Flight (20 page)

I spit out a laugh. "My Fledge? You want to know – fuck it, all right. My Fledge, OK – how's this? I won. Isn't that spectacular? Yeah, I was the most deadly motherfucking avian that General Fledge has ever seen. I killed eighty-something people, including my best friend. A little kid who was only ten years old. Then, after I won, I played Deliverance too, and I won that as well. But only after killing my other friend. I accidentally nicked him with my SEAR and had to chop his head off in front of a packed arena so he wouldn't suffer."

Gideon stares at me with his mouth open but my mother is as cool as they come.

"Is that the kind of catch-up you wanted?"

She just looks at me.

"Or maybe you'd like to hear how I heard my boyfriend being murdered over a com or how my," I make air quotes with my fingertips, "father dosed me with a fucking abortion spray and left me on the floor of my shower to expel a teeny tiny little baby while the blood pooled around my body."

Gideon stands up. "OK, look – this is private, Linny. I'm outta here."

"You bring me here and then you think you get to leave when it gets uncomfortable? I don't fucking think so,
Gideon
."

"Sit down, Gideon."

He does as my mother instructs, but he doesn't look at me.

I direct my attention back to my mother. "You wanna hear the best part, Mom? I was supposed to kill Tier in that Deliverance fight, he was tried for treason for saving my life back here on Earth. But I killed myself instead. And then the fucking AI that took over my body offered me a deal and the Archers of the Band granted me Resurrection. So, here I am. Reborn twice in the last six months. That must be a fucking world record or something, worth a trophy at least."

I recognize the incredulous look on her face from toddlerhood. She thinks I'm exaggerating. I laugh. "This is just the highlight reel, Mom. The details are something else entirely. Like the twenty prisoners I beheaded on stage, or the three guys I killed in the showers for trying to rape me. And let's not forget little Kete – we barely noticed when her ass never came back after Fight Four."

"Are you finished now, Junco?"

I shrug. "I don't know? Am I? You wanted to know how my fucking Fledge went? Well, I guess it's
possible
you're not aware that Fledge is nothing but killing from start to finish, but I doubt it. That's not something you'd be ignorant of."

She ignores my words and checks her nails like some pampered socialite. "If you recall, I had no part in your life past the age of six. I am not responsible for these events. Now, if you want to pull this attitude with your father when you see him, I'd like to stay and watch. Because that would be something spectacular."

I have so many feelings inside me I don't even know where to begin. "What do you want from me?"

My mother smiles. "I want you to stay here, of course. Stay with us and forget all this nonsense with these avians."

"Are you on drugs?"

Gideon turns his head and laughs at my question.

"I mean, there is no way in hell I'm staying here with you and this Subjack guy."

"You're being used by the avians, Junco. They want you for one reason and one reason only."

"Yeah? What's that?"

"To make sure you die in the end."

A chill travels up my chest wound before I can shut it down. "What the hell are you talking about? They've had plenty of opportunities to kill me and I'm still alive."

My mother looks me straight in the eyes as she speaks. "Because the remaining six Siblings are useless without you, Junco. The clutch is only as strong as all the living members. They need you to be alive when they harvest the genetics. Then how useful will you be?"

Tier's words flood back to me as I think about this.
I have no plans to kill ya yet, darlin'. Perhaps I will one day. Perhaps that day will never come. But right now I'm interested in keeping ya alive.

There's pounding at the door and I can hear my team outside yelling. Obviously Isten could hear me. I look over at my mother and smile. "You're lying." I get up and walk over to the door and no one stops me this time. I jerk it open and then stop and look up at Tier's surprised face. "I'm gonna go find that bedroom with my armor, Gideon. Whether you come help me find it or not. So be a nice guy and just show me where it is, OK?"

I wait and then hear a chair scrape back from the table behind me. I listen as the footsteps approach and then I turn and wave him in front of me.

I look back one final time at my mother and then the door closes and she is gone. I shrug Tier's hand off my shoulder and keep step with Gid, my absurd dress swaying in the wind we create with our fast pace.

He leads me to the room and opens the door. My armor and supplies are still there and I whip the dress over my head and tug on my dirty tank top. I look back at the guys. "I only need one person to help me get dressed, so choose who stays and then get the fuck out."

Tier stays.

"Don't talk to me, Tier, just help me."

He smiles. "OK, Junco."

He seals me back up and takes two of my rifles so I don't look quite so insane. We're about to leave when he puts his hand up. "Wait, OK? One question, what the fuck was that about back there?"

I stand there thinking but it doesn't make sense. "I have no idea. She's crazy. You think I'm crazy? She's crazy, Tier. I need to get the fuck out of this tunnel. I can't stay here. I can't fucking–"

He takes me by the shoulders. "Stop. We're going tomorrow. It's one day."

"No. I want to go outside now.
Now
, Tier."

"No, Junco. We're meeting with yer father right now. We're planning the mission and yer still in, ya understand? You can't quit in the middle of a mission. And you won't. If ya want to stay here when we leave, then stay. But as you can probably see, you'll be trading down because maybe we're not perfect, but these people are fucking–"

"– human," I whisper.

He exhales a heavy breath. "Yeah. Fucking human."

I pull on the door and open it. Gideon is still outside with the 039 and I glance up at him with a look of surprise.

"Moju still wants in on the mission, Juncs."

I turn to look back at Tier. "He does?"

"Yeah. He's done with Earth."

The small carbohydrate-infused breakfast inside my stomach stirs up the acids and I have a moment of puke panic as we enter the military section of the tunnels. Gideon leads the way again, directing us down a long side tunnel crowded with troops in various dress and stages of exhaustion and injury. The smell of them is what triggers it and the next thing I know I'm puking in a trashcan that mercifully stands sentry at the intersection of another tunnel.

When I come up for air Tier is shaking his head at me and his eyes are glowing bright green.

"It stinks in here."

We catch up with the guys but the air is thick with questions as we walk.

Can you sit on it for a week?

No, Layla. I highly doubt I can sit on this for another day, let alone the rest of the fucking week.

We stop at a cavernous door guarded by both human and machine sentries. The humans physically check Gid and then each one of us. A knee-high machine clacks on eight arachnid-like limbs and then climbs up my leg to spray a chemical antagonist. The mist waffs upward and clings to my armor, and then the bot moves on to Tier. A small yellow cloud of fluorescent gas begins to drift up out of my pocket and the plasma rifles whine and come to attention on my head.

"What the fuck are ya doing?" Tier yanks the bot off his leg and pushes the guards back as they come at me. "Junco, what's in yer pocket?"

I reach in and my hand recognizes the small envelope from Layla. I swallow and pull it out and then reveal it in my open palm. "Anti-rad pills, that's all." The guards take the small packet and one walks away. The others keep their rifles trained on me.

I shrug and look around, unconcerned, and then smile up at Tier.

"You have a KI implant, Junco. Why do ya need anti-rad pills?"

I shrug again. "She said take them, Tier, she's the fucking medical officer, ask her."

"I will." He pulls out his ship com and searches for a signal, but the guards wave us on and I watch out of the corner of my eye as he puts his com away. The guards hand me back the envelope as I pass by and Tier snatches it right out of my hand.

Gideon is walking fast and I have to trot to keep up. Tier lags behind for a moment and when I look back at him he's barely walking, reading the note with a puzzled look on his face. He looks up and I stop and chew on my fingernail as I wait for him.

"I know too, Junco. We'll talk about it later."

I want to cry with relief that's how badly I want this secret to be out. But I don't. There's no time for that.

Tier sees I'm on the verge of tears and squeezes my hand. "Ya OK?"

I nod and he takes my hand and we run a little to catch up with the guys who are waiting on us at a door. More biometrics, more guards, more sniffers. Tier hands the little packet over to the guards and explains in a few private whispers that has everyone looking over at me. I bite my lip and take a deep breath.

We pass through this one without incident and then we're in the interior passageways. The inner sanctum of what is Subjack's military command. I can tell because everyone in here has a proper uniform and a snappy attitude. There's none of that everyman soldier shit that we saw back in the outer tunnels, this is the business end.

My heart begins to pound and I take a moment to check it. Tier squeezes my hand a little before letting go and moving up to the front of the group. Isten drifts back to me and smiles as we walk to a final door that is flanked with large sentrybots like the ones back in the Ramah tunnels. Gideon announces us and the doors open. I lean around Isten a little to get a peek, I can't help myself, and a few seconds later we move forward as a group into a war room. There's a long table and I watch Tier shake the hand of a man standing at the head of the table.

A man who most certainly is not my father. I try and pull my eyes away from the hulking bearded man with wild shoulder-length hair and piercing blue eyes, but they're stuck on him. He's not wearing a uniform. In fact he looks far more road-warrior than I did earlier.

He catches my eye and smiles.

I don't smile back.

Tier directs us to take our seats so we line up like we're at Lucan's crescent moon table, and then he walks to the back and stands on the other side of me and begins to speak. "Let me introduce the Aves 039. I'm Captain Raubtier of the Presidential Guard. We serve at Lucan's direct orders so when you speak to us, you speak to Lucan. At the top is Ashur, Executive Officer, when you speak to him, you speak to me. Next is Braun, Rikan, Mish, Arel, Isten, and Junco."

Subjack stands. "Junco, it's good to see you again."

I shrug at him. "You're not my father. Not even close." I look over to Tier. "He's not my father. That's not him."

Tier stays silent.

"OK, what am I missing now?"

"Memories, Juncs." He shakes his head. "Later, OK? We're workin' now." He looks up at Subjack and nods.

I sit there barely listening to the plans they're making. I rack my brain. It's not possible to just lose memories like that. It's not. I've dropped them off before, but I've picked them all back up since the morph. I don't have any missing memories, I have perfect recall, I have it all the way back from when I was a baby. I can pull up anything, anything, in a matter of minutes. Even ancient fucking Sumerian. How could I not recognize my own father? It makes no sense.

The meeting goes on without me for whole stretches of time. I'm only brought back to the present when Isten or Tier shove me to pay attention. I search Isten's mind to bring myself back up to speed and I feel him smile from the inside as he opens up.

The remaining Seven Siblings are being held in a global genetics containment facility called Runout, which is really a mountain town facility built in a valley out near the ski resorts in the MR. It's completely self-sustaining and paranoid to the extreme with aerial rocket launchers and a domed shield that is on twenty-four hours a day, except to allow entry of pre-planned secure deliveries. They have a full-sized army living on the outskirts and elite units that live on the inside.

A hologram emerges from the war table and highlights the town as a small red dot on the 3D map, then it zooms in, the dot growing bigger and bigger with each incremental advancement. Finally we get a bird's view of the valley up close and each building is highlighted and explained. I log it all and tuck it down for later recall. The dot turns yellow and then concentrates in on a single building.

"That's where we think they are." Subjack looks up and meets our eyes one person at a time. He lingers on mine for a fraction and then stops with Tier. "We have a mole and he's been reliable so far, but I can't make any guarantees. Everyone knows you're coming for them, we've been expecting you for months. We have to assume they know you're here now."

"So if we can't fly in, what do ya propose?"