What ensued was quick, professional, and well coordinated. A man wrapped his arms around my chest, smiled, and blew mint-fresh breath in my face. I tried to move and found that I couldn’t. My feet were lifted clear of the ground. Something bit my left thigh. My thoughts slid apart, reassembled themselves in strange ways, and swirled as the chemicals pulled me downwards. Complete and total darkness followed.
I awoke to the smell of freshly brewed coffee. Not all at once, mind you, but gradually, until I wanted a steaming hot cup of Americano in the worst possible way.
It seemed as though my eyes were glued shut. It took a conscious effort to force them open. First the right, then the left. The picture was bleary. I blinked it clear. A room full of empty desks, computer consoles, and office equipment surrounded me. The clutter gave the impression of employees who might return at any moment. Curt sat two feet in front of me. A bandage covered the bridge of his nose. A thin red line signaled where the garrote had been buried in his neck. I sensed people behind me but couldn’t see them. My arms and legs were bound to a chair. The lifer nodded pleasantly and took a sip of coffee. “Well, look who decided to join us. Welcome back.”
I tried to muster a smart-assed reply but couldn’t seem to come up with one. Curt nodded understandingly. “A little short on repartee? That’s too bad, but nothing to be ashamed of, considering your low IQ.”
Curt took another sip of coffee and gestured with his cup. “Tell me something, Max, how smart are you, anyway? Nothing to say? Well, the experts say you have an IQ of about eighty, realizing that most people score between ninety and a hundred. Not too good, is it? Nothing like the 124 you scored prior to joining the Mishimuto Marines. They say you were one smart hombre back then, until you checked into a research station called T-12 that is, and had your ass kicked. Do you remember T-12?”
I mustered some saliva and used it to moisten my mouth. “Yeah, sort of.”
Curt nodded agreeably. “I thought so. And after your capture? Do you remember what happened then?”
I tried to shrug. The ropes made it difficult. “Bits and pieces. Nothing much.”
“And the girl? What did she tell you?”
I thought of Sasha and whatever it was that she’d been hiding. “I asked but she didn’t tell me anything.”
Curt placed his coffee cup on a table and leaned back in his chair. “Not too surprising, because if she told you the truth you’d run to us instead of away from us.”
I felt an almost overwhelming need to know what he knew, to be in on the secret, to understand my past. “I would?”
“Yes,” Curt replied quietly, “you would. Here’s what Sasha Casad doesn’t want you to know…Her mother, a more than competent physicist named Marsha Casad, worked for a company called Protech. She and a group of other scientists came up with a breakthrough, something worth a lot of money, and were just about to cash in on it when the war started. We know, because one of her closest associates was employed by us. Unfortunately for Dr. Casad and her fellow entrepreneurs, Protech was taken over by rank-and-file employees, and the scientists had little choice but to go along for the ride. A ride that started guess where?”
“On an asteroid called T-12?”
Curt pointed a finger in my direction. “Bingo! Not bad for an idiot. So, along comes Captain Maxon and his gung-ho Marines. They attack, get waxed, and the survivors wind up as prisoners.”
Curt leaned forward so the front legs of his chair hit the floor with a thump. “Now pay attention, Maxon, because this is the interesting part. It seems that Marsha Casad and her scientist friends had no desire to share their newfound discovery with the great unwashed horde. But where to hide it? In the computers that any tool head worth his or her salt could hack? On cubes the unionists could check? No, they needed something better, a hiding place where no one would ever think to look.”
I waited for Curt to continue, but he shook his head and smiled. He wanted me to think of it, to solve the puzzle with what was left of my brain, to…My god! That was it! The bastards had stored their data in my brain! Had used me as a zombie, or a near zombie, leaving just enough mental capacity to survive.
Curt saw the understanding fill my eyes and laughed. “That’s right, stupid. Sasha Casad was guarding you rather than the other way around. She may not look very imposing, but Sasha Casad has been in training for this mission since she was born.”
It all came back. The countless times when Sasha had been more competent than she should’ve been, when people came after me instead of her, when I should’ve smelled a rat. But not me, oh no, I was too stupid for that.
I fought the bonds, tried to pull free, but hands gripped my shoulders. Curt waggled a finger in my direction. “Naughty, naughty! We wouldn’t want to damage that shiny little head, now would we? Not after all we’ve been through. There were others, you know. Backups. A man and a woman. The man committed suicide shortly after discharge. I found the woman in a mental institution. Our shrinks siphoned a lot of crap out of her head, but very little of it made sense. That’s the trouble with schizos. They make piss-poor storage modules. The R &D types are working on that. We have high hopes for you, though.”
I remembered the greenie called Philip Bey, how he’d told me about the others, and how Sasha had refused to comment. The rotten little bitch. I struggled but the ropes held me in place.
“So,” Curt said, getting to his feet, and cracking his knuckles. “Enough of this bullshit. First, I’m going to break your nose. Then we’re going to drain your brain, dump the data to my pet zombie, and beat Protech to the punch. Adios, asshole.”
Curt planted his feet, pulled his fist back, and swung. I tipped my head forward, felt the impact on the top of my skull, and heard him scream. He was still dancing around holding his broken hand when a tox dart took him in the neck. He looked surprised, tried to say something, and collapsed.
I heard a commotion, tried to turn, and felt the hands leave my shoulders. Someone yelled, “Shoot her!” and swore as he took a dart. Feet scuffled, dart guns hissed, and bodies thumped as they hit the floor. That was when Joy appeared next to my knee, scrambled onto my lap, and went to work on my bonds. She was her usual exuberant self.
“Damn boss…you get yourself into the most amazing situations! I followed you here, called Sasha, and hung around until she arrived. Sorry it took so long. Are you okay?”
The last of the ropes fell away. I stood. My wrists hurt. I rubbed them to restore the circulation. “Yeah, I’m fine, thanks to you.”
Joy giggled happily, made her way up to my shoulder, and grabbed my ear. I turned to find three bodies sprawled on the floor, the zombie huddled in a corner, and Sasha going through someone’s wallet. “What the hell are you doing?”
She didn’t even glance in my direction. “Borrowing some money so we can get the hell out of here.”
I shook my head. “The farce is over, Sasha. Curt told me all about it. How your mother used me, how you lied, the whole thing.”
Sasha looked up. I couldn’t place her expression. Was it concern I saw? Relief? Or another part of the performance she’d been trained to give? There was no way to know. “I’m sorry, Max, I really am. I wanted to tell but promised I wouldn’t.”
I searched for the words that would tell her how much it hurt, how much I hated her guts, but couldn’t find them. So I walked to the door, stepped through, and heard it close behind me.
I walked for a long time. Through the residential areas good and bad, past the heavily guarded scientific section, and out into the cathedral-sized atrium. It was one of those things that the corpies hated to pay for, but did because the shrinks said the workers would go bonkers if they didn’t.
The park consisted of carefully maintained flower gardens, patches of green grass, and gravel-covered paths. The gravel had been coated with white paint, but most of it had worn off. Genetically engineered trees grew around the edges and softened the hard gray rock behind them.
It occurred to me that the vegetation served to supply supplemental oxygen as well, and I wondered where the thought had come from. How did I know that? Was I as stupid as Curt said? What part was me and what part wasn’t? My thoughts whirled, and my head started to hurt.
People strolled around me, clustering around the trees as if seeking strength from them, or shelter from the duraplast sky.
A pair of Zeebs, both women, looked my way, invented a “chrome-headed weirdo with a robot on his shoulder” category, and dropped me inside it. They subvocalized to each other and watched me from the corners of their eyes as they passed.
I sat on a park bench, tried to look normal, and let my chin rest on a fist. The knowledge of what had been
