All the stuff she had heard before. During the Invasion, when Thalia had been scrounging for food, Doc had still been a licensed, respectable member of the medical community. He worked in a refugee camp and had been fitted up with a translation chip that allowed him to talk to the alien allies. Mahdfel. Whatever.
Nicky couldn’t seem to let the idea of an implanted chip go. She got it. Really. Having a piece of hardware shoved into your brain that altered the way you processed language seemed bizarre. Unhealthy.
Keeping pressure on the wound, she glanced at her bag. The expanding foam compound was in the front pocket. If she used it without permission, Nicky might take Nathan to the hospital.
Or he might punish her for defying him. She never knew if she would get Reasonable Nicky or Punisher Nicky.
That wasn’t completely true. Punisher Nicky had taken up permanent residence since Doc’s murder. He struggled to maintain his control over his business, but younger, hungrier rivals kept coming.
“A man should have privacy in his own home. In his mind.” Nicky’s delivery grew more hurried and more erratic. Blade and meathead shared a look.
“Tell me what you want to do,” Thalia said.
His head whipped around, his body tight with tension and all his attention focused on her.
Nicky stalked toward her and gripped her head, forcing her to look him in his icy, empty eyes. His fingers dug into her scalp to the point of pain. “Are you certain he won’t make it? Are you telling me that Nathan is as good as dead? Right now. Dead. Even though he’s still breathing?”
“Yes. If the bullet hit an organ, he needs surgery. Even if I dig it out, he needs blood to recover, and nothing in here is sterile. He’ll get an infection and go septic.” It was a terrible way to die, your body burning alive from fever. She had seen it once before, with a low-level flunky who waited too long to be stitched up by Doc. He didn’t respond to the antibiotics they had on hand. The really strong stuff was harder to get than gold.
Nicky’s gaze bore into hers, determining the veracity of her statement. This close, the stink of his cologne and stale cigarette smoke burned her sinuses. “Okay.”
“Okay?” Her shoulders slumped in relief.
“Okay.” Nicky turned to Nathan’s prone form on the kitchen table and leaned down, whispering in his friend’s ear. “I won’t let them have you. I won’t let them.”
He kissed Nathan’s forehead and drew himself up to his full height, pulling Nathan into a sitting position. With an arm wrapped around the unconscious man’s shoulders, the harsh overhead light was unforgiving on his lean frame, highlighting every brutal angle. Pulling out the blaster from his shoulder holster, the weapon hummed, and he shot Nathan once in the center of his forehead.
The back of his head exploded like a melon, spraying the wall and everyone in the vicinity.
Thalia screamed and jumped back; her bloody gloved hands clamped over her mouth. She bumped into the counter, the hard edge jabbing into her hip. The spray coated her eyeglasses. Everywhere she looked was an abattoir.
She could taste it, all salty and metallic. She could taste Nathan in her mouth.
Nicky holstered the blaster and calmly reached around Thalia to rinse his hands in the sink. Blood spattered his expensive white dress shirt and clung to his face. A car pulled into the driveway, the lights moving across the walls. He grabbed a towel for his hands and then used it on his face. The towel merely smeared the blood across his skin instead of removing it.
He grinned at her, the blood of his friend on his lips and in his mouth. “Now, I’ve got more men coming in with various workplace injuries. Are you going to be able to help them or should I save us all the trouble and put a bullet in their brains when they walk through that door?”
“No. No. I can do it,” she said, her voice barely louder than a whisper.
He smiled, all teeth and empty, cold eyes, and raised a hand as if to pat her on the side of her face. He hesitated. “Get cleaned up. We’re professionals.” He turned to others, “Take Nathan to the funeral home. Get him something nice. Lilies and roses, all that shit. You know how he was.”
The men shuffled their feet, unsure.
“Now!” Nicky barked and they sprang into action.
Thalia tore the gloves off her shaking hands and tried to scrub herself clean, to no avail.
Havik
The elders say the sun could burn away most anything, and if the sun can’t scour it away, then the sand could.
Havik walked the sands for three months. He headed north because he had never seen the ocean. The idea of so much water seemed unfathomable. As a youth, he had wanted to see the sunlight glitter on the ocean’s surface like shattered glass and have the waves crash at his feet. Fathers often took their sons on the journey when they reached a certain age, venturing out into the sands for weeks.
Havik had dreamed of the journey, of sweating during the day as he and his father walked the endless miles, of the cold nights spent camping under the stars, just him and his father. No one to compete with for the warlord’s attention.
The journey never happened. Years passed. He told himself it was not that important if he missed a rite of passage with his father. Not everyone could survive the weeks in the extreme heat of the day and the freezing
