Thinking about Jayeon biting his mother’s hand reminded Kal of his own tumultuous origins. And Sumba’s activities on Reedfall reminded him that he had his own skeletons hidden beneath its dense canopy.
Jackal was moon-born too—couldn’t hide it, Coyote liked to remind him. It was most evident in his densely freckled complexion and grass-green eyes.
Reedfall, the Emerald of Amun, circled their system’s gas giant—along with its other seven moons—but was by far the largest and the most Cradle-like (if not the most hospitable due to all the megafauna). The moon was covered in megaflora that blocked out the sun across 80% of its surface. The other 20% was given to salt and freshwater, both of which crisscrossed over its ellipsoid face like a beaded lapis and jade veil.
It had been his home for a time.
Then his prison.
After his parents were killed, he'd been given over to a man called Burro who took over his guardianship. He'd effectively been sold. His parents' debts to the state had almost been his, but due to a couple clauses in a will Kal never saw, his life was forever tied to the man from Duat.
Burro took his development and enrichment very seriously. From the age of eight, Kal was schooled in many arts.
The least of them had been deception.
“Everyone with a knife on their neck learns to think fast and talk slow,” Burro was fond of saying with a dry, smoke-burned laugh. “Talking slow will keep you alive a little longer, when thinking fast fails to keep you out of trouble.”
Kal wasn't taught to cut; not in the beginning. Fighting was an idiot's gambit. If you did a job right, it would never come down to a fight.
The old man did eventually teach Kal to cut.
Kal was made to practice on himself.
Then he tried it on Burro.
Burro spoke slowly in the end.
And, true to his tenets, he didn't fight.
It wasn't until after he was dead and Kal’d ripped his mind to pieces that the boy knew who and what the man had really been: a syndicate’s man. A business man's man. A fixer. A problem solver.
A Knife in the Dark.
Bladed.
And on the run, apparently.
But by then, it was too late. Kal had already been neck deep in training for wetware work by then and he'd only just hit puberty—had just found out there was puberty for moon-born like him. No one could undo the damage even if they'd wiped him like a disk and reformatted.
(But they wouldn’t try, because Kal was special.)
Most got bladed when they hit majority, at twenty.
Jackal got his at thirteen.
For all that Burro taught him about winning at any cost, the old man never got around to teaching him how to clean winning up.
The Knives seeking Burro found a feral Fallen kid shoving chunks of his foster father into the apartments' incinerator with a vague look on his face. He hadn't even seemed surprised to see he had visitors.
Kal dreamed of having said something cool like, “Either kill me or recruit me, but don't leave me in suspense.”
What he actually “said” was more like an inarticulate wail of unbottled rage. The memory still made him cringe. He’d brandished claw-like hands, and charged at the half-dozen bladed strangers without weapon or plan.
The six cutters laid him out in as many seconds.
But that he'd survived more than a second impressed the powers that be. The Septet’s Khopesh, the masked leader of the Knives, would meet this child for themself.
The Khopesh liked him.
When Kal next came to, he was banded off-moon, on the largest station in the system: Duat. Thankfully, his parents' debt, and Burro’s betrayal, hadn't followed him.
But his own sins had.
So much for thinking fast, talking slow, and avoiding the gambit. Burro would've been disappointed in the little monster he'd made.
He'd had a normal name before that day. Maybe Demitri or Ja’hala or Yenfri or Abud. Something Lunar and strong; something with a legacy; something that deserved—that was entitled to—a future.
But after getting bladed and receiving his namesake knife, his past was stricken from the systems' records. Little good it did him in the end. A complete do-over was never going to be in the cards. He still had green eyes, still spoke in an alien cadence, still burned under UVs before tanning, still caught himself gazing out unblinded porticos, pining… for what?
He still doesn’t know.
Moon-born, destined to be station-owned.
Demitri or Abud—whoever he'd been—died on Reedfall with that Duati bastard who destroyed his childhood on a whim. And maybe, apart from all his yearning and his eventual escape, it was better to be reforged into something new—something sharp.
Anubis the Knife was born in Duat, fully formed.
No legacy.
No future.
Just another angry god, full of lies, fear, and teeth.
Kal’s last kitchen alarm went off an hour to half-cycle and he groaned as he rolled off his futon. For a second he just laid facedown on the cold concrete and took deep breaths, trying to quell the nausea twisting his guts. He’d forgotten to take his pills before going horizontal. It’d been a long time since that had happened.
Mechanically, he cleaned up in his sanitizer, took his tabs, and checked his social feed for anything crazy, but only noted a voice message from Coyote waiting for him. He cursed under his breath. He’d been so out of it, he hadn’t woken up for it.
Instead of listening to it right away, he tried calling his friend, but the link wouldn’t patch through the net. He kept getting a line disconnection notice.
Coyote’s recorded message went a long way in soothing his anxiety, thankfully. “Hey Jackalino, sorry for the early ping, Man. Wolfie’s being uber paranoid, so we’re all gettin’ new tech. Lang was apoplectic. Let’s meet up at Satunalia on your day off to link up the new numbers…”
“Phew,” Kal said to himself.
Then Coyote’s voice went soft and Kal could tell he’d found somewhere else to speak in an undertone. “Kal,” he began pensively, “I know something’s going on with Wolf. I’m not saying you need to tell me anything. I know some things are better kept off-record, but… You know how he gets if I get involved. But you and him… You two have a thing, y’know? An understanding. Just… If he’s doing something that could get him spaced, could you—I’unno—gently coerce him into not doing whatever it is? I’ve got a bad feeling about this project he’s working on. It doesn’t feel like Dog food. It feels scaly… Maybe it’s me. It’s probably me, but—Gotta go. I’ll see ya later, ‘kay? Love you.”
Kal snorted as he archived the file. “See? I fucking told him,” he grumbled to himself. “Coyote’s got a goddamn nose on ‘im.” He didn’t understand why Wolf didn’t just include his brother in everything he did. Even though Coyote didn’t have the tech experience or toys that Kal had, he was way more insightful and clever than anyone ever gave him credit. Wolf was stupid for “shielding” him.
Or, Wolf is undercover and wasn’t given a choice—Nope! Not thinking that thought anymore. Nuh uh. Forget it.
Kal finished getting ready and hit the tram to work. On the way, trying to keep the anxiety and the boredom both at bay, he started a new private session over the station’s field array and messaged Nines: “Why did you ask Wolf if I was single?”
Nines took a couple minutes to reply, which made Kal wonder what bots normally did while docked at their charging stations. “G’mornin’, Jack,” Nines texted.
“Answer the question, Medji.”
“How’d ya sleep? Didja hydrate properly?”
“Why won’t you answer my question?”
“Why are you so keen on the answer?”
Kal sent an emoticon rolling its eyes. But then he chewed on his lip and answered honestly. “I dunno,” he texted, then added, “Professional curiosity. Never had a bot ask that before.”
“I’ll level with ya, Jack, ‘cause we’re mates an’ all.”
Kal sent a flashvid of President Icotta raising a dubious eyebrow while leaning toward the drone recording his interview. The caption read: UH HUH.
“Tell me why you put up with him,” Nines replied.
Well, if that wasn’t confirmation that Nines knew he had ties to the Dogs, Kal would eat his station-issued comm bead. Kal started running a trace for the server where Nines bounced his transmissions, hoping to further bury their correspondence, but he was shocked to find Nines was already hosting their link behind his own dryware instead of bouncing their messages through the Enforcer’s comms. Kal hadn’t even noticed the switchover. Nines wasn’t just being considerate—he was slick about it too. Kal would have been impressed if he wasn’t reeling with the revelation that Nines knew his life was messy.
“That’s why I thought you were the agent, y’know?” Nines continued to text while Kal politely panicked on public transport (quietly, because he didn’t want to make any of his episodes a stranger’s problem).
“Jack? Still there?”
Since it was just the two of them on the line, he sent, “You’re not my therapist.”
“Y’got that right, Darlin’. Need a module f’that, I think.” He sent a bashful emoticon that looked remarkably like a MK-3 companion robot.
Jackal swapped over to typing on his Disso eye so he could take a puff from his atomizer. “Fine,” he texted. “I’ll level. I put up with him because of his brother.”
“Coyote. His twin, right? Doesn’t Amun have prob’s with that?”
“Yeah. Part of the reason they’re here and not on-world.”
“So, Coyote’s your boyfriend and Wolf is just jealous?”
Kal snorted. “No. Coyote’s like a brother to me.”
“How’s that work?”
“Having a brother?”
“No, I mean, Coyote’s like a bro to you, but his brother isn’t? So Wolf is your SO? But you can’t stand him.”
“It was that obvious at The Trenches?”
“Maybe not to everyone else. Everyone else seemed to think you two were hot-’n’-cold for the fun of it.”
“Your biometric algorithm must be finely tuned.”
He sent a stone-cold robot emoji that was blushing.
Kal responded with a confused emoticon.
“You flatter me, Technician.”
“Not on purpose, Medji,” Kal protested.
“What makes Coyote so different from Wolf?”
“Are you asking me as law enforcement or as a friend?”
“I already segregated our conversation from the net, Jack. What more assurances d’ya want from me?”
“How’d you know to do that anyway?”
“‘Cause if I didn’t do it, I knew you would. I don’t want you thinkin’ I’m muckin’ about. I want you to feel safe.”
Kal huffed a laugh under his breath. “Forgive me for not immediately trusting a tool of the state.”
“That hurts my feelings, Jack.”
“You have feelings?”
“At least two.”
Kal wiped the smile off his face and took another puff. “I’m a Duati transplant. When I first got to the station, I didn’t have many contacts, let alone friends. Long story-short, about three years ago, I was struggling to turn over a new leaf and through a mutual, I met the twins. We hit it off. Lived with them for a while before I got legitimate work. Since then, Wolf’s burned me one too many times, but Coyote’s always been there for me. I love him to pieces. I’d do anything for him. Even tolerate his shit relations. He knows Wolf and I don’t see eye-to-eye anymore, but we don’t talk about it.”
“You’d do anything for him, but you won’t tell him why you can’t stand his brother?”
“They’re close. I don’t wanna cause Coyote drama.”
“What if it doesn’t?”
“If Coyote is any friend of mine, it’s gonna hurt him.”
“I understand. You’re afraid to find out for sure if Coyote’s got your back or just his brother’s.”
Kal had never interpreted his own unease like that. He took a settling breath before he replied with, “Are you sure you don’t have any counseling modules installed?”
Nines sent him a laughing emoticon, but didn’t reply.
After the tram minder announced the next stop, Kal texted, “What do you do when you’re charging?”
“Lots of stuff.”
“Work-related or learning?”
“You’re really interested?”
“Yeah. I really am.”
“I watch dramas mostly. DIY vids. Sometimes I run diagnostics on the other metal units. Don’t tell Stock. They’ll go bonkers. I just like patching bugs. It’s fun.”
“What were you watching when I texted you?”
“A new flick starring Red Takuni. It’s a thriller-mystery about a serial killer that falls in love with a flowrist. I’m still watching. Wanna sit in? You’re using your eye, right?”
Kal smiled. Leave it to the security bot to remind him he hadn’t masked his device’s information properly. Sloppy mistake on his part. He checked his PC and texted, “Maybe later. I’m a minute out from the station.”
“It is about that time.” Then the ME texted, “Ready for the day?”
“I will be.” Once I’m medicated, he added internally.
“I saw you left your suit. Leave some of your stash behind by accident? You musta been in a rush to get home.”
“Nines.”
“Oh, is this one of those things you don’t want me to know again? I won’t press.”
Why do I wish he would? Kal wondered before banishing the errant thought. “Thanks for humoring me, Medji.”
“‘Course, Jack.” He sent several dancing bear emojis.
Kal disconnected and archived the session. A second later, when he thought better about deleting the log for the record’s sake, he realized he couldn’t retrieve the file.
Nines had already scrubbed their link.
It was like their conversation had never happened.
Kal went to his cubicle and emptied his pill pouch into his hand before realizing he didn’t have anything to drink it down. Normally he would have bodied them anyway, dry, but his tongue felt like it was made of sawdust, so he headed for the leisure lounge to grab something wet.
“Enforcers still haven’t gotten that golden head. I heard FE-10 talking about it,” Technician-5 was saying in front of their breakroom’s auto-vendor. They swiped their wrist against the pay-pad and wiggled their eyebrows.
“Golden head?” Technician-10 prompted in confusion.
Jackal hovered by the door since they hadn’t seen him.
Lioness said, “Oh, right. I keep forgetting you’re Colonial. Golden heads are pureblooded Amunites. Come on, you’ve seen ‘em before. The name fits, doesn’t it?”
“I’ve only ever seen Amunites on magazine covers. I honestly thought they got implants to look like that.”
“Nah. All natural. Although, the boy our guys are trying to bag is a little brassy in his mugshot.”
“Wait, Lang’s pack has two of those rich bloods? Why would they go for such a small outfit if they’re from on-world? Don’t most Amunites come from pedigree?”
“Fled the planet from religious persecution, is what Twofer said. Her uncle’s half-Amunite. The cats on Amun do this whole cleansing thing, and apparently twins are a cultural no-no. Wolf and his brother were supposed to kill each other, but booked it to Duat instead.”
“Tough break. Still doesn’t give ‘em the right to fuck around.”
Lioness leaned down to grab a can of orange fizz and added, “Speaking of tough breaks… Rumor has it, ‘Leven’s working angles for OCU.”
“Jackal. Working. You really believe that?”
Wow, Jackal thought, tickled pink. It was a good rag line. Technician-10 was always good for those.
“No, it makes sense!” Lioness insisted. “The whole manwhore thing, the stuff with the drones, his freakin’ admin file—It all fits the perfect cover. Everyone thinks he’s total slime, but he’s actually a Scepter of the Septet!”
Slime? I’m movin’ up. Used to be “rocket rat shit”.
Technician-10 snorted. “Do you even know what OCU stands for, Lioness?”
Jackal chose that moment to cross the threshold. “I don’t work for the Organized Crime Unit,” he said from the archway, making them both jump. He could have lingered longer to hear more pulp, but he figured that juice probably wasn’t worth the squeeze.
Technician-5 had saucers for eyes. “Hey! Mornin’ ‘Leven! Of course you don’t! Wow, you smell good. That was a weird thing to say. Gotta go!” Lioness saluted them both. “Gotta grab a bag! Duty calls! Please forget I exist!”
After they were gone, Kal shrugged one shoulder and went for the vending machine Technician-10 was still leaning against. He grabbed a canned coffee as he said airily, “If you’re gonna make the effort to take your spice trade offline, the least you could do is keep it quieter.”
Ten said, “What the hell is wrong with you?”
Kal sighed dramatically. “Where do I begin? I think it all started when my tube-foster—”
“Close the box. What’s Macaw’s fixation with Nines?”
Ah. That explains the above average animosity, Kal thought to himself. ME-0999’s had a run-in with Technician-10 before. Did they get to be pals? Did Ten get his hands inside his matrix and think he was special? Kal smirked. “Jealous, Ten? Did I take your primary issue? You can have him back if you want. If he’ll have you.”
“It’s not that,” Ten said. “Since you got put on that BOLO, stuff’s been shutting down on Blue Side. Have you seen the numbers?”
He grinned. “What’s wrong, Old Timer? Can’t keep up with the new numbers I’m slinging?”
He couldn’t see Technician-10’s expression since the guy was wearing his helmet, but he hoped Ten was losing poise. “That’s not what I’m talking about.”
Kal continued to smirk. “Spit or swallow, Ten.”
Surprisingly, the Techie didn’t completely lose his patience. In fact, he slowed down and put emphasis on his words. “You think you’re the only one putting out above average percentages in the last few cycles? Anyone looking to boost their numbers would be a fool not to act while it's quiet. But you know I’ve been walking Blue since before the war. The last time something like this happened, Serpentine, a no-name fuel-racket back then, cut the heads off Chimera and took their spot in Green Side. Know where Serpentine came from, Jackal? Blue Side. Duat Station was a blood bath for a hundred cycles until Septet ordered a quad of Ares from Amun.”
Something clicked.
To distract himself from Serpentine-came-from-Blue, Kal asked, “Ares? That name sounds familiar.”
“You think Knives are bad—Ever heard of reco’ mercs?”
“The goons that get re-printed after they flatline?”
Ten nodded slowly. “Take your average reconstitution boot. They’re trained to fight through the end, but they’re still human. After a handful of respawns, they’re taken off the field to deal with the psycho-factor. But Ares? They’re built differently. In the Sol System, they’re tube-bred to be without fear or autonomy and, the moment they slide out the shute, they’re cybernetically augmented from frills to gills.
“Listen. A team of re-heatable mercs could take out a fully populated outpost through attrition, especially if they’re working in tandem with other fireteams… but a single quad of Ares will reconstitute indefinitely until all their targets are dead or their printers are destroyed.
“When Septet made the request to the homeworld, peace was made overnight. Just the thought of an Ares docking in to finish the fighting was enough for everyone to suddenly clasp hands and sing to Mother Ubedgha.”
A lot of other things clicked.
Kal remembered the timestamps and dates from the articles he’d read. Sumba Whitney’s appointment to Septet and the rise of Serpentine sync’d up perfectly.
Jayeon’s Serpentine security was funded by his mother after all. And if Jackal’s instincts were right, and they invariably were, that meant that Jayeon wasn’t trying to take over Serpentine, StratoCorp, or her mother’s legacy.
Jayeon Whitney was cornered, probably homicidal.
Kal frowned. If my info gets out, it won’t just take down Sumba Whitney. Her name’s already come up before. If a turf war or—worse—Septet infighting—breaks out, then Amun gets involved. And if Technician-10 wasn’t talking out of the side of his helmet, that meant Ares would come knocking… which did not sound good if Ten’s serious tone was anything to go by.
My gut says I really do have a WMD in my wetware.
My gut also says it’s going to be sick.
Jackal was very upset that he hadn’t gotten properly annihilated before coming into work. Having most of his mental facilities at his disposal meant he was putting things together at-speed. The downside to genius? Coping with the crippling anxiety that resulted.
Oh fuck, oh shit, oh fuck—“What’s any of that got to do with me?” he managed to ask in what he thought was a flippant, disinterested tone. He even managed a sip of his canned coffee. Luckily, it had gone lukewarm. It's hard to look cool after accidentally drinking lava, Kal conceded.
Ten shook his helmet. “I don’t care if you’re working for Upstairs or not. That’s obviously above my paygrade. But Blue Side is our fucking home. Whatever game you’re playing with Lang’s pack has precedence. They’ll either go the way of Serpentine or the way of Chimera. But that’s not what matters.” Ten slapped the district flag image-wrapped on Kal’s left paldron. The veteran Techie said, “Don’t do anything that’ll force Amun’s hand.”
Jackal stared at him. He wanted to say something sly and petty. He could have summoned nonchalance; told the technician to take his grievances to Macaw or shove them space-side. He didn’t want to give a shit about Blue. The rent was cheaper than in Teal and it wasn’t as dirty as Yellow or Red, sure, but it didn’t feel like home.
But he couldn’t shake that strange, territorial itch. Amun getting involved in Duat biz made him mentally recoil almost as strongly as knowing Sumba was running experiments on Reedfall. He shouldn’t have felt any kind of loyalty to the moon that had birthed him or the station that had formed him, but, admittedly, he did.
All my stuff is here.
All my friends live here.
The concept of an Ares ripping through station security like it was nothing was objectively terrifying. Kal couldn’t even begin to imagine what that would look like, but whatever the heads had imagined ten years ago was enough to make everyone vie for compromise with one another over continuing to make war.
A Knife would at least look into your eyes as you went. They were dangerous, but, in the end, they were only expressions of power. A Knife said, “You have garnered the attention of the powers that be. Gods of Night and Shadow have mercy on your soul.”
Four Ares wiping out an entire station just because the homeworld didn’t want to deal with any corruptive forces living in that outpost? That wasn’t an expression of power.
That was an expression of indifference.
Jackal didn’t like that more than anything.
“I wish I could give you some kind of guarantee," Kal said softly. Technician-10 cocked his head to the side. “I know that’s what you want. It’s what I'd want. But I can’t. I don’t have the authority, the clearance, the power, or the know-how to do anything about—”
Ten took a step back. “You are the UC! I knew it!”
For fucksake. Kal sighed. “Ten. I’m not—”
“Say no more!” He held up a glove. “Honestly, I thought you were internal affairs. Don’t tell Tad I owe him.”
He tsked. “Not IA either.”
“Oh man, you’re deep cover then? Darkness, when they said you got around, you really got around.”
“Ten.”
“Present, Sir.” He snapped to attention.
Kal was suddenly torn between his desire to continue fucking with his foil and the sudden urge to escape to the sanitizer so he could cut his ears off in peace.
He needed that pick-me-up like nothing else.
Both of them made sounds of mild surprise as messages pinged across their comms. Kal swiped at his arm, but before he could open the message to read it, Technician-10 said, “Why’d you go for the screen instead of the neural implant?”
Ten thinks we’re friends now? That’s adorable. Kal smiled sweetly. “Just in case I get hardwired, I can cut my arm off before they compromise my wetware.”
He thought the admission would put the Technician off, but Ten just whistled behind his faceshield. “Janda ice, Jackal. That’s hardcore.”
“I gotta go,” Kal said. “Stock says they’ve finished gassing up the hotrod.”
Ten reached for Kal’s arm, but stopped short. “Hey. Sorry I gave you shit about Nines. It’s just, he’s fun, and I thought you’d corrupt or take advantage of him.”
Corrupt? Take advantage?! That’s hilarious, actually. If I survive this mess, I’m putting that on my resume. Kal tapped a gloved finger to his temple. “Gotta be careful about that Facade Syndrome, Ten. We unbound types are awfully susceptible to it. Next thing you know, you’ll start empathizing with traffic minders and automatic doors.” Macaw may have been on to something about the Blue Techs. I never noticed how freaky some of my coworkers are until just recently.
“Renard,” Ten said.
“Renard? Oh! I see. Three years of petty bullshit, but I might be UC, so now you wanna be friends? Very practical. You’ve already been using my casual name without my permission, so why should you care?”
Ten depressed the valve on his helmet before lifting it off his head. It occurred rather belatedly to Kal that he’d never seen Technician-10’s face. He hadn’t cared. Renard looked his age, late thirties, but the crows feet around his eyes gave him a friendly, almost youthful mien. He had classic Colonial looks with auburn hair and brown eyes. He said, “I care about everybody that works in the pen, Jackal. I just thought you didn’t. But that changes today. Let me start over.”
“We’re not exchanging comms,” Kal said sternly, but found himself smiling too, albeit uncomfortably.
“Dar’pro’, ‘Leven,” the vet said and held out a fist.
Kal rolled his eyes and debated about leaving him hanging, but he got another ping from Stock, so he just shook his head in bemusement as he dabbed back before leaving the lounge.
If everything turned out squared in the end, he was certain Ten would go back to being a pin on his seat.
But for now, it was novel to imagine he had an ally in Blue that didn’t come attached to a CrimeAnaly report.
I’m trying to do something good for once.
Something good… Kal shivered and hugged himself.
Even if it turned out Wolf was agnostic and wasn’t UC and wasn’t working for Jayeon—and if he didn’t know the powderkeg he was bandying about like a grenade—could any one person realistically do anything with the information Kal had without bringing down the wrath of Amun?
Having the key to the destruction of the station just sitting in his head made him feel incredibly lonely.
“Awlright, Jackal-mate?” Nines asked between jobs.
“Just thinking,” Kal said after a long sigh.
“Dram for your thoughts?”
Kal turned his helmet toward him. “You privatized some of The Trenches. Under whose authority?”
“Station’s,” Nines said.
“Septet,” Kal stated.
Nines didn’t say anything, which told Kal all he needed to know. “You… spoke to that Knife, didn’t you?”
“Don’t know. It was made private,” Nines said, his tone uncomfortable. Before meeting him, Kal didn’t think bots could even get uncomfortable.
“Even you can’t review the memory?”
Nines said, “You didn’t sleep well last night. Everythin’ alright at home?”
“... No,” Kal admitted, letting him change the subject. “Forgot to take my stay-sleeps.”
“Wanna talk about it?”
“Let’s just… finish emptying the queue so I don’t get any call-ins this weekend. Can you do that for me?”
“Something happen when you got in? I saw ya cloned Mac’s reports from Stock last night. What were you hoping to find?” Instead of coming across as accusatory, he sounded concerned. When Kal only regarded him, he added, “I wanna help.”
Kal leaned his head back against the seat of their transport and said, “It’s your job to want to help me.”
“It is. But I also prefer helpin’ you over the others.”
He frowned and asked point-blank. “Why?”
His tone was matter-of-fact, “You’re sweet on me.”
Kal rolled his eyes. “What does that even mean?”
“You like me.”
Kal huffed, “I'm a sucker for Duati muscle.”
“Ah, I'm just a nice ride, am I? A swank bit a pipe? A cool operator? Watch it. I don't look it, but I'm batt-fed. I run spicy… ‘Ey, you're blushin’ like a robophile, Jack.”
“I didn't give you permission to read my bios,” he groused.
Nines laughed and squeezed his thighs which in turn squeezed Kal’s leg sandwiched between them. “Was just a guess. Promise!”
Kal snorted.
Back in the office, they parted ways so Kal could vet Scythe-Bravo’s comments about their positive numbers. He got an overwhelming sense of de ja vu as he again insisted to S-B that he was intent on being a productive citizen from then on. S-B, again, made remarks that they’d believe that when they saw it.
Kal vaguely wondered how long it would be before the Scythe started to regard him with a more professional level of respect.
It was odd, but already the bullpen’s social ambiance felt new, almost raw. Instead of the side-eye he was used to receiving, he got nods of greeting and casual salutes. Apparently Ten hadn’t been blowing smoke up his ass. The entire swing-shift crew had changed their tune overnight.
Instead of inflating his ego, Kal felt more isolated.
Fickle, two-faced pricks, he thought as he saluted back.
After that second tram ride, they hadn’t talked anymore about anything that didn’t have to do with their workorders, so while Kal was doffing in the lockers, he texted Nines, “Hey. I was wound pretty tight this morning. You made the day survivable. So, thank you. Really.”
“Don't sweat it, Mate. ‘Swhat I'm made for.”
“Mind if I ask you a personal question?”
“I love personal questions.”
“Why masculine pronouns?”
“{Evasion} I like the way the words sound.”
“Uh huh. Your dialog tags are still on.”
“{Sarcasm-deflection} Whaaaaat? No way. That's crazy. How do I go about turnin’ that off then?”
Kal was grinning as he slipped into his leisure wear. “I'm not saying you can't identify as masc or fem or somewhere else on the sliding scale. I just wondered why you didn't pick something nonbinary. Most unbound do.”
“You’re so pretty, so why'd you pick masc pronouns?”
Pretty? Ugh. “Because I consider myself masc.”
“Would you feel more comfortable calling me she-her?”
“Not with that Edgelander accent.”
“Y'act like there aren't Edgelander ladies. I could tweak my vocal module, start using phrases like, STAWWP! YOU GO GIRL, BONZER, LOVE, and YAS, KING!” He sent a handful of dancing bears, but the bears were wearing tutus now.
Kal laughed aloud, bio-locking his locker and shouldering his backpack. “Please don't do that just because I asked you to. You'd lose my respect.”
“I've got Jackal-mate's respect, have I? That feels nice." Before Kal could interject with anything to the contrary, he texted, "I think passing as masc suits my self image.”
“Good for you. Sorry I'm buggin’. Got caught up in the whole not-having-genitals thing and forgot that you don't really need all that shit to still have an identity.”
“{Flirtation} Don't sound so despondent, Jack. My hardware's just as modular as the rest of me.”
Kal felt his heart skip a beat and he rolled his eyes. “Did I read that tag right?” What the fuck is wrong with me? He demanded internally. I really needed this end-cycle. I’m gonna tear Saturnalia up.
Nines texted, “{Confusion} Which tag? Thought I turned ‘em off.”
“You're ridiculous. You better scrub this log before anyone sees it.”
“Afraid you'll be put in the same bucket as Technician-1?”
“Nope,” Kal replied definitively.
“Why not? Macaw seems to think all Techies are mechaphiles. And don’t you bound types gossip?”
“Everyone knows where I go at my work-cycle-end. Just ‘cause my metrics are in the green for once doesn’t mean I’ve turned into a chrome-hound.”
“Saturnalia, Wolf told me. That true?”
Kal finished clocking out and headed for the shuttle pool instead of the tram. “What do you know about it?”
“To get in, you have to know the madam personally. And to become a member, you have to keep your points below a certain threshold.” Nines then sent, “I also know that most people don't make it past the six month mark during a passive, if extensive, vetting process. It only gets tourists during two public events every cycle-cycle. Far as clubs go, it’s more exclusive than some Green Side watering holes.”
“You did your homework.” Why did that please Kal?
Nines sent a blushing robot. “I'd say more, but then I'd be making my plausible deniability a matter of record…”
Kal laughed. “I’ll thank you for your nondisclosure.”
“Be safe, Jackal-mate. Duat feels different these days.”
Kal frowned. Ten had said the same thing, which made Kal wonder if Nines wasn’t just astute, but also involved in some respect. “What do you mean?”
“I'll tell you when you get back to work next week.”
What a tease. “I’ll hold you to that, Medji.”
“Promise me something in return?”
Kal sent a coy-looking emoticon. “Depends.”
“Tell me why ya didn't just laser the tattoo off.”
He’d seen the callus behind his ear. To be fair, he kept his hair up at work most of the time. Kal didn’t know how he felt about the question. Since Nines knew about Knives, and had probably talked to Komodo in the flesh, he might very well know what the placement of the scar meant.
Still, he couldn’t shake the hope that Nines might be the only thing on-station that wouldn’t judge him.
But Nines was still a Metal Enforcer, even if every time they talked, Kal seemed to forget that fact.
Kal texted, “I’ll think about it.”
“I’ll hold you to that, Technician.”
“G’night, Nines.” He hopped into a transport.
“Sweet dreams, Jack.”
ns216.73.216.82da2
