Grown Men (12 page)

If Ox was hiding, a hospital visit could ruin everything. If he had betrayed HardCell, they might retire him there rather than risk the publicity. No way Ox wanted corporate scrutiny or his vitals splashed over data terminals.

Runt went to the terminal but stopped, his bloody hands hovering over the keyboard.

What am I forgetting?

Once he sent the request, the rules would change entirely. A medical team would make decisions based on cost and odds. They’d control Ox’s body completely, because according to his indenture contract they owned every millimeter of it.

HardCell means business!

But if Runt couldn’t get that tooth out, Ox’s death would be slow and painful. Sepsis would devour his giant from inside.

If I’d gone with him.

If the wetsuits were armored. If the medkit had a scalpel. Fuck.

What am I forgetting?

All he cared about was stretched out on the fucking mattress.

All I care about
.

Ox panted in pain, hissing air between his teeth. He blinked over eyes dark and slick as volcanic glass.

What is it? Something about the bee-moths.

Runt flicked his eyes around the sleep-space trying to dislodge the thought. Something in the sheds?
Focus
.

“Try to breathe slowly.” Again Runt’s memory churned and itched. The digital queen chirped inside his head.
C’mon.
He ran a hand over his own face.

Alone
.

Ox’s blood leaked around the tooth, puddling on the bed, their bed, the dark ooze creeping wider. A shudder ran across his muscles.

Think.

Runt’s mouth filled with aluminum spit and he swallowed the urge to vomit.
Think.
The answer hovered in his peripheral vision. The smell of chopped mango leaves.

The retirement package!

The kill-kit
! Welded into the walls. The sonic blade. Runt’s mind raced.

Drugs. Knife.

Ox flinched when Runt stood up suddenly. Red dripped fresh and hot to the floor.

“Stay!”

Ox’s eyes widened, swimming in agony, and he took a sharp breath. He shook his head and held out a pleading hand, as if Runt was abandoning him. His mouth moved as if trying to make words.

“No, buddy, I mean—” Runt held up a finger and started to leave. He turned back to say, “Wait right here. And I’m coming back to fix you.”

Out the habitat door, past the palms, Runt sprinted up the low slope. Up on the terraces, he could see the soft bee-moths out in the fields working the night shift. He almost tore the door off the shed getting at the submachete and cracked something getting out of there, but he felt nothing. The blood roaring in his ears amounting to one word:

Hive.
And then:
Knife.

In three strides, Runt faced the hollow hive wall and cocked the whirring blade. Not pausing to think, he sliced the panel in a wide, blistering cut that exposed the kill-kit. Before it could fall, he dropped the smoking submachete in the sand, scooped up the murder box and ran back down to the habitat.

Don’t leave me. Don’t leave me.

As soon as he barged across the threshold, the quiet sounded like thunder. “I’m back. I’m here! We’re okay, huh?”

Ox nodded once, his face pale and slick. He closed his eyes a moment, as if he hadn’t blinked since Runt left, as if some part of him had expected Runt to just leave him to suffer. Leave him to die. Ox’s breathing had gotten more shallow, but still no signs of toxicity.

Runt’s heart squeezed into a tight, determined fist behind his breastbone.

Chance brought him here, and chance’ll keep him safe.

He set the weapon case on the bed and popped it open. It didn’t matter to him now if Ox saw it or not.

“Ox . . . Ox? Can you hear me?” Runt’s hands shook as he attempted to roll the oversized body into a fetal curl on the bed. “I’m going to knock you out for a second. And then I’m gonna get that thing out of you.”

Ox rolled. The bleeding under the bandage had continued, a dark pad of sluggish blood gathered there under the synthetic skin, seeping a little where the tooth pierced it.

Using one of the trank darts, Runt stung Ox before any silent questions got asked. The giant sighed, his eyes rolled back, and his pulse slowed instantly, not comatose but definitely sub-sentient. Tension washed out of his sinews. The bulldog creases of his face softened into trusting slumber.

Finally.

Runt took a real breath. For once, for this, he tried to be as methodical as Ox: listing the steps he would take. Extracting this tooth would be like fishing out a broken lock pick when he was a kid sleeping in alleys.

Easy-squeezy.

Slow, smart, steady was the way to get in and out easiest. When it mattered. For a second, Runt remembered squatting with other punks teaching him the ropes so he could jack enough food to survive. The rattle of the wire, the snick of the bolt’s release.

Make the hole a fraction wider, then fish it loose.

Runt cracked his knuckles and exhaled fully, forcing his heart rate to calm so his stubby fingers wouldn’t shake more than they were already. A droplet of sweat fell from his eyebrow and onto Ox’s feverish, stained skin.

Take what you need.

Runt took a breath and held it. His pulse pounded so hard his vision began to throb, blurring just barely with every pound of his heart as it pushed his sap where he needed it.

Using calipers to grip the hard tooth, he picked up the sonic knife and got his face as close to the wound as he could. He squeezed the bone handle, and a shivering scalpel flickered from the hilt: vibrations sharp enough to slice a hair.

Just a nick. Just this once.

As soon as it tapped the synthetic skin, the flat disk of blood under the bandage slid scarlet down his side and hip, soaking the bed. More blood than seemed safe. Runt exhaled and took another breath.

Please, please
—

With shaking hands, Runt set the point at the tooth’s insertion point. The sonic-blade never seemed to cut, it just . . .
entered
without resistance as the molecules thrummed a passage into the skin. Like light passing through plexicrete, neither one broken.

All of Odd’s Gods, firm and foolish—

The humming tip scratched the tooth, balanced there. Runt relaxed his grip a fraction.

Carefully, carefully, Runt picked the lock of Ox’s wound. He let the bone weight of the knife widen the cut ever so slightly, then lifted it away quickly. He dropped it on the floor with a clank. It fell silent without his hand to arm it.

—dice gently with our fortunes—

Blood started to well under the synthetic skin still stabilizing the wound. Ox barely breathed, but that was best.

Runt realized he had cried, that he was crying. He could feel it tracking through the dust on his face. Only one tear, but enough to shame him. And he couldn’t spare a hand to wipe it.

—Because I’d sooner die than lose him.

Now that the barbs had clearance, Runt used the calipers and tugged the vicious tooth free, wincing every time it sawed Ox open a little more. That his cofarmer didn’t flinch only made him hate the evil spike more. He growled under his breath.

So much blood
. Every scarlet drop burned his eyes like acid, but he didn’t cry another tear. Spine by spine the tooth slipped free of Ox’s muscle and bone.

All better.

Runt sterilized the reopened wound. He cleaned the gore and slapped another strip of synth-skin over it to stop the bleeding and numb the torn flesh. He’d done the right thing, so completely the right thing that he felt lightheaded.

Ox’s deathly stillness made Runt anxious enough that he pressed a hand to his heart to satisfy himself with its slow drumming.

I’m here. We’re here.

Runt rolled his heroic partner onto his back. Straightening his legs and checking the bite for leakage. Everything looked safe. Luck itself had cheated on their behalf.

A little longer
.

Using disinfectant and a cloth, Runt spent a few minutes wiping the gore from Ox. Better, he reasoned, to wake clean than blood-soaked. He scrubbed the red from the floor and the furniture and his skin until the only stains were on Runt’s clothes.

He retrieved the sonic stiletto and put it in the case. In his panic, he’d jumbled the other paraphernalia, but he left them crooked.

This advanced weaponry belonged to a corporate assassin. Runt knew that in his gut. Undetectable organic alloys, quick-dose emergency meds . . . all in a low profile case that could fit under a worksuit. No venom-gun, but those needed a surgical holster which Ox did
not
have on his body.

Runt spat. He picked up the tooth and froze, not wanting to break the spell, not wanting to see Ox hurting again, not wanting to have the argument already congealing in the air around them.

Just a few more seconds.

He checked the wound again: stable.

Runt sat on the bed, knowing that the clock’s seconds flicking by on the ceiling above his head only brought Ox closer to waking up and knowing. His stomach boiled and flipped.

Time for truth. He had everything to lose and no choice. The two of them had to discuss the deadly retirement package. A lot needed to be dragged into the light.

A lot.

Runt shuddered, dreading the discussion. In some ways, what came next would be worse than the bite, the tooth, the knife. His angry heartbeat slammed in his ears.

The eel’s iridescent black tooth sat on the bed between them. Five centimeters long and jagged as a whipsaw.

I need to wake him and check his vitals.

The concealed arsenal was either a secret he had kept from Ox or a secret Ox had kept from him.

Lose-lose, pretty much.

Odds were, HardCell had intended Runt’s early termination. Very likely Ox had arrived as a fugitive and a felon. Runt knew tonight had probably claimed all his luck for the year. His life. At least.

More like lose-lose-lose-lose
.

Runt hoped the truth didn’t require him dying.

Time’s wasting
.
Death’s waiting.

Both of them liars, Runt had snooped and Ox had come to retire him. In half a moment, they’d stand on opposite shores of a toxic sea.

Pulling an adrenal pen from the kill-kit’s lid, Runt sank the needle into Ox’s sturdy chest and pumped the ichor into him. He stood up to put the needle away.

Wham!

Ox’s eyes snapped open to the whites and his face twisted in shock. His muscled back bowed off the bed and his legs pushed against the foam. A horrible whistling gasp came out of his grimace as he sucked air into his ribs.

“Shhh. I’ve got you. Huh?” Runt patted him, standing beside the bed. “All good. Look what I found.” Runt held up the nasty tooth. “Huh?”

Ox didn’t seem able to focus his eyes. He scooted back a little bit so he could sit up.

Runt spun the tooth and cocked a grin that felt fake on his face. A mask over a mask.

The larger man blinked and shook his head. The synth-skin over his ribs had stabilized already, beginning to fuse with the muscle underneath. “Does your side hurt at all? I hit you with a ton of meds.”

Sore, but safe
.

Runt put the tooth inside the termination case between the shunt and a grenade. It almost seemed to belong there with all the other deadly shit. “I didn’t know how to calculate your dosage—”

Ox’s eyes focused finally, but not on the tooth. He stared at Runt’s hand on the case of weapons. He swallowed. His face hardened.

“Accident.” Runt faced Ox almost eye to eye. “Just rotten luck is all. The hive, yeah? I mean the heat popped the panel and a caterpillar found the knives . . . You
lied
to me and you can’t even talk.”

Ox’s eyes stayed on the retirement package resting on the bed beside his thick thigh.

“You’re trying to think of another lie to not tell me.”

Ox watched the kill-kit as if the weapons were a jar of wasps thumping against glass.

My murderer.
“They are yours. They must be.”

Ox shook his head.

“You brought these here. With you. To retire me.”

Ox looked up at him with eyes that seemed clear, cold, and a hundred years old. He looked like he was going to vomit.

“I need for you to look me in the eye and tell me the fucking truth: you’re an assassin.”

No response. Ox attempted to elbow himself up to a sitting position.

“And I can’t— I’m not gonna—”

Ox leaned forward, brow creased.

“—kill you. So I guess you need to—” Runt took a raspy breath. “—Kill me, Ox. You’re killing me.”

The larger man ran his hands over the weapons, with nausea or respect.

“I’m not a shitwit; if you disobey your orders, they’ll send another one to retire us both.” Runt leaned over the bed and pushed his face close to Ox’s. “I don’t mind, huh? Time to know and have done. I don’t mean—”

A broad finger prodded his chest.

“—Much.” Runt stepped back to stand apart from the bed.
Awful
. Ox’s blood smeared all over the pearly room. “Will you fucking answer me?”

As Runt watched, Ox lifted and replaced each weapon in its molded cradle. He knew what they were, obviously.

“I s’pose you’re the best friend I’ll ever have. I s’pose—” His voice shook a little ’til he swallowed. Runt tipped his head to the side, baring his throat. “If you terminate me, you’ll do it right. Clean.”

Ox’s nostrils flared.

“I just don’t think I can look at you when—”

Runt lifted his gaze to Ox’s angry face, which wasn’t angry at all. His eyes looked dead, their light buried.

“I’m already a dead man.”

Runt shoved Ox and Ox let him. “What are they? Who sent them? Truth. The truth now.”

Ox pursed his lips then, a child’s frown, but he didn’t shake his head. He closed the not-his kit. He locked it. His eyes stayed on it, like he expected it to lunge at him.

“But you brought them. You hid them when you welded the hive. Tell me.”