might know his secrets. Nothing was safe, not the places he hid his data or
his money, not the places he hid himself.
Fortunately, he’d fallen through the cracks of polite society. Easy enough to
make a new ID, a new life. He could stay invisible forever. Untrackable. A
nobody. A machine, brought to life only when someone set him a task. Like a
clot-bot. Go, fix that ruptured cell.
God, but it sounded depressing when he thought of it like that. And he
thought it might be time to change all that. He was no machine.
He changed all his passwords, moved his assets around. This job had paid
well. Just like the ones before. He had money—not enough to retire, true, but
Rachel Haimowitz and Aleksandr Voinov
106
enough to be comfortable for a long, long time. So why was he living like a
cockroach in the dark?
Especially when he could live with Bear instead.
“Because I’m a fuckup.”
Bear slept on, though Cyke suspected the man might have agreed if he’d
been awake to hear it.
And a chicken too.
But… No, maybe not. After all, he’d made it through Special Forces training,
through nearly ten years of the blackest black ops in every godforsaken fuckhole
on the planet. If he could do all that and come out the other side, if he could trust
every person in his unit with his life, how hard could it be to trust a single man—
a healer, even—with his heart?
He’d done it once before, after all. And if that hadn’t ended as well as he’d
hoped, well…
“Fuck, Bear.” Soft, a whisper against the sheets. “You just gotta bear with me
while I figure out how, okay? But I will. I promise I will.”
He inched over in the dark, closer to Bear, cursed under his breath when he
jostled his arm. Finally he managed to press skin to skin again, to sling one leg
over Bear’s and rest his head on Bear’s shoulder. Bear snuffled in his sleep,
shimmied closer and curled his arm around Cyke’s back without waking. Cyke
smiled. Hibernating indeed.
Cyke craned his neck to place a lingering kiss on the corner of Bear’s slack
mouth. Somehow, these past weeks, Bear had become as integral to his system as
his platform chip, had planted just as many tendrils in his head and his heart.
And it was no less thrilling than the first time Cyke had woken to a new
presence, a new awareness in his mind.
To a whole new world of possibilities.
About the Authors
Rachel Haimowitz is an M/M erotic romance author and a freelance writer
and editor. She originally dipped her toes into cable news and book publishing,
decided the water was cold and smelled kinda funny, and moved on to help
would-be authors polish and publish, write for websites and magazines, and
ghostwrite nonfiction.
, on twitter as
www.facebook.com/rachel.haimowitz
chatting in the Goodreads forums, and blogging every M/W/F at
. She loves to hear from folks, so feel free to drop her a
Aleksandr Voinov is an emigrant German author living near London.
Originally, he studied medieval history with a focus on military history, but he
then moved to London, where he works as an editor for an investment bank. His
professor would be proud—or horrified—if he knew.
, blogging at
www.aleksandrvoinov.blogspot.com
, on Twitter:
The wolf races in where the human heart trembles to follow.
Moon Run
© 2011 Joely Skye
Wolf Town, Book 3
Iain’s head has called Wolf Town home for six years. His heart, hurt by a
childhood spent suppressing his wolf, won’t let him believe he isn’t one misstep
away from exile.
During the first moon run of the year, the electrifying connection his wolf
makes with Teo, the pack’s beta and resident doctor, has potential mate written all
over it. Yet the only emotion that rises above the tangled scars of his past is
excitement over ensuring a permanent place in Wolf Town.
Teo can’t believe Iain so easily crashed through his rock-solid resolve never
to date within the pack. The young wolf’s artless, fumbling explanation for his
attraction only serves to remind Teo why he set those rules—his own past in a
dysfunctional pack. Guilt that he let Iain so far under his skin forces Teo to do
the one thing his heart rails against. Keep it clinical.
Teo’s apparent rejection not only breaks Iain’s heart, it triggers a deep-seated
desperation that pushes him to take a terrible chance for the sake of the pack.
And to show Teo their connection is no illusion.
Warning: Contains explicit m/m sex for all the wrong reasons, all the right reasons,
and a relationship that starts out on the wrong paw.
Enjoy the following excerpt for Moon Run:
After plonking his beer on the side table, Teo turned back just as Iain reached
him. He grabbed Iain by the arms—not what he’d been expecting. He thought
Teo would stand, get out of the way. He thought he was chasing Teo out of his
apartment so he could stop feeling this shitty emotion of regret and hurt. Too
easily hurt, that was him. But he’d forgotten—because his wolf instincts were
worth shit—that Teo was beta and didn’t stand down from challenges, even
stupid ones from the pack idiot.
They glared at each other, Teo’s what the fuck expression sapping Iain of some
of his anger. He pulled his legs under him, even as Teo continued to hold him,
not allowing him closer, not pushing him away either. Iain’s knees now leaned
against Teo’s strong thigh, and he reacted. Of course he did.
Not how it fucking went, this dance. No. But still, the press against that
thigh, the pressure of those large hands on his arms—Iain shuddered in reaction.
And when Teo didn’t throw him aside, Iain leaned in and placed his face in the
crook between neck and shoulder, while his chest rested against Teo’s side.
Needy. Never enough. It put people off. He should know. He’d done it
before. He was always like this, unless they got down to the fucking right away.
Goddammit. But still he breathed in Teo, soaking up the physical
contact…waiting for Teo to gingerly extract himself from this embarrassing
display, or for his body to become tense with displeasure at the unexpected
embrace.
Just a little longer…
What was going on here? Besides the obvious. A part of Teo wanted to shove
Iain away, but the idea of sending him sprawling caused Teo pain. It was the
oddest embrace he could remember, his hands on a man’s arms while he leaned
against him.
And yet it had been too long. His body was reacting, hard. He was a fool,
Teo thought a little grimly, to think he could focus elsewhere. He’d been
ignoring his basic nature as if he thought he didn’t require…
…this.
Not wanting to leave bruises on Iain’s arms, he slowly relaxed his grip and
tried to work out a course of action, a way to extract himself from this situation.
“Iain,” he said in a low voice.
“Don’t speak.” The words were muffled against his collarbone. “Better that
way. Just…go.”
There was his out—and yet it wasn’t. Iain was waiting to be pushed away,
expecting it, and that bothered Teo. He also didn’t understand. Admittedly he
hadn’t paid close attention, but he was pretty sure Iain was popular among the
guys who liked guys, and not only in a theoretical way.
He slid a hand over Iain’s shoulder and down his back, the thin T-shirt
allowing him to feel the musculature as well as the bumps dotting Iain’s spine.
The motion made Iain breathe in hard, and arousal seemed to thicken in the
air.
Don’t lead him on. That was wrong, yes. Teo didn’t do that.
End it now, Teo told himself sternly, except his conscience, if that’s what it
was, faltered. Because ending it here and now, well, that felt wrong too.
His wolf wanted Iain. That desire had been stifled while Teo kept his
distance and practiced medicine in the town. But there was no distance between
them at this moment.
Iain mouthed his neck and Teo jerked.
“Iain.” The word came out more intense, like a command, and Iain raised his
face, darkened eyes gazing into Teo’s, and he could imagine his eyes were
similarly black with dilation. “I’m your doctor.”
The pad of Iain’s thumb came to rest on Teo’s lips, rubbed back and forth
over his mouth, and Teo hardened further.
“No.” Iain traced Teo’s lips. “I don’t like doctors. I don’t go to them. I don’t
go to you.” That thumb pressed into the corner of Teo’s mouth, stroked just
slightly, making Teo want to open his mouth for a kiss.
Iain placed his palm on the curve of Teo’s jaw, and he felt mesmerized by
this attention to his face.
“You are not my doctor, okay?”
“Look—”
Iain’s lips came to rest on Teo’s, not quite a kiss but making it difficult to
speak, his thumb connected to the tender skin, his palm a caress on his jawline.
“Tell me what you want.”
Teo’s chest heaved once. He was the beta. He didn’t fuck around. But
somehow Iain’s hand slid down Teo’s chest and into his sweats. It wrapped
around his dick, and he jerked a second time.
It had been too long. And Iain was too goddamn appealing. His moral
weakness should have appalled Teo, except his wolf insisted this felt right, and
Teo generally listened to his wolf, who had never led him astray, even at the
worst of times.
Iain kept his mouth on Teo, this not-quite-kiss. “Tell me.”
Tell him what? Teo had lost track of the conversation.
And it was too late. This was a type of intimacy anyway. Iain was not his
patient, not yet at least, and there weren’t actual fucking rules about betas and
sex. Those were all in Teo’s head. The rules to make life right and avoid past
mistakes.
Teo’s head emptied out, what with Iain stroking him, making his body
thrum with pleasure, a thumb gliding over the slit before the stroking resumed.
“Christ.” His voice sounded hoarse, and Iain grinned.
“Allow me.” Iain slid down Teo’s body, entirely pleasurable, and brought
Teo’s sweats and boxers with him. Then, hands on Teo’s hips, Iain licked the
glans, setting off a series of jolts through Teo’s body.
Iain’s tongue swirled around the head of his cock, and Teo groaned. There
was expertise here he could appreciate. Iain moved his tongue down the
underside of Teo’s dick, approaching his balls.
Teo slammed his hands on the couch. “Jesus.”
Both balls were pulled gently into Iain’s mouth, even while he kept his grip
on Teo’s hips, a massaging movement with his palms. As Iain took Teo in his
mouth again, Teo brought his hands to Iain’s shoulders, let the feel of them, the
tendons, the bones beneath skin, become familiar terrain, a kind of knowledge of
touch, even as Iain rose and fell, establishing a rhythm.
There are more elusive things than water in this wasteland.
The Mercenary
© 2011 Cornelia Grey
Now that a monstrous London machine has stolen the clouds from the sky,
Asher Connor survives by selling his mercenary skills to transport water across
York’s wasted moorland. Until his unit is attacked by a pack of Tamer-controlled
wolves, and his ingenious mechanical arm fails.
He awakens, surprised to find he’s still alive—and dependent on a charming,
attractive, utterly infuriating desert-dweller. The copper-eyed, untamed Gabriel is
Asher’s only hope. At least until he reaches a technician who can repair his arm.
Reluctant trust turns to desire in the wake of another Tamer attack, and the
adrenaline rush locks them in a bond of wildfire lust.
Yet despite Gabriel's deceptively relaxed attitude, he is dangerously focused.
When they get to London, Asher manages to work out only part of the reason.
His lover is connected to some kind of underground movement that’s got
something big in the works. So big, even quick-with-a-comeback Gabriel is
maddeningly tight-lipped.
When betrayal brings the plan crashing down, Asher is plunged into a battle
that wasn’t his to fight—and if he doesn’t execute the final stage, Gabriel’s blood
could be on his hands.
Warning: This title contains hot mansex, mild but manly swearing, jealousy
possibly leading to yet more hot mansex, ancestral rituals, frightening flying machines,
clockwork owls, inopportune admirers and the complicity of odd scientists.
Enjoy the following excerpt for The Mercenary:
It happened fast.
The half-unhinged door creaked loudly as it was pushed open and a soiled
bandaged figure entered the room, the smoked goggle lenses capturing minute
glitters of tarnished light. Asher, crouched behind a massive wooden crate, could
see the contours of Gabriel’s shape melt in the shadows behind the wooden door,
the merest glint revealing his eyes. The first figure stepped inside, scanning the
doorways leading out of the hall, and a second, stouter man followed. They were
short, their limbs thick and stocky—
—and Gabriel struck, arm shooting out to grab a handful of bandages and
haul the man backward. Asher had the time to place one shot and launched
himself at the first figure as it staggered, absorbing the impact of the bullet,
hands already reaching through the wrappings for weapons. Asher lurched at
the man and clasped his chest with the unreliable strength of his brass arm,
aiming to crush ribs. A jerk in the mechanism alerted him of an untimely
malfunction. The butt of his gun collided with the man’s skull, then smashed one
of his lenses—Asher grunted as he felt the pressure of small hooked weights
lodging themselves in his side, stopped by the thick leather vest that wrapped
his abdomen. He thrust the barrel of his weapon between the bandages on the
stranger’s chest and fired, the recoil shooting up his arm to viciously tear at his
shoulder. An unmanly howl resounded in the room as the man clawed at him
with thick fingers, one reddened eye rolling wildly behind the shattered goggles.
At the edge of his vision, Asher could see a swipe of bright red as Gabriel moved
swiftly, his cloak thrown to the side to reveal a gleaming blade clutched in his
fist.
The man in Asher’s hold struggled, and he brought his mechanical hand to
seize his throat, clutching tightly. The artifact did not fail him. His adversary’s
grip weakened within seconds, a harsh wheezing sound coming from his
crushed windpipe. The man crumpled, a bloodied foam gurgling slowly from his
mouth, and Asher carelessly threw him aside—just in time to see Gabriel’s
opponent fall to the ground in a gush of blood, his throat neatly sliced open by
Gabriel’s dagger. Gabriel stood, chest heaving, his face and arms splattered
crimson with foreign blood. A gash crossed his biceps where one of the hooks
had found hold; he stared back at Asher, his eyes blown wide, the hunger of the
hunt apparently not yet satisfied.
“You’re good, stranger,” he said, voice strained. He did not move to wipe the
blood off his face, did not lower the knife. A somewhat manic grin ghosted his
lips, mirrored in his wild eyes. Asher found himself smirking back.
“You’re not too bad yourself,” he replied. Abruptly, the strength of the blood
bond they now shared lodged itself in his chest—the brotherhood of killers, the
only attachment he’d known in far too many years—and he added, “Call me
Asher.”
“Asher,” Gabriel repeated, breathless still. Asher could not suppress the
shiver that raked his body, ensnared by the way his name sounded on those full
lips. Gabriel looked at him with near-scorching intensity, distant thunderbolts
rumbling deep behind his irises. His eyes had darkened to a deep shade of
auburn. And then—then he said:
“Fuck me.”
Asher’s mouth went dry. He hesitated, suddenly all too aware of his own
body—the heightened awareness that came only from the thrill of a fight, the
rush of a kill—blistering energy thrumming in his veins, the heady rush of
adrenaline-like stoked embers at the core of his brain. “More could come,” he
rasped, his voice suddenly rough. His throat felt tight.
Gabriel’s eyes gleamed dangerously in his blood-spattered face. “Shut up,”
he all but growled, an untamed grin curling his lips upward in the most
infuriating, enticing of ways. He fixed his eyes on Asher’s as he discarded his
cloak and shrugged out of his harness. Slowly, deliberately, he unbuttoned his
tattered waistcoat and crumpled it in his hand, throwing it to the floor. He was
left in a thin button shirt—its sleeves rolled up to reveal the soft crook of his
elbows, the hint of strong biceps.
“Fuck me,” he repeated, his mouth a slow sin. His face was sharp and
beautiful, pale skin a stark contrast with the dark bloodstains, his eyes
smoldering embers staring at Asher from under his tousled locks, provocative,
near damn intoxicating—
And Asher was yanking off his own coat, unfastening the thick leather
protections that covered his chest. He stripped to a rough cotton shirt that
stretched over his muscles, a sleeve ripped to reveal the brass gleam of his arm, a
threatening confession in the half-darkness of the room. He grabbed Gabriel’s
wrist, gracelessly dragging him close—their mouths clashed together, tongues
exploring each other, teeth bared to sink in chapped lips, hot and messy and
filthy of all the promises Gabriel’s half-lidded eyes seemed to bear. Asher’s
fingers caught in thin fabric as they searched for warm skin—he ripped his hand
free and impatiently slid it down the small of Gabriel’s back, past the loose edge
of his trousers. His middle and index fingers tucked with ease in the warm
crevice between Gabriel’s buttocks, thumb pressing a dimple in the soft flesh of a
cheek. Gabriel licked Asher’s lips open and moaned in his mouth, wet and
demanding, his taste a cinnamon wildfire seeping into Asher’s bloodstream,
sizzling up his nerves to claim his brain, reaching down to his groin—
Gabriel groaned, half in pain, half in fervent lust—a hint of manic laughter
twinkling in his eyes as he landed heavily on the crate, his arms not quite fast
enough to prevent his chest from smacking against the hard wood. He braced
himself with one arm and fumbled one handed with the fastening of his trousers
as Asher held him down. The cold weight of the brass arm anchored him firmly
as Asher all but wrenched his own garments open. Gabriel’s flesh was firm
under his hand, sharp hipbone pressing against his palm as he traced his side,
pushing obstructive fabric out of the way before finding a hold—his tanned
knuckles a stark contrast where he grasped Gabriel’s fair skin.
When this deal breaks, Heaven will fall.
Angel 1089
© 2010 C.C. Bridges
Heaven Corp, Book 1
Catching two demon burglars is routine for Gabriel 1089, who’s one cog in
an army of cybernetically modified humans protecting the sky city of Heaven.
Until two turns into a twenty-demon ambush. When he wakes up, he’s missing
his network-enabled halo—and one of his metal wings.
The down-level junk dealer tending Gabe’s wounds has hands that spark
nerve endings he never knew he possessed. But for an angel cut off from Heaven,
an attic in Old Trent feels more like a trap than a sanctuary.
Demons on his doorstep are nothing new for Jeff Werth. Ever since they
saved his daughter’s legs, they’ve been calling in their marker. In exchange for
his services—nursing Gabe back to health so they can use him as a pawn in their
war with Heaven—they’ll consider the debt paid in full. Except having a
powerless angel at his mercy feeds a rising desire that has him rethinking the
deal.
Then the de-haloed Gabe begins having dreams that become visions…then
memories. Until he’s not sure whose side he’s on. Heaven, or the simple family
man who healed his broken wings…and made his heart whole.
Warning: The sexual awakening of an angel, some wing porn, abuse of heavenly
clichés and a dog who steals the show.
Enjoy the following excerpt for Angel 1089:
In some ways he was almost childlike, naïve about everything. But Jeff knew
Gabriel 1089 was dangerous, a soldier for Heaven Corp, with his wings literally
clipped. His bare chest rippled with muscles, not an ounce of fat on his narrow
frame as if he were meant to soar the skies like a bird of prey. Jeff wanted to run
his hands along those chiseled muscles, feel if they were flesh or made of stone. It
had been too long since he’d indulged in touching another man like that, and Jeff
hadn’t expected to find himself missing it.
“I like to think the whole junkyard is my workshop,” Jeff said. “But this is
where I work on special projects.”
“Like me?” Gabriel finally turned his full gaze on Jeff, those pale eyes
startling when focused so intently.
Jeff coughed to cover his reaction, surprised at the thread of desire coiling in
his gut. “I think I found you some oil.” He showed Gabriel the clear glass jar.
Gabriel took a whiff of the oil, blinking in response. “Oh. It smells sweet.”
“It’s not your typical junkyard oil,” Jeff agreed. “This should be fine for your
cybernetics.”
Gabriel frowned, crossing his arms in front of his bare chest. “You say that
like they’re not me. My wings.” He closed his eyes at the slip.
How much did it hurt to lose a limb? Jeff had a flash of Kayla in his arms,
blood everywhere, body mangled. He swallowed, not having to imagine the
agony at all. “I’m sorry.”
“How do you want me?”
Jeff shook his head at the sudden change of topic. “What?”
“Well, I can’t reach myself.” Gabriel smiled.
Normally Jeff might think that expression coy or flirtatious, but he wasn’t
sure about Gabriel. He didn’t know if angels could even engage in such things.
All Jeff knew was that they were minions of Heaven Corp, often without wills of
their own. The demons had to make their deals around the angels, who could not
be bribed like normal humans. But that didn’t answer the question.
“Um, maybe if you lean over my chair,” Jeff offered, “so I can reach
everywhere?” His face burned as he stepped into innuendo without meaning to.
Yes, the angel was beautiful. They were made to be. But Jeff couldn’t even think
about this sudden surprising attraction. Even if angels were able to bend that
way, he could hardly start flirting with Gabriel, not when Jeff was keeping
secrets to hold Gabriel here.
Gabriel didn’t seem to notice Jeff’s discomfort. He moved into position,
kneeling on the seat of Jeff’s comfy chair, crossing his arms over the back and
resting his chin on them. His golden wing stretched out, unfurling to its full
length.
Jeff couldn’t help but be struck by the beauty of such a fascinating piece of
machinery, the interlocking feathers that looked almost more like the scales of a
fish, and the way they folded, in and over. He picked up a clean shop rag and
dabbed it in the jar of oil. “Should I start any place in particular?”
“At the top, please.”
He buffed at the metal, beginning where it met Gabriel’s pale skin, molded
to his shoulder blade like he’d been born with them. It made the stub and wires
sticking out of the other shoulder a monstrosity. Jeff had to do something about
that. But right now he just concentrated on the way the dull metal began to
gleam once oiled.
“Oh.” Gabriel’s back arched.
“Did I hurt you?” Jeff lifted the rag away.
“N-no.” Gabriel seemed to need to catch his breath, panting slightly after he
spoke.
Jeff stroked his fingers down a set of feathers, delighting in how it caused
Gabriel to shiver. He pulled back at the sound the angel made deep in his throat.
Touching the angel like this wasn’t for his benefit, no matter how hard he got at
Gabriel’s unintentional sensuality.
“It just feels…intense,” Gabriel choked out.
Jeff was glad Gabriel faced away from him, not sure he would have been
able to hide his reaction to this intimate touch otherwise. “How…” He almost
choked on the word. “How did it feel when the other angels did this?”
“They didn’t. There is an oil spray system in our showers.” One of Gabriel’s
hands lifted as if to mimic a motion.
Jeff pictured a row of angels, all nude and looking remarkably like Gabriel,
standing together as they were oiled down, wings gleaming.
“Do you think it’s possible,” Gabriel started, voice thick, “to send a message
past the demons?”
The sweet smell of the oil turned rancid as Jeff lied. “No, the demons rule
Old Trent. No one can afford to cross them.” Especially Jeff.
Gabriel hunched over. His shoulders humped and his wing dragged, as if it
were too heavy to lift. Jeff wished he could help the angel, send him home and
out of their lives, keep Gabriel and Kayla safe from whatever Luca planned. Luca
had toppled other powerful demons to gain his place, taking virtually all of Old
Trent as his territory. He hadn’t been nice or polite about the takeover. Jeff had
never seen a demon so ruthless, killing those who stood in his way and leaving
the mangled bodies for all to see, both with their own eyes and in flickering
holograms around the city.
He added another dollop of oil, almost done, but not wanting to sever this
connection with Gabriel.
“What does your name mean?” he asked, wanting Gabriel to talk about
himself, but not dwell on what he had lost.
Gabriel let out a laugh. “I’m named Gabriel because I’m an archangel class,
one thousand series. Eighty-nine because I was the eighty-ninth made in that
line.”
“How many are there?”
“Too few now. They’ve moved on to the five thousand series and the seraph
class.”
Jeff wanted to know more, wanted to ask what made each series different,
how people had been modified, changed into something other. But it would be
wrong to satisfy his mechanical curiosity when all he could give Gabriel in return
were lies.
Just as wrong as his enjoyment of Gabriel beneath his fingertips. Jeff
swallowed the guilt and wiped off his hands.
“There,” he said. “I think I’ve got it all now.”
Gabriel gave a roll of his shoulder and the wing responded, twisting and
sliding into itself until the wing took up no more room than a shirt tucked up
against the angel’s back.
“That’s handy.” Jeff’s mind was already whirling with thoughts, comparing
the design to the demonic wings, how one could be modified for the better.
“Everything fits now.” Gabriel stood. “Thank you.”
If only everything else could be fixed as easily.
Document Outline
- Break and Enter
- Rachel Haimowitz and Aleksandr Voinov
- Dedication
- Acknowledgments
- Chapter One
- Chapter Two
- Chapter Three
- Chapter Four
- Chapter Five
- Chapter Six
- Chapter Seven
- Chapter Eight
- Chapter Nine
- Chapter Ten
- Chapter Eleven
- Chapter Twelve
- Chapter Thirteen
- Chapter Fourteen
- Chapter Fifteen
- Chapter Sixteen
- About the Authors
- The wolf races in where the human heart trembles to follow.
- Moon Run
- © 2011 Joely Skye
- There are more elusive things than water in this wasteland.
- The Mercenary
- © 2011 Cornelia Grey
- When this deal breaks, Heaven will fall.
- Angel 1089
- © 2010 C.C. Bridges
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