“Wounded?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You don’t have to call me sir.”
“Habit.”
“What happened, if you don’t mind my asking?”
I took the glove off my left hand and held it up so he could see. He looked over, and I thought he’d make a face, but he didn’t.
“I’ll be damned.”
I was glad to have it, don’t get me wrong, but I hated the thing. The new hand was a good match. The skin was about the right color, but it had that gray look and the dark veins stood out.
“It’s revivor tech,” he said.
“Watch the road. Yeah.”
“I heard they were doing that.”
“You heard right.”
“It beats a prosthetic, trust me.”
I looked over at him.
“Left leg,” he said. “Below the knee. Even with the nerve interface, it’s not the same. You have full feeling? Full strength? Full range of motion?”
“Yeah.” The dead hand was stronger, actually. It could crank twenty PSI more than my right hand, which was my good one. The one thing it didn’t have was body heat.
“You were an EMET Corporal …What was it like leading a team of revivors?” he asked.
No one ever asked that before. It was kind of a tough one.
“Quiet,” I said. It was the first thing I thought.
“Quiet?”
Every outfit used them to fill out the ranks, but there was still a chain of command, and the ones on top had pulses. The EMET rank went to grunts who were two things: good with revivors, and bad with people. I’d never seen a jack in the flesh until I went over, but it turned out I had a knack for messing with their heads. I drove them through my JZI, and it was fun—at first.
When I got good at it, though, they moved me so I could specialize, and I found out most of the grunts picked for that honor had screws loose. When I got my last upgrade and hit EMET, I was glad to get out of there and far away from the rest of them. When you were put in charge of those things, they were your squad. You ate, shit, and bunked in front of them. They were with you twenty-four/seven, and they never talked.
I didn’t say that to Buckster.
“Driving jacks was easy,” I said instead.
“Jacks?” I shrugged.
“That’s what we called them.”
“Why was it easy?”
They were easy because they never talked. They never ate, shit, or slept; they just always had your back, day or night. When the command spoke was lit, they did what you wanted. When it was off, they watched, and waited for it to come back on.
“They do what they’re told,” I said.
“My men always—”
“It’s not the same. They get imprinted. You could use them for target practice, as long as the spoke is lit.”
“Ever worry the command spoke would drop or the imprint would fail? That you’d lose control of them?” Buckster asked.
“Only every day.”
“That must be nerve-racking.”
“It isn’t. The controls don’t fail. You could shove a bomb up their assholes and point them at a schoolyard; they don’t care. They’ll do it.”
It was nerve-racking at first. I slept the first few months with one hand on my gun, but after a while I got to like the quiet. You spend enough time with five guys, even jacks, and you get used to them. You get used to the smell of them and they way they act. Each one is a little different, but they’re all wired to you, like extensions of yourself. In a weird way, I missed it. I missed my extra eyes and ears.
“You really do that?” Buckster asked.
“No, man,” I said. “Revivors don’t have assholes.”
He didn’t talk for a while. He just drove.
“They didn’t have that many revivors in the field when I served,” he said when he piped up again. “I think they’re relied on too much these days.”
“Then why you pushing bums into jack service?”
“Homeless,” he said. “The military won’t take them on active duty if they’ve got physical or mental problems; with revivors filling out the ranks, they don’t need to. If you’ve got issues like that, the best you can do is tier two, because if you’re just going to get reanimated, it doesn’t matter. What are they supposed to do?”
“You got me.”
“Besides, it beats being dead.”
“It is being dead.”
“They still have the memories and experiences they had when they were alive. They have consciousness, of a sort.”
“Yeah, well, trust me. It ain’t the same.”
He shrugged. “What are you going to do now that you’re back?”
I’d thought about that some, but not much. At first I thought I’d hit the fights for extra cash, but Eddie said my left hand counted as an augment, and it disqualified me from the ring. There were back-alley bouts that pit man on revivor, but those weren’t strictly legal, and I knew better than to go bare-knuckles with a goddamned jack.
“I heard you guys got a job program?” I asked.
“We do,” he said. “Come by and we’ll get you signed up. It won’t be a dream job, but we’ve got a lot of contacts. I can’t promise a time frame, but I’ll set you up with something.”
I watched the rain come down until we got to the place. It didn’t look half bad. It was a long walk from Bullrich.
“Here we are,” he said, handing me a set of keys. “You’re on the tenth floor, unit 3B. You sure you don’t need any help?”
“I’m sure. Thanks.”
He popped the trunk, and I lifted the door open.
“Hey, Leon,” I said. “Thanks. For everything. I mean it.”
“It’s why we’re here.”
The rain was blowing into the car. I went to get out and he stopped me.
“Can I give you one piece of advice?”
“Shoot.”
“Stop wearing the glove now,” he said, “before you get used to it. You were wounded in service to your country. Don’t hide your scars.”
“I’ll think about it.”
“You’re tier one now; you can do better than what we can offer, but you’ve got to do the legwork. You got any contacts, use them.”
“I know one guy.”
“Ex-soldier?”
“Yeah.”
“Good. You have my card. Call me if you need anything, or just feel like talking. Take care, Cal.”
I got out and got my pack, and he pulled away. The rain was worse by then, so I hustled in through the gate. At the door I fished out my ID and held it up.
“Flax, Calliope. First Class,” the door said, and the light turned green. I wouldn’t admit it, but it felt good to hear that.
I pushed the door open and went inside. It was warm in there, and it looked clean. I took the elevator up to the tenth floor, then hauled my bag to my new unit. There was a note taped to the door.
Welcome back. I pulled it down and stuffed it in my pocket. I put the key to the scanner, then pushed open the door and took my first step into my new place.
There wasn’t much, but all my shit was there, in a pile. The room looked like a prison cell, but it was big and it was clean.
I dropped my bag and kicked the door shut behind me, then walked up to the biggest pile of boxes. There was note on the top box.
The storage fuckheads let us take all your shit, so I guess you’re lucky it was us and not a bunch of goddamned thieves. Welcome back. —Eddie
There’d be no more fights for me; I was off the roster, and I’d never go pro. The note was pretty much good-bye.
“Fucker.”
I think it was the one nice thing the asshole ever did. It didn’t make me happy, exactly, but it did make me smile.
It made me feel like I was home.
Nico Wachalowski—Mercy Greaves Medical Center
A long, deep unconsciousness brought me back to the grind, like it often did. I’d stopped trying to make sense of it or make peace with it a long time ago, but it had a way of creeping back in when I didn’t expect it. While someone, usually Sean, worked to put my body back together, my mind turned those memories over and over like a puzzle still missing a piece.