“I’m not doing anything—” I said.
Something caught me by the back of my jacket and hauled me up. “Get out,” he said, “you damned pervert.” Something shoved me from behind. It didn’t feel like his hand.
He didn’t have to use his psi on me again. My own panic drove me out the door and into the darkness. God, they knew.… They knew what I was.
Out in the street someone caught my arm. I turned, my hand fisting. My eyes registered the slack face, the vacant stare of a burnout. The Hydran mouthed words so slurred I couldn’t tell whether they were even in a language I knew.
Swearing, I jerked free and moved on, not caring where I went, as long as it was away from there.
* * *
By the time my head had cleared enough so I realized what I’d done, I was lost. There had been signs, some way of backtracking, when I’d left the eatery. There were no signs of any kind that I recognized, now. There was no street lighting either, and Refuge’s single moon hadn’t risen yet. If there were any shops they were closed and unmarked. The only lights I could see were high up, unreachable, probably the lights of private homes. The building here were just tall enough to keep me from using the bridge to guide me back where I’d come from.
No one else seemed to be on the street now. I felt more relief than frustration as I realized how alone I was, because I couldn’t have asked for help now if I’d been bleeding to death.
I swore under my breath. I’d lived most of my life in a place where knowing the streets meant survival; and now I was lost. There weren’t even any maps of Freaktown in Tau’s public access; even my databand couldn’t tell me where I was, or how to get out of here. Why the hell had I even come to this place, just to prove what I’d always known … that no one had ever wanted me, that there was nowhere I’d ever belonged?
I started back the way I’d come, head down and shoulders hunched, shivering with cold and praying I’d make the right combination of turns to get my miserable ass out of there before curfew.
At last I saw the bridge lights, somewhere in the distance up ahead; heard the sound of human voices moving toward me. I turned another corner, breaking into a jog—slammed into someone running, so hard that we almost went down together.
A woman’s voice cried out as my hands caught her falling body. I felt something drive into my brain like a knife of thought. My mind blocked her instinctively at the same moment that I realized she was holding a child in her arms.
She cried out again—shock, fury—as my mind turned back her attack. She gasped out words in a language I didn’t know, and all the while I kept shouting, “It’s all right, I won’t hurt you, it’s all right!” trying to make her listen and understand. “What’s wrong? Do you need help—?”
She stopped struggling, as if my words had finally penetrated. Suddenly her body went limp in my grasp. The child trapped between us didn’t make a sound as the woman collapsed against me, panting. I felt her body’s fever heat even through my clothing.
She looked up at me then, and I finally saw her face: A fey, green-eyed Hydran face, golden-skinned, framed by a wild tangle of pale hair.… A face out of a dream, every alien, haunted line of it; and yet every curve and plane was somehow as familiar as the face of a lost lover.
“I … I know you?” I whispered, frozen in the glare of impossible prescience. “How—?” A trapdoor opened under my thoughts, and I fell through—
The woman made a small sound, almost a whimper, of disbelief. One hand rose, tentatively, to touch my face. (Nasheirtah…?) she breathed. (You. You—) Her expression became equal parts wonder and terror, mirroring my own, as I slowly raised my hands to touch her face.
(Anything …) I murmured as my entire life telescoped into that single moment’s contact. (Anything at all.)
(Always. Forever …) Her eyes filled with tears, her hand dropped away. (Nasheirtah—)
“What—?” I whispered, uncomprehending.
She looked down suddenly, as if my eyes were a searchlight. “Help me,” she said, in perfect Standard, but with her voice just barely under control. “Please help me—they want to take my child!” She looked over her shoulder. Light-echoes danced across building fronts in the distance down the street.
“Who does?” I asked.
“They do!” she cried, shaking her head at me, with a look that was half desperation and half incomprehension. “The Humans—”
And in the depths of her green eyes, their black slit pupils wide open to the faintest hope of light, I saw another midnight: Another Hydran woman and her child … light-years away, a lifetime ago—with no one they could turn to, no one to save them from that Oldcity alley where their world was ending in blood and pain.…
“Please—” she said, and pressed something into my open hand.
My fingers spasmed shut. I nodded, not looking at it, and let her go. She disappeared down a side street I hadn’t even noticed.
I stood frozen a few heartbeats longer, with my stupefied mind trying to follow her into the night and my body begging me to get it out of there. And then suddenly the ones who’d been after her were in front of me, shouting; I saw lights, I saw weapons— I ran like hell.
Behind me I heard someone bellow, “Corporate Security!”
Shit— I ran faster.
Lights appeared ahead of me, dropping out of the sky, as a CorpSec cruiser landed in the street.
Before I could even slow down something invisible slammed into me like a tidal wave, and I drowned.…
THREE
I OPENED MY eyes again to the blinding glare of an interrogation room. I squinted them shut. “Shit,” I said. But that wasn’t what came out of my mouth. The sound that came out of my mouth was completely unintelligible.
My face hurt, because I must have fallen on it. My hair had come loose from its clip; it was full of dirt and getting into my eyes. Every nerve ending in my body was sparking like a live wire as the stunshock wore off.
But that wasn’t what was wrong with my mouth: They’d drugged me with nephase—flypaper for freaks. I knew without feeling for one that there was a drugderm on my neck, put there by the Corpses to short-circuit my psi, if I’d still had any psi ability that I could use. I remembered the nausea, the slurred speech: the simulated brain damage. I tried to reach up, to make sure there really was a patch on my throat—
I couldn’t move my arms. Either one. I looked down, saw my body held prisoner in a hard metal seat, my arms strapped to the chair arms. I stared at my hands, feeling panic abscess inside me.
Don’t lose control.… Don’t. I took a long, slow breath and made myself look up.
Half a dozen Corpses were waiting there, as if they had all the time, and patience, in the world.
“Where is he?”
I looked at the one who’d spoken. BOROSAGE, his data-patches read. He was a District Administrator, from the flash that showed on his helmet and uniform sleeve. He looked like a real bottom-feeder. These were the Corpses I knew, not the kind who wore dress uniforms to corporate receptions. These Corpses were wearing riot gear: dressed for business, their real business, which had always been making the existence of street rats like me even more impossible than it already was.
Borosage was massive and heavy; his body was starting to go to fat, as if he’d been promoted to a level where he didn’t have to give a damn anymore. But there was nothing soft in his eyes. They were bleak and treacherous, like rotten ice. A gleaming artificial dome covered the left half of his skull; blunt fingers of alloy circled his eye socket and disappeared into his skull, as if some alien parasite had sunk neural taps into his brain.
I couldn’t imagine what kind of injury would leave him alive and leave him looking like that. Maybe he’d had it done on purpose, to scare the living shit out of his prisoners. I looked down as he caught me staring; looked at his hands. His knuckles had more scar tissue on them than mine did. I knew how they’d gotten that way. They scared me a lot more than his face did.
I looked away from his hands with an effort, down at the data-band on my wrist, the undeniable proof that I was a citizen of the Human Federation, and not some nameless piece of meat. “I want a legal advisory link,” I said.
What came out of my mouth was more unintelligible sludge. The Corpses laughed. I took another slow breath, my hands clenching. “Want. A. Legal.”
The laughter got louder. Borosage closed the space between us in one step. He held his fist in front of my face. “You want advice, you Hydran fuck? My advice to you is, answer the questions, because it’s going to get harder to talk every time you don’t.”
“Not Hydran! Regishurred … ci’zen,” I said; spit splattered his fist. “I. Got. Rights.”
“You can inscribe your rights on the head of a pin this side of the river, freak.”
“Databan’—!” My arm jerked against the restraint. Cold sweat was soaking through my shirt.
He took a step back; his hand dropped to his side. I let out the breath I was holding as he looked down. His face twisted. He poked my databand, and it beeped; pulled on it until I swore. “This is yours—?” he said finally, looking hard at my face, at my eyes. “Are you trying to tell me you’re human?”
I nodded, my jaw muscles aching as I waited for his expression to change.
He looked at the others. His grin split open. “What do you think, Fahd?” He jerked his head at the lieutenant leaning against the door. “This prisoner claims he’s a registered citizen. Got the databand to prove it.”
Fahd peered at me. “You know, in this light he almost looks human.” He moved closer. “The eyes could be a cosmo job, if he’s one of those perverts.” He smirked. “Except I’ve never seen anyone but a freak talk that way after we put the patch on him.”
“Exactly my point.” Borosage looked back at me again, and his grin soured. “So what is it, boy? Are you mixed blood? A ‘breed?” He ran a thick finger along my jaw. “You do look like a ‘breed.…”
I tried not to listen to what they said after that, about my mother, my father, about whores and gang rapes and how no decent person would let a thing like me live.… I sat motionless, breathing the stagnant overheated air, until they ran out of ideas.
And then Borosage freed my wrist—the one that wore the databand. Disbelief leaped like a fish inside me.
He didn’t free the other hand. “Look at you,” he said, picking at my sleeve. “Dressed up like a Gentleman of the Board. Wearing a databand. Trying to pass. Who did you think would believe it? Did you think we would?… You know what I think, freak?” he said to me, holding my hand. “I think you stole that databand.” He jerked my arm forward, and one of the other Corpses handed him a descrambler.
I swore silently. I’d had one of those, once. A descrambler could access the personal code of a databand in less time than it took the owner to remember it. It was about as illegal as everything else that was happening to me right now. I watched a run of data flow across the digital display, and then suddenly the datafeed stopped. It flashed NO ACCESS, the symbols so clear that even I could see them.
Borosage swore, this time. I started to breathe again; glad, not for the first time, that I wore a thumb-lock on my deebee. Unless I thumbed it in the right spot, the only way it would come off my wrist was if somebody cut off my hand. I’d bought myself some extra security, because I knew how easy the regular locks were to descramble.
“What did you do to jam this?” Borosage shoved my hand into my face.
“Mine—!” I said, and then, looking down, “Phone fun’shun!” The function light didn’t go on—the processors didn’t recognize my voice. Borosage made a disgusted noise, as if I’d just proved that the band was stolen. I tried to see what time it was. I didn’t get the chance, as he strapped my hand down again.
I told myself that someone had to be wondering where I was. They could trace me as long as I still had the databand on. Someone would come after me. I just had to hold everything together long enough so that these bastards didn’t maim me before it happened.
Borosage’s scarred hand caught me by the jaw. “You know you’re in real trouble now, freak. The sooner you tell us everything you know, the sooner I’ll think about letting you make a call, or even take a piss.” He let go of me, with a twist of his hand that made me grunt as it hurt my bruised face. “Where’s the boy?”
“What. Boy?” I mumbled. I braced myself as his open palm came at me, but that didn’t make it hurt less when it hit my face. My head slammed against the seatback. I tasted blood; felt it leak from the corner of my mouth.
“Kidnapping,” he said, through the ringing in my ears, “is a serious offense. I am talking about the human boy whose data-band we found in your possession. Joby Natasa, age three standard years, son of Ling and Burnell Natasa. He was kidnapped by the Hydran woman employed to care for him. We almost caught her tonight—but we caught you instead.” He leaned into my face again. “Now, you know what I think? I think this whole thing was politically motivated. I think you might be some kind of terrorist.” He took a step back, peeling off his uniform jacket. “Do you still want to tell me you don’t know what I mean—?”
Jeezu— I shut my eyes, remembering the look in the eyes of the woman carrying the child. Her child; I’d thought it was her own child. She hadn’t looked like a terrorist—she’d looked terrified. Looked like my mother, on the night she was butchered by strangers because no one had been there to save her.…
But she wasn’t my mother. It wasn’t even her child. I’d been nothing but a fucking mark, letting her slip me that databand. I wondered suddenly why she’d done it to me; why she hadn’t just teleported herself and the boy away, and left the Corpses behind.
But I couldn’t answer that any more than I could answer Borosage’s questions. I was under arrest on a world where I didn’t know anyone, didn’t have any rights; I was in shit up to my neck and I didn’t know how the hell I was going to get out of it.
Borosage slapped me again when I didn’t answer him.
“I. Didn’. Know!” I shook my head. “Prove it! Use … truth-tester!”
“They aren’t reliable with psions. There’s only one thing that always gets the truth out of a Hydran.” Borosage held out his hand; one of his men put something into it. This time it was a prod. Borosage flicked it on.
I sucked in a breath. I didn’t need him to show me what one of those could do. I had scars to remind me.
“That’s right—squirm, you little mindraper,” Borosage murmured. “You know what I can do to you with one of these. The Tau Board is up my ass over this kidnapping. They make me report to them every hour on the hour. They want that stolen child back yesterday, you know what I mean? They put their trust in me. They told me, ‘Do whatever’s necessary.’ I intend to do that.…”
The prod kissed the palm of my right hand. I cursed, jerking at the restraints as it ate its way into my flesh.
Borosage gestured. Fahd moved in on me, pulled open my expensive jacket and shirt. I heard something rip. “You understand me—?”
I nodded, feeling the muscles in my chest and stomach tighten with anticipation. Wanting to kick him in the balls, except that I knew what he’d do to me if I did.
“I’m going to hear everything you know, boy,” Borosage said. “Or I’m going to hear you scream.” His eyes begged me to give him an excuse.
I swore under my breath, wondering what in the nine billion names of God I was going to tell him; worse, how I was even going to get words anyone could understand out of my mouth.
A beeper sounded on someone’s databand, loud in the agonizing silence. I looked down at my own band with my heart suddenly in my mouth. The call function was still dead.
Borosage clapped his hand over his databand, held it up to his face, muttering, “What—?”
Somewhere in the world outside of this room a voice said, “… making inquiries about the prisoner, sir.”
“God damn it!” Borosage shouted. “Tell them he’s
not here. I said nobody’s to disturb us during the interrogation!”
“Administrator—”
Borosage canceled the link with a word; swore, as his band-phone began to beep again.
“Draco’s Chief of Security is here, Administrator,” the voice said, overriding his shutoff.
“What?” Borosage’s face went slack with disbelief. “Why the hell didn’t you say so? Send him in.” He looked back at me and brought the prod up close. “You hear that, freak? Maybe you thought you were in trouble before. You’ve got the mother company down your throat now, you half-breed mindfucker.”
I watched the room’s single door, clenching and unclenching my burned hand.
The security field at the door blinked off. Sand was waiting beyond it. Kissindre Perrymeade and her uncle were with him, and Protz. I looked back at Borosage, wanting to laugh, but afraid to.
Borosage made a salute, half frowned as he saw that Sand wasn’t alone. “Sir,” he said, “this is one of the kidnappers. We’ve just begun to interrogate him.” He jabbed the live end of the prod at me; I cringed.
Someone gasped in the doorway behind Sand. Sand stood staring at Borosage, at the prod in his hand, at me. The disbelief on his face was almost as complete as Kissindre’s or her uncle’s.
Sand entered the room first, alone. The others stayed where they were, as if they’d been put in stasis. Sand stopped in front of Borosage. He held out his hand with the unthinking arrogance of a man who was used to getting his way. Borosage looked surprised again, but he handed Sand the prod. I stared like everyone else as Sand took it.
Sand deactivated the prod and dropped it on the floor. “Get those restraints off him.” He pointed at me. His hand jerked with impatience as no one moved.
Fahd came forward slowly to turn me loose while Borosage watched me with blood in his eyes. I slumped in the seat as the restraints retracted, wiping blood from the corner of my mouth.
“Are you all right?” Sand asked me, frowning.