Broken: A Plague Journal

“Minolta. Oh! You’re going to hate me for not telling you sooner, but I met him.”

“Met who?”

The gelatin form’s eyes pinched to mischief. “The Author.”

The bridge slime Alina inhaled took on a bitter cool. “Really?”

“Jud’s little retrieval team misfired into our Jag When. Kate and I got to personally deliver him to the suspected Delta bleed at Lascaux.”

“You bitch!” Her stage frown became a smirk. “What’s he like? I mean, in real life?”

“Didn’t say a lot. Didn’t smile, either. His hands—”

sorry to interrupt, darlings, but we’re closing on-target.

“Okay, Sam. Meet me after the dance in the construct?”

“Sure thing, Al. Let’s lube up.”

“Bang their bottoms out, hon.” Wink.

“Later!” Mindel Frost’s gelatin form drizzled back into the bridge tide.

Alina sighed and sank back into her gauntlets. “You get that?”

it’s all recorded. Judith ME confirms Delta bleed on Fort John Wayne patterns.

“Bring them to visual.”

All around her, the dusk of Sam’s bridge faded to the intense white of the Timestream. A scattering of Judith vessels flocked according to home forts.

“Secondary confirmation?”

neurological extrapolation confirms Delta bleed. tainted code. she’s silver.

“Sweep for crawlies?”

negative on enemy pattern.

“Okay, open channel to my kids.”

done.

“Judith Ft. Myers fleet,” her fingertips raced over the projected timescape, “close on these targets and engage on my mark.”

Her finger hesitated over Mindel Frost’s vessel, Judith Kate.

“Open fire.”

tracing these constellations of flesh, greater silences than stars provide

“You, too. No more coffee.” Benton pushed back from the table. She was about to stand up when she saw Samayel and his captain approaching.

“Yes, dear.” Paul’s eyes were locked on hers. He hadn’t seen Sam & Co. yet.

“Al, don’t—”

The young woman walked right up to Paul’s side and struck him across the face before Sam could grasp her flailing arms, hands pulled to fists. West jumped up and took one of the fists harmlessly to his barrel chest. He growled as her forced her arms behind her back, slammed her to the tabletop.

“Shit. Fuck. I’m sorry, Paul. She’s—”

“The fuck’s your problem?” West bore down on her, incapacitating her against the metallish table.

Paul said nothing. He wiped a line of blood from his crumpled nose, upper lip split by that inherited chisel of teeth. With a thought, it was gone. Silver burned behind muddied eyes.

“I don’t care who you are.” Alina struggled beneath West’s heft. “If you send me on another mission like that, I’ll fucking kill you.” Her bared teeth looked entirely too sharp.

“Wanna help me out here?” Paul searched Hope’s eyes.

She activated her glass, waited. “They went on a bleed containment run today. Took out the Fort John Wayne fleet remnants.”

Paul sighed.

“She was my best friend!” Alina blinked back tears.

“Captain Mindel Frost.” Benton snapped the glass shut. “Delta-infected, 99% certainty.”

“We met her…When this all—”

“Get off me.” Alina shrugged from underneath West. He lifted her with one hand to her feet.

“You gonna control yourself?”

She didn’t answer as she fixed the tie in her hair.

“Have a seat. You three let me handle this.” Sam, West and Benton faded from the construct, now empty except for Alina and Paul.

She sat. Two distinct lines of tear wet her too-big cheeks. She wiped them away.

“I’m sorry. Really.” He reached out to take her hand, reconsidered and withdrew. “I know it wasn’t easy.”

She scoffed. “It was easy. All I had to do was reach out and think.”

“I know the feeling.” He thought a scotch into his hand, drank most in one draw.

“Listen—” She studied the tabletop where she’d been splayed and writhing a minute before. “I shouldn’t have hit you.”

“It’s okay. I can’t feel anything anymore.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“I do.” He placed his now-empty glass on the table and extended his hand. “Let’s try again. I’m Paul.”

“Alina.”

“Sam’s told me all about you.”

“Ditto.”

Awkward silence.

Paul’s glass filled itself again. Sip, swallow, clink.

“I’m sorry about Frost.”

“Yeah.”

“You know you didn’t really kill her.”

“I know she’s out there somewhere, outside of this.”

“A ghost.”

“Shaking chains in the attic, droning amps in the basement.”

Something twinged behind Paul’s eyes.

“It’s all going to be okay. Trust me.”

“I can’t.” She took his glass and drained it. “I don’t know you.”

“Then know me.”

Flush of red. “I’d better go get sliced. More fun tomorrow.” She stood.

“Keep up the good work.”

“I’ll try.”

i want to know your midnights to bear witness to your yawns, twists and turns your valleys and your breath, neither better nor worse than mine. i want to be your stars and sunrises, first kisses of ever and of morning. i want to see your first smile and hear sleeping mumbles and sighs. i want to see your waking face in the stillness of our quiet dawn. i want to be your

Cowboy lately?” He shrugged off the drape of sleep as he got out of the slicing chamber, the blades retracting, still wet with the flesh fragments of his previous day’s body.

Benton not-shyly toweled pattern scum from her pubis. “Haven’t heard anything from Jud. Adam?”

“Nah. Last I knew, they were heading outer. Trying to draw a bead on young Windham.”

Paul blew pattern from his nose, wiped it from his ears. He felt the final touches solidify: scars, wrinkles, hair. He caught Benton’s stare.