part0217

Craze found himself staring into the face of a gal with chrome-hued skin. Tears and blood streamed down her cheeks. Her lips opened wide as a Lepper portal. She screamed and screamed and screamed. Craze had to close his ear holes, choking, trying to speak. He couldn’t get enough air. He could only lay there blinking at her, hoping his expression conveyed he meant her no harm.

“Please,” he huffed. “Please ... I ... no ... hurt ... you.”

She stopped shrieking to listen to his choppy plea, sniffling. “You look familiar. Have we met? I think we met before. Not here though. I hate this place. I haven’t been here long, but I know I hate it.”

Her pink irises raked down Craze, making him feel naked. There was a glow behind them not entirely natural. He noticed cybernetic plugs at her elbows, but the mechanical halves of her arms were missing. The same was true of her knees and legs. She had no hands or feet, helpless on the floor like he was.

He recovered enough to speak better. “We haven’t met. I’d remember you. I don’t like this place either. You OK? You look hurt.”

“I suppose I’ll live if my next master lets me. I don’t know why I still need a master. I can think for myself now, decide things for myself. This obedience thing sucks. They make me do things I don’t want to do.” She sniffed, crinkling the bruises on her otherwise lovely chrome cheeks.

Her partial arm hit against his coveralls. “That’s how I know you. I made those. Don’t you remember? My master kept me on Siegna several weeks so I could make those for you. They not working well enough here, huh? That’s not because I did bad work. Wism is just hard for anybody to breathe on let alone someone like you. There’s a canteen in the corner with the rest o’ my stuff, a tea I brewed. It should help you. Drink it.”

Wow, she could talk. He’d never met a cybernetic Backworlder before and couldn’t judge whether this was normal. “It wasn’t me you met on Siegna,” he said, “but I’ve been told my pa ‘n I resemble each other a lot.” He looked around, trying to figure out which corner she meant.

“Your pa? What a small arm of the galaxy. What’s the chances of us running into each other like this?”

“Freaky.” Craze pushed himself up to sitting, slumping against the nearest crate. The effort made his head swim. He noticed her arms and legs thrown into the farthest corner across the bay. Of course, way over there. He crawled toward them. “Who did this to you?”

“My master is unhappy with me. Says he’s going to sell me.” Her weeping filled the storage room, until she wailed like an alarm. “I don’t want to stay here.”

Craze pushed the cybernetic arms and legs at the gal. They slid easily across the floor, bumping up against her floundering form. He followed after them, rolling and slithering. He figured out how to plug in an arm for her. After that, she was able to put on the other arm and her legs herself.

She leaned over and kissed his cheek. “Thank you. Now drink the tea.” She held the canteen to his lips.

He panted on the floor, hand pressed over his aching chest, taking a tentative sip. Her concoction tasted like over-ripe socks in piss. He pushed the flask away. “That tastes terrible.”

She sobbed. “Oh. I mean nothing bad. Honest I don’t.” Her shoulders shook with her sorrow. “You won’t buy me now, will you? I had hopes. You seem like a good man.”

Craze ripped a cuff off of his shirt, wiping her face of blood and tears. “Don’t be so sad. I know you mean good.” He took back the canteen, swallowing down half of the contents, swiping away stray dribbles with the back of his hand. “See.”

Her words heaved out in sputters. “I work so hard to please, but my masters is always angry ‘n mean. I don’t know how to be better. Why do I have to have a master?”

Craze didn’t know, didn’t understand her kind. He could empathize with not feeling good enough for others, and he was pissed someone would stoop to beating her and leaving her like this.

He put an arm around her shoulders, pressing his side against hers, offering comfort. “You deserve better than this, Sweetheart. I’ll help you. OK? Does that make you feel better?”

Her dripping pink eyes raised up to meet his gaze, her lower lip trembling. “You will?”

Shit, he was such a sap. That was exactly how Yerness had manipulated him, acting all needy and sad, proclaiming him hero. What would this gal do to him in the end? Leave him here naked and dead, all his chips in her pockets? Well, OK, she didn’t have pockets or clothes or much of anything and she didn’t have that I’m-going-to-devour-you spark in her eye. Besides her tea worked. Already his lungs ached less. This gal wasn’t out to use anybody for anything but to end her misery. Craze could relate.

“Yes ‘n I can feel your tea rallyin’ me.” He drank more from the canteen.

“It’s great I can aid you in payment for helping me. I have to confess, I was afraid you was an awful criminal when I first saw you ‘n again when I saw the coveralls. Your pa said they was for a no-good lowlife he didn’t need hanging around. A man who caused trouble ‘n would do his family harm. You don’t seem like that.”

Damned Bast. Bastard-ass waste of gene manipulation. “Let’s not talk about him. He’s a dastard as bad as these folks here.”

“He did you wrong, huh? I’m sorry I had a hand in it,” she said between sniffs.

Craze handed her the piece of his shirt. “You didn’t know. I’m Craze, by the way.”

She wiped her face, then held out her see-through mechanical hand. The circuits glowed pink when her fingers moved. “I’m Rainly.”

They shook. Despite the unnatural origins of the limb, her palm felt soft and warm, like anybody else’s. Craze could detect a pulse thrumming through her wrist. She was more than a compilation of cybernetic parts.

“Nice to meet you.,” he said.

She picked at the edges of a crate, peeling off splinters of compressed fibers. “How you going to help me?”

He had no great plan and didn’t fully understand what he’d be up against. Keeping it simple was best. “We have a ship. You can just leave with us.”

She separated out the strands of fiber from the severed splinter in her hand. “I don’t think my master will take that well. He’d have everybody here hunt you down. The big guy with the painted face is his brother.”

Shit. “They awful busy makin’ asses of themselves in the bar. Probably nobody will notice you gone.” Craze sure hoped so.

Her face brightened. “You think?”

He shrugged. “Why not? Besides, there’s got to be a way around that sleazy saloon. We’ll find it. C’mon, I’ll see you back to the ship. You’ll be safe there.”

She threw her arms around his neck, kissing his wide cheeks. “For this, you’ll forever be my bestest friend. Forever.”

The tea, the break, and his coveralls made him strong enough to stand. A few test strides didn’t wind him. Shrugging out of his coat, he handed it to Rainly to put on, in hopes it would make her less recognizable.