Coldware (Part 1: Software) -- Chapter Five (Rough Version)

Before my eyes even begin to open, I know it isn’t morning. Something deep in my gut—an internal clock, perhaps—screams at me, begging I return to my slumbering state and let sleeping dogs lie. However, these metaphorical dogs are, in fact, not sleeping. With that thought in mind, I tense my stomach muscles and lift myself into a sitting position. Pulling my hands from beneath the pale blue sheets, I set them on my lap and wait, allowing my vision to slowly adjust to the darkness. As pale and rather unhelpful moonlight filters its way from the small circular port window to my left, through the dust, and down to the floor, I strain my ears to pinpoint what, exactly, woke me.

“Lady, you’re creepy,” I hear a young voice say, a slight accent lilting his words to where his ‘a’s and ‘e’s are over-pronounced and his ‘o’s and ‘u’s just miss proper punctuation. For a fleeting moment, my gut clenches in fear as my heart contracts. He sounds just like Fey.

“Biter,” I whisper, my voice hoarse and broken from both the tangles of sleep and the chains of memory. He’s somewhere to my right, close to the floor; I don’t need to look to be able to track his voice. How I was unable to hear him breathing as soon as I woke up is beyond me.

“You gave me quite the fright, you know.”

I blink slowly, resisting the urge to bite my lower lip. I broke that habit years ago. “Says the biter on the floor in my room, watching me while I sleep.”

I can almost feel him grinning before he chuckles. “I won’t ‘staring’ so much as ‘observing’.” He yawns, struggling to continue speaking through the process. “’Sides, that boyish woman was lookin’ at you right strange. I know dirty looks with all my ‘eart and soul; you can toast me if that won’t one of them.”

“So you intruded my private space in an effort to keep her at bay?” I finally turn my head to look at him. His head his resting on his crossed arms, which lay at the edge of my bed. His left hand is twirling a lock of hair that is slightly longer that the others in that area of his scalp, while his right hand twitches every now and then. There are scars zig-zagging down the backs of his arms; whip scars. I wince.

“Well, if she killed you, where would I be? No escort, no mission, no coin, no purpose. Might as well stick with friends.” He yawns again, the extended inhale and exhale of breath slowing tapering away until the room is silent. After a few more moments, I feel him stretch out his right hand at poke my thigh through the sheets. I jolt.

“Friends?” I laugh—not choke. I won’t let myself choke up over this boy—locking eyes with him as he lifts his head. Green eyes glazed with exhaustion, he only smiles faintly. “We aren’t friends, biter.”

Now he laughs. It’s a quiet, soft, feminine little sound. “Nah; it’s too late for that, lady. I got you figured out now; I know how you work and everythin’.”

“What do you know?” I feel the panic swell up; a towering wave in a horrifying storm that threatens to capsize my resolve. My nails dig into my thighs through the sheets as I pinch myself. Remember what happened to you last time you opened your heart up, you sick, emotional, worthless mortal body?! I’m stronger than this; ‘friends’ was never something Fey—or even my Lady, for that matter—trained me for. Don’t see why I should start now.

“I know someone ‘urt you, once. As a simple matter of factual evidence, you ‘aven’t trusted anyone before or after the Queen. The King told me you two were close, but that was about it on the relationship side of things. I didn’t think much of it till I met you all in person and the like, but now I see how extraordinary it is for you to be close to anybody.”

I remain silent through his outline of observations, not so much surprised how dead-on he is as I am astounded at how quickly he gathered all of it up. I hardly ever talk to him, and to my knowledge, all he ever really does is kid around like most biters do. Then again, I shouldn’t be surprised. The King wouldn’t hire the puny little biter unless he had some remarkable—or at least incredibly useful—ability to his name. Might as well be observation skills.

Something nags at my mind with that thought. I try to mentally reach out and snag at the foreboding message, but it slips away as I feel the biter’s hand on my own, his thumb brushing over the tops of my knuckles. “You’ve got cyber patches all over you, don’tcha, lady?” He asks, his voice so faint I almost lose the question in the darkness and the dust.

My heart stops for a few dangerous seconds, my stomach dropping as if someone had scooped me up and tossed me over Irovian Bridge. I lose my breath for several seconds before opening my mouth to speak. He beats me to it; almost as if he senses my intake of air and my preparation for speech.

“You can’t deny it, lady; I ain’t the ‘foolish little biter’ you seem to think I am. Ain’t that somethin’ you would say?” The lazy, half-asleep way he’s speaking is nerve-wracking, to say the least. I can’t tell if he’s dreaming with incredible accuracy or if he’s actually smart enough to figure me out—without my realizing it or even bothering to analyze him in return. “See, you also ‘inted that you’re a cybermancer yourself. ‘owever, your file tells me you were a secondary Conductor to the Queen. Why do you figure that is? Seems right strange to me, given that most of those hybrid types kill themselves accidentally, what with the energy surges from the cybermancy cycling right back into your own body till you explode.”

My lips part, a sort of gurgle bubbling in my throat as my eyes widen. I don’t look at anything in particular as memories flash by and my mind attempts to formulate a way to twist all of this terrifyingly correct information into something safe and believable.

The biter yawns again, a few last words escaping his throat. “Explains why you two were attached at the hip, metaphorically speaking. Right?”

His breathing settles; I know he’s fallen asleep now by the way his chest rises and falls fluidly, and how his eyelids don’t shift. There is a frightening moments when I am not only unsure of what to say, but also find myself unable to think.

That horrifying moment when I don’t know if ‘Right?’ was his way of wanting me to tell him he was spot-on with everything—that his observations were dangerously on the mark in a way I didn’t know was possible in such an innocent-looking child—or if he was questioning if ‘metaphorically’ should be revised to ‘literally’.

A shiver runs down my spine as I touch a hand to the top of his head, stroking his thick dark chocolate hair as wave after wave of adrenaline rushes through me. I don’t think I’ll ever sleep again, damn this deceivingly intelligent biter to Hell and back again.

~

“Ms. Ayers, you look positively dreadful.” Evora chuckles over some dark, strongly-scented tea. As she leans back casually against blue-velvet cushions that are tied to rather beautiful, exotic chairs—which appear to be made from driftwood and hyperbrass ornaments—she smiles up at me, crossing her legging-covered legs. The wretched woman seems to have moved her fashion preferences from ‘practical male’ to ‘form-fitting dressed-to-impress feminine male’ overnight. I have a basic idea of what she was hoping for, but she of all people should know I was never the type to admire any form, especially not when fools like her dress with the intent of grabbing attention.

I know my appearance isn’t the best right now; I couldn’t find a comb and hadn’t bothered to pack one, so my hair was a mess. My clothes are chaotically messy, and heaven knows I could use a shower. However, I wanted to get up early and make sure the damned biter didn’t open up a verbal dam and tell Evora anything and everything she wanted to know. I look up at the inventor, frowning slightly, hating that I’m not fully ready and willing to take on the day.

Her dark brown leggings are tailored so that they hug her thighs and calves, aerial travelling boots—complete with magnetic plates on the soles that give you a bit more grip on the decks of these flying monstrosities, since most new models have a thin layer of steel between the floor of the deck and the ceiling of the rooms below—accented with polished silver buckles that glint in the sunlight with every fidgeting flick of her foot. She’s even managed a tight, crisp white undershirt with a high folded collar, covered with an elegant pale green vest lined with more silver buckles and a few more suspiciously decorative ornaments that are likely weapons of some sort. Over the vest, a very long black coat lined with so much custom tailoring, attachments, and adornments, you’d think it the coat of the leader of an entire empire. She had the sleeves of the coat rolled up and clasped to stay in place at her elbows, exposing pale, weak-looking arms down to the wrist, where she had wisely adorned gloves. These particular gloves were what companies called ‘broken gloves’, as they usually had a specific shape cut out of them again and again. They were very popular with both the men and women of high society alike these days, since the most intricate of designs could be cut out of the fabric and reinforced with expensive hypergems and metals that further display their wealth and status. In Evora’s case, the outline of an octopus with its legs tangled around an object that had been purposely obscured with the design of the cutout. This cutout was repeated on the back and palm of her hand, and again in a smaller form along her central knuckle, mid-way down her thumb, and on the tip of her pinky finger.

“I could say the same about your security, Ms. Traditoryn.” I hiss, straightening my navy blue coat so that both sides of the hem were even. “No insult intended, of course.”

“Of course,” Evora squints at me slightly, absent-mindedly lifting her left hand to adjust the goggles perched atop her head. The action draws my attention to the headpiece—which I admittedly had not noticed before now—and instantly pick out a very prominent ‘red flag’. The design of the piece is too sleek and well-made, even if it was custom made for her. That, and the left and right eyes of the goggles are not identical; the right one has a small circular device nailed on the outer side of the glass casing, a faint blue light pulsing from its center every second or so. As for the left eye, the glass is tinted ever-so-slightly more blue than the right, which is just a shade lighter and closer to the crystal-white most glass pieces are made with.

My best guess is that the circular device on the right is an Intelligence—probably Security—and the left glass isn’t glass at all; it’s a reinforced screen with which Security can project information, maps, and analyze structures and people through Evora’s point of view. I recall my Lady lazily mumbling about the idea—which the former King had talked about over supper or some other rare time they spent together—while we lay on the grassy hills by the lake, just south of the palace. The memory brings warmth; even the stench of the horses we had rode to get to that point was something I missed desperately.

I hadn’t liked it, even then. With each extended freedom of mobility they give to Security, that blasted Intelligence gets all the more dangerous. Intelligences glitch far too often for one so powerful to be trusted with its namesake—the security of the palace, the country, the seas, and even a large handful of capture Luminex from the wars.

“I apologize for any discomfort my lacking vessel might have brought you, Ms. Ayers.” Evora calls to me, dragging me away from my thoughts and back to the present. There’s a sarcasm in her voice that tells me any discomfort was intentional; however, there is also a hint of irritation.

Walking slowly—carefully—toward the table, I notice the biter sitting across from Evora, his back to me. He turns back to look up at me now, teacup in hand as he beams. “Heavenly dreams and steady sailing, I’m hoping?” He chirps, sticking out his pinky finger before raising the glass to his lips. I feel my eyebrows raise without even trying to lift them. I seriously doubt our one-sided conversation from last night was a dream. If anything, it was a horribly vivid nightmare, but I know better than to think so wishfully.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see Evora freeze mid-sip, her eyes drifting to the biter. There’s a look of confusion there, as if she thinks he’s forgotten something. I can’t help but feel slightly queasy at the thought.

“You could say that,” I mumble, pulling out a chair next to him, my cyber patches aching furiously. They really aren’t supposed to hurt—if they are, it usually means the mechanics of the thing has breached its protective casing, and it’s messing with your nervous system—but I’ll be damned if I let Evora so much as glance at my patches, let alone inspect them for an damage.

Evora suddenly snorts loudly, setting her tea back down in her lap as she uncrosses and swiftly re-crosses her legs. “Hardly,”

“Pardon?” I retort, incredulous. Surely she couldn’t possibly know I had been woken up—and kept awake—by the biter. She would have had to possess some sort of surveillance equipment or…

I glance at the biter, suspicious. He’s leaning back in his chair, grinning smugly behind his tea as he locks eyes with Evora. There’s a giddy glee in his expression as he lifts a careful finger to push a chess piece—which I hadn’t noticed either… my observational skills have truly gotten rusty over the years—from on square to another. A quick once-over tells me that the kid just check-mated the inventor at her favorite game. Damn.

Evora’s eyes widen suddenly, as if she just found a piece of a puzzle and pressed it into place. “I… I thought I… I just…” she looks to me, mind obviously whirring to make up for some mistake. “I thought I heard something snooping around the guest halls, and came to check. When I passed by your room, you were tossing and turning; I could hear you. It was purely accidental, I swear.” Putting a hand to her heart—sweet mercy, save me from the theatrics of it—she seems to relax now that she had found a reasonable excuse for wandering around the guest halls so late at night.

“Really?” The biter asks—a little too happily, I think—smiling as he sets his cup down on the woven table nailed to the deck to keep it from flying away in the wind. An attendant comes from behind me, setting a cup of piping hot tea down on my placemat, bowing slightly before swiftly disappearing again. “What do you figure the snooper was?”

“A rat,” Evora growls, glaring darkly at him. She quickly regains her composure, however, and returns her expression into false cheerfulness, directing the brunt of her mask at me as she beams. “In any case, I’m sure it was but a single rodent; they’re easier to deal with that way. Unless of course you have a hoard on your hands. Then it is best to gather them all up and torch their nests.”

I take a mental note of that rather foreboding statement, glancing again at the biter. Realization suddenly dawns on me, and I almost say it out loud before catching myself. Was he trying to tell me something without actually giving me the information personally? Only one way to find out. With a shudder, I do something I was sure I would never, ever do again.

I lean forward and smile at Evora as brightly as I can, forcing my eyes to reflect genuine happiness and curiosity. “Evora, how did you come upon such a magnificent vessel, might I ask?”

“Ah.” The inventor coughs, her mask shattering before I even finish sounding out her name. A slowly growing redness starts to infect her cheeks as she averts her eyes; her cup seems to be a thousand times more interesting to her now than it had been just a moment ago. “Well. I have generous sponsors, my lady,”

“You must be very good at your job, then.” I glance at the leather collar buckled to her neck—which is exposed save for the ridiculously tight necklace. There’s a medal instead of a buckle on the leather. It’s beautifully polished, elegantly engraved brass thinner than parchment paper in the vague shape of a woman with her arms extended, her lower half dissolving into whipping flames that caress long tendrils of hair that flow angelically about. The royal insignia—the King’s, anyways. My Lady always preferred the Nightmare—and most definitely a Brass Card.

Evora’s hand touches the medal before she can stop herself, her eyes fixated on me as her blush deepens. Really, now, it’s simply too easy to manipulate this woman. “I like to think so,” she breathes softly, her free hand inching closer to my own, which I’ve purposely set close—but not too close—to the inventor’s placemat. I try not to vomit in my mouth when I sense her hand get within an inch of my own. She most certainly cannot actually touch my hand; she has a cyber-patch in her palm—as all high-ranking royal personnel do—that allows her to scan the device in my palm and lock me into Security’s database. From there, I’m a voice-command away from being tracked by anyone with the clearance and the motive to do so.

“Must be tiring,” I sigh. In my peripheral vision, I see the biter’s eyes suddenly widen before he lifts his arm to bite his sleeve. No doubt to stop from laughing, as I am struggling to do. This kid’s a lot smarter and a Hell of a lot more devious than I originally thought. It’s sort of… fun. My heart aches at that, because after all… he does work for the King. Once I have my Lady, I won’t need him anymore. I’ve never been one to leave loose ends lying about, so it’ll have to be done eventually.

The inventor swallows hard, attention now completely and utterly focused on my hand. “It is… but I make sure to rest when my health requires it, I assure you.” She thinks I’m flirting. Not only does that thought force a wave of nausea through me, it also sparks up another urge to laugh. Surely she’s only joking… she couldn’t possibly be actually falling for this total bull, could she?

“Even last night?”

“Of course,” Evora moves her hand closer to my own once more. We need to speed this up; she’s too close. “I go to bed early and take the proper medication to make sure I stay asleep.”

A smile spreads over my face as I pull my hand away under the guise of picking up my teacup. The inventor is absolutely crestfallen, not even realizing her own slip-up as her mind is consumed with the loss of a petty touch-of-the-hand. “Really? Any level of sleeping medication is powerful enough to keep you asleep for at least seven hours nowadays.”

“Well, mine is a bit more powerful than that, but—“ She finally gets it.

First comes the shock; her eyes go wide and her jaw slacks slightly as she jolts, unable to dig her way out of this particular conversational wreckage. Then comes the panic, where her mind whirs and her eyes flick from the biter to me again and again, trying and failing to find the words to extinguish her mistake. Finally, something unexpected—an incredible, nearly-heartbreaking hurt that twists her face as she ducks her head and stands. I can’t bring myself to feel sorry for her, though. “You’ll have to excuse me,” she whispers before rushing to the captain’s cabin that has been built above-deck. “My stomach is rather weak in the mornings.”

The magnetic plates on the soles of her boots click with every step until she reaches the hyperbrass- and hyperiron-lined wooden cabin. As soon as the door closes behind her, the biter lifts a hand, palm-forward. “That was brilliant! And there I was, figuring you hadn’t caught on to my ‘inting.” He misses the ‘h’, but I don’t care. With a smile I try desperately to mask, I make a show of reluctantly high-fiving the kid, turning my face away so he can’t see. I’m not reluctant at all, actually. In fact, it’s sort of wonderful in a way that makes my heart skip a beat; however, it isn’t love. My Lady helped me feel quite enough of that particularly delicious emotion, and this isn’t it. It’s a different kind of endearment.

And… it feels good. So, for myself, I let myself enjoy the moment. Not for him. Not because I like him. Because it feels nice. “Now we just have to find the surveillance equipment she set up in our rooms—well, my room, for sure, but she could have set up some mechanisms in other guest rooms as well—and figure out some way to get her to keep her mouth shut about whatever she heard.”

“There ain’t no audio in the devices, lady,” the biter smiles, taking a final sip of his tea before the cup is empty. His face contorts a bit as he chews on cold, bitter crushed tea leaves that usually rest at the bottom of a cup. I raise my eyebrows questioningly, taking a tentative drink from my own cup.

“What makes you think that?”

“Well, the King hasn’t contacted me to alter my orders so that they fit a cybermancer-Conductor hybrid chase yet, and little-miss-curious over there hasn’t had a suspicious queries for me all morning, so… she was just watching. Which is pretty cracker-brained creepy, if you ask me. You know… since you… had to…”

Get dressed. Damn it to Hell. My mood is almost crushed at the thought. Silently, I pray that when I undressed, my body was angled away from whatever camera she had set up in the room. It’s a stretch, but hopefully the idea holds. “We’ll deal with that later.” I hiss, shuddering. “Till then… you aren’t so dull after all, kid.”

“Right back at you, lady,” he smiles, making a motion with his hand as if he were holding a cup. I raise my own cup, hardly able to believe I’m playing pretend with a biter.

Funny how quickly your position in the world can be changed…