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adverse_camber“Will you be all right?”
Slipstream finally lifted his head, and met Mirii’s gaze; he nodded, unhappily. “I’ll be okay,” he whispered, softly, half-heartedly swabbing his face dry with the handkerchief she’d procured for him from somewhere. “Just… just got… carried away. I’m sorry.”
Mirii smiled for him, and gently plucked the handkerchief from his fingers. “Do not be sorry,” she soothed, taking over at mopping his face dry, brushing away the worst of the silt. “There is no need to be, any more. We have solved the first problem.”
He sat patiently while she worked. “Now we just have to bring Lara back from the dead. Easy!”
Mirii gave him a smile. “Now now, anyone would think you had already been defeated,” she scolded, gently. “We never found her body. The Denizens have not seen her, either. If she were dead, someone around here would have found her remains.”
“Unless some city workman found her.” Slipstream’s shoulders remained slumped. “And we’d never even know.”
“Someone would have seen something,” Mirii reassured. “They traced us fairly easily. If it makes you happier, I will liaise with Rasa, and see if any of her scouts have seen anything. All right?”
He nodded, glumly, still not looking up.
She sighed, tiredly, and patted his shoulder. “You had better finish your arrest, love. I do not anticipate he will no anywhere, but it does not pay to be complacent, hmm?” She gave him a little kiss on the cheek, and set off in the direction she had come, back down the tunnel towards habitation and comfort.
Slipstream watched her go, and touched his fingers to his face, where she’d kissed him. It made him hurt, just a little bit. To know it meant… nothing, really. Just… nothing.
Firewire still sat cowering where he’d fetched up in the aftermath of Slipstream’s assault; his hands were still up on his chest, where the streaky blue imprints of the other mech’s fingers were visible.
“Give me Lucy’s command cylinder, and I might make your future a tiny bit more comfortable,” Slipstream instructed, managing to keep his voice from going too shaky. He really wanted to pound the bolts out of the bastard, but no. He wouldn’t. He wanted to keep the moral high ground, just this once.
Firewire opened his mouth to speak, then thought better of it, and just nodded. He extracted the tiny pewter spindle from a compartment in the upper left of his chassis, and after several long seconds of internal struggle, arguing with himself, he shakily deposited it into Slipstream’s palm.
Slipstream finally allowed all the stale air he’d been retaining to come out in a rush. He hadn’t even dared engage his pumps, in case something went wrong, and it was bliss to just let cold air re-circulate. He palmed open a little socket in his wrist, and tucked the cylinder inside; after a flicker of doubt where he was convinced that the sneak had switched components, given him a dud, there was the softest murmur of something that was indubitably his sister. Thank you, thank you.
Firewire looked like he was about to attempt to speak again, but Slipstream didn’t feel like affording him that sort of nicety. He gave him a shove, from behind one shoulder, and Firewire toppled easily onto his front, taken by surprise.
“Get your arms up,” Slipstream instructed, coldly, kneeling on the small of his back.
“I’m sure there’s a-”
“Get. Your arms. Up!”
“All right! All right…” Firewire shakily lifted his hands, and whined ineffectually about his pain into the silt as the Policebot yanked them hard behind him, and cuffed them at a painful, twisted angle, wrist to wrist.
“Let’s go,” Slipstream growled, dragging him upright.
“I-… all right. I’m coming. You don’t have to be violent, I’m coming!”
At least they hadn’t chained her back up, Celerity considered, sadly, sitting back between her two scaffold columns in the base of the Pit. It was only a small blessing, but at least it was a blessing. It made a nice change to being surrounded by all those damned bars, holding her back. And it was a surprise, too, given how frothingly angry Otto had been, she’d expected something much more violent!
I don’t care what your name is, he’d raged, from the eye-level platform. I don’t care who you are, where you come from, what your role is, what you’re trying to achieve, what you want, NOTHING. You’re a big, stupid piece of Merchandise, you’re here to do what we tell you and THAT’S IT! You work when we tell you, you go where we tell you, you do what we tell you! Got it?
She’d spluttered an apologetic agreement that did at least calm him, a little.
Ignoring that you're just a machine, for all the holies' sakes, we dredged you up out of that sewer, he’d gone on, more quietly, washed you, fixed you, saved your damn non-life. That means you owe us. Until we’ve decided your debt is paid, we own you. You’re a big walking advert for our merchandise, and the sooner you reconcile yourself with that, the more comfortable you’ll be. Got it?
Thankfully, he’d left her alone after that, and she’d managed to get herself to go dormant. She’d not defragmented in days, and her memory was cluttered with useless data. Not that cleaning up her data-stacks seemed to help very much; memories and daydreams tangled together to form a strange nightmare sequence that she was glad to startle awake out of.
Morning had just broken and the first of the Pit’s smaller, less-sapient occupants were chirping and stirring when the lift came to life in the wall behind her. Recognising it was too early for breakfast, Celerity sat and watched the archway with some trepidation.
The lift disgorged just the one occupant; Pabishka. Celerity offlined her optics so she didn’t have to watch her approach, trying not to shake, wondering what extra punishment the medusi had in store for her. She’d already had her scolding from Otto, and she’d nodded in the appropriate places and forced herself to look very humble, and the idea of a further lambasting from the female was… unappealing. Especially given that Pabishka tended to be louder and harsher, if Wen had been truthful to her. She was erratic enough to make Celerity anxious.
“I know you’re awake, machine, so you can stop pretending you aren’t,” the woman said, dryly. “I’m not here to yell at you. I’m just here to discuss things. All right?”
Ashamed that she was so easily seen-through, Celerity flickered her optics, and focused on the small figure in front of her. “All right,” she agreed, softly. “What-… what did you want to talk about?”
“Well, it’s very simple.” Pabishka explained, although her tones weren’t entirely unkind, waving a news-wafer which had a rather derogatory headline. “In order to avoid any more scenes like last night, you…” She settled on the platform with her legs tucked around to one side, “need a makeover.”
“A… a makeover?” Celerity gave her a confused, slightly dismayed look.
“Yes. You know, new looks, make you attractive, all that business.” She fixed her on a stare that was partially challenging, as if seeing how the big femme would react to it. “I mean, I need you looking good, to start with. Partly so old hags like Madame Noyenskiete can’t complain you’re not pretty enough, and partly because I need you to be comfortable with your looks, too.”
“I-… but I am comfortable-…” Make that, was comfortable.
“Nonsense. I saw you fidgeting out the back, last night, you nearly refused to go out there.”
“I just don’t like crowds,” Celerity whispered, hollowly, and studied her feet.
“Of course; that’s why you were arguing over your looks with your guide, is it?” Pabishka gave her a knowing look. “Trust me, machine, I have ears everywhere, especially when they’re places my merchandise goes.”
Feeling vaguely ashamed, and for no reason she could quite place her finger on, Celerity went silent.
“So what’s your name, anyway?” The medusi wondered, chewing thoughtfully at the end of her stylus and noting things down on her board. “I can’t keep calling you ‘machine’ all the time, much as the darling Otto might want me to.”
The big Policebot finally managed to rediscover her voice. “My-… it’s… C-Celerity.”
“ Celerity?” Pabishka actually sounded aghast at that, looking up, brows arched. “Oh, lordy, no. No, we can’t have that! Makes you sound like a dieting aid.” Her eyes narrowed. “I guess that’s why you’re so, ah… ‘heavy’.”
Celerity recognised an euphemism for ‘fat’ when she heard one, and looked away, quietly.
“Charm,” the laima decided, at last.
“…beg pardon?” Celerity dragged herself back out of the murk.
“That’s what we’re going to call you.” Pabishka underlined the word several times on her board. “At least at official meetings, when you come on a walkabout with me. You can still call yourself ‘Diet Pill’ down here, if you really want, but if you’re on display, you’re Charm. All right?”
Celerity pursed her lips, unhappily. Diet pill?!
“All right?” Pabishka chased, with an edge more threat in her voice.
“Yes ma’am,” Celerity responded, softly.
“Good!” The predatory tones vanished as quickly as they’d crept in. “I’ll send for you later this morning; we’ll get you measured up and re-sprayed first of all, and then my designers will have something to work with.”
“…re-sprayed? Measured?” Oh lord, now what am I being shoehorned into?!
“Of course. Silver is so passé, darling. I’m thinking maybe a light turquoise?” She studied her, carefully, tapped her lower lip with her stylus. “We could make a real statement with hot pink, but I don’t think it’d really go. And we need to get you measured up for a new exterior. Something smoother, sleeker. Nicer ‘hair’. Less… bristly, sticky-out bits.”
“But my plating has been shaped this way intentionally. It’ll hinder my operations if you go changing it-”
“Oh, nonsense. It won’t be anything major, anyway. Just a little reshape.” Pabishka tilted her head, thoughtfully. “Just to make you look a little less like a spur in drag. You could do with some proper breasts, to start with. That chest of yours is just so… ambiguous.”
Celerity covered herself with her hands, involuntarily. “I really don’t think that’s appropriate, ma’am!”
Pabishka tweaked the control pad on her belt, irritably, pulsing a disorienting crackle of energy through the collar at her latest acquisition’s neck. “That’s not for you to decide,” she snapped, sharply, reminding Celerity why she was dangerous, watching while the big femme groaned and dropped her hands, forced to use them to prop herself up instead of cover herself. “You’re fessine- that, is, a lower female, and you need to look like it! Which means…” She touched a hand to her own flat chest. “You need to look like you have the appropriate biology.” She looked down at her board and continued to jot down ideas. “And that also makes you property. If the fessine can handle it, so can you.”
“I have probably been alive for longer than your species has existed,” Celerity pointed out, softly. “I have a lot more… habits… to get over than the average female of your species.”
Pabishka shrugged. “Regardless, you will get used to it or we will see to, ah... retraining you.” Her eyes glittered. “Got that?”
Celerity knew exactly what she meant by 'retraining', and just nodded.
“More importantly,” Pabishka went on, “my team can get some preliminary readings of your functioning. If we’re going to replicate you – a little smaller, of course, the public won’t want something so enormous as you – we need to get started on research!”
“Begging your pardon, ma'am,” Celerity spoke up, softly. “I'm not an animal.”
“Perhaps not in the traditional sense, Sweetie,” Pabishka cooed, her tones fairly dripping with scorn. “Maybe we could say you’re halfway between an animal and a home computer. Do you prefer that?”
Celerity matched the laima’s pale-eyed scorn with her own subdued gaze. “No.”
“Shame. Regardless, we’re not going to change how we treat you because you’ve got hurted feewings.” She waved her stylus. “You’re not here to complain to us. You’re here to make us money. You’re the first example of what is going to be our new product. In essence, you’re going to be a mother!” Her thin lips broadened in glee at the twisted definition. “The mother of a whole new species of Nuori-Deuchainn products. It’s not every woman gets to say that about herself. You should be so proud!”
Celerity refused to meet her gaze. “A mother in the same way livestock is bred from the prize specimens?”
“Exactly!” Pabishka laughed. “I'm glad we understand each other. Now don't you go anywhere, we'll want you soon.” She rose to her feet and brushed imaginary dirt off the seat of her trousers. “Ah, one last thing.” She flicked her wrist, and something small and glittering flew through the air between them.
Celerity caught it, delicately, and opened her hand to examine it; a small, pretty bit of jewellery, like she’d worn on her brow on that first disastrous evening on display to the public.
“It looked good on you,” Pabishka offered, gently. “Maybe the rest of your looks were a little… over-the-top… but that suited you. Keep it on, hmm?”
Celerity just looked at it, watching out of the corner of her eye as the laima vanished into the access tunnel, and listening as the lift grumbled into life. You're just an animal. The words echoed unkindly in the back of her mind. We'll do as we choose with you. You're our property, now, so put up and shut up.
When Celerity's friend finally awoke – Wen had been kept late at the show, and only got in late, the previous evening – she instantly spotted the big femme's glum mood. She climbed to her usual spot on Celerity’s shoulder, anxiously. “Is everything all right, Lara?”
The Policebot nodded, jerkily. “It’s fine,” she confirmed, faintly, although she couldn’t quite keep all the static out of her voice. “Just f-fine.”
“Pabishka?”
Again, Celerity just nodded, quietly.
“Please, love, don’t pay what she says any heed,” Wen soothed, kindly. “She's all bluster and no substance-”
“Easy for you to say,” Celerity argued, softly. “You've lived here all your life.”
“I'm serious, Lara. You just have to ignore it, just for now.” The smaller female stroked her antennae. “Just until your family rescue you.”
Celerity snorted back a pained laugh and gave her head a little shake, jerking Wen's fingers away from her. “Right. Of course. Wait for the nephew who loathes the very sight of me to be magnanimous and come rescue me?”
“You don't know that-”
“ You don't know him! If there's one thing I know about Slipstream, it's that he knows how to hold a grudge.” Celerity glanced up at the pale sky, uneasily. “I need to get out of here,” she whispered, faintly, pushing herself to her knees.
“Please don't do anything silly, Lara,” Wen coaxed, quietly, scrambling hastily onto the scaffold before Celerity took her along with her.
“I'm getting out of here,” Celerity repeated, more decisively – although her voice shook more.
“You won't be able to use the lift!” Wen reminded, alarmed. “It's keyed to the workers' geneprints! It'll probably give you a shock if you touch it, too.”
“Who needs a lift?” The giant applied her foot to one of the divisions between floors, and boosted herself up, using the structure just like an enormous ladder. “Thank you for all your kindness, Wen. I don't think I'd have kept my head even this long without you.”
Wen sat in the scaffolding, and watched sadly as her friend made her break for freedom.
The brightly-coloured little honeysuckers were intensely curious of the stranger in their midst, the higher she climbed – one even so bold as to alight on her shoulder.
She shhh!-ed angrily to startle them away; the little creatures flitted away only a short distance before crowding back, excitedly. “Go away, you wretched little things!” she snapped, frustrated and unhappy. She didn't want them to get hurt because she wanted to escape! At last, she forced herself to give one of them a firm flick on the tail; it yelped alarmedly and tumbled away, landing with a thump in a patch of ferns, and the remainder finally retired to a safe distance.
Finally, after a second or two of alarm when one of the ledges crumbled beneath her feet… she reached the top, where it was mantled with a rim of uncarved rock. Only a few feet left to go. Only a few feet left until safety! She reached up to catch her fingers over the rim to haul herself over and-
The field fizzed angrily, more strongly than she'd expectedly, like a nest of hornets, making her briefly jerk her hand back; another few pieces of rock crumbled away beneath her feet. Damn. She took a moment to gather her nerve before pressing her hand harder against the field, just to see if she could get through, and just succeeded in throwing up a lilac rainbow of enraged sparks. Definitely wasn’t going to be getting through here without help. She felt like crying; at the bottom she’d been so optimistic of escape! Crushed, disappointed, she prepared herself for a long climb back down, and a return to misery, drudgery, slavery.
“Hey! What are you doing up there?”
Celerity jerked her head up, surprised, and for the second time in as many minutes, almost lost her grip altogether; one of the small guards was peering down at her, curiously.
“You’re not supposed to be there, are you?”
She seized her chance. “Let me out of here!” she snapped, fear lending a genuinely angry edge to her voice. “Right this once!”
He jumped back a step, startled. “I don't know if I'm allowed to.”
“Did the Boss authorise it?” one of his colleagues wondered, as he and the third of the team joined the first at the edge.
“Of course she authorised it!” Celerity barked. “Why else do you think I'm telling you to do it? I'm a big, useless set of spares, too big to be useful and too ugly to sell, and she wants rid of me, as soon as possible.”
The three swapped looks.
“Don’t you read the newspapers?!” she chased, increasingly alarmed that she was going to get caught in her lie. She’d not read the newspaper herself, and in a strange, twisted way that made her hurt inside, hoped it had been as unkind to her as possible. Just to back up her story.
The three swapped uneasy glances.
“She’s right,” the tallest commented, in a sort of stage whisper, and Celerity almost fell off her precarious perch in relief. “It didn’t go well. Noyenskiete threatened to withdraw funding.”
“That silly old bag says that after every meeting,” In-Between corrected. “You know she’s just trying to keep Madame Pabishka on her toes.”
“Yeah, but it sounded serious, this time,” Tall argued. “I was on duty last night, the Boss came down here and yelled at it.”
“Yeah, but letting it go? Why not, you know, sell it for scrap?”
“Do you know how much it’d cost to have me broken up for scrap?” Celerity’s vocaliser threatened to destabilise on her, going into such impassive depth about her own potential for dying. “More than the labour cost, and what she’d get back in materials! Far better to just let me disappear, and pretend.”
“Maybe we should still ask…” the littlest of them worried. “I don’t wanna get in trouble.”
“We’ll get in trouble for asking,” his taller friend reminded, grimly. “You don’t second-guess the boss, right?”
“Well right, but what if she’s makin’ it up?”
“It’s a machine, idiot,” In-Between scolded. “Machines can’t lie. We’d be screwed if the bank computer started making stuff up, right?”
“I guess…”
The middle sized one glared down into the Pit. “All right, machine. We’re gonna release the field. But only for a short while, we don’t want the honeysuckers all flying out! You need to be quick. Right?”
“Right.” She matches stares with him, resolutely. “Now will you get a move on?”
“All right, all right.” He mashed the key into the control panel and twisted it like a knife, and the field choked out in more purple sparks. “Now hurry up, I don’t want our wages docked because you took ages to comply with the Boss’ orders!”
Celerity needed no second bidding, scrambling up over the lip and listening as the field fizzed closed just in time; the angry crackle and quiet yelps gave away the positions of the would-be-escapee fliers behind her. “Thank you.” Oh, thank you thank you thank you a hundred thousand times for being so gullible! She drew herself upright, and brushed her plating clean of imaginary grit. “Please tell your mistress, I’m sorry for being a problem, and I hope she resolves her funding issues soon.”
As soon as she was out of sight, she broke into a run, flat out, pounding over the ground as fast as she could push herself. Each individual tread made the ground shudder; just give your position away to EVERYONE, why don’t you, Lars?
The chainlink fence was her first casualty. Braving the gates and hoping, hoping they’d fall for the same tricks as the Pit guards, and let her through, was going to be pushing her chances to breaking point, and she didn’t fancy her luck. The fence was so flimsy, though, a ten-foot high ring of chainlink topped with an overhang of razor wire, and it looked like a gentle poke would tear a hole through it – it was mostly just to keep people from wandering into the complex by accident, not to stop a twenty-foot-tall, very dedicated escapee from getting out. She half-climbed, half-flattened it, getting out onto a narrow grassy strip between Nuori-Deuchainn property and the underpass for a motorway. Ahead of her, she could see more industrial complexes – all grimy and smokey, pipes and silver chimneys and fans and steamy noise. And silver vehicles, milling around. Boxy silver vehicles, a little like her!
Celerity set off across the grass, determinedly. She’d already tried to get her collar off once before, and failed, but now she was out, she could find something to pry it with. She cleared the ground to the underpass fairly readily; the rough, partially-gravelled dirt was liberally sprinkled with detritus from the road above – mostly crash-damaged parts of road vehicles, but also bits of fencing, leftover construction materials, even just… general household litter, fly-tipped here. All was liberally coated with a black mist of dirt and grease that had sprayed down from the roadway above her head every time it rained.
She picked up one of the sharper, thinner pieces of metal, and bent to do battle with the collar…
The other machine could very nearly have been Slipstream’s twin, Mirii considered, examining the quiet figure huddled up in the corner of the main room. Obviously his red-yellow colour scheme was a major difference, and there were a lot of alterations around the head, most notably a lack of antennae and alarm lights, but their build was otherwise very close; Slipstream was that fraction more powerfully built, as his engine core was a little larger, but that was about as far as it went.
He… really wasn’t what Mirii had been expecting! She’d anticipated something tall, strong, broad-chested, bristling with weapons, wickedly attractive. Not this… sad, weedy little orange version of Slipstream.
She crouched alongside him. “So you are Firewire?”
He nodded, resolutely not meeting her gaze.
“Please. You have nothing to fear from me,” she reassured, gently. “I promise.”
He shook his head, unimpressed. “You’re his friend, so that makes you my enemy.” Even his voice sounded more like a wheeze of air from a broken pipe; maybe just because he was scared.
She sat back on her heels, hands in her lap. “It is not possible for me to be a… a ‘middle-man’?” she wondered, and at last his eyes slid sideways to study her. “I have no desire to hate you.”
“Slipstream didn’t tell you what I did?”
“In great detail,” she confirmed, with a nod. “I would like to know your side of the story before I decide anything, and… I have never been the hating sort.”
“If he’s talked to you, then you know my side,” Firewire corrected, softly.
“The mechanics of it. Not the reasons behind it.”
“You mean, why did I do it?” He shrugged, awkwardly, studying his feet. “Because I’m an evil bastard, of course. You said you’d spoken to him about it already.”
“You will I hope forgive me for pointing out that he was talking about the individual who hurt his sister, so his judgement may perhaps be a little, ah… biased?”
Firewire maintained his silence for several awkward seconds, and Mirii was at the point of giving up and walking away when finally he spoke. “I know he’ll never believe me,” he murmured, hollowly, “but I did it because I loved her. At least, I thought I did.” Beat. “I’m not even sure about that, any more.”
Mirii sat herself carefully back down next to him. “And yet, you left her so badly damaged that she may have never recovered, had Slipstream not found you.”
“I know. It was… stupid of me. Cruel of me. But I was scared. I thought they were going to call me insane, a religious nutjob, and lock me up, without even giving me a chance to defend myself. I-I know now that it was a stupid thing to assume, but at the time I was scared. So scared that I convinced myself of it. Every scenario I dreamed up became some inescapable living death-sentence. It just-… I was… scared.”
“Did you not consider that the… the law courts – I am assuming you have them, or something similar, on your world – would have heard your side?” Mirii wondered, gently.
Firewire shook his head. “I had no reason to think they would,” he said, quietly. “All my life, I’ve been behind the scenes. Quiet, shy, a little government bureaucratic nonentity. Nobody hears me, nobody sees me, nobody bothers with me. I guess that’s why I thought I could slip past the radar with Footloose.” He studied the dirt, and scuffed at it with a toe. “Why should I have expected anything different? Nobody will care if we lock him up forever. Nobody notices him anyway.”
“Did you not even think to just try?”
“No. Because no-one ever talks to me.” He elevated his voice enough for Slipstream to hear him. “No-one ever talks to me about anything because I’m not famous enough. I’m not the little child prodigy who can do no wrong.”
Slipstream gave him a poisonous glare. “First you stalked my sister, gave her presents she didn’t want and was scared to accept because that’d mean she owed you something, until she was scared to go out in case she bumped into you. You made her uncomfortable, and she didn’t want to hurt you, because – I can hardly believe she saw it in you, myself – she thought you were a nice guy and she didn’t want to lead you on,” he hissed, softly. His words came out as sharp little bullets of sound, and Firewire flinched back from them. “Then when stalking her didn’t work, you abducted her, you drugged her, you raped her-”
“It was consensual-!” Firewire complained.
“It can’t be consensual if you’re so drugged out of your mind you don’t even know who you are!” Slipstream interrupted. “You convinced her she was some kind of-… of religious icon, you made her scared to go out alone in case anyone attacked her for it!”
Firewire hunched his shoulders, defensively. “She is special,” he argued, quietly. “More special than you’ll ever let her believe.”
“Oh please. We’re just the product of mistakes our parents made. They forgot protection, and here we are. Ama didn’t even know she was carrying until it was too late!”
“…see? You’re denying it, again. Footloose is special,” Firewire repeated, more softly. “She’s the product of a union that crossed factions, and broke through boundaries. Her parents should have been at war with each other, should have been barely able to speak to each other without shooting, and yet they forgot their differences, came together in love, and produced a beautiful, happy, well-balanced, stable daughter. Footloose could have represented a new beginning, if only her family wasn’t so keen to keep her down. ‘We’re jealous of your promise, so we’ll make sure you understand that you’re normal and boring, just like the rest of us.’ Pah!”
“Footloose is my twin,” Slipstream reminded. “I don’t see you pursuing me with the same obsessiveness. Is it because I’m just an ugly little mech, not a bright, pretty femme? Or just too headstrong, too self-driven to listen to you and your incoherent ramblings?”
“You are more like your father than you care to let yourself think,” Firewire murmured. His eyes had narrowed, and a little of that semi-religious fervour had crept back into his voice. “You’re bullish, headstrong, work-obsessed, and emotionally cold. If you’re not angry, you’re not anything. Footloose was different; she wasn’t afraid to be herself, to wear her conscience for all to see and pay attention to everyone else’s feelings, not just her own. She stood for hope, for a new beginning for our war-torn world. If intractable enemies could come together to create a new life that is not only moderate and gentle but caring, well-balanced and fair, treating all as equals… what else might that new life have achieved in her lifetime?”
“Quite.” Slipstream matched the glare with a grim look of his own. “What else might she have achieved, if you hadn’t mutilated her? After she was trusting enough to go to you, to let you talk to her?”
For once, Firewire didn’t look away. “I was scared,” he repeated, miserably. “Your family could have made me vanish, completely and totally, no trace, with no problems whatsoever. No trial, no jail time, just a shot through the chest and some nice concrete boots, and a place to live at the bottom of the dock.” He paused. “I guess that’s what happens when you put the enemy in charge of the police.”
They’re not the enemy any more.” Slipstream bristled. “They’re good, honest, hardworking folk. They only ever wanted change, not… not the death and destruction their leader seemed to promote.”
Mirii had a curious, slightly alarmed expression on her face. “What do you mean?” she wondered, giving Firewire a look, as if challenging him to stand by his accusation.
“Oh, did he not tell you his father’s a famous war criminal?” Firewire wondered, timing it beautifully to occur in the gap in conversation so everyone heard him. “Why does that not surprise me?”
If the room had been quiet before, now the silence was deafening. Everyone turned to stare.
Slipstream lifted his chin and tried to ignore all the gaping mouths. “A reformed criminal,” he snapped, being sure to place as much emphasis on the word as he could manage. “Someone who’s done more for Deixar in the last few solar orbits than you ever did in your whole life! Someone who’s worked double time to repay a so-called debt that shouldn’t even have existed in the first place!”
“…are you still angry with him? Do you still hate him for abandoning your family the way he did?”
Slipstream lowered his voice. “He did not abandon us.”
“Of course not. I can’t think of any reason he might want to get away from his children, they’re all so happy and smiling and sweet-natured.”
Slipstream leaned down very close to his tormentor. “What do you want?” he breathed, softly, his eyes little slits through which pure anger gleamed.
“I want you to feel guilty,” Firewire replied, equally softly. “For jumping to conclusions.” Beat. “For being the root cause of all of this.”
Slipstream had to work hard not to let it show on his face; the accusation was like a kick in the power core. “I already feel guilty.”
Firewire matched his gaze for long enough that Slipstream became the one that had to look away. “Not. Guilty. Enough.”
…things were not progressing quite as well as Celerity had hoped. Getting out of the Nuori-Deuchainn company grounds had turned out to be the easiest step; getting the collar off was far more problematic. It was so perfectly measured and moulded, and so flush to her plating, she couldn’t get anything under it without buckling her own softer components. She knew the soft grey polycomposite of her throat would crush before the collar broke.
She could have cried; so close to safety, and so very impossible to get all the way to it! The collar wouldn’t come off, and with it still in place, she couldn’t transform. And if she couldn’t shapeshift, she couldn’t blend in with all these other plain silver trucks. Not that she’d even need to, if she could just get the collar off!
She was still moving steadily along, doggedly, hoping miserably for a miracle. A nice sharp saw to cut through the collar, perhaps. Or perhaps a lead-lined container to hide in, if only some kind trucker would then drive it away so her trail stopped dead. Even just something to block out the radio signal pinging her location to her hunters! Without even looking back, she knew her escape hadn’t gone unnoticed and they were searching for her; the collar itself tingled, annoyingly, and she could feel-hear the radio contacts pulsing off it. They knew exactly where she was, and it’d only be a matter of time before they found her.
Not that that was going to stop her. It was a matter of personal pride, now, to put as much space between them as possible, and defend herself as best she could when they caught up with her. Even if ultimately she ended up back in that same hole, at least she’d have the satisfaction of knowing she’d made the effort to get away.
Static charge pulsed painfully down her back and her knees buckled under her, almost dropping her all the way to the dirt. Found you. She could very nearly hear Pabishka’s voice – cool, mocking, latching onto her weakness like a shark into a lure. Found you, you naughty little bot, you. How’d something as lardy as you think you’d ever manage to sneak off, eh? You silly, deluded little wretch. You should know you can’t escape me. Once I dig my claws in, you’re MINE, and you only leave when I say you can.
Celerity tottered after few steps before there was another pulse, stronger than before, and this time she went down; she groaned softly as her knees impacted the hard ground, shivering feedback up through her hips. At least, she consoled herself, miserably, trying to catch herself with her hands before she planted her face in the dirt, she’d not broken anything in the fall.
Her last view was of Otto approaching, towering over her prone position, control pad in hand… She saw his hand twist against the pad, and a split-second gold-coloured bolt of excruciating pain clanged around in her head… and the world turned off.
