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“How do you feel?” Mack’s voice greeted me as I surfaced, but it sounded from inside my head, and I heard nothing with my ears.
“Yeah. Fine, Mack,” but even to myself, I sounded like I’d gone ten rounds with the Ghoul.
“Nuh. You sounded much worse after just one round with him,” Tens interrupted, and I sighed, tried to find my voice.
“You gave me another party line, huh.” It wasn’t really a question, but Delight chose to answer it anyway. From inside the implant. Cheeky bitch.
“Sure did, sweetie.”
Typical!
“When are we going?”
“We’re a week out.”
That last answer was from Mack, and then Doc Oskar came bustling in.
“Right. The three of you need to get right out of her head—and out of here!”
They went, and I didn’t blame them. I wouldn’t have wanted to be on the receiving end of that tone of voice, either. When the door had closed behind the last of them, Doc turned to me.
“How do you feel?” he asked, and I realized I was lying face-down.
I pushed myself over onto my side, so I could see him. It took me a minute to be able to focus on his face, but I tried for a smile, when I succeeded.
“Hey, Doc. What day is it?”
“Same as it was when you arrived here.”
“Oh... good?”
He smiled at that.
“Yes. Good. You’re recovering quickly. Mack is pleased.”
“Does it matter?”
Doc raised his eyebrows, and then scowled.
“Of course, it matters, you ungrateful imp. You have a mission to prepare for. The more time you have before it, the better prepared you can be—and if I catch you wasting a single second of that time, I’ll kick your tail, myself.”
It was my turn to go wide-eyed. I’d never heard him say anything in Mack’s defense, before. I was both glad, and worried by the depth of feeling he’d shown—but, before I could say anything, Doc leant down, putting his face close to mine.
“And if you breathe a word of this to Mack, I will make you wish you hadn’t, because I have an entire medical center full of the sharp and pointy, and I’m not as tightly bound by the Hippocratic Oath as everyone would like to think.”
Honestly, if I wasn’t still feeling tired from whatever they’d used to sedate me, I might have been afraid. As it was, I just stared at him, until he moved back out of my face, and then I stared at him a little bit more.
“You’re going to need to lie back down on your stomach,” he said. “I have to check the insertion point.”
I did? He what? Fine. Whatever. I rolled back onto my stomach, only flinching a little at his touch on the back of my skull. I listened as he talked about what they’d done.
“We put this one in in the same area that the old one was. It gave us a chance to make sure there hadn’t been any seepage. This is healing nicely. I gave it a dose of nanites to speed things along, and dosed the site with some localized painkillers.”
His fingers moved lightly over my scalp, and I realized I’d lost a bit of hair.
Doc was already talking about it.
“You’ve got a bald patch,” he told me. “If you want my advice, I’d say to suck it up and shave the lot off. You can use a wig to change your profile until your hair grows back. Your other alternative is to use the old comb-over trick, and arrange what you’ve got left so it covers the patch. Either method works.”
He paused, letting me digest it, and then I felt him move away. He started to speak, again, as I turned slowly onto my side.
“Personally, I think Mack would miss your hair, if you shaved it off. You might want to think about that, when you’re deciding.”
Personally? Personally, I thought Doc should mind his own goddamn business! It was my hair, and I’d do with it what I wanted. In fact, I was tempted to shave it all off just because that would give Mack the most shits. At the same time, though, it was kind of cute that Doc thought it would bother Mack if I did—and that he thought enough of Mack to mention the fact.
I just wasn’t sure what it said about me that I was going to take his suggestion and keep my hair, anyway.
In the end, I decided not to think about it. I just focused on pushing myself up into a sitting position, and keeping what I hadn’t eaten for lunch in my stomach. By the time I had a grip on that, Doc was back and offering me a glass of water.
“You look fine,” he said, “but there’ll be no mats for a week, whether it’s to settle a dispute, or for training—and you should stay off the range for that long as well. Daggers is fine, but nothing else, until I’m sure that implant has settled. Got it?”
Well, there really was only one answer for that. I did not want Doc mad at me—ever.
“Got it.”
Mack, however, had other plans.
“You have to familiarize!” he snapped, and then repeated the phrase when I insisted he go see Doc.
“Don’t make me take you to the mats,” he warned, and I grinned.
“You’re not allowed to; doctor’s orders.”
“We’ll see about that!” he’d said, and stalked toward Medical.
I followed at a relatively safe distance.
Mack did his usual act of storming into the Doc’s terrain uninvited, and Doc did his usual of reminding Mack where he ended up if things went wrong on a mission.
“Yeah. In some asshole’s custody,” Mack retorted, and Doc reached out and smacked him upside the head.
“And my care!” Doc snapped. “Or do you want to take that to the mats?”
I’d never seen Mack back down so fast in all the time I’d known him.
“The mats, Doc? Aren’t you getting too old for that kind of shit?”
“You want to find out?”
Mack raised his hands in surrender, and backed up a step.
“Not particularly, Doc,” he said. “I just want to find out if there’s any wriggle room in the training restrictions.”
Which wasn’t exactly how he’d phrased it, when he’d spoken to me. Doc’s response was almost instantaneous.
“No mats for a month.”
Funny. I remembered him saying ‘at least a week’. Apparently, Mack had been listening in.
“I thought you said not for a week.”
“I went back over her scans. Frankly, if the mission was something you could put off, I’d be telling you to do that, too. As it is, you are going to have to make sure she doesn’t get thrown around.”
Mack stared at him in disbelief, and I didn’t blame him. I’m pretty sure I was staring at him, too. Doc glared at us both.
“How...” we began, together, and Doc held up his hand.
“You have to tell me you’ll do your best to not let it happen, or I’ll put you both in stasis until she’s fully fit.”
“You’re—” Mack started, but Doc cut him off.
“No, I’m not!”
“We’ll do our best,” I said, answering for both of us, and they both stopped staring at each other to stare at me, which I wasn’t sure was that much better.
“What?”
Doc rolled his eyes, and turned back to Mack.
“I suppose you’re going to push it on the firing practice, now?”
Mack ducked his head.
“She does need to familiarize.”
“Damnitall. I’m right here!”
They both ignored me, and kept staring at each other. Finally, Doc closed his eyes, and pinched the bridge of his nose.
“Fine. Ten minutes at a stretch. Once in the morning. I’ll do a scan straight after and then an hour after that, and then two hours later.”
I rolled my eyes and huffed a sigh. Great! More tests, and I meant that in the most unhappy of ways. I was oddly relieved when Doc added, “But she practices on her own, with only one weapon firing at any one time.”
At least there wouldn’t be an audience if things went wrong, but Mack was still trying to push the training schedule.
“If those tests come out okay, can we try for fifteen minutes in the afternoon?”
“You give it an eight-hour break between shoots, wait for my okay, and then try for a fifteen-minute stretch, followed by the same testing regime. If everything looks okay, we’ll move to two thirty-minute sessions the following day, and slowly crank it up thereafter.”
“Done,” Mack said, and Doc grimaced, turning away from Mack to whatever he’d been studying on his terminal.
Of course, Mack had to try, one more time.
“And you’re sure—”
“Get out.”
“But—”
Doc turned his head, and glared.
“Don’t. Make. Me. Come. Over there.”
Mack did a smart about face and left the clinic. I gave the Doc a happy grin, and started to follow him. Doc’s next words wiped the smile from my face.
“You overdo it, Cutter, and I will make you regret it.”
“Gotit!” I said, and fled.
Mack was smirking, when I got out into the corridor.
“Come on,” he said. “Tonight, you’re learning how to take ’em apart and put ’em back together. Tomorrow morning, we’ll put you on the range.”
I’m not going to go through just how many times we took those damn side arms apart, or how many times I dropped something, or even how close I came to throwing something at Mack—you know, like a punch, or a stock, or a cartridge, or maybe just the whole damn gun. I just won’t. But Doc’s expression stayed fixed in my head, and I did not want to find out exactly how he was going to make me regret overdoing it.
For his part, Mack seemed to be keeping the Doc’s words in mind, too. He kept everything he said related to the process of dismantling and reassembling the weapons I’d just acquired. There was not one single snark about the amount of time I spent fondling the Zakrava, before I followed his instructions. Nor did he complain when I made extra sure I could get it apart and back together again—even though he’d wanted to start on the Blazer 54.
We went from simple instructions to me racing the clock. Mack set me a time to get the weapon apart and back together again. If I made it, he paid a bounty into my account. I knew how much I owed Odyssey, and I pushed it, until I could make his times, and then go one better.
“Again,” I said, putting my least favorite toy, the Blazer, down on the table in front of me. I’d made the time, and then half the time, and I’d made it to those times ten times running.
My hands were shaking, but I wanted more. The sooner I paid that debt, the sooner I would be free.
“Again,” I said, when Mack did not move.
I met his gaze, and pressed my hands on the table behind the Blazer, hoping he hadn’t noticed the fine tremors running through my fingers. I should have known better than to even try. Mack laid a hand over the nearest one of mine, and squeezed it lightly.
“Not tonight,” he said, “or Doc will have my hide.”
I lifted my chin, ready to argue.
“He’ll have your hide as well,” Mack added, and I sighed.
“Fine,” I said, “but tomorrow—”
“Tomorrow we go to the range,” he said, and his tone was final. “And, while we wait for your scan results, you can race Tens, Steppy and me to see who can do this faster. A hundred credits from each of us at the start of each round. Winner gets the pot. Ten rounds, then lunch.”
It was a fair deal, and I was curious to see which of us was faster. I guess there was more than one way to pass the time.
“And we need to go over the mission, once more,” Delight’s voice came to us from the doorway.
I don’t know which of us turned faster. I do know we were both locked and loaded, when we did. She gave us a smile designed to irritate, and raised one eyebrow.
“Didn’t Doc say no more than one firearm going off at a time?” she asked, and I was relieved to see Pritchard appear behind her, and lay a hand on her shoulder.
He was her keeper and shadow, a calming influence, if the stories were to be believed. He was also responsible for her recruitment, if those stories were to be believed. I didn’t know whether to be grateful or angry with him, or for what.
Delight turned her head, and met his gaze. Her smile faded, and her lips twisted into a pout.
“Time to eat,” Pritchard said, and flicked a glance to include us. “Cook’s getting twitchy.”
Now, that was something to be avoided. I looked at Mack, and holstered and harnessed my new weapons. Mack did the same, and we turned to the door.
“Cook also said no weapons at the table,” Pritchard said, “and Tens said to tell you Cook is in a mood, whatever that means.”
“A mood,” Mack said, and Pritchard nodded. “Well, we’d better leave our weapons in our cabins, then.”
He gave Delight a stern look.
“And that includes you, Agent.”
“We’ll meet you there,” Pritchard said, and turned away, taking Delight with him.
It was an education, and I made a note to dig a little into Pritchard’s history. Anyone who could make Delight toe the line had to be someone worth keeping an eye on. Beside me, Mack kept perfectly still, until they were out of sight.
“You will not antagonize that man,” he said. “He is all that stands between us and insanity.”
I didn’t want to know what Mack meant by that. I really didn’t.
