Chapter 5
Thorn straightened her uniform, despairing at the state it was in but unwilling to show her annoyance to the cyborg.
She hadn’t quite expected what he’d done. A quick efficient joining of bodies would be appropriate for a cyborg who seemed disinterested in sex.
Fuck though.
What to make of that? Her legs were still trembling.
The coat’s edge barely covered where the white uniform turned into shreds that clung together by the grace of whatever gods her tailor prayed to. The synthcock he’d stuck into her lay still detached by his side on the moonlight-grayed grass. Though that floating ad cube came back every so often and flickered text over them both as well as the grass.
The synthcock shone, and a glistening strand of something she didn’t want to own up to appeared to run from it to nearby grass blade.
She jerked down the coat sleeves. “I thank you, cyborg, for what you did.” And she prayed it’d worked. To any god anyone might call up.
He grinned, maliciously, she decided.
“A very formal thank you.”
What else would it be? Before she could answer a black-and-white police flyer arrived above and spun on its stubby wings, hovering and bathing them in the glare of police lights.
If they’d arrived only a few minutes earlier... She chilled at the thought.
“Remain still. Do not move! State your business!”
Brilliant. She complained and they painted her a criminal. Thorn held up her wrist to let them scan her.
“I’ll handle this. We’ll be free to go in a minute.”
I’m s’kar co-captain, Thorn, and I reported several homicides and assaults. She sent them the code for those calls. This cyborg assisted me.
The lights dimmed to a less blinding level and the cop flyercar settled in to land, engines throttling down. The protruding fins, as always, reminded her of a predator fish.
Within a short time it lifted off again. *We have this. Thank you for your reports. Officers will be in contact later this night to question you. If you could prepare a report asap and send it on.*
I will. She nodded, despite the officers remaining inside the flyer.
It rose higher, turned and zoomed overhead, disappearing into the night within seconds.
In pursuit of her attackers, she hoped, and presumably to the museum.
The cyborg hadn’t even stood. That irked her for some reason. She really needed to get this back onto a normal footing. He wasn’t in her world and she wasn’t in his, no matter how sort of grateful she should be.
Don’t trust him. Her instincts screamed that. It wasn’t the way he killed, it was how he’d handled her – though whatever was happening to her might have somehow caused that?
This had to be an illness.
See a doctor after the naming ceremony, priority one.
“You can leave...Rik.”
“It’s Ledderik. You can call me Led if you wish to.”
“I don’t see you as a Led.”
He shrugged and didn’t get up.
The checkpoint was two buildings over. With a bit of hurrying she’d make it to her temporary quarters, get washed and changed, write up the report for the cops, and be at the assembly point for the naming at the stadium with many spokmins to spare.
Then she strode away and tried not to dwell on what might happen if her coat unbuttoned or a wind blew it aside.
She held up her hand, showing the cyborg the back of it in a casual farewell. “Goodbye. Rik.”
“Farewell.”
A sedate goodbye, even though she’d tried to poke at him with that Rik.
“I’m going to LoL tonight. The contract is signed.”
She looked back. “Oh.” Mistake.
Thorn fidgeted. How to answer that?
She was sure he’d not moved at all, that he was memorizing her in some way, or her ass. If the cyborg was going to live in a virtual world, she’d never see him again. Except perhaps by a million to one chance as a loaner, with someone else inhabiting his body.
Not the same, of course.
Relief came with that fact as well as sadness. She was sad for a man she barely knew. LoL was the last resort of the world weary and the stupid. She doubted he was stupid.
Was it possible to be sad and angry at him? Yes.
As she turned on her boot heel and walked away, again, she heard him say softly, “I enjoyed it all, greatly.” This time she wasn’t stopping.
The rest of this day, or night, would have to be exceptional. She’d had murders, random sex with a cyborg, and the most inexplicable things happen to her, and had surely used up her bad luck for millennia.