Orphan of Mythcorp (23 page)

Sanson

The damp smell of rain filled the air as I
exited the school. Rain was dangerous. If it was a particularly
humid day, rainwater would raise my body-temp. Injections of
nanites works great to raise my temp back up to safe levels, but
not so well in lowering my temp. For that I’d have to take an
ice-cold shower and possible wallow naked in ice cubes in the
tub.

If things get that bad, my joints seize up,
and then I need help undressing and getting into the tub. I’m
pretty sure that having your mother undress you at fifteen is the
fifth level of hell.

So I hitched my backpack on tight and ran
across the front lawn of the school, racing for the parking lot a
good two hundred yards away on the other side. A single bolt of
lightning arced down and struck the lightning rod atop the school.
Rain would soon follow and then I’d be totally screwed.

I was moving at a good clip, careful though
not to trip or push myself into an injury. About halfway across the
lawn, I heard my name being called.

Feet stopped. Standing under the big Willow
tree with her black hair framing her face, stood Lexi. She was
waving. Before I could return the wave, she said something to her
friends and jogged my way. Fortunately, I had the presence of mind
to keep my jaw snapped shut as she bounced towards me.

At least, I was pretty sure my mouth was
shut. I lifted my hand to it to make sure.

“
Hey Charlie,” she said, coming to a
stop right in front of me. “What’s going on? I’m so sorry about
earlier my friends dragging me away from you and all but they just
had to tell me something and it wasn’t a guy thing you know so
we’re cool right you aren’t like mad or anything and wanting to
choke me or spread nasty rumors about me diddling some grungy
druggie with a pockmarked face like a pizza and some godawful yucky
stuff going on below but I wanted to ask about Ash and stuff did
you talk to him did he still want to meet my dad because I think we
could figure something out maybe.”

“
Um.”

Lexi giggled and rocked on her heels. The
Goth flock back at the willow tree was watching—and they did not
look happy. “I’m sorry. I talk too much Missy is always telling me
but she talks just as much as I do and maybe a bit more and always
about herself. God does she drone on. But back to what you were
saying?”

“
I was saying something?” I asked,
genuinely curious.

“
About Ash?” She looked way too
eager.

What did she see in that little Morai yahoo?
“Right,” I said. “We worked it out. Your parent-teacher conference
will be this Wednesday. The teachers and Principal Steck have
already signed on and he’s calling our parents like right now. So,
it’s done.”

“
Oh my God!” she squeaked, sounding
like a mouse who’s just found a Gouda. She looked ready to hug me,
but must’ve thought better of it, after glancing back at her
friends. “How did you do it?”

“
It was mostly the Morai,” I confessed.
“So, do you think your dad will show up now?”

Lexi’s face, a compilation of cute and petite
features, rolled through a series of unreadable expressions. At
last she looked back at me and spoke. “He might. I mean it’s not
like I’m asking him to pay for college tuition right? I just want
him to come to my school to speak with my teachers. What’s the big
heavy, right? Yeah, he’ll come. I’ll drag him here if I have to. So
Ash still totally wants to meet him?”

“
Oh yeah,” I said. “He totally wants to
meet your father.”

“
And then he’ll go with me I mean if my
dad doesn’t go all ‘I’m a US Senator and I will not have my
daughter dating some boy I don’t even know’ on him and
stuff?”

I felt sorry for Lexi; really this whole
thing had very little to do with her. “That’s the plan. Oh, and
make sure you tell him this conference is to address the Morai
problem. He was one of the few senators who sought to reopen
Mythcorp, wasn’t he?”

“
Oh yeah,” Lexi smiled. “He even tried
to organize a picket line or something like a hundred years ago. It
was probably more like ten years ago I don’t really remember but
mom told me about it and about all the flak he took from that awful
Zoner group. Anyway,” Lexi dug out her FAD and voxed a message to
herself before turning it to me. “Tell me what you just said you
know what you wanted me to tell my dad to get him to come. If you
don’t I’ll forget and then I’ll have to come up with some lie and I
can’t lie to my dad I just start stammering he sees right through
me with his I’m-a-US-Senator-and-you-can’t-lie-to-the-likes-of-me’
eyes.”

I spoke into her FAD, leaving a vox message
that I hoped no one else would hear, because I sounded like a
moron.

“
Later,” Lexi called to me as she
skipped back to her girls.

I breathed deep—never a good idea with all
the stress inhaling puts on my nanites. Thunder boomed and I
shrunk, startled. The old Sanson family chill returned. I puffed a
breath cloud, shook, and resumed my trip to the tool shed in the
parking lot.

It was darker now, making me wonder just how
long Lexi had kept me. Maybe talking with teenage girls makes time
fly. Stranger things have happened.

I rounded the corner, leaned against the
brick to check my thermal. “Sixty,” I breathed. Had to take it
easy; zombies don’t like jogging. Most of the cars had gone by now,
leaving a smattering of Ford Transits, Think City’s and about a
dozen Tesla Triads. The ban on internal combustion engines in 2022
may have made our air cleaner, but it’s done nothing to lesson
violence; fights and tussles over charging stations is just a way
of life.

Good thing I’m banned from ever operating a
vehicle. No pulse, no license.

The tool shed stood behind a battered pickup
truck resting on four flat tires, a relic that probably hadn’t been
used since 2021. It was a nest for birds and a reminder that the
past was—apparently—dead.

I looked both ways, like mom always says,
before crossing the lot. Halfway to the shed something fluttered
behind me. I flicked a look back. “The wind.” Of course, that’s
what the guy in the movie thinks just before the Jabberwocky eats
him or Jason Voorhees slices him up.

My walk turned into a saunter, into a jog,
into an oh-hell-no-I-won’t-be-caught flat out run.

At the shed door I stopped to steal another
peak over my shoulder. I caught a glimpse of dark hair, but
considering the waning light it could’ve been brown or dark blonde.
The only certainty was that it wasn’t white. So my pursuer was not
a Morai. That just left about two hundred students as potential
Sanson voyeurs.

I yanked on the door handle while still
looking behind. A few grunts and I had the sliding door open a
couple of feet. That’s when whoever was stalking me jumped out of
the shadows.

The stomp-stomp of shoes first, followed by
the shikt of a sword being withdrawn. I knew that ancient sound
only because filmmakers make up all kinds of excuses to have their
actors pulling swords out, and, admittedly, I like it when they do.
It’s a cool sound.

But not when you’re the one the sword is
being drawn on.

I twisted, caught a flash of steel, but
lowered my head and shielded my eyes as the steel zipped down at
me. Silence. I opened my eyes. My EDISON/TESLA AC/DC shirt had been
slashed. By the red splotch blooming behind it, I could tell I’d
been slashed too. Time to run. I scurried into the tool shed and
slid the door closed. A quick search of the nearby workbench
provided me with a screwdriver, which I jammed into the latch on
the inside of the door.

The thermal started blaring, crying at the
sudden expenditure of precious nanites. I don’t bleed much, as my
blood flows only by the trickling influence of the nanomachines,
but when I do leak the good red stuff, well, as the blood goes so
go the nanites.

I dropped my pack, tore out the metal case.
My attacker yanked and pried at the door.

“
Come on, come on, come on!” I cursed
as my fingers, already going stiff, refused to cooperate. I dropped
the first vial, failed to grab a second. On my knees now, thermal
blaring. If it could speak it would’ve said
Better hurry up, Charlie, or you’re going to watch your own
funeral.

Breath clouds lingered around my head while
blood trickled to the asphalt floor. You could almost see tiny
gleaming specks in the midst of the precious red stuff, my
expensive life-saviors, spent. The door rattled: the latch was
giving way under the onslaught. Some idiot had used only short
nails to attach it, when he should’ve used long screws. I was going
to be killed (permanently this time) because some half-wit
carpenter had done a lame job.

I tried one more time to grab the fresh vial.
Steadying my right wrist with my left hand, I slowly reached for
it. With an almighty effort I managed to wrap fingers around it.
But then, halfway through the battle, my joints completely seized
up; I teetered and fell onto my knuckles, like how Grandpa Sanson
used to get on all fours to play horsey. There I remained,
frozen.

I couldn’t even shake in surprise when the
latch finally gave, blowing out and landing beside me. The door
squeaked open. Footsteps. Taking his time now. “Who,” I managed,
but then my jaw froze too.

Without a word the WHO walked up to me. I saw
the shoes. They were white, no bling or color or swooping lines
like every normal in the universe wears. These were the plain-Jane
shoes of the orphaned Morai. That and the lack of white hair
eliminated everyone but Morgan. He’d been giving me the creepy-eye
since he got here. If he didn’t kill me, I’d be sure to pay him a
visit.

Something whistled through the air and
must’ve conked me on the head. Fortunately, I did not feel it.

The sound of a rat gnawing on something: that
was what brought me round. I scanned the shed for it. Then it
dawned on me that I was moving, capable of movement, able to wave
my hands. After sitting up and while still massaging my thighs
splayed out before me, I noticed the hypo-spray-gun lying outside
its case, an empty vial in the loading chamber.

“
Nimrod?” I called. Who else would’ve
helped me?

I sat there in silence for a long time,
letting the nanites acclimate to their new environment. When my
thermal was back up to 61, I packed the gun, stuffed the case into
my backpack, and stood.

“
You okay?” Nimrod appeared in the
doorway, wearing a halo of gloom.

“
Yeah,” slinging the backpack over my
back. “Thanks for injecting me. Why’d you leave though?”

Nimrod walked into the shed after looking
over his shoulder. “I did not inject you.” He stood erect,
straining that bizarre augmetic knee. “The one who hurt you also
injected you.”

“
What? Why?” nothing about this night
made any sense. “Who hurt me?”

He opened his mouth but then closed it,
noticing something about my face; which frightened me. I could be
missing an ear for all I knew. He leaned in close, held my head
while his augmetic eye whined. “What are you doing?” I struggled.
“Let go.”

“
You do not have a concussion but you
should ice that bump.” His eyes traveled down to my chest, to the
slashes, which had stopped leaking but were not yet scabbed over.
Zombies don’t scab. We need special nanoscale materials called
dendrimers to heal wounds. Only Dr. Wilmut could provide these
little wonderworkers.

“
Who hurt me?”

“
Morgan,” he growled. “Black hair,
skinny as a rail. We’ll deal with him later.” Nimrod reached into a
remarkably deep pocket and pulled out a silver shaft that reminded
me of the toy I’d found in my mother’s bedroom last year. He handed
it to me.

“
Yeah, ah, no thanks.”

He grabbed my hand, shoved the shafty thing
into my palm. “Open it.”

Indeed, there was a cap. I twisted it. A hiss
accompanied the release of mist. As I held the smoking
dildo-thingy, Nimrod withdrew a syringe from inside. “For Ash.
Tomorrow.”

If I was like any dumb yahoo, I’d have taken
Ash’s recruitment of me as a compliment, but now I saw plainly why
he’d befriended me: I was the only bloke in Philicity High allowed
to carry metal through the detectors. That clever, manipulative
yahoo.

Nimrod slid the syringe back inside and I
sealed the dildo-thingy. It barley fit inside my hypo-gun case.
Tomorrow I would carry it through the detectors, past the Iconocops
on whom Ash would use it later. “I got to get these looked at,” I
told Nimrod, pointing at my wounds. “I could have an infection or
something. Who knows where that sword has been? Frigging Morgan.
Pfft.”

“
I’ll handle him.” Nimrod squeezed my
shoulder.

“
Um . . . you’d do that, like, for me?”
not sure exactly what we were discussing.

Nimrod’s mouth curled up but then sagged. “I
owe it to his father. Both have it coming.” He released me and
whisked over to the door. After a quick glance into the darkness,
he stiffened.

“
Go home.”

“
What do you see?”

But he was already gone. My walk home
was not the pleasantest time I’ve ever had. Mom found me on
86
^th
Street. She’d been out
driving around, worrying herself silly. Considering what I’d just
done and what I was going to be a part of tomorrow, she was right
to worry.

“
Hey,” someone was shaking me. “You’re
going to be late.”

“
For an important date?” I said,
getting up on my elbows. “Ava? Why the flip you waking me? I was
dreaming I was a prince and everyone had to do what I said. That
included women—and I said a rather lot to them, sure as
sure.”